00:00 Speaker A
Let’s move now to our trending tickers of the day. We’re watching Amazon and Guidewire, both on the up and up. Apple, on the flip side, seeing some losses. Let’s start with Amazon. The company, seeing some small gains today following an expansion announcement. Amazon said it’s going to be investing $10 billion into North Carolina for its cloud and artificial intelligence infrastructure. Um and the shares are up about 1% today, but really this is sort of part of the company strategy that’s been announced to spend about a hundred billion dollars overall this year on building out AI infrastructure.
00:45 Speaker B
Yeah, it sounds like this investment will create at least 500 new jobs, expected to support thousands of local construction jobs. I Governor here saying, uh, this investment among the largest in the state’s history. By the way, Dan Ives over at Wedbush, out with a fresh note this morning, identified the three tech companies he believes will define the future of the AI theme over the coming years. Yes. Obviously, Nvidia, Dan’s going to put in there.
01:14 Speaker A
Amazon as well. Makes the cut.
01:16 Speaker B
And there’s a new Ives ETF apparently that has has that in there. Um, this is not the first investment, by the way, that Amazon’s made in the South. It’s announced plans back in January to invest at least $11 billion in Georgia. So this is something that it, and of course, it’s hyperscaler competitors, are also doing.
01:53 Speaker A
Shares There it is. There is. Mhm. For sure. Yeah. I’ll look at Guidewire as well because it’s also seen share increase today, on track for a record close here, in fact, after the software maker announced a rise in sales in their third quarter, point to a large adoption of the cloud-based platforms by customers. Despite falling short of market expectations for revenue, companies still saw big gains in the stock market during trading hours. So this one, uh, comes out, it boosted its revenue guidance for the year, uh, and that did did exceed what the street was looking for. So they now see between it looks like 1.18 and 1.19 billion. The estimate was close to 1.17. Company saying based on this strong execution and our robust pipeline, we’re raising our full-year fiscal 2025 targets, truly.
02:58 Speaker B
And this stock, which, to be frank, I hadn’t heard a lot about before today, um, kind of flew under the radar, but it’s on it’s on track for a record close today. It’s up 50% this year. It’s more than doubled, up about 130% over the past 12 months. So it’s done really, really well. Analysts here seem to like it, although many of them now have neutral equivalent ratings on it after that huge increase that we’ve seen in the stock. But most of the, um, chatter I saw, commentary, was positive on these numbers, at least.
03:48 Speaker A
Interesting. Mhm. Yeah, investor has been very positive.
03:53 Speaker B
Yeah. And let’s talk about Apple now. Um, major fluctuations in that share price today, although in a relatively narrow range. Needham, Laura Martin over there, leading those analysts to raise, uh, or to cut the stock, I should say, to hold from buy, citing overvaluation and growing artificial intelligence competition. Um, the stock was higher to start the day, but now it’s just about flat. What I also thought was interesting, she said, what would change my mind on this? And she said, for the stock to work, it must have the catalyst of an iPhone replacement cycle. She said, we don’t see that coming in the next year.
04:44 Speaker A
I am not totally surprised by this, only because we’ve had Laura Martin on this very show. And she was like the least bullish Apple bull, I think I’ve spoken to in a while. So this didn’t exactly shock me that Laura would come out, take the red pen, downgrade this one. It does come after this stock has already taken a beating. I mean, Apple’s down about 20% this year already. I wonder how much of the bad news she’s highlighting is already reflected. She clearly thinks more to come, or not reflected enough.
05:24 Speaker B
Yes. Yeah. Right. Yeah. What does she like better?
05:28 Speaker A
Alphabet and Amazon.
05:30 Speaker B
There you go. So sharing some Ives, uh, preferences there.
05:36 Speaker A
Yes. Yes.
