Overview
- SK Hynix reported a more-than-sevenfold rise in operating profit and on Wednesday announced about $45 billion in shareholder returns, sending its stock up roughly 11 percent and lifting Korean markets.
- Samsung posted a record quarterly profit and said on Thursday it will boost investments by about 60 percent to expand capacity for AI-optimized chips that are already selling at a premium.
- Microsoft beat expectations with strong cloud results and a 48 percent rise in Azure revenue, and the company reported cash metrics that reassured investors about the payoff from its AI spending.
- Alphabet reported higher revenue driven by cloud growth but a roughly 25 percent fall in net profit and negative free cash flow related to large AI and data-center commitments, triggering a near 13 percent drop in its share price.
- Energy firms also profited: Shell doubled quarterly profit to $10.8 billion and announced a $5 billion buyback linked to higher refining margins from Middle East supply disruptions, a development that is drawing calls from NGOs for windfall taxes while the Fed’s pause on rate hikes keeps markets responsive to corporate cash flows.