Here are five things you need to know this morning:
Markets look to Nvidia for direction: Chipmaker Nvidia is poised to reveal quarterly results after the bell today, and it’s not an exaggeration to suggest the entire market will be waiting to see what the company has up its sleeve. Demand for the company’s next generation semiconductor chip Blackwell has been off the charts, but with those billions of dollars of sales already baked in, there are some questions as to whether or not the company can produce enough of them on time. Expectations are sky high for the company as always, but Nvidia has an impressive track record of meeting those lofty ambitions quarter after quarter. Trading in the options market implies there will be about an eight per cent swing up or down in the shares depending on if the company misses or beats and by how much. That’s a volatile outlook for any company but for one with a market cap in excess of US$3 trillion, that’s a potential $300 billion swing in valuation up or down. That means by this time tomorrow, there’s a decent chance that the world’s biggest company will have gained or lost the entire market cap of all but 25 companies on the S&P 500. The stakes are high here.
Feds to review Paladin’s Fission Uranium takeover: Canada’s federal government is going to review the proposed takeover of Fission Uranium on national security grounds, adding another delay to a merger that was supposed to have been completed by September. Paladin announced in a regulatory filing that the feds would examine the deal, noting that the deadline to finalize it has now been extended until Dec. 30, and also warning that the deal could fall apart entirely. The delay not only threatens the creation of the world’s third-largest uranium miner but would also nix plans to list the shares in the combined company on the TSX, something a large foreign mining company hasn’t done since 2022.
Dye & Durham says buyers have stepped up: Dye & Durham says it has paused its strategic review process until the end of the company’s annual general meeting and election of a new board. The company says it has received “significant inbound interest” from multiple parties “at attractive premiums to the market price of its shares.” Dye & Durham was a high-flying stock during the pandemic following its IPO, but the company’s shares have been sliding lower of late on concerns over debt and pressure from activist shareholders for the company to go in a new direction with a new board. The company’s existing board said it decided to hit pause on the review process due to the activist situation, and in response to feedback from a select group of shareholders.
Missing the Target: Another market mover today is likely to be Target Corp., as the retailer posted earnings before the bell today that disappointed investors. The company trimmed its profit outlook for the full year, noting that inventory is piling up as consumers are still buying the essentials but cutting back on frills like clothing and home products. Target shares are off about 20 per cent premarket. Target’s numbers aren’t great in and of themselves, but their real problem is that they look especially bleak compared to Walmart’s numbers yesterday, which showed better than expected growth on all fronts. That implies Walmart is winning over market share and gobbling up a bigger slice of a possibly shrinking consumer pie, which is bad news for the Targets of the world. “The poor Target performance probably doesn’t bode well for the likes of Kohl’s, Dollar General and Dollar Tree,” Vital Knowledge analyst Adam Crisafulli said in a note to clients.
Comp. Bureau probes sales tactics at Leon’s & The Brick: Canada’s Competition Bureau says it has obtained a court order to gather information related to an ongoing investigation into Leon’s Furniture and its subsidiary The Brick over marketing practices. The bureau says it is gathering information about the use of deceptive marketing provisions forbidden under the Competition Act including “urgency cue claims,” which is when end dates of sale periods may be false or misleading. The bureau is also probing potentially inflated regular prices that are used when making savings claims, and the use of statements which may create the false or misleading impression that people are benefiting from a sale.