It's no secret that Ubisoft hasn't had the best year, with the gaming giant having had to shut down multiple live-service and single-player games this year as a result of disappointing player counts and sales figures. Now, according to a series of rumors, Ubisoft is in talks with Chinese conglomerate Tencent with the intention of a buy-out. Curiously, though, Yves Guillemot, who currently sits as CEO of Ubisoft, wants to sell at least some of the Guillemot family's shares to Tencent, effectively giving Tencent a controlling stake in Ubisoft, but the Guillemot family wants to do so without losing control of the company it helped found.

According to Reuters, inside sources claim that the Guillemot family, who are the founding shareholders and currently have a controlling stake in Ubisoft, would like to maintain a controlling position in the company after whatever potential buyout deal is being discussed. Apparently, the Guillemot Family's desire for continued control has thus far been a sticking point for Tencent, who has as yet opted not increase its stake in the French game developer and publisher, instead holding out for a more favorable deal. Tencent already has around a 10% stake in Ubisoft, but the inside sources claim that Tencent wants greater control over the company before agreeing to a buyout of Guillemot shares.

Intel Altera's FPGA unit is attracting a lot of attention in the semiconductor industry according to a recent report by Bloomberg, Lattice Semiconductor emerging as a potential buyer for the entire division. Bloomberg reports that Lattice actively works with advisers and seeks private-sector backing to support their bid. However, Intel's preference appears to be leaning toward selling only a small portion of its Altera shares instead of selling everything and this can be a decisive factor in upcoming negotiations. The potential sale has attracted interest from many outside Lattice Semiconductor, including major private equity firms such as Francisco Partners, Bain Capital, and Silver Lake Management. Qualcomm has also expressed interest in acquiring parts of Intel's design business.

Bloomberg also reports that selling just a portion of Altera's shares would likely require complex financial arrangements, while private equity firms are considering investing about $3 billion through instruments. This could result in Intel's valuation being lower than the original purchase price. Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger has indicated plans to close the Altera transaction in early 2024, with the company valuing the nearly $16.7 billion Intel paid for Altera in 2015 at approximately $17 billion. Lattice's market value of $7.48 billion is certainly smaller and can challenge Lattice's ambitions for complete control of Altera. The Intel board discussed Altera's future last week and prefers to sell only a minority stake, with a decision expected soon.

Supermicro shares took a big hit today when Ernst & Young quit as its auditor, making its stock fall over 30%. EY decided to leave because of their worries in July about how Supermicro runs things, shares information, and keeps track of its money. In August, Supermicro delayed its annual report as they were looking over internal financial controls following Hindenburg Research's allegations of accounting manipulation. Ernst & Young's letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) about quitting says they can't trust what the company's leaders say anymore. They also don't want their name on the company's financial papers after discovering new information during their check. "We are resigning due to information that has recently come to our attention which has led us to no longer be able to rely on management's and the Audit Committee's representations and to be unwilling to be associated with the financial statements prepared by management."

Supermicro doesn't agree with the accounting firm's decision, and they say fixing these problems won't mean they have to redo any of their financial reports from 2024 or earlier. Commenting on this subject, Nathan Anderson, the founder of Hindenburg, said in a post on X, "As far as auditor statements go, E&Y's SMCI resignation letter is about as strongly worded as I have seen." According to The Wall Street Journal, the Department of Justice is currently looking into the company. Supermicro will present its first quarter fiscal 2025 business update on Tuesday, November 5, 2024, at 5:00 p.m. ET / 2:00 p.m. PT.

Electronic Arts (NASDAQ: EA) today announced preliminary financial results for its second quarter ended September 30, 2024. "EA delivered another strong quarter with record Q2 net bookings, driven by our incredible teams, broad portfolio and technology leadership," said Andrew Wilson, CEO of EA. "The momentum in our business reinforces our strategic vision to deliver innovative experiences and interactive entertainment that deepens and expands engagement across our global communities."

"Q2 was another successful quarter for EA, exceeding the high end of our guidance range. As a result, we are also raising our FY25 outlook," said Stuart Canfield, CFO of EA. "We remain confident in our ability to drive long-term value creation through increased scale, driving top-line growth, improved margins, and greater cash flow as shared at our Investor Day."

Seagate Technology Holdings plc (NASDAQ: STX) (the "Company" or "Seagate"), a leading innovator of mass-capacity data storage, today reported financial results for its fiscal first quarter ended September 27, 2024. "Seagate is off to an outstanding start to the fiscal year, highlighted by gross margin expanding to the highest level in more than a decade," said Dave Mosley, Seagate's chief executive officer.

"We executed on our plans to aggressively ramp our 28-terabyte nearline drives and broaden the number of cloud customers entering qualification on HAMR-based Mozaic products. We are excited by the strong product momentum which positions us well to address customer demand while delivering profitable growth. Our confidence in Seagate's future opportunities is reflected in the decision to raise the quarterly dividend as announced today," Mosley concluded.

Today, ASML Holding NV (ASML) has published its 2024 second-quarter results.

• Q2 total net sales of €6.2 billion, gross margin of 51.5%, net income of €1.6 billion
• Quarterly net bookings in Q2 of €5.6 billion of which €2.5 billion is EUV
• ASML expects Q3 2024 total net sales between €6.7 billion and €7.3 billion and a gross margin between 50% and 51%

CEO statement and outlook
"Our second-quarter total net sales came in at €6.2 billion, at the high-end of our guidance, with a gross margin of 51.5% which is above guidance, both primarily driven by more immersion systems sales. In line with previous quarters, overall semiconductor inventory levels continue to improve, and we also see further improvement in litho tool utilization levels at both Logic and Memory customers. While there are still uncertainties in the market, primarily driven by the macro environment, we expect industry recovery to continue in the second half of the year. We expect third-quarter total net sales between €6.7 billion and €7.3 billion with a gross margin between 50% and 51%. ASML expects R&D costs of around €1,100 million and SG&A costs of around €295 million. Our outlook for the full year 2024 remains unchanged. We see 2024 as a transition year with continued investments in both capacity ramp and technology. We currently see strong developments in AI, driving most of the industry recovery and growth, ahead of other market segments," said ASML President and Chief Executive Officer Christophe Fouquet.

Today, ASML Holding NV (ASML) has published its 2024 first-quarter results.

• Q1 total net sales of €5.3 billion, gross margin of 51.0%, net income of €1.2 billion
• Quarterly net bookings in Q1 of €3.6 billion of which €656 million is EUV
• ASML expects Q2 2024 total net sales between €5.7 billion and €6.2 billion, and a gross margin between 50% and 51%
• ASML expects 2024 total net sales to be similar to 2023

CEO statement and outlook
"Our first-quarter total net sales came in at €5.3 billion, at the midpoint of our guidance, with a gross margin of 51.0% which is above guidance, primarily driven by product mix and one-offs. We expect second-quarter total net sales between €5.7 billion and €6.2 billion with a gross margin between 50% and 51%. ASML expects R&D costs of around €1,070 million and SG&A costs of around €295 million. Our outlook for the full year 2024 is unchanged, with the second half of the year expected to be stronger than the first half, in line with the industry's continued recovery from the downturn. We see 2024 as a transition year with continued investments in both capacity ramp and technology, to be ready for the turn in the cycle," said ASML President and Chief Executive Officer Peter Wennink.

Silicon Motion Technology Corporation ("Silicon Motion", the "Company" or "we") today announced its financial results for the quarter ended June 30, 2023. For the second quarter of 2023, net sales (GAAP) increased sequentially to $140.4 million from $124.1 million in the first quarter of 2023. Net income (GAAP) increased to $11.0 million, or $0.33 per diluted American Depositary Share of the Company ("ADS") (GAAP), from net income (GAAP) of $10.2 million, or $0.30 per diluted ADS (GAAP), in the first quarter of 2023.

For the second quarter of 2023, net income (non-GAAP) increased to $12.6 million, or $0.38 per diluted ADS (non-GAAP), from net income (non-GAAP) of $11.2 million, or $0.33 per diluted ADS (non-GAAP), in the first quarter of 2023.

Today ASML Holding NV (ASML) has published its 2023 second-quarter results.

• Q2 net sales of €6.9 billion, gross margin of 51.3%, net income of €1.9 billion
• Quarterly net bookings in Q2 of €4.5 billion of which €1.6 billion is EUV
• ASML expects Q3 2023 net sales between €6.5 billion and €7.0 billion and a gross margin of around 50%
• ASML expects 2023 net sales growth towards 30% compared to 2022

CEO statement and outlook
"Our second-quarter net sales came in at €6.9 billion, at the high end of our guidance, with a gross margin of 51.3%, higher than guided, primarily driven by additional DUV immersion revenue in the quarter. "Our customers across different market segments are currently more cautious due to continued macro-economic uncertainties, and therefore expect a later recovery of their markets. Also, the shape of the recovery slope is still unclear. However, our strong backlog of around €38 billion provides us with a good basis to navigate these short-term uncertainties.

Corsair Gaming, Inc. ("Corsair" or the "Company"), a leading global provider and innovator of high-performance gear for gamers and content creators, today announced financial results for the quarter ended September 30, 2022. Andy Paul, Chief Executive Officer of Corsair, stated, "We achieved 10% sequential revenue growth from Q2 2022 to Q3 2022, while significantly reducing our channel inventory in what remains a challenging environment. Sales out levels from our Channel to Consumers were significantly above pre-pandemic levels in almost all product lines and were above the year ago level in many of our product categories.

As we mentioned in previous quarters, the self-built PC market has been held back over the past 2 years, as high demand for GPU cards from crypto miners caused GPU prices to rise and in some cases double. Now that Crypto mining can no longer utilize graphics cards as they used to, GPU demand has since normalized resulting in a decline in prices back to standard MSRP or below. We are already seeing the positive effects of this on the market.

Elon Musk in a late-Thursday tweet announced that he is placing his Twitter acquisition bid on "temporary hold" over doubts about the platform's spam-bot data. Twitter, in a recent SEC regulatory filing, disclosed that spam bots made up less than 5% of its userbase. The filing revealed that Twitter has 229 million users that viewed consistent ads, while fewer than 5% of the "monetizable daily active users" were fake or spam-bot accounts. Financial analysts predict the substantial fall in cryprocurrency values, as well as a $400 billion drop in market-capitalization of the Tesla stock since Musk announced plans to buy Twitter, may have made the world's richest man squeamish about buying Twitter, and that he is probably looking for a legally safe escape route from the deal. Twitter shares plummeted in value since the Musk tweet.

Global shipments of traditional PCs, including desktops, notebooks, and workstations, declined 5.1% in the first quarter of 2022 (1Q22) but exceeded earlier forecasts, according to preliminary results from the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Personal Computing Device Tracker. The PC market is coming off two years of double-digit growth, so while the first quarter decline is a change in this momentum, it doesn't mean the industry is in a downward spiral. Despite ongoing supply chain and logistical challenges, vendors still shipped 80.5 million PCs during the quarter. The 1Q22 volume marks the seventh consecutive quarter where global shipments surpassed 80 million, a feat not seen since 2012.

"The focus shouldn't be on the year-over-year decline in PC volumes because that was to be expected. The focus should be on the PC industry managing to ship more than 80 million PCs at a time when logistics and supply chain are still a mess, accompanied by numerous geopolitical and pandemic-related challenges," said Ryan Reith, group vice president with IDC's Worldwide Mobile Device Trackers. "We have witnessed some slowdown in both the education and consumer markets, but all indicators show demand for commercial PCs remains very strong. We also believe that the consumer market will pick up again in the near future. The result of 1Q22 was PC shipment volumes that were near record levels for a first quarter."

AMD (NASDAQ: AMD) today announced that its board of directors approved a new $8 billion share repurchase program. The new authorization is in addition to the $4 billion share repurchase program announced in May 2021, under which the company has repurchased approximately $3 billion of shares of AMD common stock.

"We are pleased to expand our share repurchase program based on the strength of our balance sheet and expectations for future free cash flow generation," said AMD Chair and CEO Dr. Lisa Su. "With our strong financial performance, we are able to increase investments to drive long-term growth while returning additional value to our shareholders."

AMD (NASDAQ:AMD) today announced revenue for the second quarter of 2021 of $3.85 billion, operating income of $831 million, net income of $710 million and diluted earnings per share of $0.58. On a non-GAAP basis, operating income was $924 million, net income was $778 million and diluted earnings per share was $0.63.

"Our business performed exceptionally well in the second quarter as revenue and operating margin doubled and profitability more than tripled year-over-year," said AMD president and CEO Lisa Su. "We are growing significantly faster than the market with strong demand across all of our businesses. We now expect our 2021 annual revenue to grow by approximately 60 percent year-over-year driven by strong execution and increased customer preference for our leadership products."

Microsoft on Tuesday achieved another milestone on its road as a publicly traded company - the $2 trillion valuation milestone, that is. Microsoft may have felt slightly stung when Apple crossed that threshold first in 2020, but slowly and surely sure does pave the way. Microsoft crossed the $2 trillion valuation mark after its share rose by 1.2%. The company is currently having some of the best quarters in its history, with the latest quarter bringing in revenue increases of around $41.7 billion, and a clean, tidy, enormous $15.5 billion in profit during the same time.

Microsoft's shares have increased some 20% YoY already, and the acceleration from its $1 trillion market cap is nothing short of grandiose. The company took 33 years from its IPO (Initial Public Offering) to reach the $1 trillion valuation in 2019 - and it took them less than two years to double that to $2 trillion. COVID, of course, has its microscopic toes in this success, but so does Microsoft's increased investment and returns in gaming, as well as the lift-off of its cloud business.

The US Government, specifically the Department of Defense (DoD), has under the Trump administration blacklisted the Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi. This was a way to impose sanctions on the Chinese company as it was believed that Xiaomi was involved with the Chinese military, thus the Trump organization had problems having US investors taking a share of it. However, the company has issued legal proceedings against the US government for making such claims, and now the US govt., administrated by the President Joe Biden, has reached an agreement with the company. Xiaomi managed to prove that it is not owned or controlled by the Chinese military, so the US DoD has removed the company from its blacklist.

This has caused the company shares to soar on the Hong Kong stock exchange by as much as 6.7% after the news appeared. "The Biden Administration is deeply concerned about potential U.S. investments in companies linked to the Chinese military and fully committed to keeping up pressure on such companies", said Emily Horne, a spokeswoman for the White House National Security Council.

On Monday, GIGABYTE, a Taiwanese PC manufacturer, has published a blog post that made fun of other component manufacturers for having their products made in China, the "low-cost, low-quality way". According to Bloomberg, who was the first to spot the blog post, which is now removed. According to the report, such a statement had a massive toll on the shares of the Taiwanese company. E-commerce operators in China, like JD.com Inc. and Suning.com Co., have removed GIGABYTE products from their offerings and searching GIGABYTE or "Jijia" (Chinese company name) returned zero results from these websites. This has single-handedly caused the shares of the company to plummet by 10%, wiping away around $550 million worth of market cap.

The original blog post has since been removed, and GIGABYTE has issued a public apology, which you can see here. The translation of the text says that "A few days ago, part of the text content published on our official website is seriously inconsistent with the fact. It is caused by poor internal management of the company. We sincerely apologize for the discomfort caused to you." The company has also noted that it is very proud of "Made in China" products. On a more personal note, it is interesting to see such a strict market response coming from a blog post, and even more interesting to witness this exclusion from the Chinese e-commerce companies.

TrendForce's investigations find that India has become the second largest market for smartphones since 2019. However, the recent worsening of the COVID-19 pandemic in the country has severely impaired India's domestic economy and subsequently dampened various smartphone brands' production volume and sales (sell-in) performances there. TrendForce is therefore revising the forecasted YoY growth in global smartphone production for 2021 from 9.4% down to 8.5%, with a yearly production volume of 1.36 billion units and potential for further decreases going forward.

TrendForce further indicates that the top five smartphone brands (Samsung, Apple, Xiaomi, OPPO, and Vivo) have either set up assembly plants in India or sought assistance from EMS providers with operations in the country. Hence, the share of made-in-India smartphones has been on the rise over the years, even though the majority of the domestically manufactured devices are still for meeting the demand of the home market. Judging from the current state of Indian smartphone manufacturing, TrendForce expects the second wave to reduce the country's smartphone production volume for 2Q21 and 3Q21 by a total of 12 million units, in turn resulting in a 7.5% YoY decrease in smartphone production in India for the whole year.

Intel's announcement today that their 7 nm node is facing difficulties is being taken one of two ways: as an unmitigated disaster by some, and with a tentative carefulness (lest we see another 10 nm repeat) from others. However one looks at this setback, which means AMD will still enjoy a process lead over Intel for some extra time, this is good news for AMD in more ways than just that one.

Case in point: stock price. While AMD has a much lower market cap than Intel (calculated by multiplying the value of a single stock by the number of total issued stocks), today, for the first time since 2006, AMD's shares were more valuable than Intel's on a per-share basis. AMD's $70 billion market cap still pales in comparison to Intel's $215 billion. At time of writing, AMD's stock pricing is $18 higher than Intel, at $68.67 compared to Intel's $50.79. A first in many years for the green company.

NVIDIA's stock value has been falling precipitously in the last several months. We reported in December that the company lost some 48.8% in value between October and December, moving from an all-time peak of $289.36 on October 1st, to just under $149 on December 14th. At the time, excess inventories were the cause, alongside a less than glamorous reception to their new RTX series of graphics cards. Now? NVIDIA cites "deteriorating macroeconomic conditions, particularly in China" as harming demand for their gaming GPUs. But this now comes alongside a its datacenter business also falling short of expectations - that's two of NVIDIA's most lucrative markets being put towards the red, or at least, with lower than expected income revenues.

This led the company to revise its financial outlook for the year, lowering revenue estimates by $500 million, down to $2.2 billion from its initial $2.7 billion forecast. Gross margins have been lowered by some 7%, which means lowered earnings for investors. Since the December plunge, NVIDIA's stock had recovered up to around $160 per share, but has now dived 14.52%, down to $136.90 - even lower than before. The company has seen its market valuation shrink by more than 50% inside of four months - while the company is still well in the green side of the limbo, so to speak, these certainly don't serve to improve the company's spirit.

Analyst Kevin Cassidy, responsible for AMD shares rating with Stifel, has revised expected AMD growth in the wake of expected (and already verified) PC market growth. Following the news at the end of last week, AMD shares jumped by 5% on Friday, and increased by another 2% on Monday. This marks an increase of 61.3% YTD (year-to-date.) Looking at this trend, the analyst increased his 12-month price target on the stock to $21 from $17, a nearly 27% upside from Monday close.

The news and details on Intel's most recent chip flaw have been coming in almost faster than news outlets can put them out, and it just seems that the company is going through a phase where news are seldom good. New information has come to light that paint Intel CEO's Brian Krzanich's sale of $24M worth of stocks in November 24th in a negative spotlight, euphemisms be allowed. We (meaning, this editor) previously dismissed the share sale as a pre-planned event that didn't show any kind of shady wrongdoing in the face of news breaking out regarding Intel's VM security flaw. However, it seems as if it pays off to be negative rather than positive in the world at large, and the skeptic in me is saying "serves you right".

French media conglomerate Vivendi has been amassing Ubisoft shares over a course of two years. The company is the biggest shareholder at the moment owning approximately 26% of Ubisoft's shares. By French accounting law, Vivendi is obligated to make a mandatory bid once their shareholder percentage surpasses the 30% mark. Earlier this year, the French giant made it clear that the hostile takeover would happen before the year ends. It won't be their first rodeo, since they took over Gameloft not so long ago. The gaming sector is the second largest in the content industry after all, so you can't hardly blame Vivendi for wanting a bigger piece of the pie. However, business plans do change over time. According to Vivendi's recent third-quarter financial report, the company has postponed the Ubisoft takeover for at least another six months.

Broadcom, makers of networking equipment, is exploring a deal to acquire mobile technology giant Qualcomm in a USD $100 billion deal, which could be the largest ever acquisition value of a chip-maker. The resulting company could be the world's largest chipmaker, combining Broadcom's IP with networking PHYs and IoT infrastructure, and Qualcomm's SoCs powering IoT devices besides smartphones, tablets, and ultra-portable notebooks. Broadcom is looking to raise a cash+stock bid consisting of shares valued at $70/share. Besides networking infrastructure equipment, Broadcom made its fortunes on the back of Apple iPhone's success, as it supplies its networking chips.

AMD's stock on Monday took a relatively steep dive in value, following a report by Morgan Stanley that pegs cryptocurrency-fueled graphics shipments to decline by 50% next year (a $250 million decline in revenue). "We believe that AMD's graphics surge has been caused by a sharp increase in sales of graphics chips to cryptocurrency miners. We expect this to meaningfully decelerate next year," Morgan Stanley analyst Joseph Moore said. At the same time, the report expects video game console demand to decline by 5.5% in 2018, which led Moore towards lowering his price target for AMD shares to $8 from $11, a 32% decline from Friday's close.

As a consequence of the report, Morgan Stanley reduced its rating on AMD shares from equal-weight to underweight, which reduced confidence in the market, and triggered a sell-off - and following the mechanism of availability and demand, a descent in stock pricing was already painted on the wall. A 9% fall isn't something to scoff at - especially when the economics surrounding it are attributed to a single - as of yet - report. AMD stock fluctuations aren't new; the company's stock has been particularly volatile in recent times - especially when compared to its peers (and competitors) Intel and NVIDIA.