On August 4, Wynn Resorts Limited (NASDAQ:WYNN) reported second quarter 2026 results showing net income more than doubling to $140.1 million from $66.2 million a year earlier, while revenue climbed to $1.86 billion. Diluted earnings per share jumped to $1.32 from $0.64. Behind that headline number sits a messier picture: one Macau property carried the quarter while Las Vegas and Boston watched their profits shrink, even as management pressed ahead with a resort in the United Arab Emirates that will not open until September 2027.
Wynn Palace did the heavy lifting this quarter. Revenue jumped $113.8 million to $653.4 million, and Adjusted Property EBITDAR climbed to $201.5 million from $157.2 million a year earlier. The mass market table games win percentage came in at 29.7%, well above the 22.3% posted in the second quarter of 2025, a sign that ordinary gamblers, not just high rollers, are spending more at the tables. Las Vegas also showed discipline where it counts: the table games win percentage reached 23.9%, inside the property's expected 22% to 26% range and up from 21.8% a year earlier.
Wynn Resorts backed up the earnings jump with capital returns. The board declared a quarterly dividend of $0.25 per share, payable August 28, to shareholders of record as of August 14. The company also bought back 741,098 shares during the quarter at an average price of $101.20, spending $75.0 million, and still has $326.1 million left under its repurchase authorization. Construction, meanwhile, continues on Wynn Al Marjan Island, the joint venture project in Ras Al Khaimah, with life-to-date cash contributions reaching $1.06 billion as of June 30.
Strip away Wynn Palace and the picture changes. Adjusted Property EBITDAR fell at three of Wynn's four properties. Las Vegas Operations brought in $4.6 million more revenue, but EBITDAR still dropped $19.6 million to $215.2 million, meaning costs ate into the top-line gain. Encore Boston Harbor had it worse on both ends, with revenue down $6.4 million to $209.3 million and EBITDAR down $7.8 million to $56.1 million; its table games win percentage slipped to 18.1% from 21.3% a year earlier, even though it stayed inside the expected 18% to 22% range.
Wynn Macau's revenue rose $7.3 million, but EBITDAR still slipped to $95.5 million from $96.5 million, and its VIP table games win percentage of 2.58% fell well short of both the prior year's 3.41% and the property's own 3.1% to 3.4% target range. Wynn Palace's VIP win percentage of 2.97% missed its target range too, even with mass market strength carrying the property overall.

#quarter #property #year #earlier

On August 5, Primerica (NYSE:PRI) reported second-quarter results that read as two different companies bolted together. Net income climbed 13% to $202 million, and earnings per diluted share jumped 19% to $6.45, pushing return on stockholders' equity to 32.1%. Total revenue reached $865 million, up 9% from a year earlier. But those headline figures obscure a split story. The investment arm is sprinting to record highs while the life insurance sales force is quietly getting smaller. Here is what is actually moving the numbers.
Investment and savings product sales hit a record $4.4 billion in the quarter, up 23% from a year ago, while client ****** et values ended the period at an all-time high of $140 billion, up 16%. Net inflows added another $397 million. That growth translated directly into profit. ISP segment revenue rose 21% to $361 million, and pretax income jumped 31% to $104 million, meaning the segment's margin expanded even as it grew. The reason: ****** et-based commission revenue climbed 28%, outpacing the 19% rise in average client ****** ets, thanks to a shift toward higher-margin US managed accounts and Canadian mutual funds.
Primerica also returned $172 million to shareholders in the quarter through $135 million in buybacks and roughly $37 million in dividends, bringing year-to-date capital returns to $352 million. Its effective tax rate improved to 21.7% from 23.9% a year earlier, and its life insurer's statutory risk-based capital ratio stood at approximately 440%, a cushion most insurers would envy.
The company's distribution engine tells a rougher story. The life-licensed sales force fell 3% year over year to 148,612 representatives. Recruiting rose 2% to 82,346 recruits, but far fewer of them actually got licensed: new life-licensed representatives dropped 15% to 11,020. That gap between recruiting and licensing shows up directly in output. The company issued 78,904 life insurance policies, down 12%, with total face amount issued falling 8% to $27.7 billion.
Term Life revenue was roughly flat at $444 million even as adjusted direct premiums rose 3%, and segment pretax income fell 4% to $148 million. Part of that came from cost creep rather than claims: the benefits and claims ratio held steady at 57.9%, but the insurance expense ratio rose to 8.4% from 7.6% a year earlier, eating into a segment that is supposed to be Primerica's stable, predictable cash generator.

#sales

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Being a millionaire is considered table stakes for a comfortable retirement. The magic number for the average American is $1.46 million, according to a 2026 survey by Northwestern Mutual (1).
But is hitting that target really a guarantee of a smooth-sailing retirement? In 2026, the answer isn't exactly straightforward. To understand the chilling reality of retirement in the modern economy, you need to look beyond the headlines at all the other variables that impact your senior years.
Jeff Bezos backs a platform that lets anyone invest in rental homes for as little as $100 — 6 ways to build wealth like a landlord without actually being one
JPMorgan sees gold hitting $5,000/oz by Q4 — and savvy investors are protecting their wealth with a tax-advantaged Gold IRA. Get your free guide from Priority Gold

#finance

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This article originally published at Your guide to the Griswold high school football team ahead of the 2026 season.

#sign #connecticut #network

Former Cincinnati Bengals players popped up in headlines around the NFL during the final cuts process as teams formed initial 53-man rosters and practice squads.
There were controversial former Bengals free agents making moves. And some fresh Bengals releases quickly got chances with other teams before the season, too.
Ahead of Week 1, here's a quick rundown of some former Bengals players during final cuts.
Released by Buffalo Bills, signed to practice squad
Released by Tennessee ******* ans

#bengals #players

It wasn't pretty, but Duke was able to pull out a 17-3 victory over Tulane to begin Manny Diaz's third season with a win.
Here are some instant takeaways:
There are a lot of running backs in college football who get more headlines, but there might not be many better than the Duke sophomore. It was evident starting from the first drive, in which he went for 51 yards on 11 carries, ending it with a nine-yard touchdown run.
In the end, Sheppard finished with career-highs in carries (35) and rushing yards (227) while scoring twice.
The good news is that the quarterback didn't turn the ball over in his Duke debut. The bad news is that he struggled, finishing 13-of-27 for 131 yards. When opposing teams are able to stop Sheppard, Eget will have to be much better.

#duke #sheppard #able

Artificial intelligence companies are racing to secure one increasingly valuable resource: computing power.
That race has resulted in massive investment in Nvidia (NVDA) processors, data centers, and power. It has also spawned a new breed of specialist cloud providers promising to provide the infrastructure necessary to train and operate ever more advanced AI models.
Now firms are putting a stunning amount behind that demand.
U.K.-based AI infrastructure firm Nscale is telling potential investors that it has about $103 billion in total contracted revenue, according to documents reviewed by The Information and cited by Reuters. The Nvidia-backed startup might launch an initial public offering as early as September.
However, the headline figure comes with a crucial caveat.

#reuters

On August 6, Installed Building Products (NYSE:IBP) reported second-quarter results that told two different stories at once. Net revenue hit a second-quarter record of $777.8 million, yet profit and margins moved the other way, and the board still found room to raise the dividend for the fifth straight year.
The headline number was $777.8 million in net revenue, up 2.3% from $760.3 million a year earlier. That growth came almost entirely from outside the core insulation installation business. Other revenue, which covers IBP's manufacturing and distribution operations, jumped 50.4% to $67.1 million, while commercial work inside the Installation segment posted same-branch sales growth of 10.4%. Acquisitions did heavy lifting too. The company closed Diamond Energy Systems in May, then Harkraft and Builders Hardware of South Carolina in July, adding roughly $30 million in combined annual revenue. Year to date, IBP has acquired about $59 million in revenue and still expects to reach at least $100 million for all of 2026.
The balance sheet backed that ambition, with $394.5 million in cash on hand at quarter-end. Management also kept returning cash to shareholders, repurchasing about 365,000 shares for $76.2 million in the quarter, with $398 million still available under the buyback authorization through March 2027. The board topped it off by declaring a third-quarter dividend of $0.39 per share, payable September 30 to holders of record on September 15, more than a 5% increase over last year's third-quarter payout.
The strength was uneven. Residential same-branch installation sales fell 6.1% for the quarter, and job volume excluding heavy commercial work dropped 5.2%, evidence that the housing slowdown is landing directly on IBP's biggest business line. That mix shift showed up in the bottom line. Net income fell to $64.9 million, or $2.43 per diluted share, from $69.0 million and $2.52 a year ago. Adjusted EBITDA slid 2.3% to $130.9 million, with the margin compressing to 16.9% from 17.6%.
Gross profit margin also narrowed to 33.3% from 34.2%, and the company pointed to a specific cause: the faster-growing Other segment carries a 24.7% gross margin, well below the 36.5% margin in core Installation work, so revenue mix worked against profitability even as total sales climbed. Higher fuel costs added further pressure on gross margin, while administrative expense crept up as a percentage of revenue, driven by higher medical insurance costs. CEO Jeff Edwards acknowledged the backdrop directly, saying the company expects affordability and consumer confidence to keep weighing on the residential market.

#million #installation #year #sales

On August 5, Southwest Gas Holdings (NYSE:SWX) reported second quarter results for the period ended June 30 and reaffirmed its full year 2026 guidance. Net income attributable to the company reached $42.1 million, a sharp turnaround from a $40.2 million loss in the same quarter of 2025. But the number that stood out was the Great Basin 2028 Expansion Project, where contracted demand has grown enough that management now expects capital costs of $2.3 billion instead of the $1.7 billion baked into current five year guidance.
Southwest Gas's growth story increasingly runs through Nevada. Binding precedent agreements for the Great Basin 2028 Expansion Project have grown to roughly 1 billion cubic feet per day of contracted demand, and the company has fielded another 1.8 billion cubic feet of expressions of interest for phases running from 2029 through 2035. Based on that demand, management now projects an annual margin of $270 million to $300 million once the pipeline is in service, on capital investment of about $2.3 billion.
Regulators have been cooperating too. California's Public Utilities Commission approved the non-cost-of-capital pieces of Southwest Gas's rate case, adding roughly $40 million of incremental annual revenue and triggering recognition of $9.7 million of previously deferred first-quarter income. Nevada regulators approved a Triennial Resource Plan with prudency pre-determinations for about $186 million of capital spending, and the company filed for a general rate case increase of roughly $74 million.
Arizona's new System Integrity Mechanism, effective April 1 this year, lets Southwest Gas recover safety and reliability spending faster, up to a $50 million annual cap. The company put $520 million into its network in the first six months of 2026, including $115 million toward Great Basin, and closed the quarter with $270.5 million in cash and nearly $1 billion in available liquidity.
Look past the headline swing to profit, and the picture gets murkier. The core natural gas distribution segment actually earned less this quarter, with its contribution to net income falling from $45.6 million a year earlier to $40.8 million, and its adjusted net income slipping from $33.7 million to $31 million. Depreciation and amortization rose $8.7 million, or 13%, as gas plant in service grew 7% year over year, a reminder that heavy pipeline spending shows up in expenses well before it shows up in rates.

#million #company #basin

A $500,000 balance yields just $20,000 annually at the 4% withdrawal rate, yet still surpasses the median 65+ retirement account balance of $103,202.
Traditional 401(k) withdrawals count as ordinary income and can trigger taxation on up to 85% of Social Security benefits, raising the real cost of each dollar withdrawn.
A paid-off home, a cash reserve of one to two years, and delaying Social Security to capture the roughly 8% annual benefit increase each do more for lifetime income than portfolio size alone.
Read More: Learn 7 secret wealth tips high net worth investors use that most investors miss (sponsor)
Half a million dollars in retirement savings may sound modest when headlines are full of seven-figure nest eggs. But measured against what real retirees have actually accumulated, it is a substantial sum. Vanguard's 2026 How America Saves report shows that for participants aged 65 and older, the median account balance was $103,202 in 2025, with an average of $330,186. Transamerica's most recent survey put median Baby Boomer household retirement savings at $270,000. So a reader sitting on $500,000 is ahead of the typical retiree. The real planning question is what that balance can actually deliver in monthly income once you factor in withdrawal math, taxes, and Medicare.

#Retirement

John Cena vs Cody Rhodes headlined WrestleMania 41.
WWE's eclectic portfolio of partnerships doesn't get closer to he center of a Venn Diagram than its budding collaboration with Supercell's Clash of Clans. Already a ***** an in its own way, Clash of Clans has amassed over two billion lifetime downloads. The popular game was recently voted the Greatest Mobile Game of all Time by the followers of Pubity.
Now, in a follow-up to a successful partnership in 2025, Clash of Clans has teamed up with John Cena to turn his forever-memed "You Can't See Me" catchprase into a mobile gaming app. Starting this week, Cena's Clash character is virtually unsearchable. Over the next month, Cena will be waiting for Clash of Clans players to find him throughout the course of their daily raids. The more players raid, the higher the chance they find the living legend. To the victor goes the spoils of a rare Cody Rhodes statue for their village.
I spoke with John Cena in a phone interview about the partnership and how the 17-time world champion is brimming with wrestling-related ideas for his ongoing epilogue.
What was your favorite part about the Search for Cena campaign?

#clans #john #mobile #partnership

OBDC cut its quarterly dividend from $0.37 to $0.31 as falling rates squeezed floating-rate loan income, making the 7% headline yield harder to trust.
NNN REIT extended its dividend growth streak to 37 consecutive years, while BTI dividends may qualify for the lower U.S.-UK tax treaty rate.
OBDC dropped ~10% over the past year and its NAV slipped to $14.26, proving that collecting dividends without selling shares doesn't protect principal.
Read More: Avoid these 13 retirement mistakes before they derail your future (sponsor)
The pitch behind an $860,000 portfolio paying $5,100 a month is a blended yield of roughly 7%. That is achievable today with three well-known income names in the right mix, but the word quietly in the headline does a lot of work. One of the three holdings just cut its base distribution, another trades at a share price that is down double digits over the past year, and the tax treatment across the sleeve varies enough to change what actually lands in your account. Here is the real version.

#headline #dividends #year #three

On August 13, Legence Corp. (NASDAQ:LGN) reported second-quarter results that more than doubled the company's revenue from a year earlier, a jump big enough to make even seasoned investors do a double take. Strip out the contribution from the company's Bowers acquisition and the underlying business still grew 60%. But dig one line deeper into the same report and a less flattering picture shows up: profitability per dollar of revenue actually shrank, and the bottom line posted a wider loss than it did last year. That contrast, blistering growth paired with thinning margins, is the story investors now have to sort out.
The headline number was revenue of $1.26 billion for the quarter, up 110.7% from $598.9 million a year ago. Adjusted EBITDA climbed even faster in percentage terms, rising 114.1% to $154.6 million, which tells you the company managed to grow its cash-generating profit measure roughly in step with the top line even during a period of heavy acquisition-driven expansion. Backlog and awarded contracts, effectively the pipeline of future work already on the books, reached $5.67 billion, more than double the $2.77 billion Legence held a year earlier.
That backlog is not concentrated in one place either. While data centers and technology remained the biggest driver, management pointed to healthy activity across life sciences and healthcare, state and local government, and education as well, spreading the growth across several end markets rather than resting it on a single customer type. The Installation & Maintenance segment did the heavy lifting, with revenue up 162% to $1.06 billion, and even after removing the Bowers acquisition's impact, that segment still grew 86.6% on its own.
Management also used the quarter to raise its full-year guidance, now targeting $4.7 billion to $4.8 billion in revenue, up from a prior range of $4.1 billion to $4.3 billion, alongside adjusted EBITDA guidance lifted to $565 million to $585 million from $470 million to $490 million.
The same report shows profitability moving in the opposite direction of revenue. Gross margin fell to 17.4% from 21.5% a year ago, and the non-GAAP adjusted version slipped to 18.5% from 21.8%, a shift the company attributed to a revenue mix leaning more heavily toward lower-margin installation and maintenance work. The Engineering & Consulting segment felt this directly, with gross profit down 12.4% to $56.1 million even as its revenue grew, a sign that pricing and cost pressure in that business outpaced its sales growth. Net loss attributable to Legence widened to $27.8 million from $5.3 million a year earlier, and the company's total net loss grew to $34.6 million from $3.9 million.

#year #grew #adjusted

On August 4, Hamilton Lane (NASDAQ:HLNE) posted a first fiscal quarter that showed just how far the private markets manager has scaled. Revenue jumped 56% year over year to $275.3 million, fee-related earnings climbed 49% to $124.5 million, and the firm's total ******* et footprint pushed past $1.1 trillion. That kind of quarter would normally be the whole story. Instead, it came wrapped around three separate balance sheet payouts and a candid admission that client flows have gotten choppier than the headline numbers suggest.
Hamilton Lane's specialized funds are doing the heavy lifting. Fee-earning ******* ets under management in that category grew 25% year over year to $42.6 billion, and that mix shift toward higher-fee products pushed the blended fee rate up to 69 basis points. Management and advisory fees rose 21% to $161.4 million, and FRE margin expanded to 53% from 51% a year earlier, a sign the extra revenue is reaching the bottom line rather than getting absorbed by costs.
The Evergreen platform, Hamilton Lane's semi-liquid product line built for individual and smaller institutional investors, generated $640 million of net inflows and ended the quarter with $19 billion in ******* ets. Ten of twelve funds took in net new money, and none of them needed to gate redemptions even as the broader alternatives industry has wrestled with liquidity questions. The company also added six senior Evergreen sales professionals poached from Fidelity, BlackRock, PIMCO, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley and Monroe Capital, and just landed its multi-strategy equity fund on a third wirehouse platform.
Fundraising on the closed-end side was equally strong. The sixth direct equity fund closed at $3.8 billion combined, 57% larger than its predecessor, while the seventh secondary fund and second venture fund each held first closes, at $1.3 billion and $370 million. On top of that, Hamilton Lane is set to book roughly $33 million in combined gains from monetizing its stakes in Russell Investments and Canoe, on top of a newly public stake in Securitize.
Not every part of the story is clean. Hamilton Lane's non-US multi-strategy equity fund swung to net outflows for the quarter, and management pointed to a broader hesitancy taking hold. Co-CEO Erik Hirsch acknowledged "a slowdown in flows on certain products and the general hesitancy with investors," a rare moment of candor from a company that otherwise leaned on strong numbers.

#fund #lane

On August 6, Ligand Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:LGND) reported second-quarter 2026 results showing royalty revenue up 32% year over year, just weeks after the company closed its acquisition of XOMA Royalty. Total revenue reached $63.7 million for the quarter, up from $47.6 million a year earlier, and Ligand raised the low end of its full-year adjusted earnings guidance. The headline growth numbers are easy to like. What is harder to ignore is that Ligand just more than doubled its royalty portfolio and added $700 million in convertible debt in the same stretch.
Royalty revenue is where Ligand's growth is actually coming from, and it has been strong on its own merits. Royalties totaled $48.0 million in the second quarter, up from $36.4 million a year earlier, with Travere Therapeutics' Filspari, Pelthos Therapeutics' Zelsuvmi, and Merck's Ohtuvayre leading the increase. That growth compounded further in the first half, when royalties reached $91.0 million, up 42% from $63.9 million a year ago. The Filspari story helps explain why: the FDA approved the drug in April to treat FSGS, a second rare kidney disease beyond its original approval, and Travere reported $141 million in US net sales in early August, up 96% year over year.
Then there is the XOMA deal. On July 14, Ligand closed its acquisition of XOMA Royalty, adding more than 120 commercial, clinical, and preclinical **** ets, including Roche's Vabysmo, Servier's Ojemda, and Zevra Therapeutics' Miplyffa. That pushed Ligand's total portfolio past 200 royalty **** ets, more than double what it held before. Management expects the deal to add roughly $0.50 per share to 2026 adjusted earnings and $1.50 per share in 2027, and it came with about $700 million in deployable capital left over to keep buying royalty streams at a stated pace of $150 million to $250 million a year.
That growth is not coming cheap. G&A expense jumped to $29.1 million in the second quarter from $20.2 million a year earlier, driven by transaction costs tied to the XOMA deal along with higher headcount and stock compensation. R&D expense nearly tripled to $14.7 million, largely because of a $12.3 million funding arrangement with Orchestra BioMed. A large share of the quarter's reported profit also did not come from the royalty business at all: net non-operating income of $55.7 million included a $35.7 million non-cash gain tied to swings in the value of Ligand's Pelthos Therapeutics stock holdings, a figure that can move the other way just as easily.

#reported

On August 6, Versant Media Group (NASDAQ:VSNT) reported second-quarter 2026 results that capture a company in transition. Revenue slipped 3.8% year over year to $1.64 billion, and net income attributable to Versant tumbled 30.1% to $211 million. Yet the same report included a raised full-year outlook, a third straight quarterly dividend, and a second $100 million stock buyback. For a company barely eight months removed from its separation from Comcast on January 2, the numbers tell two stories at once.
Versant's headline Adjusted EBITDA fell 8.9% to $624 million, but measured against the prior year's Standalone Adjusted EBITDA, the more relevant apples-to-apples baseline, EBITDA actually grew 3.0%. That gap matters because it shows the company trimming programming and overhead costs faster than legacy revenue is shrinking. Management leaned into that momentum by raising full-year revenue guidance to $6.2 billion to $6.45 billion and Adjusted EBITDA guidance to $1.9 billion to $2.05 billion, while holding free cash flow guidance at $1.0 billion to $1.2 billion.
The growth story lives outside the traditional cable bundle. Platforms revenue, excluding the divested SportsEngine business, climbed 9.3% on the strength of Fandango and GolfNow, and Versant used the quarter to lock in two multi-year distribution renewals with major partners in the US and Canada. Sports rights remain the anchor: PGA TOUR coverage delivered its best second quarter since 2020, USA Network's WNBA broadcasts drew three of the quarter's most watched games across cable and streaming, and a new five-year Bundesliga deal adds more than 300 live matches a year, with at least 30 landing on USA Network. MS NOW backed that up digitally, posting audience growth for a seventh straight month through June and racking up close to 3 billion YouTube and TikTok views so far this year. Layer in the Full Swing acquisition completed after quarter-end, and Versant is placing real bets beyond linear television.
The pressure driving those buybacks and that raised guidance is real. Total revenue fell 3.8% to $1.64 billion, or 2.8% excluding SportsEngine, and linear distribution revenue, still the largest piece of the business, dropped 6.3% as subscribers kept leaving traditional pay TV. Rate increases only partly offset that erosion, and advertising revenue slipped another 0.6% even with better ratings and a boost from a recent acquisition.
The bottom line felt it more than the top line. Net income attributable to Versant fell $91 million to $211 million, and the company pointed to higher costs of running as a standalone public company, new interest expense tied to debt taken on after leaving Comcast, and a bigger tax bill linked to the SportsEngine sale. Those are the direct costs of standing alone rather than sitting inside a larger conglomerate. Versant's prior year financial statements were also built from Comcast's carve out accounting rather than results as a true independent company, so s

Palladyne AI reported headline growth that looks dramatic: second-quarter revenue rose 470% year over year and 63% sequentially to $5.783 million. Palladyne AI Corp. (NASDAQ:PDYN) ended June with $24.6 million of backlog, up 43% during the quarter after roughly $13 million of new contract awards, net of revenue recognized. Management expects most of that backlog to become revenue over the next 12 to 18 months and reiterated 2026 revenue guidance of $24 million to $27 million, or 357% to 415% growth.
Copyright: ralwel / 123RF Stock Photo
The comparison needs an important qualification. Palladyne said the increase came from acquisitions as well as organic growth. Its 10-Q says second-quarter product revenue was derived mainly from businesses acquired in November 2025, while engineering-services revenue came from one acquired business. Revenue consisted of hardware products, development contracts, and engineering services; the filing explicitly says Palladyne had generated no software-product revenue to date. The quarter therefore does not yet demonstrate scaled sales of its proprietary autonomy software.
The bull case is that backlog and defense awards provide a bridge to that commercialization. Programs involving SwarmOS, Gremlin-X, BRAIN flight computers, and Air Force development work may deepen customer relationships. But award values do not become revenue immediately, and fixed-price development work can produce weak margins if actual costs exceed estimates. Palladyne separately put total estimated contract value at $30.9 million, but that broader figure includes unexercised options and should not be confused with firm backlog.
The loss profile remains severe. Operating loss widened to $13.413 million from $8.094 million a year earlier, and net loss reached $12.326 million. Palladyne held $33.774 million of cash and equivalents plus $9.972 million of marketable securities, totaling $43.746 million. Its reiterated full-year operating-cash-burn outlook was $32 million to $36 million; the company defines that measure as operating cash used plus capital expenditures.

#million #palladyne #quarter

The September Effect has a reputation for making investors nervous. September has historically been the weakest month of the year for U.S. stocks across a data set stretching back 98 years. For investors watching companies in the artificial intelligence (AI) ***** e this year, September could be a useful test of whether a stock's investment thesis rests on price momentum or on business progress.
That distinction matters for Micron Technology (NASDAQ: MU) and Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA). Both companies are seeing conditions shift as the AI build-out progresses into a new stage, but the more interesting story is what is happening beneath the headlines about graphics processing units (GPUs) and central processing units (CPUs).
Missed Nvidia in 2009? This Rare Signal Is Flashing Again. In 2009, a "Double Down" signal flashed for a little-known chipmaker called Nvidia. For the first time in years, that same "Total Conviction" signal is flashing for a company 1/100th the size of Nvidia. Continue »
Micron is one of the clearest examples of how AI infrastructure is changing.
The company produces HBM4, a type of high bandwidth memory (HBM) that Nvidia is embedding in its brand-new Vera Rubin platform, but that is only part of the opportunity. Micron is also shipping SOCAMM2 low-power memory and its PCIe Gen6 9650 data center solid-state drive in high volumes. Those products address all the different memory-related needs of an AI system: accelerator memory, CPU-attached memory, and storage.

#NVIDIA #september #micron

October WTI crude oil (CLV26) closed up +0.29 (+0.32%) on Thursday, and October RBOB gasoline (RBV26) closed up +0.0311 (+1.00%).
Crude oil and gasoline prices settled higher on Thursday, with crude oil posting a new 6-week high. Crude prices are climbing as the US-Iran conflict continues with no end in sight, prolonging disruptions to energy flows through the Strait of Hormuz. Crude oil also found support from Thursday's decline in the dollar index ($DXY) to a 1.5-week low. Crude prices fell from their best level on signs that oil supplies are still moving through the Strait of Hormuz.
Adequate US Nat-Gas Storage Pressures Prices
Crude Oil Prices Rally as No End in Sight to US-Iran War
Markets move fast. Keep up by reading our FREE midday Barchart Brief newsletter for exclusive charts, ***** ysis, and headlines.

#crude #prices #closed

Billionaire technology investor Peter Thiel's hedge fund, Thiel Macro LLC, disclosed 372,755 shares of Vistra Corp. (NYSE:VST) at the end of Q2 2026, worth about $59.1 million.
The position is interesting because Vistra sits directly in the argument over whether electricity, rather than GPUs, becomes the scarce ******* et in the next leg of the AI buildout. Data centers need large blocks of reliable power, and Vistra owns a broad generation fleet with exposure to fast-growing power markets. Wolfe Research has argued that the market may be underestimating Vistra's ability to convert data-center demand into sustained EBITDA and free-cash-flow growth.
Image by Markus Distelrath from Pixabay
There is also a valuation wrinkle though. Recent Insider Monkey ******* ysis put Vistra at roughly 15.8 times forward earnings, below Constellation Energy at about 22.9 times. Vistra Corp. (NYSE:VST) does not have Constellation's same nuclear-heavy contracted profile, but that discount gives the stock room to rerate if data-center contracts make more of its future cash flows visible.
The caution is that Thiel Macro's Q2 filing says nothing about why the fund owns Vistra, or exactly when during the quarter it accumulated the position. The filing establishes the position at quarter end, not a same-day purchase and not Peter Thiel's reasoning for holding it. It would be sloppy to call it an AI bet on Thiel's behalf. Power prices, hedges, plant economics and capital allocation can matter as much as data-center headlines, and a cheap multiple versus Constellation can persist if investors continue to prefer nuclear ******* ets and long-duration contracts.

#constellation

Jim Cramer broke down Dell Technologies Inc.'s (NYSE:DELL) post-close earnings report on Mad Money's episode aired on September 1, as he declared it one of the best quarters he has ever witnessed. He stated:
You're getting a Dell, specifically, a blowout quarter from Dell Technologies. After the close, this iconic maker of tech hardware reported one of the best quarters I've ever seen thanks to the incredible strength of their AI server business. Dell's revenue grew 58% year-over-year, a 2 billion dollar beat. The company earned $7 and 4 cents per share. That's more than $2 above what Wall Street was looking for and more than triple what they made the year before. And the guidance was even better. They took their full-year earnings per share forecast from just under 18 bucks all the way up to $25.50. Stunning, definition of blowout.
The headline numbers show that the business is operating at extraordinary velocity. Dell Technologies Inc.'s (NYSE:DELL) total revenue reached a record $47 billion, marking a 58% increase year-over-year and beating estimates by more than $2 billion. Non-GAAP diluted earnings per share landed at $7.04, crushing expectations by $2.1. Management backed up the beat by raising full-year revenue guidance to $192 billion and lifted non-GAAP earnings expectations to $25.50 per share.
The main catalyst was the Infrastructure Solutions Group, where revenue surged 89% to $31.8 billion. Dell Technologies Inc. (NYSE:DELL) also booked $60.9 billion in AI-optimized server orders during the quarter, closing the period sitting on a staggering $95 billion AI backlog, proving that enterprise data centers are experiencing a broad modernization cycle. The company's COO and vice chairman, Jeff Clarke commented:
We're seeing broader revenue growth as well, with traditional servers and networking up 122%, storage up 26% and our client solutions up 20% year over year. Our second quarter results underscore the compounding benefits of our competitive advantages, the breadth of our portfolio and the strength of our operating model.

#year #billion #technologies #NYSE

Soluna Holdings reported second-quarter revenue of $15.1 million, up 145% year over year. That headline needs an important qualification. A change in accounting presentation moved roughly $4.4 million of pass-through electricity costs from a net presentation to both revenue and cost of revenue, without changing profit or loss. Excluding that change, revenue grew 73% year over year and 13% sequentially. Soluna Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:SLNH) therefore delivered substantial growth, but not all of the reported increase reflected new economic activity.
The quarter also should not be treated as proof that the AI pivot is already producing revenue. Project Dorothy 1A generated $2.9 million of revenue, up 31% sequentially, and $795,000 of gross profit at a 28% margin, but that improvement came from Bitcoin-mining customers, including Blockware and Canaan. Management said Bitcoin-miner hosting remains its largest business today. The AI and high-performance-computing opportunity is prospective. That distinction matters because AI leases can carry different capital needs, construction schedules, and customer requirements from cryptocurrency hosting.
That opportunity is nevertheless large. As of August 1, Soluna reported a roughly 6.3-gigawatt overall pipeline, including more than 1.6 gigawatts of AI data-center capacity in development. It said Hedy, Ellen, and Fei were advancing under term sheets toward a combined 583 megawatts designated for AI and HPC. The 583-megawatt figure describes their combined planned capacity, not entirely new capacity. Based on the project updates, their capacities rose by 243 megawatts in aggregate, from 340 to 583 megawatts.
A pipeline is not contracted revenue. Projects still require land, permits, interconnection, financing, equipment, and tenants before generating cash. Soluna Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:SLNH) remains a small company pursuing capital-intensive facilities, so delays or unfavorable funding could overwhelm operating progress. AI customers may also demand stronger balance sheets and long construction guarantees, while rapid share issuance could dilute per-share gains.
Hedge-fund interest increased but remained limited. Insider Monkey counted nine hedge funds holding the shares in Q2, up from six in Q1. Separately, Vident Advisory, an institutional investment adviser rather than a hedge fund, expanded its reported position by 7,772% to 5,227,200 shares. The percentage is dramatic because its prior position was small and should not be mistaken for broad sponsorship.

#soluna #holdings #NASDAQ

Chevron's 52-week high reflects three Venezuela JVs that grew production to 250,000 barrels daily, not the private company's 65-billion-barrel headline lease.
CVX's core thesis rests on Permian scale, Guyana's Stabroek block, and a 20-year Microsoft power purchase agreement, while Venezuela represents pure upside optionality.
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Venezuela reportedly lays claim to over 300 billion barrels of proven oil reserves, and the U.S. has set its sights on more of them.
Bloomberg News correspondent Tyler Kendall reported from Caracas this week that the headline prize of Washington's Venezuela deal, a 100-year lease on 17 strategic oil fields holding a claimed 65 billion barrels, went to a private, non-supermajor bidder: North American Blue Energy Partners, a private company that cannot develop the fields alone and has yet to sign on producing partners. Meanwhile, Chevron (NYSE:CVX) stock just printed a fresh 52-week high at $212.79 on a separate, parallel Venezuela commitment. The two developments deserve to be evaluated separately.

#barrels #lease #year

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Social Security is the retirement income lifeline for millions of Americans and garners its share of confusing headlines. From the full retirement age and cost-of-living adjustment to the rules for claiming benefits while still working, here is what's expected to change in 2027.
A common concern among those planning for retirement is an ever-increasing Social Security "full retirement age."
Geoffrey Schmidt, a certified public accountant and founder of Holy Schmidt!, a retirement education resource, told Yahoo Finance that many seniors ***** ume the full retirement age keeps climbing.
"It doesn't. It has finished its long, slow climb to 67. Anyone born in 1960 or later has a full retirement age of exactly 67, and that group reaches it in 2027," Schmidt said. "Under current law, it does not go any higher. So if you've been worried they'll keep moving the goalposts on you, at least on the retirement age, that increase is over."

#Retirement #disclosure #americans

On August 12, Flywire (NASDAQ:FLYW) expanded its partnership with Trustly, bringing "Pay by Bank" open banking payments to customers across the US and Canada. The expansion lets payers authorize ACH and Pre-Authorized Debit transfers straight from their bank login, skipping the routing and account numbers that trip up so many cross-border payments. It is the kind of unglamorous plumbing upgrade that rarely makes headlines, but for a company built on moving money across borders, cutting payment friction is close to the whole business model.
Flywire and Trustly have partnered since 2017, first in Europe, and this expansion carries that same playbook into North America. Trustly runs a real-time balance check the moment a payer authorizes a transaction, catching insufficient funds before the payment is submitted rather than after. For cross-border transfers, Flywire manages the funds through the return window itself, which cuts down on the reversals that have long made international payments messy for clients and their customers alike. "We're applying the open banking infrastructure we've successfully scaled across Europe to North America, enabling our clients to confidently offer their payers a proven experience," said Kate Moran, Flywire's Vice President of Global Payments.
The timing lines up with a quarter of accelerating growth. On August 4, 2026, Flywire reported second-quarter revenue up 27.2% year over year to $167.7 million, while total payment volume jumped 38.2% to $8.2 billion. Management raised its full-year guidance for both revenue growth and adjusted EBITDA margin, and the business is no longer leaning on education alone. Flywire signed more than 200 new clients across 45 countries during the quarter, with hospitality wins spanning nearly 90 U.S. hotel properties and education revenue outside its core markets growing more than 30% year over year.
Growth came with a cost. Gross margin slipped to 53.4% in the second quarter of 2026 from 57.0% a year earlier, and adjusted gross margin fell even further, from 61.1% down to 56.6%. That is a meaningful step backward on a per-dollar basis even as the top line expanded by double digits, and it raises the question of whether faster growth is being bought with thinner margins on the payments themselves.
Flywire also still posted a GAAP net loss of $8.1 million for the quarter, an improvement from the $12.0 million loss a year earlier but a loss nonetheless. And the company's own leadership flagged caution ahead: CFO Cosmin Pitigoi said Flywire is keeping its ***** umptions for the education vertical conservative because of the current visa policy environment, an acknowledgment that the company's largest historical vertical faces headwinds outside its control.

#trustly #across #payment

ADP's 92% client retention and $11.04 EPS covering a $6.64 dividend powers growth, while Aflac CEO Dan Amos confirmed 43 straight years of dividend increases.
Chevron leads the trio with a 3.49% yield, $15.4 billion in free cash flow, and a 20-year Microsoft power deal delivering returns independent of oil prices.
Owning all three Aristocrats together delivers genuine sector diversification across payroll fees, insurance capital, and integrated energy inside a single income strategy.
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Dividend Aristocrats get lumped together as if they are one defensive blob of consumer staples names, but the label actually spans wildly different business models. The three companies below sit in payroll processing, supplemental insurance and integrated energy, and each has stacked annual dividend increases well past the 25-year bar the headline demands.

#Dividend

On August 24, ePlus (NASDAQ:PLUS) announced it had completed the acquisition of the **** ets of Daymark Solutions, a Massachusetts-based IT services provider, with the deal having closed three days earlier on August 21. The announcement landed three weeks after the company posted first-quarter fiscal 2027 results on August 4, showing sales climbing even as profit slipped. Together, the two headlines capture where ePlus stands right now: reaching for new growth in cloud and security while working through pressure on its existing business.
Daymark, founded in 2001, built its business serving highly regulated, data-intensive industries including energy and utilities, healthcare, life sciences, defense, and financial services. Its core capabilities span modern data center infrastructure, cloud, Microsoft 365, Microsoft 365 Copilot, and cybersecurity, and its status as a Microsoft Tier 1 Cloud Solution Provider slots directly alongside ePlus' existing Azure and Microsoft 365 professional and managed services work. The acquisition also gives ePlus a deeper foothold in the New England region, particularly metropolitan Boston. CEO Mark Marron framed it as a way to gain a specialized Microsoft team that could serve as a catalyst for growth across Azure, Microsoft 365, security, and Copilot.
The timing lines up with what was already ePlus' fastest-growing segment. Managed services revenue rose 15.1% to $51.3 million in the first quarter, the segment's first quarter above $50 million, with gross profit up 11.3% on that growth. The balance sheet backs further moves like this one: cash and equivalents reached $448.9 million as of June 30, up from $410.8 million three months earlier, giving ePlus room for additional acquisitions, dividends, and buybacks. Management also pointed to record sales and a significant rise in booked and open orders, positioning the company for what it called a stronger second half.
The first quarter numbers show a company growing on top but shrinking underneath. Net earnings from continuing operations fell 5.4% to $30.3 million, adjusted EBITDA dropped 9.2% to $47.8 million, and operating income declined 9.6% to $38.8 million. Gross margin slipped to 23.3% from 23.9% a year earlier, with margin compression showing up across all three business segments rather than just one.
The professional services segment, the part of the business closest to the consulting and implementation work Daymark specializes in, fell 5.1% to $68.1 million, and its margin dropped to 36.9% from 39.2%. The product segment saw its own margin decline, to 21.0% from 21.3%, as an ongoing memory chip shortage extended lead times and delayed shipments. Terms of the Daymark transaction were not disclosed, leaving no visibility into what ePlus paid or how the deal affects near-term results.

#Microsoft #million #august #first

On August 4, Innospec (NASDAQ:IOSP) reported second-quarter results that pushed revenue up 12% to $491.4 million, with every one of its three businesses posting higher operating income. Net income attributable to Innospec climbed to $30.8 million, or $1.25 per diluted share, up from $23.5 million and 94 cents a year earlier. That headline growth was real, but a look further down the cash flow statement shows a business generating far less cash than its earnings suggest, a gap investors weighing this specialty chemicals maker need to understand.
Every segment expanded in the quarter ended June 30. Performance Chemicals revenue rose 9% to $190.3 million, with operating income up 15% to $16.4 million as price and mix gains of 8% more than offset a 2% drop in volumes. Fuel Specialties, the company's largest and most profitable unit, grew revenue 12% to $185.7 million on a 7% volume increase, with margins staying inside management's target range even as the business absorbed input cost pressure.
Oilfield Services put up the sharpest turnaround. Revenue jumped 14% to $115.4 million, gross margin expanded 2.7 percentage points to 32.3%, and operating income surged 40% to $8.7 million, a swing the company tied to its recent DRA plant expansion. That kind of margin recovery in a smaller segment can move the needle disproportionately if it continues.
Underneath all of it sits a debt-free balance sheet with $250.2 million in net cash. Innospec used part of that cushion to pay its semi-annual dividend of 92 cents per share and repurchase 87,089 shares for $6.4 million in the quarter, continuing a pattern of returning cash to shareholders without adding leverage.
The cash flow statement tells a less flattering story. Operating cash flow for the first six months of 2026 fell to $24.8 million from $38.8 million a year earlier, as working capital changes consumed $60.9 million compared with $22.6 million in the prior-year period. Cash and equivalents dropped to $250.2 million at quarter-end from $292.5 million at the start of the year, even before the dividend and buybacks funded from that balance are counted.

#million #quarter #flow #every

On August 3, Ocular Therapeutix (NASDAQ:OCUL) reported second-quarter 2026 financial results that read as much like a regulatory update as an earnings report. Management confirmed that AXPAXLI, its lead retinal disease candidate, remains on track for a new drug application submission for wet age-related macular degeneration in the fourth quarter of 2026, a plan the FDA effectively signed off on during a Type C meeting held in May. That timeline, paired with new data suggesting patients could need far fewer injections, is the headline. The rest of the report shows what it costs to get there.
AXPAXLI's case rests on the SOL-1 trial, which Ocular describes as the first successful superiority study of a new agent against an approved anti-VEGF therapy since that drug class arrived two decades ago. The FDA's May 2026 meeting minutes confirmed that SOL-1's efficacy and safety data, along with an interim safety look at the SOL-R trial and supporting evidence on axitinib, will be enough to support the NDA filing, and Ocular plans to file under the 505(b)(2) pathway, which could shave up to 60 days off a standard review.
A post hoc ***** ysis of SOL-1 adds a practical argument for the drug: applying SOL-R's stricter rescue criteria, Ocular estimates patients could need up to 72% fewer injections through 60 weeks, or 56% once the two loading doses are counted, than a patient on a typical every-eight-week aflibercept regimen, a gap that matters given that up to 40% of wet AMD patients quit treatment within their first year.
Early market research backs that pitch: about 80% of surveyed retina specialists said they would likely prescribe a drug with AXPAXLI's profile, and more than 90% expect to adopt it within a year of approval. The company says every Tier 1 payer it has engaged, across Medicare Advantage and commercial plans, has floated premium pricing for a more durable option. Underpinning all of it is a cash balance of $598.6 million as of June 30, which management expects to last into 2028.
Getting AXPAXLI to market is expensive, and the quarter showed it. Research and development spending rose to $54.1 million from $51.1 million a year earlier, selling and marketing costs climbed to $17.3 million from $13.7 million, and general and administrative expenses jumped to $22.2 million from $14.3 million, all tied to trial costs and a growing commercial team ahead of a launch that still is not approved. Net loss widened to $78.8 million from $67.8 million in the same quarter of 2025.

#quarter #costs

SALISBURY - A race car driver was involved in a crash at Lime Rock Park Friday afternoon, Connecticut State Police said.
The motorsport racing track has been hosting its 44th annual Historic Festival since Thursday. The crash prompted a request for a Life Star helicopter response, police said.
According to the festival's schedule, practice was taking place at the time of the reported crash.
A spokesperson for the track could not be reached Friday afternoon.
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#connecticut #state #police #track