SOX -1.6%. NVDA -3.4% closed lower despite unveiling its plans for more powerful chips and partnerships as it failed to excite investors. Jensen keynote was a two-hour emphasized the increasing computational demands of "agentic AI," autonomous AI agents, stating that these demands are significantly higher than previously anticipated (100x more than last year).
It featured updates on next-gen Blackwell Ultra, Rubin, and Rubin Ultra architectures. The launch of Dynamo – NVDA's inferencing software designed for the optimization of reasoning models within data centers (the operating system for AI Factories). Robotics breakthroughs (GROOT N1 a family of fully customizable models that NVIDIA will pretrain for robotics developers, NVIDIA Quantum-X silicon photonics networking switches & GM deal).
See GIR take Read to Europe: Bulls of the view this is potentially a +ve read to Besi given Jensen talking up Co-Package Optics (CPO) and watch for TSMC orders. For STM would note that Mobileye got dinged on the partnership between NVDA and GM. Mixed views on semicaps and memory.
While in the US a second day in a row of intense Mag 7 underperformance – for context, this is the first time that the Mag 7 has lagged the NDX by >1% on back-to-back days in ~30 months. Across the pond China Tech space rallies and Xiaomi hit all time highs after 4Q24 beat – revenues +49% with its smartphone business +16%.
This is ironic: Chinese commerce minister is potentially blocking BYD from opening a plant in Mexico because “China is concerned that Mexico would gain unrestricted access to BYD’s technology and potentially allow the US access to it, the Financial Times reports, citing two unidentified people familiar with the matter”
VOD - Turkish Lira under pressure given the political opposition leader detained – watch the TRY (down 1.6% so far) and knock on impact to VOD that is exposed to Turkey and flags this as it fastest growing business. - Watch Spanish pricing as Orange cuts convergent plans Prosus – note that Tencent reports post HK close and this is Prosus biggest driver.
Dassault Systèmes announces investment in Click Therapeutics; financial details not provided. Click Therapeutics, a player in in prescription digital therapeutics and software-enhanced drug therapies.
Temenos – nice financing deal - Temenos issues CHF 250m 5-year bond. The senior unsecured instrument carries an annual fixed-rate coupon of 2.22% and matures in April 2030. Pretty similar to its current cost of debt at around 2.1%
Adyen has officially enabled Tap to Pay on iPhone in nine new markets: Bulgaria, Finland, Hungary, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Switzerland and Liechtenstein. The functionality allows businesses the all-in-one solution for the hospitality industry, to enable iPhones to accept contactless payments without the need to purchase or manage additional hardware.
Meta has seen strong demand for its "open" AI model family, Llama. Mark Zuckerberg said Llama has now surpassed 1 billion downloads, which is particularly notable because the company hit 650 million downloads just three months ago.
Spain gets more competitive - Orange Spain (MasOrange) has begun offering a number of convergent rates at around half their usual cost in ‘ad personam’ promotions not currently included on the operator’s website. They include a plan with broadband at symmetric speeds of 1Gbps plus two mobile lines with unlimited calls and data, Orange TV plus a choice of Netflix, Prime, Disney+ or Max for EUR 44 a month instead of EUR 86. Another includes Orange TV, Netflix, Prime, Disney+ as well as Max for EUR 53 a month instead of EUR 96 while a third has 600Mbps fibre plus Orange TV, Netflix and Disney+ for EUR 49 a month instead of EUR 91.
Proximus is planning to split management of its domestic and international activities, according to the criteria for its CEO search. Newspaper L'Echo reports the company is searching for two CEO profiles to replace Guillaume Boutin, who said last month he is leaving for Vodafone.
Ukrainian telco Kyivstar, moves towards a Nasdaq listing, as its parent company, VEON, announces the signing of a business combination agreement with Cohen Circle Acquisition Corp.
SES has outlined plans for a more streamlined board of directors, but one of the satellite operator’s biggest shareholders says the changes don’t go far enough amid mounting competition in the space industry. SES also kicked off a search for a director with capital markets experience after hedge fund Appaloosa called for an overhaul of its share capital and board structure.
