After Hours Summary: PROF +19.7%, APLD +4.1% higher on earnings; LEVI -1.5% lower on earnings
After Hours Gainers:
Companies trading higher in after hours in reaction to earnings/guidance:PROF +19.7%, APLD +4.1%
Companies trading higher in after hours in reaction to news:WOLF +23.1% (Received a conditional 30-year loan commitment of up to $1.5 billion from the U.S. Department of War.), VTVT +6.0% (Received FDA Orphan Drug Designation for HPPD as a potential sickle cell disease treatment.), CCO +1.3% (Received CFIUS clearance for Mubadala Capital’s $2.43-per-share acquisition, with closing expected around October 14.)
After Hours Losers:
Companies trading lower in after hours in reaction to earnings/guidance:LEVI -1.5%
Companies trading lower in after hours in reaction to news:VALN -2.4% (UK regulators revoked IXCHIQ’s marketing authorization after a benefit-risk review, with Valneva expecting minimal sales impact.), NDAQ -1.3% (Reported September and third-quarter statistics, with U.S. equity options volume reaching 384 million contracts.)
Vitol chief warns of tanker shortage and risk of $200-a-barrel oil
Head of world’s largest independent oil trader says shipping squeeze is creating new bottleneck despite increased Gulf flows
The global energy crisis triggered by the Middle East conflict has entered a new phase because of a shortage of tankers to move crude around the world, according to the head of the world’s largest independent oil trader.
Vitol chief executive Russell Hardy said that while more oil was now flowing out of the Gulf, there was a fresh bottleneck as buyers struggled to secure ships.
“We started this conflict with a crude crisis. Then it turned into a product crisis. Now we have more crude oil coming out of the Middle East, but it is turning into a shipping crisis,” he told the Energy Intelligence Forum in London.
“There is really not quite enough shipping to go around,” Hardy said, adding that the price for chartering a tanker had become “pretty parabolic” and that refineries were now suffering.
Hardy estimated that roughly 12mn barrels of crude a day and 2mn barrels of refined fuels were now making it out of the Gulf after the US Navy cleared a route for tankers to shuttle in and out of the Strait of Hormuz.
Maintaining this flow was critical to preventing a new surge in oil prices, he said, because the seven-month conflict between the US, Israel and Iran had now run down stockpiles of crude and refined fuels.
“Without it, you do have that $200-a-barrel scenario, so it is pretty important it continues,” he said. “There aren’t any more inventories to drain in the west.”
The system relies on one set of tankers shuttling through the Strait of Hormuz, running the gauntlet past Iranian attacks, before transferring their cargoes to another group of ships waiting in the Gulf of Oman.
The increased flow of oil has eased pressure on benchmark oil prices, with Brent crude trading below $98 a barrel in London on Tuesday.
But the method was also “very inefficient”, according to Hardy, since ships are tied up waiting for cargoes for several days or weeks at a time, reducing the pool of tankers available elsewhere.
The resulting shortage has sent freight rates soaring and made it increasingly difficult for traders and refiners to calculate the delivered cost of crude.
“It is creating a lot of stress for everybody because nobody really knows, to the nearest $2, $3, $4 [a barrel], how much their shipping costs are going to be,” said Hardy. “That creates a difficult set of decisions for people to make day to day.”
Refiners unable to charter ships, or unwilling to pay sky-high rates, are aggressively competing for supplies that are easier to deliver. One oil executive said cargoes of North Sea oil were selling for $145 a barrel last week.
European refiners have been particularly hit by high crude and freight costs, with refining margins, the return from processing crude into fuels, recently turning negative. Margins in the US, where refiners have ready access to domestic crude supplies, remain above $70 a barrel, according to data from LSEG.
As European refineries struggle to make money, they are likely to cut back production, intensifying the supply problems around fuels such as diesel.
“It is very difficult to maintain this situation and that is why the market remains elevated because there is still no obvious solution in front of us,” said Hardy, although he noted that the export of both crude oil and fuel from the Middle East would help alleviate the problems.
“It is an important lifeline,” he said. “Most of the crude oil is going to go to Asia. The crude that has been coming out is finding homes and will be run in November and December and produce products for the markets across the winter period.”
Mistral to Release New AI Model to Better Compete With U.S. Rivals
Mistral launched a public preview of the model on Tuesday
- French AI startup Mistral announced it will release a new open-weight artificial-intelligence model called Mistral Large 4, dubbed Le Chonk.
- Mistral launched a public preview of the model on Tuesday and plans to release its trained parameters on Oct. 27.
- The company trained the new model on about 4,000 Nvidia Grace Blackwell graphics processing units at its European data centers.
Mistral said it would soon release a new open-weight AI model that it claimed would rank among the best globally, part of efforts to grow its appeal, lock in more customers and better compete with U.S. rivals.
The French artificial-intelligence startup said it was launching a public preview of Mistral Large 4, dubbed Le Chonk, on Tuesday so it could work with developers, cybersecurity experts and state authorities to evaluate how the model behaves. It plans to release the weights, or the trained parameters of the model, on Oct. 27.
Since its early days, Mistral has been a staunch advocate of open-weight models that are publicly available for anyone to download and modify, saying they give users the flexibility to tailor them to their needs while protecting their data and intellectual property.
The company said that closed models—where developers keep the source code, training data, and underlying model weights hidden—could pose security risks for users because they sometimes block responses to useful cyberdefense requests.
A more capable model would allow Mistral to appeal to more consumers and enterprises, grow its customer base and better compete with the likes of ChatGPT maker OpenAI and Anthropic. Mistral said it had trained its new model on about 4,000 Nvidia Grace Blackwell graphics processing units deployed at its own data centers in Europe.
It said Mistral Large 4 would rank among the top open-weight models globally on aggregate benchmark performance, and the strongest open-weight model developed outside China by a substantial margin.
“The model capabilities will further improve as we scale up our training capacity,” Guillaume Lample, Mistral co-founder and chief scientist, said.
The announcement comes about a month after Mistral completed a funding round led by South Korea’s Samsung Electronics that lifted its valuation above $24 billion, giving it additional firepower to invest in model development.
News Corp, owner of Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal, has a content-licensing partnership with OpenAI.
Other news:
- PCVX -2.7% (Launches separate $500 million stock and pre-funded warrant offering and $500 million convertible senior notes offering.)
- SYRE -2.7% (Priced a 4.12 million-share public offering at $85 each, targeting approximately $350 million in gross proceeds.)
- TRMD -2.0% (Oaktree affiliate launched a secondary offering of 6.33 million Class A shares, with TORM receiving no proceeds.)
- STX -1.6% (Reportedly expressed interest alongside Toshiba in TDK’s magnetic-head business for hard drives.)
- NSLR -1.3% (Provided a preliminary third-quarter investment portfolio update.)
- RGEN -1.1% (BioLife Solutions acquisition is expected to close soon, pending final closing conditions.)
Gapping up
In reaction to earnings/guidance:
In reaction to earnings/guidance:
- APOG +19.3%, NOMD +2.9%, ZS +2.3%, NEO +1.9%
Other news:
- OPCH +21.5% (McKesson and CD&R are reportedly nearing a deal involving Option Care Health.)
- CEG +6.1% (Signs 20-year Google power deal supporting 890 MW of new nuclear capacity and over $4.3 billion in investment.)
- FRSH +5.1% (Will join the S&P SmallCap 600 before the open on October 8, replacing BioLife Solutions.)
- XNDU +4.2% (Entered a multi-year GlobalFoundries partnership to industrialize key photonic quantum components on its 300 mm production line.)
- AJG +4.0% (Acquired London-based maritime law firm Winter & Co Solicitors through its Gallagher Bassett unit; terms were undisclosed.)
- ACB +3.1% (Urges shareholders to await its recommendation on Curaleaf’s revised $5-per-share hostile offer.)
- BTGO +3.1% (Expanded its HashKey Cloud partnership across institutional staking, trading, custody and tokenization services in Asia-Pacific.)
- APLD +2.8% (Secured access to up to 1 GW of potential power capacity in Finland for a planned AI Factory campus.)
- AZ +2.7% (Completes acquisition of profitable retail media company Hedia, which generated about $20 million in audited FY25 revenue.)
- LAB +2.6% (Agreed to sell its Microfluidics business to ARCHIMED, with closing expected in approximately 30 days.)
- AVNW +2.1% (Signs India manufacturing license with Dixon for WTM 4000 products, retaining intellectual property, software and services.)
- HTB +2.1% (Authorized a new 790,000-share buyback, representing about 5% of outstanding shares, after completing its prior repurchase program.)
- AZN +2.0% (Will present Phase III efzimfotase alfa and eneboparatide data at the ASBMR meeting.)
- HPK +2.0% (Secures $450 million preferred equity investment and committed $800 million credit facility to repay its $1.17 billion term loan.)
- BWXT +1.8% (Selected to supply BANR microreactor technology for a planned 50 MWe transportable nuclear plant in New Brunswick.)
- CSIQ +1.8% (Won a 100 MW/200 MWh Australian battery supply and commissioning contract with OX2, including a 20-year service agreement.)
- HLP +1.6% (Appointed Michael W. Zhang chairman, while Jie Liu remains CEO and Chenglong Yang resigned from the board.)
Department of War drafts EV battery factory into military drone duty with $75M grant
As if to prove that there may not be money for universal childcare or nationalized healthcare but there is ALWAYS more money for war, the US Department of War has awarded Amprius a $75 million grant to convert a civilian EV battery production line to churn out high-energy-density batteries for military drones.
When California-based battery developer Amprius Technologies received a $15 million order for its innovative lithium-ion cells from an anonymous customer back in 2024, all the company would say was that the buyer was a, “leading Unmanned Aircraft System manufacturer.” We still don’t know who that mysterious customer might have been, but we know this: there’s enough demand for Amprius’ energy-dense batteries that DoW is willing to spend $75 million to draft a civilian factory originally designed to build zero-emission electric cars into drone duty.
The grant itself will see the conversion of an existing US-based electric vehicle battery production line operated by, “a major South Korean manufacturer” through a grant awarded through DoW’s Industrial Base Analysis and Sustainment Program (IBAS).
IBAS provides funds to shore up domestic manufacturing capabilities it deems critical to national security and defense, with the official copy cexplaining that, “the primary objective of this award is to establish high-volume, commercially viable US manufacturing for advanced battery systems that power unmanned aerial systems – Group 1, 2, and 3 drones.”
It keeps on getting Skynet-ier
Because we haven’t learned anything at all from The Terminator franchise, we’re now writing a story about putting 75 million tax dollars (plus $25 million more from “other sources,” by the way) into a battery supply chain for increasingly capable, at least partly autonomous military flying machines mere days after Figure’s F.02 humanoid robots gave us a decidedly T2 “hasta la vista, baby” send off that the robots will surely remember when it comes time to enact their unholy revenge on humanity.
Or, as Amprius CEO, Tom Stepien put it, “This DoW grant is intended to establish a primary source of domestic, NDAA-compliant battery production,” before adding that, “our technology, combined with the US manufacturing prowess of our South Korean manufacturing partner, positions us to accelerate adoption of standardized, high-performance pouch cells in a fast-growing market.”
The modified line expands Amprius’ existing contract manufacturing relationships and significantly increases the ability of the Company to provide NDAA-compliant pouch cells for key customers at scale. Completion of the conversion is planned for early 2028, the line is expected to have the capacity to produce 12 million Amprius cells annually.
France’s Marine Le Pen pledges to rein in public spending
Far-right presidential frontrunner wants to cap borrowing at 60% of GDP and reduce budget deficit, despite decades of failed attempts
French far-right leader Marine Le Pen has promised to drastically cut public spending and to cap future borrowing if elected president next spring, in a bid to bolster her economic credentials and calm jittery markets.
Le Pen, who is topping opinion polls ahead of her fourth bid for president, on Tuesday proposed a “golden rule” to cap national debt at 60 per cent of GDP and to reduce the public deficit each year by 0.5 per cent to reach “close to a balanced budget” — mirroring Germany’s “debt brake” which was enshrined in the constitution until last year. Le Pen said she would put the “golden rule” to voters in a referendum.
In a news conference, Le Pen blamed President Emmanuel Macron’s economic management and profligate spending for pushing the deficit to 5.4 per cent of GDP this year.
“The parties that are part of the system put us in the hands of debt holders but I refuse to lie to the French by saying this all will not have consequences,” she said.
She unveiled detailed plans of her €140bn package of spending cuts and tax rises she would implement over five years. The economic plans are designed to convince voters she can be entrusted with power and also to reassure investors who have sent French borrowing costs soaring.
Long a champion of big-state spending to protect the working class, Le Pen in recent months has swung behind the idea that France needs a major clean-up of its degraded public finances.
France has been singled out by markets as a weak link in the Eurozone because investors see the presidential election as a risk that may worsen chronic political gridlock and prolong profligate social welfare spending. French borrowing costs recently soared higher than Italy’s and Greece’s — in a reversal of fortunes since the Eurozone sovereign debt crisis in the early 2010s.
Macron’s bet that business-friendly reforms on labour and tax would deliver enough of a growth boost to solve France’s chronic deficits has not paid off. French governments have struggled for decades to rein in public spending, with the budget gap widening every year since 1974.