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The Rundown
Palantir's Revenue Hits $1B for First Time, TSMC Investigates Theft of Chip Trade Secrets
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Public.com presents the rundown, your daily market update in under 10 minutes. My name is Zaydad Mani and Today is Tuesday, August 5th. In today's episode, we'll tell you why the markets bounced back to start the week and some concerns on the horizon. We'll also dive into earnings from Palantir and hims and a potential corporate espionage happening at tsmc. Then stick around to the end of the show to find out why vine might be coming back. We got a great show for you today. Let's go. Stocks had a great start to the week with the S&P 500 climbing 1.5% and the Nasdaq jumping 2% on Monday. It was a pretty strong bounce back from the dip the markets experienced on Friday of last week. Honestly, I'm pretty shocked how quickly the markets just brushed off the week jobs report from Friday. It's like it never happened. One of the key drivers of this rally seems to be solid corporate earnings. And we're deep into earnings season right now and and 79% of the S&P 500 companies that have reported so far have had better than expected revenue and 82% have beat on profits. So despite the concerns of weakness in the labor markets and the potential impact of tariffs, corporate earnings seem to be a bright spot. Now remember, more tariffs are going into effect starting this Thursday and that might take a few months before we start seeing the impact on corporate earnings and inflation. And we'll have to wait for more jobs data to see if the weakness in the labor market over the summer is is a concern moving forward. The one thing the market seems to agree on right now is that we're going to be getting a rate cut at the September Fed meeting. Markets are pricing in a 90% chance of a rate cut at the next meeting. So it looks like it might finally happen. And I think that might be one reason why bulls seem to be in control and pushing the markets higher. We got a lot more corporate earnings to go through this week. We're staying on top of all this stuff, so make sure you guys are subscribed to the podcast. To stay in the loop. Let's run through some headlines, starting with Palantir. Palantir just dropped another massive earnings report, beating expectations across the board. Revenues of the AI software company jumped 48% year over year in Q2, and for the first time ever, their quarterly revenues crossed the $1 billion mark. And Palantir's US commercial business was the bright spot in this report. Palantir's AI software is being integrated across major US Corporations to boost efficiency. And the results speak for themselves. Revenues in that division for Palantir nearly doubled, up 93% over the past year. And what's wild is that this segment was growing at around 50% a year ago. So we're seeing a serious acceleration in growth. And that's why Palantir sees this unit as an emerging core of the company. Now, the government side of their business continues to hold Strong as well. U.S. government revenue rose 53% in Q2. And last week, Palantir landed a $10 billion contract with the U.S. army for for software and data systems. So with all that growth, the company raised their full year guidance. They now expect revenues to be $4.15 billion for the year. That's well above their previous estimates. Now, look, Palantir Stock is already up 8x from a year ago. So the expectations are pretty high. But so far, they keep clearing it. Palantir CEO Alex Karp credited the company's growth to its ability to connect artificial intelligence to the real world. And the CFO took it a step further, saying that LLMs simply don't work in the real world without Palantir. So, I mean, that's a flex right there. But investors seem to be believing it. Shares are up 7% at the time of this recording. If you guys want to do a deeper dive into Palantir and what they do and how they make money, check out our Deep Dive episode from a few weeks ago. We dive into the history of the company and what they do today. We'll drop a link in the description to check that out. Let's shift gears and talk about tsmc, because they are dealing with some corporate espionage over there. TSMC is the biggest, most advanced chip maker in the world. They make chips for Apple, Nvidia, pretty much everyone. And they just reported that three of their employees are under investigation for allegedly stealing trade secrets. The leak reportedly involves proprietary information about TSMC's upcoming 2 nanometer chip, which TSMC says will be the most advanced chip on the market in terms of density and energy efficiency. TSMC says they detected the unauthorized activity through routine monitoring. And. And they acted quickly. They launched an investigation, disciplined the employees, and turned things over to prosecutors in Taiwan. Two of the individuals are current employees and one is a former employee. All three have now been detained. And look, this is very serious because it's not just about business. It's about national security for Taiwan. The entire world depends on TSMC to make these advanced chips. They're an essential part of the AI supply chain. If it wasn't for TSMC making the most advanced AI chips, we wouldn't have AI today. So losing control of that tech, even just a slice of it, has global consequences. And that's why TSMC takes this stuff really seriously. They have systems in place to protect their tech. In fact, TSMC says they have more than 200,000 trade secrets on their internal systems and it was the second most awarded company for US patents last year, just behind Samsung. So yeah, I can't imagine the multi level authentication that employees have to do there just to access their work emails. Let's talk talk about some stocks making moves today. Shares of Axon are up this morning. The company best known for making Tasers and body cam, they just reported record revenues and raised their full year forecasts. Axon has now delivered 30% revenue growth for six straight quarters and over 25% growth for 11 straight quarters. The company says the latest growth was fueled by strong demand for its premium software, body cams, Tasers and counter drone gear. Not even sure what that means. Now if you look into Axon's business, they break it down into two main parts. They had the connected devices which includes the Tasers and the body cams that grew by 29% and now makes up 56% of their total revenue. But they also have a software and services division which includes everything from digital evidence management to AI powered productivity tools they make for law enforcement. That grew by 39% and the company is betting big on AI. Axon believes that it's AI tools built specifically for law enforcement will continue driving demand. And AI software is high margin business and that's why investors are super hyped. The stock is up more than 14% this morning and it's up more than 40% year to date. And this is coming after a monster 2024 where their stock jumped 130%. So I know Exxon doesn't get a lot of hype, but it might be one of the stealth winners of the AI boom. Now on the flip side, shares of Hims and hers are sliding this morning after the company missed revenue estimates despite posting a 73% year over year growth. Revenues in Q2 came in at $545 million, about 7 million shy of what Wall street was expecting. And their guidance for this quarter was also underwhelming. You know there was a lot on the line for this report for this company. Himss weight loss business has been in jeopardy ever since the FDA declared that GLP1 shortages was over. That shortage is what allowed Hims to sell compound generic versions of weight loss drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy. They're not legally allowed to sell those anymore now. Now Hims was hoping that partnerships with manufacturers like Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly would help keep the GLP1 revenue flowing, but that hasn't worked out because Novo Nordisk has accused Hims of illegally mass compounding and pulled out of their partnership back in June. So as a result, HIMS GLP1 sales dropped to $190 million in Q2, which is down from the $230 million from the quarter before. As a result, their shares are down about 5% this morning. Let's wrap the show with the first fun fact. Vine is making a comeback sort of. Over the weekend, Elon Musk announced that he's bringing back the vine archives. See, Twitter bought Vine when it was being developed and they launched it in 2013. The app allowed people to upload six second looping videos, which was pretty revolutionary at the time. This is before the invention of short form video like TikTok, Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts, and at its peak, vine had about 200 million users and it launched the careers of creators like Logan and Jake Paul, David Dobrik, and more. But the problem is that Twitter never really made improvements to Vine. So as video got better on other platforms like Instagram, vine just couldn't keep up and the app was shut down by 2017. And for years everyone thought that those iconic clips on vine were lost. Well, it turns out that they weren't. Elon says that the video archives were discovered and the company is working on restoring access. So that means that you'll soon be able to watch and relive all your favorite Vines directly on X. Can you imagine being the guy who found those archives at Twitter? How does that even happen? Was he just bored at work one day and started looking through files? Anyways, we might all get hit with a wave of 2014 nostalgia once those clips get restored. Well all right guys, that's the rundown for today. Hope you guys enjoyed today's episode. If you did and you have like 8 extra seconds, consider giving us a 5 star rating on Apple, Spotify or wherever you listen to your podcasts. And if you are listening on Spotify, don't forget to vote in today's Spotify poll. Leave us a comment Comment on Spotify Let us know what your favorite vine was from back in the know. All that engagement really does help us out and it helps other people find the show. Thank you guys so much for listening. Shout out to Mike and Connor for all the work behind the scenes, and we'll see you guys back here tomorrow.