Chipmaker Nvidia closed Friday’s session nearly 5% higher and was up 2% in pre-market trading on Monday morning.
Shares rose on Friday after it was announced that the chipmaker was partnering with Cerence (CRNC) — an artificial intelligence developer that works with a multitude of major carmakers. Cerence shares soared more than 140% in Friday’s session after it made the announcement.
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Investors are also gearing up for Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s keynote speech at the 2025 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas on Monday evening.
Nvidia said in a release ahead of the event that the show “has long been the stage for the unveiling of technological advancements, and Huang’s keynote is no exception.”
Reports suggest that Nvidia is expected to unveil its GeForce RTX 5000-series graphics cards at the show.
Shares in Taiwan’s Hon Hai Precision Industry, known as Foxconn, rose nearly 2% in Monday’s session in Asia after beating estimates in the fourth quarter.
Foxconn, which is the world’s largest contract electronics maker, posted its highest-ever revenue for the fourth quarter in a statement released on Sunday. The assembler of Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone, as well as Nvidia products said revenue had risen 15% year-on-year to 2.13tn new Taiwan dollars (£52bn).
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Reuters reported that this figure was slightly ahead of an LSEG SmartEstimate analyst forecast of 2.1tn new Taiwan dollars.
Foxconn reported revenue for December of 654.8bn new Taiwan dollars, which was down 2.6% month-on-month.
The company said its components and other products parts of the business showed “strong growth, cloud and networking products delivered significant growth, while computing products and smart consumer electronics experienced slight declines.”
Electric vehicle (EV) maker Rivian shares soared nearly 25% on Friday after the company reported better-than-expected vehicle sales for its fourth quarter.
Rivian said on Friday that it delivered nearly 14,200 EVs during the fourth quarter, bringing its yearly sales volume to roughly 51,580 electric trucks — within the company’s prior guidance.
Wall Street analysts had expected the company to deliver closer to 13,400 EVs for the period and 51,000 for the year.
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These figures come following a tough 2024 for Rivian, with the stock still down 22% on a one-year basis. In the third quarter, Rivian posted a fall in revenue for the first time since it went public in 2021.
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RBC Capital Markets analyst Tom Narayan said that the fourth quarter delivery figures “affirms that supply issues were isolated to Q3.”
On the UK market, shares in engineering firm Rolls-Royce fell 3% on Monday morning, after analysts at Citigroup (C) downgraded the stock.
The FTSE 100 darling, which was one of the top performing stocks on the UK’s blue-chip index in 2024, was lowered from a “buy” to a “neutral” rating by Citigroup.
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Russ Mould, investment director at AJ Bell (AJB.L), said: “Even though Citigroup raised its price target for the stock, investors appear to have taken the rating downgrade as a signal to lock in some profit.
“Rolls-Royce has been a runaway success for investors in recent years as its recovery story gained traction.”
“The turnaround opportunity is now looking like old news and investors increasingly want to hear about the next phase of the company’s growth, not simply what it is doing to get back on track as that looks to have already happened,” he added.
Consumer goods giant Unilever also fell after a rating downgrade from analysts, with the stock dipping more than 2% on Monday morning.
Bank RBC downgraded Unilever, the company behind brands such as Dove and Marmite, to an “underperform” rating.
Mould said that not only did this hurt Unilever but also weighed on its big brand peers down at the same time.
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“Share price weakness in big brand companies including Unilever, Reckitt (RKT.L) and Haleon (HLN.L) is often a signal that investors are worried about consumer spending and growing inflationary pressures,” he said.
“Renewed cost pressures may prompt companies to hike prices and this could see shoppers switch to cheaper supermarket own-brand items. It’s a major risk for investors in big brand stocks to consider.”
Other companies in the news on Monday 6 January:
ASML (ASML, ASML.AS)
FedEx Corporation (FDX)
Super Micro Computer (SMCI)
Oklo (OKLO)
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