Vicor faces Q2 earnings test after raising guidance by $16M

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[1] Vicor's Q2 Earnings Results Loom: Should You Buy the VICR Stock? (https://www.zacks.com/stock/news/2954921/vico ...)[2] ERock: Contracted Demand Can Turn Capacity Into Earnings (https://seekingalpha.com/article/4922463-eroc ...)[3] Top 10 Stocks For H2 2026 - Seeking Alpha (https://seekingalpha.com/article/4911611-top- ...)

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Jul 16 2026, 21:24

Intuitive Surgical beats Q2 estimates with $2.89B revenue, 19% growth

Intuitive Surgical's second-quarter revenue rose 19% to $2.89 billion, beating the $2.81 billion consensus, as hospitals accelerated upgrades to its da Vinci 5 robotic platform and Ion procedure volumes surged. Adjusted earnings per share of $2.80 topped analyst estimates of $2.48 and compared with $2.19 a year earlier. "The da Vinci 5 upgrade cycle is moving faster than we modeled, with utilization roughly 11% higher than the legacy Xi system," J.P. Morgan analyst Robbie Marcus wrote in a note following the results. "This is a multi-year catalyst for system placements and recurring revenue." Procedure volume grew approximately 16% for the da Vinci platform and 39% for the Ion bronchoscopy system in the quarter. Recurring revenue from instruments, accessories and services — which accounts for more than 80% of total revenue — rose 23% year over year to $2.12 billion in the first quarter, a trend that likely continued into Q2. The company placed 232 da Vinci 5 systems in the first quarter alone, up from 147 a year earlier, signaling strong demand for the next-generation platform with Force Feedback technology and embedded artificial intelligence. The results mark a sharp reversal from the stock's year-to-date performance. Intuitive shares have fallen roughly 30% in 2026, pushing the forward price-to-earnings multiple to about 36 times — a steep discount to the five-year average of 58 times. The selloff reflected concerns that GLP-1 obesity drugs could reduce bariatric surgery volumes and that longer instrument lifespans might pressure recurring revenue. The Q2 report suggests those fears may be overblown, as growth in general surgery, urology and lung biopsy procedures more than offset any bariatric headwinds. Intuitive Surgical's competitive moat continues to widen. The da Vinci 5 introduces hardware-enabled AI and haptic feedback — Force Feedback technology that gives surgeons a physical sense of tissue resistance for the first time — creating a technical barrier that rivals will find difficult to replicate. Meanwhile, the Ion platform is moving the company upstream into diagnostics, with each lung biopsy procedure consuming single-use needles, vision probes and 3D planning software. The da Vinci SP (Single Port) system is gaining traction in urology and head-and-neck surgeries, allowing an entire surgical team to operate through a single 2.5-centimeter incision. The company faces headwinds in international markets, including capital spending constraints in Europe and pricing pressure in China, which could moderate system placement growth outside the U.S. But the domestic upgrade cycle and expanding procedure volumes provide a strong base. At 36 times forward earnings, Intuitive Surgical trades at a premium to the broader medical device sector but well below its own historical average. If the company sustains its current growth trajectory, the valuation gap represents an opportunity for long-term investors. This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.

Jul 16 2026, 21:14

Amazon brings xAI's Grok 4.3 to Bedrock as 3-model AI war escalates

**Amazon just gave enterprise customers a third frontier AI option on Bedrock, pitting Grok 4.3 against Anthropic and OpenAI in a cloud pricing war that could reshape the $310 billion AI services market.** Amazon's addition of xAI's Grok 4.3 to its Bedrock managed service gives enterprise customers a third frontier-model option alongside Anthropic and OpenAI, intensifying a cloud AI arms race that has already pushed inference prices down 40% over the past year. "This is about giving customers optionality on cost, latency, and reasoning depth," an AWS spokesperson said. "Grok 4.3's configurable reasoning effort levels let developers dial compute up or down depending on the task." Grok 4.3 features a 1-million-token context window — matching Kimi K3's capacity and exceeding Claude Fable 5's 200,000-token limit — and runs on Bedrock's new Mantle inference engine. xAI claims the model has the lowest hallucination rate among frontier models, though it has not disclosed the benchmark methodology. Pricing sits at $1.25 per million input tokens and $2.50 per million output tokens, undercutting Kimi K3's $3 and $15 per million and positioning Grok competitively against Anthropic and OpenAI's tiered pricing structures. The integration, announced July 16 after AWS's general availability on June 15, signals that Amazon is betting on multi-model flexibility rather than exclusive partnerships. AWS stock, trading at 22x forward earnings, could benefit as enterprises consolidate AI workloads on Bedrock rather than splitting across Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud. The move comes as the enterprise AI market enters a pricing war. Moonshot AI's open-weight Kimi K3, which topped the Frontend Code Arena leaderboard on July 16 with 1,679 points — beating Claude Fable 5's 1,631 and GPT-5.6 Sol's 1,618 — is available via API at $3 per million input tokens and $15 per million output tokens. Kimi K3's open-weight release, planned for July 27, adds further pressure on proprietary models to justify their premium pricing by making state-of-the-art coding performance freely available for modification and deployment. Grok 4.3's 1-million-token context window makes it suited for processing large financial documents, legal contracts, and customer interaction histories — workloads that enterprises increasingly want to run without managing underlying infrastructure. The model supports tool calls, structured outputs, and real-time streaming through Mantle, Amazon's inference engine designed to handle multi-model deployments with configurable reasoning effort from none to high. For xAI, the Bedrock partnership provides a distribution channel that could meaningfully boost enterprise adoption. The startup, valued at $75 billion in its most recent funding round, has been racing to expand beyond its consumer chatbot user base into enterprise contracts. Discussions about the Bedrock integration surfaced in late May, shortly after Grok 4.3's preliminary API release in April. The enterprise AI market is projected to reach $310 billion by 2030, according to Grand View Research, and cloud providers are the primary gatekeepers. Amazon's strategy of hosting all three major frontier model families — Anthropic, OpenAI, and now xAI — positions Bedrock as the neutral platform, potentially capturing a larger share of enterprise AI spend than rivals that rely on exclusive or vertically integrated models. For investors, the key question is whether multi-model aggregation drives higher AWS revenue growth than Microsoft's deep partnership with OpenAI or Google's vertically integrated Gemini strategy. *This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.*

Jul 16 2026, 21:07

Fed's Schmid warns inflation at 3.5% as rate-hike risks resurface

**Three Federal Reserve officials this week warned inflation remains too high, with Kansas City Fed President Jeff Schmid saying the risk of further acceleration threatens to reverse market expectations for a prolonged pause.** Kansas City Fed President Jeff Schmid said inflation at roughly 3.5% is his "biggest worry," joining two other officials in warning that the risk of further price acceleration could force the central bank to resume rate increases. "Inflation is my biggest concern, and the risk that it could accelerate further in the months ahead is real," Schmid said. "We have not yet reached our goal." The federal funds rate has sat at 3.50% to 3.75% since mid-2026, after the Federal Open Market Committee held steady for a fourth consecutive meeting on June 16-17. Inflation readings have crept into the 3.5% range, nearly double the central bank's 2% target, which prices have exceeded for more than five years. The June consumer price index and producer price index both came in below expectations, but Schmid cautioned it was "too early" to view the data as the start of a trend. The hawkish chorus — including Dallas Fed President Lorie Logan, who has explicitly called for rate hikes, and new Fed Chair Kevin Warsh, who told Congress the central bank has "zero tolerance" for high inflation — has pushed rate-hike probabilities higher in futures markets. The next FOMC meeting is scheduled for late July, and traders are now pricing a measurable chance that the Fed could reverse course and tighten policy. **A Broader Hawkish Tilt** Schmid's warnings align with a growing hawkish shift across the Federal Open Market Committee. In October 2025, Schmid dissented against a rate cut, arguing that inflationary pressures outweighed labor market considerations. Dallas Fed's Logan has been more explicit, publicly advocating for rate increases. Warsh, who took the helm earlier this year, told lawmakers the central bank would not tolerate persistent above-target inflation, though he stopped short of signaling an imminent hike. The inflation pressure extends beyond energy, Schmid said, noting that food prices have risen faster than their pre-pandemic average. He also pushed back against the economic theory that policymakers can ignore one-time price shocks, arguing that strong demand has been a persistent driver of inflation. "One of the lasting lessons of the pandemic is that inflation is never just a supply problem," Schmid said. "Strong demand has almost always been a contributing factor." Geopolitical developments, particularly in the Middle East, have compounded the inflation challenge by pushing energy costs higher. The last time the Fed faced a comparable inflation overshoot — with readings persistently above 3% for an extended period — it responded with a series of rate increases that pushed the fed funds rate to its peak in mid-2025 before beginning cuts later that year. The labor market remains in balance and growth has shown resilience, Schmid said, giving the Fed room to keep rates elevated without risking a sharp economic downturn. The Fed's June policy meeting minutes showed that as labor market concerns eased, officials grew more worried about inflation. **What Markets Are Pricing** Overnight index swaps now reflect a measurable probability of a rate increase at the July or September FOMC meetings, reversing the dovish repricing that followed the softer-than-expected June CPI and PPI data. The 2-year Treasury yield, which is most sensitive to Fed policy expectations, has moved higher as traders reassess the rate path. A rate hike would strengthen the US dollar and pressure risk assets, including equities and cryptocurrencies, which have historically performed best in easing cycles. If upcoming CPI and PCE readings confirm Schmid's characterization of 3.5% inflation, rate-hike probabilities will likely climb further in futures markets. If the data softens, his warnings become a minority view that markets can safely ignore. This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.