Friday, August 14, 2026

Equities pushed higher on Thursday: SPY (SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust) gained 0.70% to $777.88 and QQQ (Invesco QQQ Trust) gained 1.16% to $732.07, but the AI infrastructure universe lagged — our 523 stocks averaged -0.21% with 232 advancers and 285 decliners, underperforming SPY by 91 basis points. Software & Design led at +4.48%, while Networking was the weakest segment at -2.29%. The standout gainer was SNDK (Sandisk Corporation) up 13.7%; SLND (Southland Holdings, Inc.) was the largest decliner at -24.3%. Today's calendar includes SHMD (SCHMID Group N.V. Class A Ordinary Shares), NKLR (Terra Innovatum Global N.V. Ordinary shares), MOVE (Corvex, Inc.), and ASPI (ASP Isotopes Inc. Common Stock) reporting. Next week's AI infrastructure earnings calendar includes FN (Fabrinet) Monday, VNET (VNET Group, Inc.) Tuesday, KEYS (Keysight Technologies, Inc.) Tuesday, and ADI (Analog Devices, Inc.) Wednesday.

AMAT (Applied Materials, Inc.) reported fiscal third-quarter EPS of $3.50 versus the $3.40 estimate, beating by $0.10. The company announced third-quarter results on Thursday.

GDS (GDS Holdings Limited) reported EPS of $0.56 against a $0.011 estimate, beating by $0.55.

XE (X-Energy, Inc. Class A Common Stock) posted a loss of $0.15 per share against a -$0.097 estimate, missing by $0.05. The stock nonetheless gained 11.7% Thursday, the second-best performance in the universe.

TSSI (TSS, Inc.) reported EPS of $0.05, a penny light of the $0.05993 estimate. TSSI sits at the data center construction and integration layer.

NPWR (NET Power Inc.) reported a loss of $0.91 per share versus the -$0.072 estimate, missing by $0.84. The clean power developer's second-quarter update was wider than expected.

AIRJ (AirJoule Technologies Corporation) reported EPS of -$0.12 against a -$0.075 estimate, missing by $0.04. The company also provided a business update with the release.

AIT (Applied Industrial Technologies, Inc.) reported EPS of $3.17 versus a $2.92 estimate, an upside of $0.25. AIT is a technical distributor exposed to power transmission, rotating equipment, and MRO.

Lam Research announced plans to invest more than $3 billion to expand its global lab network. LRCX (Lam Research Corporation) said the investment is aimed at increasing innovation velocity in the AI era. The expansion is a capacity-building move by a major semiconductor equipment vendor.

Cerebras said it is powering an ultrafast mode for OpenAI's GPT-5.6 Sol. CBRS (Cerebras Systems Inc.) shares fell 11.8% Thursday even with the announcement. The news positions wafer-scale compute as part of frontier AI inference infrastructure.

FN (Fabrinet) reports Monday. The consensus estimate is $3.81. Fabrinet's results will be a direct read on 800G and 1.6T optical module volume for AI clusters.

AGPU (Axe Compute Inc.) reports Monday. The consensus EPS estimate is None. No actual results have been reported yet.

BHP (BHP Group Limited) reports Monday. The consensus EPS estimate is $2.67. No actual results have been reported yet.

VNET (VNET Group, Inc.) reports Tuesday. The consensus EPS estimate is $0.1839. As a Chinese data center operator, VNET will be a read on AI-driven colocation demand, pricing, and capacity expansion.

KEYS (Keysight Technologies, Inc.) reports Tuesday. The consensus estimate is $2.48. Watch for order trends in high-speed digital test, AI data-center interconnect, and silicon photonics.

ADI (Analog Devices, Inc.) reports Wednesday. The consensus estimate is $3.34. Analog Devices is a key read on power management and signal chain attach rates across AI servers, power infrastructure, and test equipment.