DK Street Journal

Genpact, a 145,000-employee firm registered in Bermuda that runs finance, accounting, sourcing, supply-chain and risk operations on contract for banks, insurers, life-sciences companies and manufacturers, told investors on 6 August that revenue grew 7.1% to $1.343bn in the second quarter, 6.9% excluding currency. That was its fourth consecutive quarter of acceleration, from 5.6% a year ago. Almost all of the increment came from one place: Advanced Technology Solutions — its data, digital and AI agent work — rose 24.1% to $363m, now 27% of the company and supplying roughly four-fifths of the quarter's added revenue.

Management then raised full-year adjusted earnings-per-share growth guidance to at least 12% and lifted the growth target for that unit to at least 25% from a mid-teens outlook, with full-year gross margin guided to 36.5% and adjusted operating margin to 17.7%. Chief executive Balkrishan Kalra said Genpact expects more than $1bn of total contract value for agentic — self-directing AI — work in 2026, about five times 2025's level, with over half of cumulative agentic awards coming from new clients. That last detail matters more than the headline number: it is the difference between AI bookings that are incremental and AI bookings that are existing work relabelled.

The reported profit and loss agrees. Gross margin reached 36.50% against 35.88% a year earlier, operating income grew 7.5% on 7.1% revenue growth, and net income rose 9.8%. CONFIRMS at Genpact.

The same month, the opposite quarter

Tata Consultancy Services, the Mumbai outsourcer with 584,519 people on file selling application services and its own banking and automation platforms, reported rupee revenue up 13.9% for the June quarter. Strip out the currency and dollar revenue of $7.6bn grew 0.4%, with total contract value of $9.5bn and headcount rising to 593,798. Operating margin fell to 23.96% from 24.46% and net income rose 4.6%. More people, flat real revenue, thinner margin — the arbitrage model working in reverse. CONTRADICTS.

Infosys, the Bengaluru firm with 328,062 staff, cut its constant-currency guidance for the year to March 2027 to 1.5–3.0%, which nets to roughly half a point organically once acquisitions and mix are removed. Management named "deflation" on large-deal renewals — clients demanding productivity give-backs at renewal and increasingly mid-contract — and is hiring 20,000 graduates anyway. Its AI-first revenue reached 8.2% of the total from 5.5% two quarters earlier: real, and not yet big enough to cover the price concessions.

Cognizant, the Teaneck, New Jersey outsourcer with 356,700 employees, is the other name where the business supports the tape. Second-quarter revenue rose 4.5% to $5.481bn with operating income up 7.0%, a sixth consecutive quarter of adjusted operating-margin expansion to 16.0%, and trailing bookings of $29bn up 5%. It raised its 2026 adjusted EPS range to $5.70–$5.82 and authorised a further $2bn of buybacks — while trimming full-year revenue growth to 4–5.5%, of which 150 basis points is acquired. Two days earlier it announced an expanded partnership with Anthropic making it a Global Premier Partner and training over 30,000 staff on Claude.

Accenture, the Dublin firm with 799,000 employees, is the group's problem. Its shares fell a record 18% on 18 June after new bookings of $19.3bn fell 2% year on year, about 13% below the prior quarter, and management cut full-year revenue guidance. Bookings convert to revenue over six to eighteen months, so the revenue deceleration from 8.3% to 5.6% has further to run. Its generative-AI bookings were about $1.5bn in the May quarter against $2.2bn of "advanced AI" bookings in the November quarter alone — an internally defined category no outsider can audit. CONTRADICTS.

Valuation: cheap against their own history, with one exception

Genpact trades at 10.1x trailing and 8.4x forward earnings, 3.03x price-to-gross-profit, on a 9.8% free-cash-flow yield, against implied multiples of 15.1x and 14.9x at its 2024 and 2025 year-ends. Cognizant is at 12.7x and 10.3x against 17.1x and 18.2x at the same two dates. Accenture is at 14.1x and 12.9x against 21.4x to 36.7x at each of its last five August year-ends. Tata Consultancy is at 17.2x and 15.4x against 26.9x at its March 2025 year-end. SUPPORTED in all four.

Infosys is the exception: its forward multiple of 15.9x sits above its trailing 14.95x, because consensus earnings of $0.795 for the year to March 2027 sit below the $0.83 it just reported — the only member where the market models a decline — and its 8.07x price-to-gross-profit is the dearest here against Genpact's 3.03x. STRETCHED.

What actually moved the prices

The rally is not primarily a fundamental re-rating. In July the Nifty IT index gained 16.7% while the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index fell 21%, the widest monthly gap since 1999, as money left AI hardware for the outsourcers it had spent a year pricing as AI's first casualties. Gartner, Globant and EPAM moved with them. The trend signals confirmed late and on non-earnings dates — the two Indian listings on 21 July, Genpact on 3 August, three sessions before it reported, Accenture and Cognizant on 7 August — and Accenture and Cognizant now sit 14.4% and 19.6% above their pre-crash June closes, so this is no longer a retracement of the June reset.

The setup

Where it stands — Genpact and Cognizant are growing margins and bookings; Accenture, Infosys and Tata Consultancy are not, and all five re-rated together. Would confirm — Genpact's third-quarter agentic total contract value tracking toward the guided $1bn, with Advanced Technology Solutions growth holding above 25%. Would invalidate — Accenture's August-quarter bookings falling below $19.3bn again, or Infosys trimming its 1.5–3.0% constant-currency guidance further. Watch next — Accenture's fiscal fourth-quarter results in late September; Genpact and Cognizant report third quarters in late October. Valuation — Genpact 10.1x trailing and 8.4x forward, against roughly 15x at each of its last two year-ends.

For two years the companies that sell power-management chips, converters and microcontrollers to carmakers and factory-equipment builders have been working off a glut: distributors sitting on stock, fabs running half-empty, revenue falling. This reporting season, at nearly every one of them, that ended — and the shares fell anyway.

The cycle turned, in the disclosures

Microchip Technology, a Chandler, Arizona supplier of 8-, 16- and 32-bit microcontrollers and analog parts to car and factory customers, reported June-quarter revenue of $1.485bn, up 38.0% year on year against a trough of $1.076bn and a net loss twelve months earlier. Gross margin recovered to 63.2%. Management said bookings were the strongest in about four years, that distributor inventory has normalised at 25 days — the low end of its historical range, with no further correction needed — and guided September revenue to roughly $1.603bn, up 40.6% year on year.

Diodes Incorporated, a Plano, Texas maker of discrete transistors, rectifiers and timing chips, grew revenue 21.7% to $445.5m, its fifth straight quarter of double-digit growth, and guided the September quarter to about $510m, up 30%. Channel inventory is now below its normal 11-to-14-week band. ON Semiconductor, the Phoenix supplier of power switches, silicon carbide and image sensors, returned to growth at +9.2% after four quarters of double-digit declines, extended lead times from 27 to 32 weeks and reported book-to-bill significantly above 1 for multiple quarters.

NXP Semiconductors, the Eindhoven maker of microcontrollers, radar and near-field-communication chips for cars, grew industrial and internet-of-things revenue 38% to $755m and communications infrastructure 41%, and told investors explicitly that it sees no restocking — the growth is content per car and per machine, not distributors refilling shelves. Texas Instruments, the Dallas analog and embedded-processing house, grew industrial revenue 30% across all sectors and regions and noted its industrial business is still five to six points below its 2022 peak.

Verdict on the business: CONTRADICTS the tape at seven of nine names. Revenue is accelerating and margins are widening while prices fall. And this is not a general chip selloff — over the past 30 days Nvidia and Broadcom both rose while this group fell, even as the Philadelphia Semiconductor index sold off on China chipmaking advances and doubts about AI capital spending. Money left analog specifically.

Data-centre content is what separates them

Monolithic Power Systems, a 4,501-person designer of dense DC-DC power chips written into Nvidia's server reference designs, is leading. Second-quarter revenue hit a record $980.6m, up 47.6%, and enterprise data revenue rose 164.3% year on year; management raised its full-year floor for that segment from 85% to 130% growth. Microchip disclosed about $1bn of data-centre sales, up 69%, half from a dedicated unit and half from catalogue parts, with 14 PCI Express Generation 6 design wins. ON now expects its AI data-centre revenue to more than double this year.

NXP is the laggard on this axis and is being punished for it. UBS cut it to Neutral and trimmed its target to $270 from $305, citing China automotive inventory risk and AI-infrastructure revenue of just over $500m — roughly 3% of sales, against more than $1bn at several peers. Analog Devices, the Wilmington, Massachusetts converter and sensor maker, grew 37.2% last quarter with gross margin at 67.3% after six straight quarters of expansion; it is the last member yet to update and reports fiscal third-quarter results on 19 August.

The two that earned the decline

Cirrus Logic, whose revenue is dominated by audio and haptic chips for smartphones, has no meaningful data-centre content. It lowered its personal-computer expectations versus May on component shortages and delayed launches; its smart-meter chip only taped out in June, with market entry expected in 2028. Consensus has its fiscal 2028 earnings per share falling 7%.

Alpha and Omega Semiconductor, at a $916m market value the smallest here, is the only shrinking, loss-making member: fiscal fourth-quarter revenue of $170.4m fell 3.5% with a net loss for the year. Its 15% drop on 13 August resolves cleanly as guidance — revenue and the adjusted loss both beat, but the September guide of $176m ±$10m missed on PC softness the company blamed on elevated memory prices. Diodes fell 9.3% the same day on no news of its own. Here the business CONFIRMS the move.

Valuation: INCONCLUSIVE across the group

The multiples do not point one way. NXP trades at 15.4x forward earnings against 19.7x trailing, 13.5x trailing enterprise value to EBITDA and a 5.1% free-cash-flow yield — the cheapest profitable name, with the fastest-growing industrial business. Microchip and ON sit at 24.3x and 25.5x forward against 107.6x and 51.6x trailing, because trailing earnings are at cyclical troughs. Texas Instruments and Analog Devices are at 32.2x and 30.7x on thin free-cash-flow yields of 2.1% and 2.5%; Texas Instruments' depreciation steps up roughly $400m in 2026 even as capital spending falls. Monolithic Power remains dearest at 50.2x forward and 65x trailing EV/EBITDA — though down from about 67-70x in May, because estimates rose faster than the price fell.

One shared risk sits underneath all of it: DRAM contract prices have roughly doubled and analog vendors have pushed through price increases — Analog Devices raised 15% across all lines in February. Cost inflation is flattering revenue and squeezing the consumer end.

On the tape, the split is the story: over 30 days NXP fell 17.6% and Cirrus 11.6% while Monolithic Power and Diodes rose — a 20-point spread, not a uniform drift.

The setup

Where it stands — Orders and utilisation turned up at seven of nine analog chipmakers this season while their shares fell. Would confirm — Microchip delivering the guided ~$1.603bn September quarter with distributor inventory still near 25 days. Would invalidate — NXP's Q3 landing below the $3.75bn ±$100m guide, or book-to-bill slipping under 1.0 at ON. Watch next — Analog Devices reports fiscal Q3 results at 7:00 a.m. Eastern on 19 August 2026. Valuation — NXP 15.4x forward vs 19.7x trailing; Monolithic Power 50.2x forward vs 83.1x trailing.

Volumes up, spending down

EQT, the largest natural gas producer in the United States, with roughly 2 million gross acres concentrated in the Marcellus shale of Appalachia, sold 634 billion cubic feet equivalent in the second quarter — above the top end of its own guidance — on capital spending of $666m, 9% below the bottom end. It generated $330m of free cash flow at a realised price of $2.89 per million British thermal units (MMBtu), raised full-year production guidance by about 90 Bcfe and cut capital spending guidance by $25m. It also signed a 10-year deal to supply 325 million cubic feet a day to Competitive Power Ventures' 2-gigawatt Shay Energy Center in West Virginia from 2031 — priced off PJM wholesale power rather than a gas index, and worth roughly $100m of annual free cash flow at strip. Its quarterly realised differential to Henry Hub was $(0.67) per thousand cubic feet, better than guided despite basis widening.

Range Resources, the smallest of the three with about 794,000 net acres and a $9.3bn market value, earned an adjusted $0.79 a share against $0.65 consensus on revenue of $834m, having spent only 33% of its annual capital budget by mid-year. It tightened basis guidance to $0.35–$0.40 below Henry Hub and lifted its natural gas liquids premium guidance to $2.50 a barrel over the Mont Belvieu benchmark. Production of 2.3 billion cubic feet equivalent a day is tracking to 2.6 Bcfe/d by end-2027.

Expand Energy, formed from the Chesapeake–Southwestern merger in 2024 and holding about 5,000 wells across the Marcellus and the Louisiana Haynesville, agreed to buy gas marketer Twin Eagle for $1.25bn, repurchased $850m of stock — roughly 4% of its float — and authorised another $1bn, with management framing the buying against a $3.50–$4.00 per thousand cubic feet mid-cycle view and a $2.70 breakeven. It still has no permanent chief executive; Mike Wichterich remains interim.

The gas market moved against them

None of this was a commodity rally. Front-month Henry Hub fell to $2.78/MMBtu, down 4.3% over the month, with Lower 48 dry gas output at a record 110.6 Bcf/d. The EIA expects prices below $3.00 until November and a record 3,985 Bcf in storage at end-October, 5% above the 2021-25 average. Liquefied natural gas export demand weakened too: feedgas to the nine major plants averaged 16.9 Bcf/d in August against a year-to-date 18.85, on Freeport maintenance, though analysts see flows near 22 Bcf/d by year-end. What did improve is local: Appalachian seasonal basis strips for winter 2026/27 through winter 2027/28 each hit all-time highs, and 8.8 gigawatts of behind-the-meter gas generation is in development in Pennsylvania alone.

One business confirms, two contradict

Range is the only member with revenue growth and margin expansion: revenue up 19.1% year on year, operating margin 39.1% against 26.8%. EQT's revenue fell 29.2% and operating margin compressed to 25.1% from 44.3%; Expand's revenue fell 19.7% with margin at 22.3% from 34.4%, though gross profit rose 64.7%. Volumes rose at all three; price did the damage. Verdict on the business: CONFIRMS at Range, CONTRADICTS at EQT and Expand.

Valuation splits the same way. Expand trades at 3.75x trailing enterprise value to EBITDA, 1.16x book and an 11.6% free-cash-flow yield — a wide discount to EQT's 6.36x for a comparable asset base. Range is the only one whose forward price/earnings ratio (9.72x) sits below trailing (10.96x). EQT's forward 12.78x sits above its trailing 11.89x, because consensus 2026 earnings of $4.23 are below the trailing year. Consensus targets imply roughly 25-30% above EQT's $53.88 close, about 36% above Expand's $95.25, and only 11% above Range's $39.78 on a neutral rating. The catch: the same models show 2027 earnings falling 5.2%, 3.5% and 4.4% respectively before a 2028 recovery of 15-32%. Verdict on valuation: CONFIRMS for Expand, INCONCLUSIVE for EQT.

The tape agreed only partially. Between 5 and 12 August all three, plus peers CNX Resources and Antero Resources, moved out of their deepest downtrend reading into a milder one — 50-day averages still below 200-day, a less-bad downtrend rather than an uptrend. All three were in uptrends as recently as May and June before de-rating through the summer.

The setup

Where it stands — Company-specific news, not gas prices, drove August gains; only Range's income statement supports it.

Would confirm — LNG feedgas returning above 20 Bcf/d and end-October storage printing below the forecast 3,985 Bcf.

Would invalidate — 2027 consensus earnings cut further from $4.01 (EQT), $3.96 (Range), $8.75 (Expand).

Watch next — Expand's Twin Eagle close, expected in the third quarter, and its permanent CEO appointment.

Valuation — Expand 3.75x trailing EV/EBITDA versus EQT's 6.36x; EQT's 12.78x forward P/E exceeds its 11.89x trailing.

Wholesale power in the Houston zone of the Texas grid averaged $33 a megawatt-hour in the second quarter — 8% below a year earlier, and $19 under the $52 that NRG Energy budgeted when it set 2026 plans. That single gap, plus Virginia's unexpected 1 July re-entry into the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), a carbon-permit compact that added about $70m of cost NRG had not underwritten, is most of what separated the two largest independent power producers this earnings season.

Two quarters, two directions

NRG Energy, the Houston company that owns gas, coal, nuclear and battery capacity and sells electricity to roughly six million customers under the Reliant, Direct Energy and Green Mountain retail brands, grew adjusted EBITDA 34% to $1,217m and free cash flow before growth to $1,025m, reaffirming full-year guidance. The per-share line went the other way: adjusted earnings fell to $1.49 from $1.73 and missed the $1.82 consensus, as interest expense doubled to $310m from $148m following the LS Power acquisition. Texas segment EBITDA fell $131m. A $721m build programme pushed NRG's 3x net-leverage target from 2028 to 2029.

Vistra, the Irving, Texas generator and retailer with about 38,700 megawatts across gas, nuclear, coal, solar and storage and 4.3 million customers in 20 states, ran the opposite way. Adjusted EBITDA rose more than 30% to $1.767bn, generation up 68% to $994m on hedging and higher capacity revenue, retail flat at $773m. Reported revenue fell 5.5% to $4.017bn yet operating income rose 7.4% and operating margin widened from 12.12% to 13.77%. Guidance for 2026 ($6.8–7.6bn EBITDA, $3.925–4.725bn free cash flow before growth) and the 2027 range of $7.4–7.8bn were both held — and 2027 still excludes the pending Cogentrix purchase and a long-term Meta power-purchase agreement at PJM nuclear plants, together worth roughly $700m.

Verdict on the business: the de-rating CONFIRMS at NRG, where interest cost and Texas prices are real and per-share earnings fell. It CONTRADICTS at Vistra, whose profit, margin and guidance all improved.

The dividing line is Texas, not merchant power

The generators exposed to the eastern PJM market fared differently. Constellation Energy, the largest US nuclear operator, raised 2026 guidance to $11.50–12.50 a share from $11–12 and signed about 920 megawatts of long-term nuclear contracts at 18.5-year average tenor; Talen Energy, another PJM nuclear owner, is roughly flat over twelve months. PJM's 2028/29 capacity auction cleared at the $325 per megawatt-day cap, 2.5% below the prior year — but only because the ceiling bound: it cleared 6,831 MW short of the reliability requirement, against PJM's own uncapped simulation of $554.72. Scarcity is worsening; the price cap stops generators collecting on it.

Texas supplied the genuine bad news. On 3 August the state paused all data-centre interconnections pending a statewide audit of a queue that now totals roughly 474 GW; BloombergNEF estimated the audit could delay 49.8 GW of load and cost projects up to $15bn. Vistra called it a two-month pause and put realistic Texas data-centre load at 12–15 GW by 2030. Meanwhile Texas battery capacity is heading toward roughly 37 GW by end-2027 with solar output nearly doubling, which is what is capping midday prices. The offset: FERC's 18 June show-cause orders to all six grid operators pulled co-location rules forward to early 2027 from 2029.

NRG's answer — a 1.2 GW gas plant for an unnamed investment-grade hyperscaler, $3.2bn of capex for $500m of run-rate EBITDA — is only "aligned on principal commercial terms," with land, approvals and a final investment decision outstanding and first power targeted for late 2029.

What the multiples now say

Vistra trades at 24.4x trailing and 16.1x forward earnings and 10.6x trailing enterprise value to EBITDA, against roughly 73x trailing when this desk last examined it in May, and below Constellation at 23.8x forward and 14.6x EV/EBITDA, and below regulated Dominion Energy at 18.8x forward. Consensus has Vistra earning $9.06 in 2026 and $10.93 in 2027. NRG sits at 13.5x forward, 11.5x EV/EBITDA and 0.69x sales — down from 1.07x in May — or 11.0x its $10.93 2027 consensus, a 28% discount to Dominion. Sell-side targets were cut but remain far above spot: Evercore to $195, Scotiabank to $211.

Verdict on valuation: CONTRADICTS the bear case at Vistra, where the multiple has compressed faster than earnings have grown. INCONCLUSIVE at NRG, where the cheapness is real but so is the leverage.

The tape agrees only with the NRG half. NRG fell 15.5% in one session on 4 August to a 52-week low; Vistra dropped 8.2% in sympathy but is up 2.5% over three months. Both slipped back into downtrends by 12 August, with their 50-day averages below their 200-day, while Constellation's improved.

The setup

Where it stands — Cheap Texas power cut NRG's quarter; Vistra's improved, yet both trade below nuclear-heavy PJM peers. Would confirm — Houston zone prices staying near $33/MWh through the summer and Vistra guiding 2027 to the low end. Would invalidate — Vistra raising 2027 EBITDA above $7.8bn once Cogentrix and the Meta contract are folded in. Watch next — Texas regulators' data-centre audit results and Vistra's Q3 guidance update after Cogentrix closes. Valuation — Vistra 24.4x trailing, 16.1x forward; NRG 31.5x trailing, 13.5x forward, versus Constellation's 23.8x forward.

The order book grew; the guidance did not

Corning, the New York company founded in 1851 that draws optical fibre and cable, makes the glass substrates inside televisions and phones, and supplies ceramic filters for vehicle exhausts, told investors on 28 July that its optical communications division sold $2.07bn in the June quarter, up 32% from a year earlier. The enterprise half — the fibre and connectors that go inside data centres rather than under streets — rose 65% to $1.27bn, and sales tied to artificial-intelligence build-outs came close to doubling. Segment net income rose 77% to $438m, a record 21% margin. Carrier sales, the telecom half, grew 1%.

That demand is contracted rather than hoped for. Meta signed a roughly $6bn multi-year fibre, cable and connectivity agreement; Nvidia signed a multi-year optical partnership in May under which Corning expands its US optical connectivity manufacturing capacity tenfold and its US fibre capacity by more than half; Amazon signed a multi-billion-dollar data-centre agreement in June. Management raised its Springboard plan, which sets annualised revenue run-rate targets, to $20bn by end-2026, $30bn by 2028 and $40bn by 2030.

The September-quarter guide — $4.9-5.0bn of sales, up 16%, and core earnings of $0.85-0.89 a share, up 28% — landed at or below the roughly $5bn consensus. The stock fell 51.5% from a $255.69 peak to $124.05 on 29 July, taking LightPath down 48.3% with it. It has since recovered 33.5% in eleven sessions to $165.63, the rebound dated to a 4 August report that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is drafting an import ban on new Chinese optical transceiver models for AI data centres. Two Chinese firms, Innolight and Eoptolink, control over 60% of the 800-gigabit-and-above segment, and Western capacity would take 12-24 months to scale.

Verdict on Corning: the business CONFIRMS the demand story and CONTRADICTS the de-rating. Since a May reading, price-to-gross-profit has compressed from 26.3x to 23.1x trailing and 20.4x forward, and forward earnings from about 59x to 50.7x, while growth accelerated. On valuation the verdict is INCONCLUSIVE: 50.7x forward is expensive in absolute terms and rests on consensus of $3.27 in FY2026 earnings and $4.30 in FY2027 — two straight years of 30%-plus growth, or 38.5x the later figure. Post-earnings targets average roughly $187, with Bank of America at $243 and Morgan Stanley at $165, level with the price. Corning's own display half is a drag: glass innovations sales of $1.46bn grew 1%, and management expects handheld unit volumes down mid-teens percent in 2026 as memory prices squeeze phone makers.

The micro-cap is leading, on defence rather than data centres

LightPath Technologies, an Orlando maker of moulded glass and infrared lenses and optical assemblies for defence, medical and industrial customers, is the strongest business in the group and the least proven. March-quarter revenue rose 108.9% to $19.15m, gross margin widened from 29.1% to 36.3%, and the operating loss narrowed to $0.86m. Backlog hit a record $110.6m, up 196% since the fiscal year began, with 85% tied to defence, surveillance and public safety and roughly 70% due to ship in calendar 2026. CONFIRMS on operations. Valuation CONTRADICTS the comfort: at 24.6x forward gross profit it is dearer than Corning's 20.4x while still losing money, and the diluted share count rose 48% in six quarters, to 58.6m from 39.6m. Earnings multiples are noise here — consensus has earnings per share turning positive only in fiscal 2027, at $0.03.

The emitter licensor is being marked down for volume, not price

Universal Display, the New Jersey firm that licenses organic light-emitting diode (OLED) patents and sells the phosphorescent emitter chemicals that make the pixels glow, reported June-quarter revenue down 11.4% to $152.2m. Material sales fell 26% to $66m, with green emitters at $51m against $64m; operating margin slipped to 35.3% from 39.9%. Full-year revenue was guided to the low end of $630-670m, below 2025's $650.6m. Management denied any price or royalty-rate erosion, citing five-year contracts, and the market data agrees: OLED's smartphone share is rising while panel shipments are forecast to fall 3% on high memory prices — the same input-cost shock hitting Corning's cover glass. CONFIRMS a justified de-rating, one that has largely done its work: 21.3x forward against 21.6x trailing prices in no growth at all, alongside a 4.12% free-cash-flow yield and $855m of cash, 21% of the $4.13bn market value. Brokers cut hard after the print — Citigroup to $85 from $100, Susquehanna to $90 — leaving the price at or above the more cautious ones.

The tape has inverted since late July: over the past 30 sessions Corning is down 11.7% while Universal Display is up 14.1% and LightPath 14.7%. Trend signals have not caught up — Corning's 50-day average slipped below its longer trend on 29 July and LightPath's on 30 July, both while prices rose, and Universal Display has registered a downtrend every session since 14 May despite a 15% bounce off its July low.

The setup

Where it stands — Corning's optical business is accelerating into contracted hyperscaler orders while its multiple compresses; the display-linked names move on smartphone volumes. Would confirm — Corning hitting the $20bn annualised revenue run-rate in the September quarter, as the guide midpoint implies. Would invalidate — Optical communications growth falling below 20% year on year, or enterprise revenue declining sequentially. Watch next — LightPath's fiscal fourth-quarter and full-year results, due within about a month; consensus implies roughly $20.7m of quarterly revenue. Valuation — Corning: 74.9x trailing, 50.7x forward earnings, 38.5x FY2027 consensus; 23.1x gross profit against 26.3x in May.

Amazon agreed in July to license InterDigital's wireless and video-coding patents across its devices and services, including Prime Video, resolving all pending litigation between the two. Because the deal covers years of past use, InterDigital — a 460-person Wilmington, Delaware licensing company whose patents cover 2G through 5G cellular, Wi-Fi and the HEVC and AVC video codecs — recognised $103.7m of catch-up revenue in a single quarter, taking June-quarter revenue to $260.2m against guidance of $139-143m. Streaming and cloud customers contributed roughly $110m of that. The company then raised 2026 guidance to $775-845m, up $85m at the midpoint.

The catch is in the fine print: the final value of the Amazon licence will be fixed by binding arbitration expected to take 18 to 24 months, with the booked figure a conservative accounting estimate.

What the reported numbers say

Strip the headline beat and the income statement is contracting. June-quarter revenue fell 13.4% year on year, operating income 32.2% and net income 35.6%; operating margin was 53.5% against 68.3%. That is not one quarter — December-quarter revenue fell 37.4%, full-year 2025 revenue of $834.0m was down 4.0%, and consensus models $796.4m in 2026 and $754.3m in 2027 before a rebound to $963m in 2028.

Against that, the recurring floor is rising: annualised recurring revenue reached a record $625.7m, up 13%, toward a stated target of more than $1bn by 2030, a bridge that depends on streaming and cloud royalties growing from roughly $60m to over $300m. Enforcement is doing the work: InterDigital won a second Unified Patent Court injunction against Disney in July over an HEVC encoding patent, covering 11 EU countries, after a fifth German injunction in February. Verdict A: INCONCLUSIVE — recurring royalties are growing, reported profits are falling, and the difference is timing.

Valuation is less ambiguous. Forward price-to-earnings of 40.4x sits above the trailing 30.0x, an inversion that only occurs when earnings are expected to decline. Enterprise value to EBITDA of 19.6x compares with roughly 12x recorded on this desk in May, on an $9.07bn market capitalisation against $6bn then. Jefferies' raised target of $340 sits below the current $351.43. Verdict B: CONTRADICTS — the re-rating has outrun the arbitration.

Adeia grew and the stock did not

Adeia, a 150-person San Jose licensor of media patents to pay-television and streaming distributors and of semiconductor patents covering hybrid bonding — the technique for stacking chip wafers directly — grew revenue 12.1% to $96.1m at a 58.7% adjusted EBITDA margin. Semiconductor revenue reached $48m year to date against roughly $26m for all of 2025; non-pay-television recurring revenue rose 54% and now nearly doubles the shrinking pay-TV base. Management lifted the long-term revenue target to $600m from $500m and the semiconductor piece to $200m from $100m, added a record 12 customers including a multi-year Google renewal, and sued fuboTV in Delaware on 1 July over four media patents. The shares are down 9.8% over three months. Verdict A: CONTRADICTS.

Qualifications matter. Management conceded it is tracking the low end of $395-435m guidance; consensus has 2026 revenue falling 3.1%. Chief executive succession is unresolved, with an announcement targeted for the December quarter. And the foundational hybrid-bonding patents Adeia inherited from Ziptronix have expired — one in 2020, one on 4 May 2026 — leaving roughly 1,100 untested continuation patents as the forward moat, just as the technology goes mainstream and with TSMC and Intel still unlicensed.

On 19.7x forward earnings against 24.9x trailing, 13.1x EV/EBITDA and a 5.85% free-cash-flow yield, at $28.11 versus a $32 median analyst target and a $37 average, Verdict B: POSSIBLE DISLOCATION, discounted by the guidance and governance overhangs.

The tape

InterDigital did not drift higher. It gapped 16.2% on 30 July, earnings day, on nearly double normal volume, and still sits 11.4% below its 52-week high with its 50-day average below its 200-day. Adeia jumped 12.3% the session after its own print and gave all of it back within six sessions.

The setup

Where it stands — InterDigital's beat rests on one-time back royalties still subject to arbitration; Adeia's growing chip-royalty business has not moved its stock.

Would confirm — InterDigital's annualised recurring revenue clearing $650m without catch-up help; Adeia semiconductor revenue exceeding $60m year to date at the September quarter.

Would invalidate — Adeia landing 2026 revenue at or below the $395m guidance floor, or InterDigital's arbitration valuing Amazon below the booked $103.7m.

Watch next — Adeia's chief executive announcement, targeted for the December quarter; both companies report September-quarter results in late October.

Valuation — InterDigital 30.0x trailing and 40.4x forward earnings, 19.6x EV/EBITDA versus roughly 12x in May; Adeia 24.9x trailing, 19.7x forward.

An open-source chip, and the bill that never arrived

Electronic design automation — the software used to turn a chip architecture into a manufacturable layout — has been a two-company toll booth for two decades. On 17 July, Moonshot AI's Kimi K3, a 2.8-trillion-parameter open-weight model, ran the entire flow itself: architecture, register-transfer-level (RTL) code generation, synthesis, place-and-route and simulation verification, in 48 hours, using only open-source tools such as OpenROAD. No Cadence licence, no Synopsys licence. Both stocks fell roughly 9% that day, and Cadence went on to six consecutive down sessions totalling 14.5%, one of them erasing about $9.8bn of market value. Mizuho read the same release the other way, arguing that the model acts as a general-purpose agent invoking existing tools rather than replacing the platforms underneath.

That single event is why eight software names the market spent a year de-rating together no longer move together.

Cadence: the business contradicts the tape

Cadence Design Systems, which sells chip-design software, verification hardware and licensable circuit blocks to semiconductor firms, grew June-quarter revenue 24.2% to $1.584bn at a 28.4% operating margin, with net income up 129.3%. Backlog hit a record $8.1bn, first-half bookings rose about 55%, and management called it the largest single-quarter raise to annual guidance in company history — $6.26bn-$6.34bn for 2026, explicitly assuming export rules stay substantially unchanged. Its own agentic products are live: a validation agent in more than 20 production engagements cutting five-week RTL checks to under a day. CONTRADICTS. Valuation is the counterweight: 63.9x trailing and 39.7x forward earnings, 14.1x forward sales, 41.2x enterprise-value-to-EBITDA and a 1.9% free-cash-flow (FCF) yield — still the most expensive name in this group after the fall, though down from roughly 79x trailing three weeks ago. INCONCLUSIVE on valuation.

Synopsys, the number-two chip-intellectual-property franchise behind Arm, is the opposite case. Its headline 41.9% revenue growth is acquisition arithmetic: gross margin fell from 80.2% to 72.3%, operating margin from 23.5% to 10.4%, and net income dropped 95% as the Ansys deal amortised. CONFIRMS. At 27.9x forward, against roughly 45x in the spring, it is the only name in the group whose 50-day average sits below its 200-day and falling. It reports third-quarter results on 26 August.

Atlassian did the work, and got paid for it

Atlassian, the Sydney maker of Jira and Confluence sold per user seat, grew fiscal 2026 revenue 26.0% to $6.572bn, cloud revenue 31% in the June quarter, remaining performance obligations 44% to $4.8bn and free cash flow 32% to $475m. Management says core seat counts are expanding again after disclosing the first enterprise seat decline in its history in May. CONFIRMS — but its own fiscal 2027 guide calls for total revenue growth of about 13% and non-GAAP operating margin of 25%, down from 36%, as Data Center revenue declines into a 2029 retirement. Price-to-sales went from 4.10x to 6.20x in ten sessions; at least 14 brokers raised targets after the 6 August print, averaging about $176 against a $155.24 close.

GitLab, which sells a single-application developer platform per seat, is the mirror image: growth has decelerated four straight quarters, 29.2% to 23.1%, with consensus at 17.8% next year, yet it trades at 50.2x forward earnings and 6.18x forward sales. Its 9.2% jump on 7 August came with no earnings, on renewed unconfirmed reporting that Datadog is exploring a bid above $60 a share. CONTRADICTS, in the expensive direction.

Where the business is ahead of the price

Adobe, which sells Creative Cloud and marketing software on subscription, grew revenue 12.7% to $6.618bn, though operating margin slipped from 35.9% to 33.8%. Its AI-first annual recurring revenue tripled past $500m with a third-quarter guide of $6.67bn-$6.72bn above $6.51bn consensus. It trades at 10.6x forward earnings against 14.8x trailing, on a 10.3% FCF yield.

Autodesk, whose AutoCAD and Revit run architecture and construction projects, grew revenue 18.4% and operating income 60.1%, lifting operating margin from 20.7% to 28.0%; its spring de-rating traced to the $3.6bn all-cash purchase of MaintainX, not demand. It sits at 19.8x forward against 36.2x trailing and reports on 27 August. PTC, which sells product-lifecycle software to manufacturers, reached $2.448bn of ARR up 9.1% and raised full-year ARR guidance to 9.0%-9.5%, while buying back $525m of stock in one quarter citing its compressed price; headline revenue fell 6.8% purely on a divestiture. Figma, the browser-based design platform, grew revenue 48.2% to $370.1m with 136% net dollar retention and raised guidance by $40m, yet posted a $117.3m operating loss on inference costs and sits near the bottom of its 52-week range with a lock-up expiry at end-August. CONTRADICTS at all four.

The tape

Five of the eight — Adobe, Autodesk, PTC, Figma and Atlassian — turned their moving-average trend positive inside 30 days, while Cadence and Synopsys were downgraded on 17 and 30 July. The move has already stalled: over 10-12 August six of eight fell, averaging 2.0%, as money rotated back toward AI hardware even as hyperscaler capital spending stays guided up about 77% to $725bn.

The setup

Where it stands — Five design- and developer-software names re-rated on results; the two chip-design toolmakers de-rated on one AI demonstration, not on their numbers.

Would confirm — Cadence holds 2026 revenue guidance of $6.26bn-$6.34bn and backlog above $8.1bn at its next report.

Would invalidate — Synopsys guides fourth-quarter revenue below consensus on 26 August, or cites open-source tool competition in its outlook.

Watch next — Synopsys reports 26 August, Autodesk 27 August, Figma's lock-up unlocks end-August, Adobe's third quarter in September.

Valuation — Cadence 63.9x trailing, 39.7x forward; Adobe 14.8x trailing, 10.6x forward; Autodesk 36.2x trailing, 19.8x forward.

Three businesses sit under the same industry heading — wireless and mobile networks — and until this summer that heading described what they did. It no longer does. Two of the three are now being paid mostly by defense ministries and police departments; the third, the one whose customers are phone companies, is shrinking.

Ericsson: the carrier-levered name is the falling one

Ericsson, the Stockholm supplier of radio access network (RAN) hardware and software to mobile operators, reported second-quarter sales of SEK 52.7bn with organic sales down 1%. Reported revenue has now fallen year over year for four consecutive quarters. Networks — the core radio business — was down 8%, with organic declines in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and the Americas; the North American acceleration the market had waited for did not arrive. Gross margin held at 48.4% against 48.0%, a real structural gain from 44.9% in 2024, but operating income still fell 1.8% and management warned that component costs "will gradually build up" through 2027 with no automatic pass-through in long-term contracts, guiding third-quarter Networks gross margin down to 48-50%.

The end market explains it. Dell'Oro Group forecasts RAN revenue growing at roughly a 1% compound annual rate as operators prioritise capital efficiency, and expects global telecom capital spending to fall outright in 2026, with North America the specific drag. Bank of America cut its target to SEK 77 from SEK 88 on the revenue miss and rising memory costs; sell-side consensus is 2 buy, 10 hold, 7 sell. The shares trade at 13.2x trailing earnings, 6.9x enterprise value to EBITDA and a 9.7% free-cash-flow yield — genuinely low — but consensus models 2026 earnings per share of SEK 5.46, some 31% below the SEK 8.00 delivered in 2025. Business CONFIRMS the decline; the valuation is doing rational work, not mispricing. (Ericsson's screened forward multiples are a currency artefact — Swedish-krona estimates against a dollar-denominated American depositary receipt — and should be ignored.)

Motorola Solutions: the raise was defense, not public safety

Motorola Solutions sells land mobile radio (LMR) systems and handsets to police, fire and government agencies, plus video security and command-centre software. Second-quarter revenue of $3.13bn rose 13.3%, an acceleration from 7.4% in the first quarter, with gross margin at 53.6% versus 51.1% and backlog at a record $15.6bn, up 11%. The company raised full-year revenue guidance to about $12.975bn and adjusted earnings to $17.62-$17.72 a share.

The composition matters more than the number: Silvus military mesh radios, lifted to $850m for the year on NATO, German, Ukrainian and Indo-Pacific demand, drove the bulk of the raise, against $75m from LMR. Motorola also agreed to buy counter-drone specialist D-Fend Solutions for $1.5bn, adding roughly $185m of revenue. That sits directly on top of NATO's July commitment of more than $40bn to counter-drone capability over five years and the US Army's $994m small counter-drone procurement request for fiscal 2027. Underneath, the D-Series radio infrastructure refresh — the first in twelve years — has customers signing five- and ten-year plans across 40-plus US statewide networks. Business CONFIRMS. Valuation is INCONCLUSIVE: 36.6x trailing and 26.9x forward earnings against consensus 2027 growth of 8.2%, 29x book and a 3.4% free-cash-flow yield, with UBS at $520 and Bank of America at $530. A $150m memory-cost headwind this year is partly offset by $60m of tariff refunds.

Ondas: real revenue, 462 million shares

Ondas Holdings builds private industrial wireless radios and Scout drones for rail, energy and defense customers. First-quarter revenue of $50.1m was nearly eleven times a year earlier, and pro-forma backlog reached $457m against $68.3m at end-2025, with full-year guidance of at least $390m. That is a genuine inflection. It is also loss-making at an operating margin of -85%; the reported $362.9m of quarterly "net income" is a non-operating fair-value item, so the trailing price-to-earnings figure is meaningless. Diluted shares went from 105m to 462m in a year, financed partly through 3% senior convertible notes. At 57.6x trailing sales — about 14x management's own guidance — and with consensus 2026 revenue of $525.7m sitting above what management has promised, valuation CONTRADICTS on any measure other than backlog growth. No second-quarter results are yet on file.

The setup

Where it stands — Two defense-levered names are advancing; the one carrier-levered name is contracting into a flat RAN market.

Would confirm — Motorola's Silvus revenue reaching the guided $850m and D-Fend closing in the second half.

Would invalidate — Ericsson's third-quarter Networks gross margin printing below the guided 48-50% range.

Watch next — Ondas' second-quarter results, its first reported quarter since backlog jumped to $457m.

Valuation — Motorola 36.6x trailing, 26.9x forward; Ericsson 13.2x trailing; Ondas 57.6x trailing sales.

Over the five weeks to 12 August, the companies that own the pipes carrying America's natural gas reported one of their strongest quarters of the cycle. Kinder Morgan, the Houston operator of roughly 83,000 miles of pipeline and 143 terminals, grew second-quarter adjusted earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) 12% and adjusted earnings per share 32%, lifted full-year guidance about 5% above budget and raised its dividend 2%. Gas transport volumes rose 7% and gathering volumes 26%, with its Haynesville shale system up 54%.

Tulsa-based Williams, whose core asset is the Transco line running from the Gulf Coast to New York, raised 2026 adjusted EBITDA guidance to $8.3–8.5bn and lifted its 2025-2030 compound annual growth target to 11%-plus from 10%-plus, having guided 9% in May. Energy Transfer, the Dallas partnership with roughly 31,000 miles of gas pipe, raised full-year guidance to $18.8–19.1bn. Calgary's TC Energy, which moves gas across 93,300 kilometres of line, grew comparable EBITDA 12% and is tracking the upper end of C$11.6–11.8bn. DT Midstream, a Detroit pure-play gas gatherer with just 588 employees, reaffirmed 2026 adjusted EBITDA guidance of $1,155–1,225m. Pembina Pipeline, the Calgary midstream operator moving 3.1m barrels of oil equivalent a day, reiterated C$4.35–4.55bn while noting it trends to the midpoint.

The demand is now contracted, not projected

The data-centre link stopped being a forecast this quarter. Energy Transfer signed long-term agreements with Oracle to supply about 900,000 thousand cubic feet a day to three US data centres and brought its Hugh Brinson line into service. Williams closed a $5.34bn joint venture on 13 July selling Blackstone, Apollo and KKR 49% of five behind-the-meter power projects while keeping control; the first, a 200-megawatt plant serving a Meta campus in New Albany, Ohio, came in on time and on budget in 18 months. And on 31 July the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) granted certificates for Kinder Morgan's Mississippi Crossing — 208 miles of large-diameter pipe and up to 2.1 billion cubic feet a day into the Southeast — part of a 3.4 Bcf/d buildout. The single largest permitting risk in the group cleared while the shares were falling. Kinder Morgan's sanctioned backlog is $9.6bn, TC Energy's origination backlog passed $20bn, and DT Midstream took final investment decision on about $300m of Haynesville expansion.

On business momentum the tape CONTRADICTS the fundamentals. The likelier cause sits in the bond market: the 10-year Treasury yield reached 4.69% on 12 August after topping 4.71% the day before, and over the same 30 days regulated utilities fell harder than the pipelines — NiSource -10.7%, Sempra -9.3%, AEP -8.4% — while Energy Transfer actually rose. That is a repricing of long-duration cash flows, not of gas demand.

Where the market is charging most

On valuation the verdict splits, and it splits along capital intensity. Energy Transfer sits at 9.7x trailing enterprise value to EBITDA, 13.0x trailing and 13.4x forward earnings, on a 7.2% free cash flow yield — the cheapest name and the only riser; its advance is CONFIRMED by the numbers, helped by an 78% revenue jump and by scrapping its Lake Charles liquefied natural gas project, which Argus called the first reality check on the US LNG wave. Williams at 16.2x EV/EBITDA, 29.2x trailing and 30.4x forward earnings, and a negative trailing free cash flow yield of -0.24%, and DT Midstream at 15.7x EV/EBITDA and 16.8x price-to-gross-profit — dearest per dollar of gross profit — are the two carrying the biggest data-centre capital programmes and the two falling hardest. Their de-rating is CONFIRMED by valuation. Kinder Morgan at 12.7x EV/EBITDA with leverage down to 3.6 times, and TC Energy at 13.8x with the group's widest trailing-to-forward compression (26.6x to 16.9x), are where business and price most plainly disagree. Consensus 2026 earnings estimates rise across all six, from +7.3% at TC Energy to +18.1% at Kinder Morgan. Pembina is the lone operational blemish: revenue up 15.5% but operating income down 7%.

The tape's own signal was late. Kinder Morgan's 50-day average crossed below its 200-day on 11 August, triggered by a 7 August low of $30.85 — after which it rose three straight sessions. Williams had already stepped down on 28 July and has since recovered 4.5% off its own 7 August low.

The genuine threat is regulatory, not financial. Texas Governor Greg Abbott ordered a pause and audit of grid interconnections covering almost 49.8 gigawatts of data-centre projects, which BNEF says puts about 20% of the US pipeline at risk of delay and up to $8bn of revenue at risk by early 2027. TC Energy chief executive François Poirier called the pushback regional — two or three of roughly 15 states — and said it may move sanctioning timing rather than demand. Kinder Morgan separately flagged tightening compression-equipment supply as turbine capacity shifts toward power generation.

The setup

Where it stands — Six gas pipeline operators raised or held 2026 guidance and won permits while their shares fell alongside rate-sensitive utilities. Would confirm — Kinder Morgan adding at least $1bn to its $9.6bn sanctioned backlog in the second half of 2026, as guided. Would invalidate — Mississippi Crossing, Trident or Williams' Delta Access slipping their stated 2027-2029 in-service dates. Watch next — TC Energy's Crossroads sanctioning decision, expected in the fourth quarter of 2026 at a 5x-7x build multiple. Valuation — Trailing enterprise value to EBITDA spans 9.7x at Energy Transfer to 16.2x at Williams; forward earnings 13.4x to 30.4x.

Late July and early August brought earnings from five companies that sell software priced by the unit of work automated — a claim estimated, a data seat governed, a purchase order routed, a service call booked. They reported within eight days of each other, and the operating results came out in opposite directions.

A sixth name that once sat alongside them is simply gone. CSG Systems International, which ran billing software for cable and telecom carriers, was acquired by NEC through its Netcracker subsidiary on 14 May 2026 for $80.70 a share in cash, a deal worth about $2.9bn including debt, and delisted later that month. Its frozen price still props up any average that includes it; the five live names are down about 7% over twelve months.

The two that raised

CCC Intelligent Solutions, which operates the network connecting property-and-casualty insurers, collision repair shops, parts suppliers and lenders, grew second-quarter revenue 9.8% to $285.9m and raised full-year guidance to $1.158–1.164bn of revenue and $485–491m of adjusted EBITDA. Operating margin nearly doubled to 16.7%. Its artificial-intelligence products now run above $120m annualised, growing about 50% and supplying four of the quarter's ten points of growth; net dollar retention rose to 107 from 106, and trailing free cash flow reached $308m, up 36%. The business CONFIRMS the move. So does the price: 15.5x forward earnings, 16.9x trailing enterprise value to EBITDA and a 7.5% free-cash-flow yield, after a 27% twelve-month decline. The 105.6x trailing price-to-earnings ratio is distorted by amortisation and stock compensation on a 2.5x-levered balance sheet.

AvePoint, which sells data governance, backup and compliance tools for Microsoft 365 and rival cloud suites, grew revenue 22% to $124.5m, lifted annual recurring revenue 27% to $465.1m with record net new additions of $29.9m, and raised its full-year recurring-revenue target. Managed-service partners now carry 59% of that base. The business CONFIRMS; the valuation is the group's dearest, at 7.33x forward gross profit against CCC's 4.81x, and Microsoft made Agent 365, a control plane for governing AI agents, generally available on 1 May — priced at $15 per user standalone — directly against AvePoint's AgentPulse.

The one with nothing new to say

UiPath, the New York vendor whose low-code platform builds and orchestrates software bots for banks, hospitals and governments, has not reported since 28 May. Its April-quarter results showed annual recurring revenue of $1.901bn, up 12%, with net retention of 109% — five points below reported revenue growth of 17.3%, and below the 110% line. Consensus has revenue growth halving to 11.5% next year and 8.4% the year after. Since this desk logged the stock at 4.55x gross profit and a $6.32bn value on 29 July, it has re-rated to 5.85x and $8.12bn on no company disclosure. Fundamentals CONTRADICT the advance: the entire gain is multiple expansion in the one business here most exposed to AI agents that automate workflows natively, without scripted rules.

The two that slowed

SPS Commerce, which runs the retail supply-chain network handling electronic trading-partner connections for retailers and suppliers, grew just 5.6% to $197.8m after 17.8% for 2025, guided to about 5% for the year, sold its Amazon-seller recovery unit at a $23.5m loss and shed roughly 200 recurring customers sequentially. Growth CONTRADICTS a 50% three-month gain — though adjusted EBITDA rose 19% and trailing free cash flow 40% to $198.7m, leaving 15.7x forward earnings versus 36.7x trailing.

EverCommerce, which sells vertical software and payments to home-services, health and fitness small businesses, grew 2.7%, runs blended net revenue retention of 94%, steered to the low end of guidance and installed Alex Goor as chief executive on 6 August. Management blamed slower customer acquisition on "evolving AI-driven search behavior affecting organic traffic" — the commoditisation risk arriving as a measured revenue headwind. Business and tape agree; at 13.6x forward earnings it is the cheapest of the five.

What the tape was actually doing

All five rose 5–12% on 26 June, fell 3–11% on 22 July and rose 2–14% around the 28–29 July Federal Reserve meeting. That is factor rotation: US small caps returned 22.93% in the first half of 2026, their best on record, against 9.55% for large caps. The bounce is three months old, not a fresh turn.

The setup

Where it stands — Two of five raised guidance; UiPath's 29% two-week re-rating rests on no new company information. Would confirm — CCC's AI revenue holding roughly 50% growth and net dollar retention above 107 in the October quarter. Would invalidate — UiPath reporting annual recurring revenue growth below 12% or retention under 109% on 3 September. Watch next — UiPath's second-quarter fiscal 2027 results, 3 September 2026; CCC and SPS Commerce report late October. Valuation — CCC 15.5x forward earnings, 16.9x trailing EV/EBITDA; UiPath 19.5x forward against 25.3x trailing; AvePoint 7.33x forward gross profit.