War Is Good For Palantir; And Great For Oil Companies; AMD Continues Euphoric Run; SuperMicro The Icarus Of AI.
- Dipo Owolabi
- 7 hours ago
- 5 min read
Earnings season is separating narrative from execution. Palantir is turning U.S. government demand and enterprise software growth into record results, AMD is proving that AI infrastructure spending is still flowing hard into semiconductors, Supermicro is trying to prove it can become a full-stack data center provider even with legal noise around it, and Chevron is showing that higher oil prices do not automatically translate into higher profits when war, timing effects, and supply disruptions get in the way. All this and more in today’s Read It And Eat Earnings! |
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MAJOR HEADLINES
Palantir; The Tech Company That NEEDS A War To Thrive
Palantir issued a Q1 beat, and raised guidance. The company said first-quarter revenue rose 85% year over year to $1.63 billion, while profit came in at $871 million. U.S. revenue grew 104% to $1.28 billion, U.S. government revenue rose 84% to $687 million, and U.S. commercial revenue jumped 133% to $595 million. Palantir also raised full-year revenue guidance to $7.65 billion to $7.66 billion, above its earlier outlook, even though shares slipped about 1.5% after hours as investors still debated valuation.
The most important part of the story is where the growth is coming from. Palantir said its Maven Smart System is being deployed across the Department of War, and the company closed 206 deals of at least $1 million, including 72 deals of at least $5 million and 47 deals of at least $10 million, showing that the business is not just winning contracts but winning bigger ones. The movement of their stock for the day and for the year. In plain English, Palantir is becoming embedded in national-security workflows and enterprise operations that look increasingly hard to dislodge. Wall Street Journal
AMD Beat Q1 Estimates; Turbocharges Forecast Due To Data Centers
AMD beat Q1 estimates and issued a blowout forecast as booming AI demand led to a 57% sales surge in its data center business With stronger than expected earnings and even higher forecasts it blows estimates out the water. The company reported first-quarter revenue of $10.253 billion, up 38% year over year, with net income of $2.265 billion and diluted EPS of $1.37. The real engine was the Data Center segment, where revenue surged 57% to $5.8 billion, driven by demand for EPYC processors and the ramp of Instinct GPU shipments. AMD’s own release also showed Client and Gaming revenue rising 23% to $3.6 billion, helping reinforce that the company is not relying on just one growth leg.
The outlook was just as important as the quarter. Reuters reported that AMD’s strong forecast helped send its shares to an all-time high, with the stock jumping 14.9% and their stock is up 66% since the start of the year. The company said the server CPU addressable market now looks set to grow by more than 35% annually through 2030, up from a previous 18% forecast, a signal that the company sees AI demand broadening beyond GPUs and into the CPU layer that powers inference and agentic AI workloads. CNBC
Supermicro missed Q1 revenue estimates but beat on earnings and issued strong guidance as it rapidly transforms into a total data center infrastructure provider; the firm severed ties with indicted co-founder Yih-shyan Liaw. The server maker reported third-quarter fiscal 2026 net sales of $10.24 billion, below analyst expectations of $12.33 billion, even though revenue still jumped 122% year over year. Net income rose to $483 million from $109 million a year earlier, and adjusted EPS came in at 84 cents, ahead of the 62-cent estimate. More importantly for the market, Supermicro projected fourth-quarter revenue of $11 billion to $12.5 billion, above the $11.07 billion consensus estimate, with adjusted EPS of 65 cents to 79 cents versus expectations of 55 cents. Shares surged 18% in extended trading on the guidance.
The company is trying to sell investors on a bigger identity shift: not just a server vendor, but a total data-center infrastructure provider for AI, cloud, storage, and edge workloads. CEO Charles Liang said demand remains strong for the broader datacenter and cloud software suite, and the company’s manufacturing sites in Taiwan, Malaysia, and the Netherlands are ramping aggressively. At the same time, Supermicro has been distancing itself from indicted co-founder Yih-Shyan “Wally” Liaw; Reuters said the company’s relationships with Nvidia, AMD, and Intel were not affected, while other reports say Liaw has departed the board and severed ties with the company. That makes the quarter a mix of operational strength and reputational cleanup, which is exactly why the stock moved the way it did. Wall Street Journal |
Chevron Beat Q1 Earnings And Revenue Estimates, But Profit Still Fell Despite Surging Oil Prices
Chevron beat Q1 earnings and revenue estimates but posted a dramatic fall in profit despite surging oil prices due to the Iran war. The company reported $2.2 billion in earnings, down from $3.5 billion a year earlier, while adjusted earnings came in at $2.8 billion. Reuters said Chevron’s adjusted EPS of $1.41 beat estimates, even though the quarter was dragged by a $360 million legal reserve charge and foreign-currency pressure.
The reason is that higher crude prices do not always flow neatly into higher profits. Reuters noted that supply disruptions and stalled Middle East deliveries complicated the quarter, while downstream timing effects also distorted the usual relationship between oil prices and earnings. Even so, Chevron returned $6.0 billion to shareholders and said worldwide and U.S. production rose 15% and 24%, respectively, showing that the business still generated strong cash even in a messy war-driven market. CNBC
Minor Headlines
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