The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost some momentum on the stock market today after data showed another wave of worse-than-expected jobless claims early Thursday.

(Bloomberg) -- Nvidia Corp. gave a quarterly revenue forecast in line with analysts’ estimates, helped by a surge in spending on internet infrastructure and purchases of computer gaming gear.Revenue will be about $3.65 billion in the fiscal second quarter, the Santa Clara, California-based company said Thursday in a statement. That compares with an average analyst estimate of $3.28 billion. The company’s prediction includes a “low-teens percentage” contribution to revenue from its acquisition of Mellanox Technologies, which some analysts hadn’t included in their forecasts.Nvidia is the biggest maker of semiconductors that improve video-game play on computers. The company has parlayed that strength into a growing position in data centers, where its chips are well-suited to artificial intelligence work. Owners of data centers are buying more chips and other components to handle an increase in online activity spurred by a large chunk of the world’s population sheltering in place during the Covid-19 pandemic.Revenue from gaming was $1.34 billion in the quarter. That was a gain of 27% from a year earlier but a decline of 10% from the prior period. Data center sales leapt 80% from the same quarter in 2019 and were up 18% from the fourth quarter, making it the only market to post sequential growth for Nvidia.The company was hurt by supply constraints at the beginning of the quarter as Nvidia’s customers – personal computer and graphics card makers – had to close plants. Later in the quarter, shelter-in-place shuttered retail outlets -- which affected sales of gaming products -- Chief Financial Officer Collette Kress said in a statement published on the company’s website.Chief Executive Officer Jensen Huang recently unveiled new graphics chips and computers for AI processing in data centers. The products challenge Intel Corp.’s dominance in this area.Read more: Nvidia Unveils New Data Center Chips to Speed Pace of AIGross margin, or the percentage of sales remaining after deducting the cost of production, will be about 66% in the current quarter, Nvidia also said.The shares were little changed in extended trading following the report. Earlier, they closed at $351.01 in New York. The stock has surged 49% this year.Beyond gaming and AI, Huang is targeting the market for self-driving vehicles, which require similar chip capabilities. Still, the majority of sales come from PC gaming, where Nvidia’s graphics chips create the most realistic experiences.Profit in the fiscal first quarter was $917 million, or $1.47 a share, compared with $394 million, or 64 cents a year earlier. Revenue surged 39% to $3.08 billion and profit excluding certain costs was $1.80 a share in the period, which ended April 26, the company said. Analysts, on average, had predicted earnings of $1.69 a share on sales of $3 billion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.(Updates with divisional breakdown in fourth paragraph)For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.

(Bloomberg) -- The list of Intel Corp.’s annual supplier award winners tends to read like a who’s-who of the semiconductor industry’s biggest names. This year, it included a little-known Japanese company whose machines have become indispensable in the race to improve semiconductors and whose stock has been rocketing up as a result.Lasertec Corp. is the world’s only maker of testing machines required to verify chip designs for the nascent extreme ultraviolet lithography (or EUV) method of chipmaking. In 2017, Lasertec solved a key piece of the EUV puzzle when it created a machine that can inspect blank EUV masks for internal flaws. Last September, it cleared another milestone by unveiling equipment that can do the same for stencils with chip designs already printed on them. This March, Intel gave the tiny Yokohama-based company an award for innovation, its first after decades of doing business together.“That’s a major milestone for us,” Lasertec President Osamu Okabayashi said in an interview. “It means a lot to be recognized this way as a supplier.”The company’s stock has soared about 550% since the start of 2019, more than twice the gain of the second-best-performing security in the benchmark Topix index. Shares increased about 4% Tuesday, pushing its rise this year to more than 60%.Intel declined to say if it was buying EUV equipment from Lasertec, which already supplies test gear to its rivals Samsung Electronics Co. and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. The three chip fabricators are the only ones so far to announce EUV plans, because the technology is so complex and expensive. Okabayashi would only say that his company has “two or more” EUV customers.“This can be read as a sign that Lasertec’s tools are indispensable to Intel’s EUV roadmap.” said Damian Thong, an analyst at Macquarie Group Ltd.Read more: Japan’s Star Electronics Stock Will Be Vital to Intel, SamsungEUV is just entering the mass production phase after two decades in development, but investors are already betting Lasertec will be one of the key beneficiaries. The move to EUV overcomes key hurdles to shrinking manufacturing geometries of semiconductors, allowing more and smaller transistors to be crammed onto silicon. It promises to unleash another wave of gadgets that are slimmer, cheaper and more powerful.Last month, Lasertec raised its annual order forecast for the second time this year to 85 billion yen ($789 million) in the period ending June, nearly double the amount it received in fiscal 2019. The company is headed for the fourth straight year of record revenue and profits. Sales will climb 39% to 40 billion yen and profit will jump 76%, according to its estimates. And that’s likely to be just the beginning.Samsung earlier this month said it is building a 5-nanometer fabrication facility that will use EUV to make processors for applications ranging from 5G networking to high-performance computing from the second half of next year. Taiwan’s TSMC is pushing ahead with plans to adopt 3-nanometer lithography mass production in 2022 and announced plans to build an advanced fab in the U.S. Intel’s first product made using EUV is expected late next year.Their primary focus is on so-called logic processors, used to power devices and networking applications, but the new manufacturing technique will eventually filter through into the production of DRAM and other memory chips.Read more: Samsung Takes Another Step in $116 Billion Plan to Take on TSMC“Logic makers will be first to adopt EUV, with memory makers following later,” Okabayashi said. “The real volume of orders will come when they reach mass production stage. Right now it’s 7- and 5-nanometer chips. 3-nanometer is still in development stage.”Okabayashi expects each customer will probably need several of his testers, which could cost well over $40 million apiece and take as long as two years to build. A chipmaker would need at least one machine in its mask shop to make sure the stencils come out right. Another would go into a wafer fab to keep an eye on the microscopic wear and tear that result from concentrated light being projected repeatedly through the chip design stencils.“Lasertec is still trying to get a feel for this market and how big it can be,” Macquarie’s Thong said. “Their stock is moving on expectation of future orders. But there is little actual visibility on the scale of this market, so Lasertec retains a lot of capacity for surprise.”(Updates with share price in fourth paragraph)For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.

(Bloomberg) -- Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., a major chipmaker to Apple Inc. and Huawei Technologies Co., has hired a new lobbyist in Washington to help stave off the impact of deteriorating U.S.-Chinese relations on its business.Former U.S. Chamber of Commerce executive Nicholas Montella joined the Taiwanese company in May as its director of government relations, just months after Intel Corp.’s former top lobbyist Peter Cleveland became TSMC’s vice president for global policy. The company confirmed the appointment of Montella, who previously focused on Japan, Korea and APEC policy, according to his LinkedIn profile.The world’s biggest contract chipmaker joins a growing number of companies, including Huawei, with business links to China that are increasing their lobbying activities in the U.S., looking to gauge and lessen the impact from Washington’s ongoing dispute with Beijing.The stakes for TSMC became even higher earlier this month when a new round of U.S. curbs thrust it into heart of tensions over Huawei. Under the rules from the U.S. Department of Commerce, TSMC will have to apply for waivers from Washington for future orders from Huawei. The Chinese tech giant is TSMC’s largest customer after Apple, according to Bloomberg supply chain data, contributing roughly 14% of the chipmaker’s revenue.The Commerce Department announcement came hours after TSMC said it would build a $12 billion plant for advanced 5-nanometer chips in Arizona, a desicion designed to allay U.S. national security concerns and shift more high-tech manufacturing to America.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.

The Dow Jones futures were higher late Tuesday following the coronavirus stock market rally. Five top stocks near buys include Alphabet and Apple.

If you rebuild the workplace after COVID-19, will the workers ever come back? In Silicon Valley, the answer from many tech companies is that many won’t, and maybe that is a good thing.

TSMC (NYSE: TSM), the world's largest contract chipmaker, recently announced plans to build a new $12 billion plant in Arizona by 2024. The announcement might seem like good news for Taiwan-based TSMC and Arizona, but it also indicates the company is becoming entangled in the escalating trade war. Let's see how this deal could affect TSMC's business, and whether or not it's becoming a pawn in the messy tech war between the U.S. and China.

Top Research Reports for Intel, Adobe & AMD

Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMD) has made strong inroads into the CPU processor market following the launch of the Ryzen series in 2017. Companies and tech leaders are also gravitating toward AMD, as its processors boast a superior price-to-performance ratio.More recently, Linux open source operating system founder Linus Torvalds has said he is ditching Intel Corporation (NASDAQ: INTC), which was his processor for a one-a-half decades, and is switching over to AMD."In fact, the biggest excitement this week for me was just that I upgraded my main machine, and for the first time in about 15 years, my desktop isn't Intel-based," Torvalds said while announcing Linux 5.7-rc7 kernel. Torvalds said he's now using AMD Threadripper 3970x."My 'allmodconfig' test builds are now three times faster than they used to be," he said. Torvalds had earlier in 2016 expressed his desire for an ARM-powered laptop.The Ryzen Threadripper 3970X processor is based on the 7nm architecture, with 32 cores and 64 threads of simultaneous multiprocessing power, with 4.5 GHz max boost frequency and 144MB of combined cache.At last check, AMD shares were down 1.79% to $54.18. Intel shares were trading 1.71% higher to $63.32. Related Links:AMD Analysts Eye Valuation, PC Risks, Intel Competition After Q1 Report Why BofA Says AMD, Nvidia Are High-Quality, High-Beta Stocks In A Volatile Market Photo by WhiteTimberwolf via Wikimedia. See more from Benzinga * Here's How Long It Took Nvidia To Reach A 0B Market Cap * Nvidia Analyst Says New, Ampere-Based Data Center GPU Makes Chipmaker 'Unassailable' * AMD Analysts Eye Valuation, PC Risks, Intel Competition After Q1 Report(C) 2020 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.

One of the biggest winners in the semiconductor space over the past few years has been Advanced Micro Devices (NASDAQ: AMD). The CPU and GPU designer had long been an also-ran in the chip space, with minimal market share relative to CPU leader Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) and GPU leader NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA). Look no further than AMD's stock price relative to the market for the last five years as evidence of its renaissance under CEO Lisa Su, who took over in 2014.

Advanced Micro Devices (NASDAQ: AMD) is showing no signs of slowing down despite the adverse impact of the COVID-19 outbreak on businesses and economies around the globe. According to Mercury Research, AMD held 4.5% of the server processor market at the end of 2019. There are rumors that the chipmaker is aiming to attain 10% market share in server CPUs (central processing units) by the end of 2020 -- and seems to be making solid progress toward its goal.

Amazon (AMZN) in talks to acquire Zoox in order to strengthen presence in the autonomous driving space.

These established, well-known technology leaders boast staying power in all markets, writes Michael Brush.

DOW UPDATE Shares of Walt Disney and Coca-Cola are seeing declines Thursday afternoon, sending the Dow Jones Industrial Average into negative territory. Shares of Walt Disney (DIS) and Coca-Cola (KO) are contributing to the blue-chip gauge's intraday decline, as the Dow (DJIA) was most recently trading 142 points lower (-0.

The financial regulations require hedge funds and wealthy investors that exceeded the $100 million equity holdings threshold to file a report that shows their positions at the end of every quarter. Even though it isn't the intention, these filings to a certain extent level the playing field for ordinary investors. The latest round of 13F […]

The Zacks Analyst Blog Highlights: Intel, Adobe, Advanced Micro Devices, Wynn Resorts and Everest Re Group

Gilead Sciences (NASDAQ:GILD) created Remdesivir to treat the Ebola virus. This is a coronavirus similar to, though not precisely like, the COVID-19 strain behind the global pandemic.Source: Eyesonmilan / Shutterstock.com Now, having teased the drug's results through fast trials that would usually be classed as preliminary, Gilead says it's ready to profit.Once donated supplies of 1.5 million doses are exhausted, probably in June, the company will start charging. Based on "Quality Adjusted Life Years," the idea that drugs should be priced based on the value of a life, a price of $4,340 per treatment has been suggested.InvestorPlace - Stock Market News, Stock Advice & Trading TipsGilead sees a "multi-year commercial opportunity" in remdesivir, but the price of GILD stock has fallen over the past month. It opened May 22 at about $73/share, indicating a market cap of $92 billion on pre-Remdesivir revenues of $22.7 billion. The Remdesivir TrialGilead was a profit machine long before COVID-19. * 7 Excellent Penny Stocks Ready to Roar The company was founded in 1988 to produce antiviral treatments. Heavy-hitters like Gordon Moore of Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) and Donald Rumsfeld, later Secretary of Defense, were recruited to its board.Gilead is best known for sofosbuvir, later sold as Sovaldi, a treatment for Hepatitis-C acquired for $10.4 billion. The drug costs $84,000 per treatment in the U.S. but a tiny fraction of that in international markets. In Sovaldi's heyday, in the mid-2010s, Gilead brought over half its revenue to the net income line.Since then, Gilead has been investing heavily to come up with another Sovaldi. Analysts think Remdesivir is it.A clinical trial of 1,063 patients with severe COVID-19 symptoms found patients taking Remdesivir were discharged four days faster. Only 8% of Remdesivir patients died, against 11.6% of a placebo group.Critics attacked the government for ending the trial early and giving placebo patients the drug. Remdesivir is not a cure for COVID-19, just a treatment. But media reports, and the company's own plans, indicate it's being treated as one. The Gilead Profit MachineEven without Remdesivir, Gilead is doing very well for investors.Gilead reported net income of nearly $5 billion last year. Its price-to-earnings ratio of about 19 is below that of the average S&P stock. A 68 cent per share dividend is good for a healthy yieldof 3.68%. Five years ago, the dividend was 43 cents.Gilead also has $21 billion in cash and short-term securities, though most of that value is outside the U.S. and unavailable for acquisitions.Gilead stock has averaged just 6% in gains per year, as the company has used its Hep-C cash primarily to buy other companies in the search for another blockbuster. Remdesivir was created as an "orphan drug" for an African virus that died out. Its potential for treating the novel coronavirus is a happy accident. Gilead's ReputationGilead's reputation may be why investors aren't rushing in to buy it.Gilead used the so-called "double Irish" loophole to avoid taxes on international profits. Critics have said the company delayed research on an antiviral treating HIV to extend profits on an older drug. Its pricing on Sovaldi has been attacked as excessive. It has also Voluntary Licensing Agreements with Asian generic companies to keep them out of lucrative markets. Indian activists want its Remdesivir patent protection rescinded, and generic versions of remdesivir are already being created.Even drug researchers don't all trust Gilead. Researchers in Texas recently suggested that another Gilead drug, GS-441524, might work better than remdesivir. But that drug was patented in 2009, they write, remdesivir in 2017. The Bottom LineShould Democrats gain power in November, they're going to go after Gilead. Gilead is already ramping up its lobbying to fight back. That's not to say the risks in Gilead stock are entirely political. Remdesivir isn't a cure, but Gilead is investing as though it is. Should better COVID-19 drugs come along, and hundreds are in trials, Remdesivir may not be the blockbuster investors are looking for.Dana Blankenhorn has been a financial and technology journalist since 1978. He is the author of the environmental thriller Bridget O'Flynn and the Bear, available at the Amazon Kindle store. Write him at danablankenhorn@gmail.com or follow him on Twitter at @danablankenhorn. As of this writing he owned no shares in companies mentioned in this story. More From InvestorPlace * Top Stock Picker Reveals His Next 1,000% Winner * America's Richest ZIP Code Holds Shocking Secret * 1 Under-the-Radar 5G Stock to Buy Now * The 1 Stock All Retirees Must Own The post Remdesivir Can't Cure Covid, But Good Luck Telling Gilead Stock appeared first on InvestorPlace.

New 'XT' branded desktop CPUs will reportedly deliver 5% to 10% performance gains, while carrying the same list prices as their predecessors.

The major stock indexes were mixed despite coronavirus vaccine optimism early Friday. Alibaba dove on earnings.

Intel (INTC) reported earnings 30 days ago. What's next for the stock? We take a look at earnings estimates for some clues.