Wall Street opened green, with buy-the-dip buyers out in force. Three earnings winners led the moves.
Mastercard
Shares rose more than 3% after quarterly results beat expectations. Adjusted earnings per share came in at $5.04, above the $4.77 the Street looked for. Revenue was $9.28 billion, also a beat. The results point to confidence in consumer spending, and management nudged its full-year revenue outlook higher. Digital payments stayed healthy and the payments network kept growing. Switch transactions, a closely watched metric that counts payment authorizations and transactions processed across the network, rose 9%. Management credited strength in the core payments network plus added services like fraud prevention, cybersecurity, data analytics, and consulting.
Visa reported a similar story a day earlier: rising revenue, resilient consumer and business spending, a lift from the FIFA World Cup, and a push into stablecoin with a new platform letting merchants use it. Visa is up about 3% for the week.
Fortinet
Shares rallied more than 8% on strong guidance. Many strategists had flagged cybersecurity as a source of momentum, and the numbers backed that up. Fortinet beat across the board: adjusted earnings of 90 cents per share versus 75 cents expected, and revenue topping $2 billion against $1.89 billion expected. Product revenue jumped 52%, a sharp acceleration. Services revenue grew 14%, and billings climbed 33%, showing customers are placing orders. Free cash flow reached nearly $1 billion for the quarter.
Guidance rose too. The company lifted third-quarter EPS guidance above estimates and raised full-year revenue guidance to between $8 billion and $8.2 billion, implying about 19% annual growth. Full-year earnings guidance also moved higher, with profits growing faster than revenue.
On a three-year chart the recent high was $170; the stock trades at $164, close to retesting it. Over one year it is up 53%, and year to date 104%. Evercore ISI raised its price target to $65, in line with current levels, while Rosenblatt, in the buy camp, raised its target to $195, so some analysts stay neutral. Cybersecurity names had been caught in a broader software selloff, though many argued they should not have been. Fortinet's strength is echoed in gains for CrowdStrike, Palo Alto, and Okta.
Lam Research
Shares surged nearly 19% after a record quarter, the best performer on the S&P 500. These chip-equipment names often move sharply. Lam beat on earnings, posting adjusted EPS of $1.82 versus $1.69 expected, with revenue of $6.72 billion, also a beat. It set records for revenue, operating margins, and earnings per share.
AI is still driving chip spending. The CEO said AI continues to reshape the semiconductor industry, with chipmakers investing in new manufacturing capacity to produce processors and memory chips. Lam benefits because it supplies the specialized equipment used to build those chips, so a strong AI infrastructure story is a tailwind. First-quarter revenue guidance is $8.1 billion, a full billion above Wall Street's estimate. Q1 EPS guidance is $2.15 versus the $1.84 expected. Both top and bottom lines point to continued momentum.
Other S&P winners included Baxter, Emerson, SanDisk, Quanta, Microsoft, Seagate, and Chipotle. On the downside, Carvana fell about 10% after its quarterly report.
