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Hyperliquid HYPE trades at 15x earnings as Grayscale sees $1B revenue
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[1] SK Hynix, Meta, Apple, and More: 5 Stocks Investors Couldn't Stop Buzzing About this Week (https://www.benzinga.com/markets/market-summa ...)[2] Hyperliquid Is Building A $1B Business, Says Grayscale – But Traders Just Got Reminded Of The Risks Amid SK Hynix Turmoil — TradingView News (https://www.tradingview.com/news/stocktwits:2 ...)[3] U.S. Stocks May See Further Upside On Upbeat Amazon Results (https://www.finanzen.ch/nachrichten/aktien/u- ...)[4] FTSE 100 on track for best month since first US attacks on Iran five months ago – as it happened (https://www.inkl.com/news/bp-to-sell-north-se ...)[5] SanDisk Falls 54%: Morningstar Sees Finite AI Boom Before 2029 Downturn (https://www.techtimes.com/articles/322247/202 ...)
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Aug 01 2026, 15:19
GE Vernova up 8x from 2024 low on AI power demand
GE Vernova shares have surged more than eightfold from their $122.46 April 2024 low, driven by power demand from AI data centers and cloud infrastructure. The company's Q1 2026 earnings showed earnings per share of $17.44 versus a $1.67 consensus estimate, a 944 percent beat, with revenue of $9.3 billion up 7 percent year over year, according to the company's earnings release. GE Vernova operates three core businesses: Power, which accounted for 55 percent of 2025 orders; Electrification at 33 percent; and Wind at 13 percent. Orders rose 7 percent organically in 2024, then accelerated to 34 percent growth in 2025. From 2025 to 2028, analysts expect revenue and adjusted EBITDA to grow at compound annual rates of 17 percent and 60 percent, respectively. The stock trades at 40 times this year's adjusted EBITDA with an enterprise value of $252 billion. A $5,000 investment at the April 2024 low of $122.46 would be worth more than $40,400 today, an eightfold return that reflects the market's appetite for companies supplying power to AI infrastructure. **Power and Electrification Lead the Charge** The Power and Electrification segments have grown rapidly since the company's April 2024 spin-off from General Electric to meet demand from power-hungry cloud, data center, and AI markets. That growth has offset softness in the Wind segment, which has grappled with supply chain issues. GE Vernova's stock has traded in a 52-week range between $530.16 and $1,195.94, according to Investing.com data. The stock has traded around $900 to $990 in recent sessions, well above its debut price of $143 per share on April 2, 2024. The company raised its annual revenue forecast on data center demand, according to its Q1 2026 earnings release. Orders surged 71 percent in the first quarter, according to the same release. The company's gas turbines and grid equipment are in high demand as utilities and hyperscalers race to add capacity. **Valuation and Outlook** With an enterprise value of $252 billion, GE Vernova is not cheap at 40 times this year's adjusted EBITDA. But the company's strong growth rates could support that premium valuation, according to the source material. The stock's performance reflects a broader theme: companies supplying power to AI data centers are commanding premium valuations as hyperscalers including Microsoft, Amazon, and Alphabet race to secure electricity for their expanding AI infrastructure. GE Vernova's order book growth suggests this demand is translating into tangible revenue. The company's growth trajectory is closely tied to the pace of AI infrastructure buildout. Nvidia's GPU shipments and data center capital expenditure from cloud providers will be key indicators for GE Vernova's order pipeline. If AI infrastructure spending continues at current levels, GE Vernova's Power and Electrification segments are positioned to capture a significant share of the demand. Investors will watch whether GE Vernova can sustain its order momentum as AI infrastructure spending continues to expand. The company's next earnings report will provide the clearest signal on whether the growth trajectory remains intact. This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.
Aug 01 2026, 14:17
Alphabet's $205B AI capex vs Microsoft's $175B sets up Q3 showdown
Alphabet's Q2 capex of $44.9 billion pushed free cash flow to negative $5.86 billion, while Microsoft's $41 billion spend kept FCF positive at $19.6 billion — the sharpest divergence yet in hyperscaler AI funding. "We have the flexibility to adjust our spending based on market conditions," Microsoft CFO Amy Hood said on the earnings call, a contrast with Alphabet CFO Anat Ashkenazi's guidance that 2027 capital expenditure will rise "significantly" beyond the current $195 billion to $205 billion range. Alphabet's Google Cloud revenue grew 82 percent year over year to $24.77 billion, with operating margin expanding from 20.7 percent to 35.6 percent, while Microsoft's Azure grew 43 percent and Intelligent Cloud revenue reached $39.3 billion. Alphabet's contracted cloud backlog stands at $514 billion, and its stock fell 7 percent on July 23 after the company disclosed its first negative free cash flow quarter in 22 years. The divergence matters because J.P. Morgan estimates AI capital expenditure now consumes 93 percent of hyperscaler cash flow from operations, up from 33 percent in 2023. Alphabet trades at roughly 16 times trailing earnings against 82 percent Cloud growth, while Microsoft's disciplined spending has kept its stock near record levels — setting up the next quarter as a referendum on which approach investors reward. ## The Capex Gap Is a Margin Story Alphabet's $44.9 billion quarterly capex — roughly 37 percent of revenue — funded custom Tensor Processing Units that now deliver a 35.6 percent Cloud operating margin, up from 20.7 percent a year ago. The company deploys approximately nine TPUs for every NVIDIA GPU it uses, paying NVIDIA's margin on only about 10 percent of its AI compute. That silicon advantage is why Cloud operating income more than tripled to roughly $8.8 billion in Q2 alone, and why Alphabet now sells TPU capacity directly to Anthropic, OpenAI, and Meta. Microsoft took a different path. Its $41 billion quarterly capex — two-thirds allocated to CPUs and GPUs — went largely to NVIDIA hardware, but the company still generated $19.6 billion in free cash flow. Azure surpassed $100 billion in annual revenue, and Microsoft 365 Copilot reached 30 million paid seats. Hood maintained full-year capex guidance at $175 billion, an adjustment accounting for a shift in lease classifications, and projected Q1 capex above $50 billion. ## What the $514 Billion Backlog Changes Alphabet's $514 billion cloud backlog — contracted but not yet recognized revenue — represents more than five years of Cloud revenue at current run rates. Ashkenazi told analysts that "cloud revenue would have been higher if we were able to meet the demand," meaning the constraint has been compute capacity, not customer demand. The $195 billion to $205 billion capex program is, in management's framing, an acceleration in capacity delivery to meet contracts already signed. The question for the next quarter is whether Alphabet's negative free cash flow is temporary — as Phillip Securities analyst Serena Lim Yi Qi argued when she upgraded GOOGL to Buy on July 27 with a $425 price target — or the start of a structural shift. Alphabet has raised roughly $84.75 billion in equity since June 2026, including a $10 billion private placement with Berkshire Hathaway, and long-term debt has climbed from $46.5 billion to $98.2 billion. Share buybacks, which consumed more than $346 billion over the prior decade, are suspended. Microsoft faces no such constraint. Its free cash flow of $19.6 billion, despite aggressive AI investment, gives it the flexibility to fund the buildout internally. The company's maintained capex guidance and positive cash generation have kept investor confidence intact, even as Meta raised its full-year capex to $125 billion to $145 billion and Tesla reported negative free cash flow of $1.1 billion after $25 billion in AI spending. For investors, the next quarter's earnings calls will determine whether Alphabet's aggressive spending converts its $514 billion backlog into margin-accretive revenue quickly enough to justify the 16 times trailing earnings multiple — or whether Microsoft's disciplined approach, trading at a premium for its cash generation, becomes the template the market rewards. Alphabet's Q3 earnings in October will be the first clean read on whether the capex acceleration produces the operating leverage the bull case requires. This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.
Aug 01 2026, 13:18
Retail giants win GLP-1 market as 6% of employers drop coverage
Retail giants from Walmart to Costco and Amazon are capturing GLP-1 market share as employers drop coverage and push patients into direct-to-consumer programs, turning a low-margin prescription into a recurring customer relationship. "Retailers are betting that if they can become the front door for obesity care, they'll earn a relationship that extends far beyond a single GLP-1 prescription," said Eric Bormel, managing director specializing in digital healthcare at Solomon Partners. The direct-to-consumer programs carry steep discounts tied to loyalty. LillyDirect's cash prices run $299 to $449 a month, with better pricing tied to refilling within 45 days. Novo Nordisk's NovoCare charges $199 for introductory months before stepping up to $349. Costco's Sesame partnership prices Wegovy at about $349 and requires a membership. Amazon offers insured patients prices as low as $25 a month through its One Medical and Pharmacy units, with same-day delivery in nearly 3,000 cities. The stakes are large. A Mercer survey last month showed 6 percent of large employers dropped GLP-1 coverage this year, with the drugs' share of claims swelling to 11.4 percent from 6.9 percent in 2023. Health insurer Cigna said earlier this month it would stop covering the medicines for its own employees. A new Medicare Bridge program launched July 1 offers eligible patients GLP-1s at a flat $50 monthly copay. **Pharmacy lock-in becomes a loyalty play** Walmart, the nation's fifth-largest prescription provider with nearly 4,600 pharmacies, has moved aggressively to capture the shift. In April, the retailer expanded its Better Care Services digital platform to bundle GLP-1 prescriptions with weight-management support including nutrition coaching, fitness apps and AI-driven coaching tools. According to the most recent published data from Drug Channels Institute, Walmart holds 4.8 percent of the pharmacy market, well behind CVS's 14.7 percent and Walgreens' 14.6 percent. "Pharmacy lock-in is loyalty-program economics applied to medicine, and it works because the refill, unlike almost everything else in retail, is non-negotiable," said Jackie Swanson, managing partner at Gartner Consulting. She called LillyDirect's refill discount "a loyalty program dressed as a discount schedule" and NovoCare's stepped pricing "a classic acquisition funnel." The big retailers have struggled before to make healthcare profitable. Walmart shuttered its 51 Walmart Health clinics and virtual care service in 2024 after concluding the primary-care business wasn't sustainable. Amazon shut down its Amazon Care telehealth service at the end of 2022, weeks after unveiling its $3.9 billion deal for One Medical, and walked away from Haven, its joint venture with JPMorgan Chase and Berkshire Hathaway, in 2021. **Independent pharmacies lose out** On the other side of the opportunity are independent pharmacies. Seth Friedman, pharmacy and health plan services practice leader at Gallagher, said smaller pharmacies stand to lose volume. Dared Price, who owns nine pharmacies in small Kansas towns, said the shift puts independents at a disadvantage because big chains' programs don't share patient records, leaving his system unable to flag drug interactions. "There are no good programs for independents. It is a travesty that there aren't," Price said. Elina Onitskansky, founder and chief executive of Ilant Health, an obesity-care center, said the race for the lowest price has created a "gold rush" mentality that fragments patient care. "I don't think fragmentation helps," she said. The economics of these programs favor scale. "The retailer that fills the prescription tends to sell the groceries too, and pharmacy is quietly becoming the membership battleground of American retail," Swanson said. With employers steering more workers to direct-to-consumer platforms, the chains that win the GLP-1 sign-up are positioned to capture years of refills and the shopping carts that come with them. This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.