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IBM‘s (IBM -1.34%) efforts to capitalize on the rise of generative AI aren’t its only big bet on future technology. Alongside this, the company has also been investing heavily in quantum computing.

Quantum computing utilizes quantum mechanics to solve complex problems more quickly than classical computers. The potential use cases of this technology are extensive, including applications in areas like artificial intelligence (AI), cybersecurity, drug development, and even areas like sustainable energy and traffic optimization.

However, with the perception that this catalyst, at best, will only start to positively impact performance many years from now, investors don’t seem all that interested in “Big Blue’s quantum leap” right now.

Instead, what’s top of mind among them right now is whether increased spending on AI infrastructure is coming at the expense of IBM’s other product and service offerings, which may result in lower-than-expected overall growth for the company.

Still, does this mean it’s better to “watch and wait” with this stock right now? Not necessarily. Instead, this dynamic may start to shift.

Image source: Getty Images.

IBM makes more quantum progress, but investors are unimpressed

Up until recently, news related to IBM’s quantum computing catalyst would elicit a positive reaction from the market. For example, back in June, the stock surged when the company announced plans to have the world’s first “large-scale, fault-tolerant supercomputer” on the market by the end of this decade.

A “fault-tolerant” quantum supercomputer monitors and self-corrects errors at the component level, to prevent the system from producing faulty calculations. This is important, since a high error incidence rate has been a key reason why quantum computing, despite being many decades in the making, has yet to go mainstream.

Now, however, further news regarding IBM’s quantum catalyst hasn’t seemed to excite investors all that much. On Aug. 26, IBM and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD 1.91%) announced that they would collaborate on quantum computing, with AMD providing the chips needed to power IBM’s quantum supercomputer.

However, while the stock has moved higher since this announcement, the gains have been modest at best. Admittedly, this makes some sense, given other events that have transpired over the past few months.

Software uncertainty limited a post-earnings recovery

A month prior to this latest major quantum computing announcement, the market reacted negatively to IBM’s latest quarterly earnings release. Overall, the company beat on both revenue and earnings for the quarter ended June 30. Strong demand for AI-specialized mainframes resulted in better-than-expected revenue for IBM’s infrastructure segment, with revenue of $4.14 billion beating forecasts calling for $3.81 billion in revenue.

Yet while robust demand for AI infrastructure led to an earnings beat, the market placed greater focus on a negative aspect of the earnings release: weaker-than-expected software sales. Software makes up the majority of the company’s overall sales, with this segment representing around 43.5% overall revenue during Q2 2025.

The software sales miss was relatively minor, $7.39 billion compared to $7.41 billion expected, and was mainly due to flat transaction processing software sales. However, the concern remains that, as macro uncertainty persists, companies continue to invest in AI infrastructure, but are reducing expenditures in areas like enterprise software.

Hence, uncertainty about whether this trend will continue in Q3 and beyond is the likely culprit behind IBM’s modest post-earnings rebound. Still, with shares trending higher, albeit slowly, perhaps the market is starting to appreciate the company’s AI and quantum computing catalysts, as well as other promising areas like IBM’s consulting and hybrid cloud businesses.

Quantum computing, other growth catalysts, could drive a further rebound

As noted by CEO Arvind Krishna in prepared remarks released alongside Q2 2025 earnings, AI is driving growth across multiple IBM segments, including within the software segment, as well as in segments like consulting.

As a result, IBM’s total “AI book of business,” consisting of both sales and bookings, continues to grow at a rapid clip. Last quarter, this “book of business” totaled $7.5 billion, up $1.5 billion, or 25%, versus the previous quarter. Also, don’t forget that AI is not the only near-term growth driver for the company.

Earlier, I briefly mentioned IBM’s hybrid cloud business, made up primarily by the company’s Red Hat software unit. During the second quarter, Red Hat sales grew 16% year over year, up from 12% during Q1 2025. This could be the prelude to further growth acceleration in the coming quarters.

As for the “quantum catalyst”? The big payoff may be years in the making, but another major update could be just around the corner. Later this year, IBM and AMD plan to hold a public demonstration of how IBM supercomputers, powered by AMD chips, could deliver hybrid quantum-classical workflows.

Progress in these areas could lead to higher prices for the stock, as the market once again appreciates how IBM is shedding its past “tech dinosaur” image. IBM’s operating margins increased from 13.7% to 14.5% last quarter, and could be en route to rehit levels above 20%, a level of profitability not seen for more than a decade.

While IBM’s stock has surged in value over the past two years thanks to this long-term transformation, further upside may be on the table. Currently trading for around 21.5 times forward earnings, shares remain undervalued compared to other tech giants investing heavily in AI, like Meta Platforms and Microsoft, which trade for between 25 and 35 times forward earnings, respectively.

With all of this in mind, I would consider IBM worth buying at this stage of the rebound.

The stock market trended higher in August. The popular S&P 500 (^GSPC -0.05%) index gained 1.9% last month. As of September 10, it has seen a total return of 20.6% in 52 weeks.

The top three performers among the 503 S&P 500 components took very different routes to the top. Let’s take a quick look.

1. UnitedHealth, up 24.2%

Health insurance giant UnitedHealth Group (UNH -0.31%) had three things working in its favor last month:

1. The stock dropped after reporting weak Q2 results near the end of July. It’s mathematically easier to post big gains after a dip like that.
2. The long-suffering acquisition of home healthcare specialist Amedisys finally closed. The $3.3 billion deal was proposed in the summer of 2023, following a process that included lawsuits and substantial concessions to secure the final approval.
3. Above all else, Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A -0.55%) (BRK.B -0.59%) disclosed owning 5 million UnitedHealth shares. It’s an entirely new position and investors celebrated Berkshire’s cash-powered seal of approval.

2. Intel, up 23%

Intel (INTC -2.09%) followed a similar stock-chart trajectory but for strange reasons. The Trump administration will buy $8.9 billion of Intel stock.

The U.S. government will hold a 9.9% ownership interest in Intel, with a warrants-based option to purchase another 5% of the stock under certain circumstances.

3. Newmont, up 19.8%

Gold miner Newmont (NEM -0.50%) rounds out this trio. Gold prices have been rising all year long, currently soaring near all-time highs. The average gold price rose 4.8% in August.

Newmont wasn’t alone in this surge. Fellow gold miners Coeur Mining (CDE 1.04%), Gold Fields (GFI -0.06%), and Iamgold (IAG 1.27%) outperformed Newmont in August, gaining 37.4% (Gold Fields) to 51.3% (Coeur).

Image source: Getty Images.

Shaky macroeconomics often result in rising gold prices, as investors flock to safer asset classes. That’s what’s going on in 2025, too.

However, Newmont is the only gold stock in the S&P 500, so its rivals don’t qualify for this particular list. Otherwise, all the names mentioned above would have ranked lower — including Newmont.

The benchmark S&P 500 has recovered dramatically from a tariff-driven shock in April 2025, and is now trading close to record highs. “Magnificent Seven” stocks, in particular, have been the key driver of this mid-year rally. Increasing adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) globally, coupled with strong earnings performance, has been fueling investor confidence for these technology giants.

Semiconductor giant Nvidia continues to be the paragon of this ongoing AI boom. However, another company may soon become a Wall Street darling, as it is helping enable GPUs to work together efficiently in large AI clusters. That company is Arista Networks (ANET -8.77%).

Image source: Getty Images.

While most investors have been focusing on AI chips, networking is also equally important. AI training and inference (real-time deployment) workloads demand enormous clusters of GPUs, which can cost tens of thousands of dollars each. However, without fast, low-latency connections between GPUs, both the training of large AI models and inference at scale suffer from slower performance and higher costs. Arista is well positioned to resolve these challenges.

AI data center catalyst

Arista has established itself as a pure-play Ethernet networking company, delivering hardware and software networking solutions for large-scale AI data centers, as well as for campus and routing networks.

Until recently, Ethernet wasn’t considered strong enough for AI workloads. Instead, Nvidia’s InfiniBand technology was the go-to choice for scale-out back-end AI networks, linking racks of servers and accelerators in massive GPU clusters. Even in scale-up back-end AI networks (within a server rack), Nvidia’s proprietary high-bandwidth interconnect technology NVLink is used to connect GPUs for high-performance and low-latency networking. However, that seems to be changing now.

Ultra Ethernet Consortium (UEC) released its first full specification in June 2025, creating an Ethernet-based system designed for AI and high-performance computing (HPC) at scale. Since then, hyperscalers and enterprises have been migrating away from proprietary InfiniBand to open-source Ethernet. Over time, Arista also expects clients to migrate from NVLink to Ethernet/UALink networking in scale-up back-end networks.

Arista stands to benefit dramatically from this transition, as its Ethernet-based Etherlink portfolio (20-plus products launched since 2024), paired with its Extensible Operating System (EOS) operating system, is being increasingly preferred by data centers for scale-out networking.

The company already accounted for nearly 21.3% of the data center Ethernet switch market at the end of the first quarter 2025. As more AI workloads move to Ethernet, Arista is well-positioned to capture an even bigger share of the global data center AI networking market, estimated to be nearly worth $20 billion in 2025.

Customer base

Management is guiding for AI networking revenue to exceed $1.5 billion in 2025. That includes about $750 million from back-end AI networks alone, a dramatic improvement from absolutely nothing in 2022.

A major chunk of this $750 million revenue target is firmly supported by two hyperscaler clients, Microsoft and Meta Platforms, which have deployed 100,000 GPUs in distributed AI clusters. Each of these clients is expected to account for at least 10% of Arista’s revenues in fiscal 2025. The third hyperscaler client is also close to that scale, while the fourth hyperscaler client is on the way. With its sticky hyperscaler customer base, Arista enjoys significant near-term revenue visibility.

Arista is also expanding its customer base beyond hyperscalers. The company now caters to 25 to 30 enterprises and Neocloud customers (new generation of cloud providers) actively deploying AI clusters. While individually smaller than the big four hyperscaler clients, they are helping offset the slowness in ramp-up of the fourth hyperscaler customer and the loss of the fifth sovereign AI customer. The diversified revenue base has also helped reduce Arista’s overreliance on a smaller client base.

Other markets

Besides AI networking, Arista is also strengthening its position in enterprise campus and wide-area network (WAN) segments. The VeoCloud purchase gives Arista an AI-ready WAN portfolio that helps customers connect branch sites securely, while managing traffic flows more efficiently for AI workloads. Arista now expects its campus switching business to add $750 million to $800 million in revenues in fiscal 2025.

What about the valuation?

Arista shares trade at 47.4 times forward earnings, which is not cheap. Additionally, the company also faces competition from technology giants such as Nvidia and Broadcom, as well as from hyperscalers exploring in-house options in the networking space.

But Arista can still see its share price grow despite the high valuation multiples. The company’s software offerings, comprising EOS operating system and CloudVision network management and automation platform built atop EOS, helps improve networking performance. Since GPUs use high amounts of power, the networking software plays a critical role in reducing the overall GPU usage. Arista’s Ethernet also works across different accelerators, giving customers more flexibility.

The data center industry is gradually moving from a network connection speed of 400 gigabits per second of data to 800 gigabits per second of data. With its Ethernet-based networking products, robust software stack, and long-term customer relations, the company can capitalize on this opportunity. Hence, Arista can emerge as a major winner in the AI networking boom in the coming years.

Two of the world’s largest companies are Apple (AAPL 1.82%) and Alphabet (GOOG 0.27%) (GOOGL 0.22%). These two companies are currently the third and fourth largest in the world by market cap, so neither is likely to provide market-crushing returns. As a result, investors need to determine if either of them can outperform the market over the long term; otherwise, they aren’t worth owning.

I believe there is a clear better buy between the two right now, and this stock could easily outperform the market over the next five years, while the other may struggle to do so. Which one is it? The answer may surprise you.

Image source: Getty Images.

Both businesses want to maintain the status quo

Both Apple and Alphabet have some of the most recognizable brands on the planet. Apple’s ecosystem is centered around the iPhone, with accessories and laptops to create a leading consumer technology brand. Alphabet is the parent company of many businesses, but its most notable brand is Google. Google is how the vast majority of people access the right content on the internet, although that notion is under distress.

Many investors believe that generative AI could replace Google, although that remains to be seen. Google remains the top search engine used by many, and with its recent integration of AI search overviews, it has also evolved to adapt to this AI-centric view.

Additionally, Alphabet recently won a court case that allowed it to stay in its current state and continue paying Apple for the right to be the default search engine on its iPhones. This helps ensure Alphabet’s status quo is maintained, and is an extremely positive sign for investors.

Apple is thriving on the status quo, as it hasn’t really released a new feature or technology in recent years. That may change at its next release event, but investors will need to see what the market demand is for anything that Apple releases, as it could be a flop.

At their core, Alphabet and Apple are two businesses that want to maintain the status quo while expanding when possible. This doesn’t really distinguish either of them from the other, so we’ll need to examine their finances to determine the true best buy.

Winner: Tie

Alphabet is putting up better growth figures

Since 2023, Apple’s growth has been practically nonexistent. That changed in Q3 FY2025 (ending June 28), when it delivered 10% revenue growth and 12% diluted earnings per share (EPS) growth.

AAPL Revenue (Quarterly YoY Growth) data by YCharts

Still, that pales in comparison to Alphabet’s growth, which has been far stronger for much longer. In Q2, Alphabet’s revenue rose by 14% and diluted EPS increased by 22%. That continues a long-standing streak of Alphabet outperforming Apple from this standpoint, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see that pattern continue.

GOOGL Revenue (Quarterly YoY Growth) data by YCharts

Alphabet’s faster growth stems from some of its other divisions, such as Google Cloud and Waymo. Both of these have massive upside and provide growth wings that Apple can’t match.

As a result, I think it’s fairly clear that Alphabet has far better growth than Apple.

Winner: Alphabet

Alphabet’s stock is far cheaper

Valuation is another important consideration, as it’s possible that the slower-growing company can be the better investment if it’s priced cheap enough. However, that’s not the case here. Apple’s stock is significantly more expensive than Alphabet’s, despite the latter’s much slower growth.

AAPL PE Ratio data by YCharts

Although they used to trade at a similar price-to-earnings (P/E) price tag, a significant gap has opened up since mid-2024. However, after reviewing the growth charts from above, it’s clear that Alphabet has grown much faster than Apple during this time frame.

As a result, Apple’s stock has become far more expensive than it normally is, while Alphabet is just returning to its usual valuation range. This makes Alphabet a far better buy considering its growth.

Winner: Alphabet

Global spending on information technology is expected to reach nearly $5.4 billion in 2025, driven primarily by the growing adoption of artificial intelligence (AI). This massive wave of investment is creating long-term opportunities for businesses that can scale with these digital shifts. Companies with robust competitive advantages and proven business models are positioned to benefit most from this trend.

Image source: Getty Images

As this trend accelerates, here’s why these two growth stocks can prove to be exceptional buy-and-hold picks for the next decade.

Meta Platforms

Meta Platforms (META 0.70%) remains a leading player in the social media and digital advertising landscape, and it’s now accelerating its investment in AI infrastructure to drive the next phase of growth.

Meta’s core business is a cash-generating machine that can fund future growth opportunities. In the second quarter of 2025 (ending June 30), revenues rose 22% year over year to $47.5 billion, with an operating margin of 43% and free cash flow of $8.5 billion.

It is indisputable that digital advertising remains the primary driver of growth. Meta is leveraging advanced AI technologies to enhance ad targeting and recommendations as well as user engagement across Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Threads, strengthening its digital advertising business.

The company serves over 3.4 billion daily active users and uses AI models, including Andromeda, GEM, and Lattice, to enhance ad conversions and pricing across its applications, resulting in stronger monetization.

Its push beyond its core apps into newer platforms may also begin to generate fresh advertising growth. Threads has already surpassed 350 million users, and ads are starting to appear across its feed. Advertisements are also being introduced in the status and channels features of WhatsApp. Business messaging is scaling, with U.S. click-to-message revenue up more than 40% year over year in the second quarter.

Meta is also rolling out subscriptions for WhatsApp channels — a feature that can help businesses connect with over 1.5 billion daily active users who visit the channels. Meta AI, a consumer-facing AI-powered assistant integrated into its app ecosystem, has already built a user base of over 1 billion monthly active users. Besides improving user engagement through personalized recommendations and enhanced content discovery, it can also become a new monetization avenue in the coming quarters.

The tech giant is aggressively investing to expand its AI infrastructure. Meta expects capital expenditures of $66 billion to $72 billion in 2025, with even higher figures in 2026 as it builds AI data centers to support advanced AI models. While this may affect margins and cash flows in the near term, the long-term payoff of leveraging in-house AI capabilities to strengthen the core business may be exceptionally impressive.

Meta’s shares trade at a rich valuation of nearly 28.5 times forward earnings. While the company’s growth to date has been awe-inspiring, this may be just the beginning of an AI-powered multiyear growth story. Hence, considering Meta’s scale, cash generation potential, and AI investments, the stock remains an attractive choice for the next decade.

Amazon

E-commerce and cloud computing giant Amazon (AMZN -0.74%) is also doubling down on cloud computing, advertising, and AI to fuel its next chapter of growth.

The company’s core business is strong, and it clearly has enough financial flexibility to fund future growth opportunities: Amazon’s revenue increased 13.3% year over year to $167.7 billion while operating income soared 31% year over year to $19.2 billion in the second quarter of fiscal 2025 (ending June 30). The company also reported trailing-12-month free cash flow of $18.2 billion at the end of the second quarter.

Amazon Web Services (AWS), the company’s cloud computing business, accounted for 30% of the global cloud infrastructure services market in the second quarter of 2025, up from 29% in the prior quarter. With 85% to 90% of global IT spend focused on the on-premises environment and enterprises increasingly shifting workloads to the cloud, there is huge scope for AWS to grow in the coming years.

AWS revenue grew 17.5% year over year to $30.9 billion in the second quarter. The business has now reached an annualized run rate of $123 billion.

AWS had a backlog worth $195 billion at the end of the second quarter, reflecting strong demand for Amazon’s infrastructure and AI services. AWS is giving customers the use of Nvidia‘s cutting-edge graphics processing units as well as its own custom chip, Trainium2, to ensure better performance and lower costs to clients running AI workloads.

Additionally, Amazon Bedrock (a fully managed service enabling clients to build and scale generative AI applications on AWS) is adding several leading large language models like Anthropic’s Claude and the company’s own model, Nova. 

Amazon’s e-commerce business is also speeding up, especially as the company leverages automation and robotics to improve cost efficiencies, which could boost margins. Faster delivery is becoming a significant competitive advantage in the e-commerce market. In the second quarter, the company delivered 30% more items on the same day or the next day in the U.S. than it had in the same period last year. The company is planning to expand this same-day and next-day delivery to over 4,000 smaller U.S. towns by the end of 2025.

Finally, advertising is fast becoming a major growth catalyst. Amazon’s advertising revenues grew 22% in the second quarter of 2025 to $15.7 billion. With proprietary shopping, browsing, and streaming data secured from its platforms, advertisers can optimize their efforts, leading to improved outcomes. Advertising is proving ever more effective on platforms such as its retail marketplace, Prime Video, Fire TV, Twitch, and live sports.

Despite the many tailwinds, Amazon’s shares trade at 34.6 times forward earnings, which is not cheap. But considering AWS’s growth, fueled by rising AI adoption and improving e-commerce and advertising businesses, the stock may be attractive to investors seeking long-term growth opportunities.

Some decisions are tough to make. Others are so easy that they don’t require much thought and are practically no-brainers.

Three Motley Fool contributors believe they’ve identified dividend stocks to buy in September that fall into the latter category. Here’s why they picked Abbott Laboratories (ABT 0.81%), AbbVie (ABBV -0.85%), and Eli Lilly (LLY -0.20%).

Image source: Getty Images.

A tremendous track record of stability and dividend growth

David Jagielski (Abbott Laboratories): A top blue chip dividend stock to hold for the long term is that of Abbott Laboratories. It may not be the flashiest stock or have the highest dividend yield, but the long-term stability and consistency it offers investors makes it a no-brainer option for not only years but potentially decades.

Currently, the stock pays 1.8%, which is a bit higher than the S&P 500 average of 1.2%. It’s not a huge yield by any means, but the big payoff for investors is from simply hanging on to the stock. That’s because Abbott Laboratories is a Dividend King — it has been raising its dividend for decades. Last December, it announced a 7.3% increase to its payout, and with the significant bump up, Abbott extended its streak to 53 consecutive years of increases. And the healthcare company has been generous with its increases; the stock’s dividend has risen by over 60% since 2020.

The company’s fundamentals also look solid, which is key when selecting a quality dividend stock. This year, excluding COVID-19 testing sales, its revenue will grow at an organic rate between 7.5% and 8%. Its broad business encompasses pharmaceuticals, nutrition, diagnostics, and medical devices. As a leading company in the healthcare industry with many ways to grow in the long run, Abbott makes for a great income-generating investment to buy and hold.

Checking all the boxes — income, growth, and value

Keith Speights (AbbVie): AbbVie was spun off from Abbott Laboratories in 2013, and inherited its impressive track record of dividend increases. Its current forward dividend yield of roughly 3% is well above its parent company’s, though, making AbbVie a great choice for income investors.

Growth investors have something to like about this stock, too. AbbVie quickly shook off any effects from the patent cliff it faced in 2023 with its former top-selling drug, Humira. Its shares have outperformed the S&P 500 so far in 2025, and over the last five years.

Even better, AbbVie expects to deliver solid earnings growth through the rest of the decade. Soaring sales for Skyrizi and Rinvoq, its two successors to Humira, should help the company meet its goals. The company also has other big winners, including cancer drug Elahere and migraine therapies Qulipta and Ubrelvy. Vyalev, which was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in October 2024 for treating Parkinson’s disease, has built strong sales momentum as well in its first year on the market.

Is AbbVie an attractive stock for value investors, too? Yep. The big drugmaker’s shares trade at only 15 times forward earnings. Its price-to-earnings-to-growth (PEG) ratio, which reflects analysts’ five-year projections for earnings growth, is a super-low 0.4.

Few stocks offer something for income, growth, and value investors. But AbbVie checks all the boxes.

Much more than just a weight loss stock

Prosper Junior Bakiny (Eli Lilly): Over the past few years, Eli Lilly has dominated the headlines in the pharmaceutical industry, and with good reason: The drugmaker has established itself as the leader in the rapidly expanding weight loss market. Both Lilly’s lineup, with brands like Mounjaro and Zepbound, and its pipeline in this field look incredibly exciting.

The company has generated strong revenue and earnings growth in recent quarters, and is likely to continue doing so. However, it would be a mistake to think that Eli Lilly is just a weight loss stock. The company has a lot more to offer. Its lineup features blockbusters outside of its area of expertise, including cancer treatment Verzenio. Recent approvals, such as Ebglyss for eczema, could also achieve over $1 billion in annual sales at their peak.

Then there’s the pipeline, which boasts promising programs beyond diabetes and obesity. Lilly’s investigational drug lepodisiran completed phase 2 studies in reducing lipoprotein(a), a substance in the body that, in high concentrations, is strongly linked to various cardiovascular problems. So along with excellent financial results, investors can expect robust clinical and regulatory progress in the foreseeable future.

Lastly, the stock is an excellent pick for income seekers. It’s true that Lilly’s forward yield is a modest 0.8% — but the company has increased its dividend by an impressive 200% in the past decade. Eli Lilly’s excellent business and remarkable dividend track record make it a no-brainer stock to buy.

You could do a lot of things with $2,000. Spend it. Bury it in jars in your yard. Buy lottery tickets. However, I think a smarter approach is to use the money to buy stocks that pay attractive dividends.

The obvious question that arises is: Which dividend stocks should you buy? There are thousands of alternatives, some of them good and some not so good. Here are my picks for the smartest dividend stocks to buy with $2,000 right now.

Image source: Getty Images.

1. Enbridge

Enbridge (ENB 0.60%) is a Dividend Champion with 30 consecutive years of dividend increases. Its forward dividend yield currently stands at 5.63%. The company should be able to continue increasing its dividend, with expected distributable cash flow (DCF) of around 3% through next year, which should jump to 5% after 2026.

A strong underlying business supports those dividend payouts. Roughly 30% of the crude oil produced in North America and 20% of natural gas consumed in the U.S. flow through Enbridge’s pipelines. The company ranks as the largest natural gas utility in North America based on volume. And it has expanded beyond fossil fuels, with over $8 billion committed to renewable energy projects that are either currently in operation or under construction.

The stability of Enbridge’s relatively low-risk business model should be especially appealing now, considering the uncertainty surrounding a potential U.S. government shutdown, tariffs, and weak jobs reports. I like that the company has been able to consistently deliver solid earnings per share and DCF per share during turbulent times, including the financial crisis of 2007 through 2009 and the COVID-19 pandemic.

But Enbridge isn’t just a dividend stock to buy as a defensive move. The energy infrastructure leader has around $50 billion of growth opportunities through 2030, with nearly half of the total related to expanding its gas transmission business.

2. Realty Income

Realty Income‘s (O 0.50%) track record of 30 consecutive years of dividend increases matches Enbridge’s. Its forward dividend yield of 5.43% is nearly as high as Enbridge’s. Realty Income offers one nice advantage compared to the energy company, though: It pays a monthly rather than quarterly dividend.

This real estate investment trust (REIT) owns over 15,600 properties. Its tenant base represents 91 industries, including convenience, grocery, and home improvement stores, as well as restaurants. None of Realty Income’s tenants generate more than 3.5% of its total annualized contractual rent.

Realty Income shares another similarity with Enbridge: remarkably stable cash flows. The REIT has generated positive cash flow in every year since 2004 except for 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the global economy. Even then, though, its total operational return remained positive.

What about growth? Realty Income checks off that box, too. It’s targeting a total addressable market of roughly $14 trillion. Around 60% of that market is in Europe, where the REIT faces only one major rival.

3. Verizon Communications

Verizon Communications (VZ -0.35%) has increased its dividend for 19 consecutive years. While that isn’t as impressive as Enbridge’s and Realty Income’s streaks of dividend hikes, Verizon beats them in another way, with its ultra-high dividend yield of 6.35%.

I think Verizon’s dividend program is on solid footing. The telecommunications giant recently increased its free cash flow guidance for 2025 to a range of $19.5 billion to $20.5 billion, up from its previous forecast of $17.5 billion to $18.5 billion. Over the last 12 months, Verizon has paid out dividends of $11.4 billion. This reflects plenty of free cash flow cushion to continue growing the dividend.

Although the telecom market is highly competitive, Verizon more than holds its own. The company generated the highest wireless services revenue in the industry in the second quarter of 2025. Its broadband market share continued to grow. Verizon was also recently recognized by J.D. Power as having the best wireless network quality for the 35th time.

The company’s pending acquisition of Frontier Communications should boost growth over the near term, with the transaction expected to close in early 2026. Verizon could have strong long-term growth prospects as well as a 6G wireless networks launch in a few years.

If you still think of Robinhood (HOOD -2.29%) as a trading platform for the risky retail investor, you’ve been missing what’s happening at the financial services company. Although retail investing is still its bread and butter, it has evolved into a large fintech company with a broad range of services.

Granted, risk-embracing traders might still be its core user base, but Robinhood has become impressively profitable and is leading the way in financial technology. Below, I’ll dig a little deeper and see whether Robinhood stock is a buy today.

Beyond meme status

Robinhood made a splash when it debuted free online trades, attracting millions of users who could easily start trading online. The concept took off but got plenty of negative attention for what people saw as encouraging risky behavior. That culminated in the GameStop episode, when retail investors banded together to create a short squeeze in the shares of the ailing video game and electronics seller.

Instead of putting the brakes on the company’s business, this episode made it a household name — and Robinhood has only grown since then. Today, it has an expanded and profitable business offering many financial services, all with its signature, disruptive style.

Image source: Getty Images.

Trading is still Robinhood’s core business, and many of its new services are different kinds of investing instruments, including cryptocurrency and options. But the company is leaning into more traditional products, like bank accounts and credit cards, too, and is launching in new regions. It’s catching on and becoming a solid player in finance.

Consider the phenomenal second-quarter results. Revenue increased 45% year over year to $989 million, and net income was up 105%. Funded accounts increased 10% over last year to 26.5 million, and Gold membership, which is the company’s premium program, increased 76% to 3.5 million members.

It’s moving beyond its products and tapping into the excitement and energy of its user base, and it just announced the launch of a new social media app for its users to be able to communicate about trading. Previously, users gathered in spaces like Reddit to collaborate, where idle and even misleading speculation sometimes was sometimes taken as investment advice. Robinhood is planning for its social media channel to follow an X-style template, but trades will be verified if users chat about them, which will take some of the sketchiness out of the picture.

This is important for another reason: Funded members, the company’s main user base, increased 10% year over year in the second quarter, which isn’t a huge increase. If Robinhood’s edge has been free trades, that edge is long gone. There are countless other brokerages offering free trading today, including almost every large bank, plus many new startups. Robinhood needs to monetize its user base in new ways but also needs another way to stand out.

High gains, high risk

Robinhood operates in some risky markets. Cryptocurrency, for example, may be all the rage today, and it’s been like that for a few years already. It may be here to stay, but it may not.

The company’s excellent performance also hinges on strong trading activity. The current bull market is driving trading volume, but that could end if the market turns bearish. You have to have a fairly healthy risk tolerance to invest in a company like Robinhood because its core products also are risky.

Finally, Robinhood has been a monster stock recently, up 500% during the past year. It trades at a sky-high valuation, which means it’s priced for perfection. That’s also risky because any error could send it plummeting.

HOOD PE Ratio (Forward 1y) data by YCharts.

In another 10 years, Robinhood could be much bigger and reward investors accordingly. If you believe in its innovative model, you might decide it’s worth the risk.

Most investors should probably wait and look for a few more rounds of increasing earnings and durability. I’d also wait for a better entry point before investing in Robinhood stock.

The energy sector is a great spot to find high-quality, high-yielding dividend stocks. It has the highest dividend yield in the S&P 500 index at 3.4%, nearly three times higher than the index (1.2%). Many energy companies have built resilient businesses that can withstand the volatility of energy prices, putting their high-yielding payouts on very sustainable foundations.

My top three energy stocks for dividend income right now are Energy Transfer (ET -0.23%), Chevron (CVX -0.64%), and Brookfield Renewable (BEPC 0.21%) (BEP 0.92%). These companies offer high-yielding and steadily rising payouts backed by strong financial profiles.

Image source: Getty Images.

A very low-risk, high-yielding payout

Energy Transfer currently has a yield of more than 7.5%. The master limited partnership (MLP), which sends investors a Schedule K-1 Federal Tax Form, backs that payout with a very strong financial profile. It generates very stable cash flow as fee-based agreements supply 90% of its annual earnings. The company produced nearly $4.3 billion in cash during the first half of this year, $2 billion more than it distributed to investors. Energy Transfer retained that surplus cash to invest in organic expansion projects and maintain its strong financial profile.

The MLP’s leverage ratio is currently in the lower half of its 4 to 4.5 times target range. That puts Energy Transfer in the strongest financial position in its history. This provides it with ample financial flexibility to invest in organic expansion projects and make strategic acquisitions.

Energy Transfer expects to invest $5 billion in growth capital projects this year, with the majority of these projects coming online by the end of next year. They’ll provide the MLP with meaningful incremental cash flow. It recently approved several more projects, including the $5.3 billion Desert Southwest Pipeline that should enter service by the end of the decade. These growth projects support its plans to increase its cash distribution to investors by 3% to 5% annually.

The fuel to grow into the 2030s

Chevron‘s dividend yield is approaching 4.5%. The oil giant backs its high-yielding dividend with one of the most resilient portfolios in the oil patch. Chevron currently has the industry’s lowest break-even level at $30 a barrel. It also has a fortress financial profile, with one of the lowest leverage ratios in the sector. At less than 15%, Chevron is comfortably below its 20% to 25% target range.

The oil giant expects to deliver a massive amount of additional free cash flow over the coming year. A combination of recently completed expansion projects, its Permian Basin development program, and cost savings initiatives could add $10 billion of incremental free cash flow from its legacy portfolio next year. Meanwhile, its acquisition of Hess will provide an additional $2.5 billion boost to its free cash flow in 2026.

Chevron’s Hess deal extends and enhances its free-cash-flow growth outlook into the 2030s. Meanwhile, the company is investing in building several new energy businesses, including lithium. These growth drivers should give it plenty of fuel to continue increasing its dividend, which it has done for 38 straight years.

The powerful dividend growth should continue

Brookfield Renewable’s dividend yield is also approaching 4.5%. The global renewable energy producer backs that payout with very stable and predictable cash flow. It sells about 90% of the power it produces to utilities and corporations under long-term power purchase agreements (PPAs) with an average remaining term of 14 years. Those PPAs index 70% of its revenue to inflation.

The company expects its existing portfolio to deliver annual funds from operations (FFO) growth of 4% to 7% per share through the end of the decade. It will benefit from inflation-linked rate increases and margin enhancement activities such as signing new PPAs at higher market prices as legacy ones expire. Brookfield also expects to continue investing in growing its portfolio through development projects and acquisitions. The company’s numerous growth drivers should increase its FFO per share by more than 10% annually.

Brookfield’s growing earnings should support 5% to 9% annual dividend increases. That aligns with its historical trend of growing its payout at a 6% compound annual rate since 2001.

Top-notch energy dividend stocks

Energy Transfer, Chevron, and Brookfield Renewable pay high-yielding and steadily rising dividends backed by strong financials and visible growth profiles. Those features make them my top energy stocks to buy for dividend income right now.

Google parent Alphabet (GOOG 0.27%) (GOOGL 0.22%) faced a frightening challenge after its search engine business was declared an illegal monopoly last August. Since then, investor concern over the potential consequences dampened Alphabet stock’s performance.

That changed on Sept. 2, when a federal judge finally delivered the legal penalties, and they largely favored Alphabet. The news sent the company’s stock to a record high.

Even so, Alphabet didn’t escape unscathed. While the penalties pose no immediate threat, over the long run, the possibility exists for damage to its critical artificial intelligence (AI) business. Digging into the court ruling’s implications can reveal if the tech titan’s AI aspirations face long-term risk.

Image source: Getty Images.

How the court’s decision affects Alphabet’s AI ambitions

The Sept. 2 legal ruling bars Alphabet from signing exclusive contracts with partners such as Apple. Deals are still allowed, as long as exclusivity isn’t a component, so no immediate revenue impact is involved here.

But another legal stipulation mandates sharing some of Google’s search data with competitors. This is where AI comes in.

Artificial intelligence relies on massive troves of data to perform tasks accurately. The court’s decision arms Alphabet’s rivals with ammunition to improve their AI models.

That competition includes Microsoft, which battles Alphabet on several fronts, including search, digital advertising, cloud computing, and of course, AI. The court’s requirement would deliver Google’s data insights to Microsoft’s Bing search engine, and feed across all the areas where the two corporations compete. But where it can really provide value is in AI.

Microsoft incorporates AI models developed by ChatGPT creator OpenAI into its offerings, since it has a stake in the company. ChatGPT’s introduction of generative AI to the world is one of the key drivers that kicked off the current artificial intelligence frenzy. Adding Google data to the mix could strengthen both Microsoft and OpenAI’s tech.

In fact, the judge who delivered the Sept. 2 ruling, Amit Mehta, noted, “The emergence of GenAI changed the course of this case.”

Is Alphabet’s AI position at risk?

Alphabet has the option to appeal the court’s penalties, but even if it doesn’t, the tech conglomerate’s impressive use of AI to date could be enough to prevent erosion of its businesses.

For instance, new AI features introduced to its Google search engine boosted usage. This enabled Google search revenue to hit $54.2 billion in the second quarter, up 12% from 2024’s $48.5 billion.

Alphabet’s AI advancements helped Google maintain a search market share of 90% in August, compared to next-closest competitor Bing’s 4%. Even if Google’s data helps Bing gain share, the gap between the rivals is so huge, Bing is unlikely to make a meaningful dent in Google’s lead anytime soon.

AI contributed to growth in Alphabet’s cloud computing segment, Google Cloud, as well. The division is bringing AI-powered shopping capabilities to PayPal. Such customer adoption of AI drove Google Cloud’s Q2 sales to $13.6 billion, a whopping 32% year-over-year increase.

Should cloud competitors improve their AI with Google data, the difference would have to be significant to get Alphabet’s customers to switch. Google Cloud integrations aren’t easily unfurled, leading to high switching costs.

Beyond search and cloud computing, Alphabet has injected AI into YouTube, its Waymo robotaxi service, Gmail, and more.

Alphabet isn’t out of the woods yet

Overall, Alphabet dodged a bullet in the Google search antitrust case. The legal penalties could have been as far-ranging as a forced divestiture of its popular Chrome browser and Android mobile operating system.

Considering these worst-case scenarios, Alphabet got off pretty light, and the ruling’s impact to its business over the long term looks minimal. The conglomerate’s widespread use of AI across its operations gives it a solid lead against competitors who may benefit from access to Google data.

But the legal dangers aren’t over yet. Earlier this year, Alphabet lost a separate antitrust case directed against its advertising empire. The penalties in that case are yet to be determined. However, Google was slapped with a $3.5 billion antitrust fine by the European Union on Sept. 5 for violating rules designed to protect a competitive advertising marketplace.

Compared to the Google search case, this separate antitrust lawsuit poses a lower risk. That’s because it involves advertising tech related to the company’s Google network, which produced $7.35 billion in Q2 sales, a drop from the $7.44 billion generated in the previous year. By comparison, Google search accounted for $54.2 billion of Alphabet’s $96.4 billion in Q2 revenue.

So while Alphabet isn’t out of legal trouble yet, the biggest long-term risk to its business is behind it, as long as the conglomerate can continue pushing AI innovation across its operations.

A star stock during the pandemic era wasn’t shining so brightly on Friday. On a media report that the current presidential administration is preparing to link a set of fatalities to Covid vaccines, BioNTech‘s (BNTX -7.35%) share price declined by 7% across that day’s trading session. The biotech company’s decline was particularly notable given the essentially flat-line performance of the S&P 500 index.

Negative accounts

That morning, The Washington Post published an article stating that healthcare officials in the Trump administration were aiming to link the deaths of 25 children to coronavirus vaccines. BioNTech is a co-developer of a top vaccine, Comirnaty, aimed at preventing the disease’s spread (its partner in the effort was U.S. pharmaceutical giant Pfizer).

Image source: Getty Images.

Citing four unnamed people “familiar with the situation,” this effort will be based on findings that were apparently filed with the federal government’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System. The platform contains unverified accounts of experiences and events following the administration of jabs.

The newspaper added that the government’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) stresses that the system isn’t intended to determine if any vaccine injections result in fatalities. According to the CDC, such a judgement requires significant investigation by scientific and medical professionals.

Danger of reputational damage

The Post wrote that administration officials aim to present their findings next week to a CDC advisory panel. That panel is considering recommendations for new Covid vaccines.

BioNTech might be particularly exposed in such a move, as it is a much smaller company than its big U.S. partner Pfizer. If it becomes seen as a developer of a supposedly harmful product, its reputation could suffer irreparably.

Shares of Micron (MU 4.59%), the U.S.-based memory chipmaker, were moving higher today in sympathy with SK Hynix, the world’s largest memory chip company, which hit an all-time high today after it announced the world’s first HBM4 product.

Though SK Hynix is a competitor to Micron, the news was seen as a positive for the broader memory-chip industry, as it should spark more demand for HBM. It also comes during a week when artificial intelligence (AI) stocks have been flying higher after Oracle gave blowout guidance for cloud infrastructure growth earlier this year.

Micron stock closed up 4.6% on the news.

Image source: Getty Images.

A rising tide in memory chips

SK Hynix, based on South Korea, jumped 7% today after it said this morning that it completed development of HBM4, its next-generation memory product for ultra-high performance AI.

Touting its capabilities, the company said that HBM4’s bandwidth has doubled, and its power efficiency improved 40% compared with the previous generation. HBM4 marks its sixth generation of HBM.

While that development might be seen as bad news for Micron, the memory chip sector is subject to many of the same supply and demand trends. Micron has already sold out its HBM capacity for the year, so the news shouldn’t have an immediate impact on its results, but it could help lift prices in the industry.

What’s next for Micron?

Today’s gain marks the second day in a row of upward momentum for Micron, as the stock moved higher yesterday after Citigroup raised its price target to $175 and reaffirmed its buy rating, noting that pricing for DRAM and NAND chips are trending higher.

Micron will report fiscal fourth-quarter earnings on Sept. 23, with analysts expecting revenue to jump 43% to $11.1 billion and for adjusted earnings per share to more than double from $1.18 to $2.85.

If the company tops those estimates, the stock could soar as Micron still looks cheap at a forward P/E of just 12.

According to data compiled by S&P Global Market Intelligence., AppLovin‘s (APP 1.87%) stock was among the market’s most-loved this week, rising by nearly 19% in price over the period. That was entirely understandable, as the shares were tapped for an inclusion on one of the top stock indexes in the world, and capped the week by being the subject of an analyst price target raise.

Index inclusion

Just after market close last Friday, index compiler S&P Dow Jones Indices, a division of S&P Global, announced that AppLovin would be a component stock of its bellwether S&P 500 (^GSPC -0.05%). This was among a series of adjustments made by S&P Dow Jones Indices as part of its quarterly “rebalancing” to reflect changes in market cap for certain stocks.

Image source: Getty Images.

AppLovin is being accompanied by next-generation brokerage Robinhood Markets and mechanical/electrical systems specialist EMCOR Group in the current round of S&P 500 advancement. The three stocks are displacing current components MarketAxess Holdings, Caesars Entertainment, and Enphase Energy.

These changes will take effect before market open on Monday, Sept. 22.

Double-digit potential

Friday morning, Wedbush analyst Alicia Reese added to the generally positive sentiment on AppLovin by raising her price target on the stock. That hike was substantial, as the pundit cranked it 17% higher to $725 per share, well up from the previous $620. At AppLovin’s most recent closing price, the new level anticipates upside of nearly 25%.

According to reports, Reese’s move was based on what she considers to be strong and sustainable growth in several of the company’s customer segments, including gaming and e-commerce.

Shares of little-known company Ibex (IBEX 36.38%) went parabolic today, shooting 41.1% higher in early-morning trading. The stock was still trading around 33% up at 1:15 p.m. ET Friday.

Ibex is a business process outsourcing company, providing a wide array of services such as customer and technical support, lead generation, surveys, and business intelligence and analytics.

Turns out, Ibex’s efforts to build a digital business have already started to pay off, and that is drawing attention to the stock today. The keyword here is artificial intelligence (AI).

Image source: Getty Images.

AI-driven growth

Ibex reported numbers for its 2025 fourth quarter and fiscal year (ended June 30) after the Sept. 11 market close. Ibex’s Q4 revenue jumped 18% year over year to $147 million, driven by strong growth in its top three markets: retail and e-commerce; healthcare; and travel, transportation, and logistics.

The real deal, however, is what Ibex’s full earnings report looked like:

• Record fourth-quarter and full-year revenue
• Highest revenue growth in 11 quarters
• Fastest revenue growth in three years for the full year
• Record free cash flow

These are big milestones, but they’re not really why Ibex stock is going to the moon. It’s these words from CEO Bob Dechant: “Importantly, this quarter marked the shift from proof of concept for our AI solutions to full-scale deployments, setting the table for future growth.”

Ibex is “transforming into a digital-first business” by leveraging AI through its Wave iX platform, which uses generative AI to improve customer experiences. Earlier this month, Ibex said it is targeting the government sector now.

What’s next for Ibex stock?

The company’s capital expenditures more than doubled to $18.4 million in 2025, driven by capacity expansion. Ibex generated record free cash flow of $27.3 million in the year and repurchased nearly 3.9 million shares, almost 23% of its outstanding shares.

Following Ibex’s strong earnings report, analysts at RBC Capital were quick to raise their price target on the stock to $39 per share from $31 a share. Ibex stock already hit an all-time high of $42.99 per share today.

With Ibex projecting 7.5% revenue growth at the midpoint for FY 2026 and capital expenditure of $20 million to $25 million on further expansions, this is one stock you should have on your radar.

Yesterday was a big day for Opendoor Technologies (OPEN -10.88%) stock. Shares of the online real estate platform skyrocketed 80% yesterday after it named a new CEO. Retail investors have been rallying behind Opendoor, turning it into the latest meme stock.

Today, though, investors are booking those gains. Co-founder and new chairman Keith Rabois squashed some of the excitement surrounding the stock in a CNBC interview this morning. Shares had plunged by 15.4% at 1:17 p.m. ET.

Image source: Getty Images.

Is Opendoor bloated and broken?

Rabois and co-founder Eric Wu were brought back to the board of directors yesterday after Kaz Nejatian, formerly chief operating officer of Shopify, was appointed CEO. Today, Rabois said of the company’s 1,400-member workforce, “I don’t know what most of them do.” He stressed that a headcount reduction would be coming as more than 200 current employees aren’t needed, in his opinion.

Rabois called the workforce “bloated” from the ability to work remotely. He added this:

The culture was broken. These people were working remotely. That doesn’t work. This company was founded on the principle of innovation and working together in person. We’re going to return to our roots.

Rabois also contended that Opendoor was not, as many investors claim, a meme stock. Shares have rocketed more than 1,300% in the last three months behind retail trader support.

Rather, he said the retail movement in stocks is healthy as consumers, not professional money managers, are deciding what stocks to support.

That’s bound to be a controversial point of view. Investors who own Opendoor for the momentum of a meme stock might be dumping shares today. That’s probably a smart move, too. Eventually, business fundamentals will win out. A turnaround in the housing sector might be what saves Opendoor’s currently unprofitable business, but that remains to be seen.

It’s been an amazing past 10 years for Arista Networks (ANET -7.42%). Although it wasn’t clear for the first several years following its 2004 launch that a newcomer could successfully compete with networking giant Cisco Systems, its clever improvement to existing networking technology (the company’s switches and routers are largely software-based, and therefore can be custom-programmed and updated) have made Arista’s solutions a very popular option.

And shareholders have been well rewarded for their foresight and patience.

First fueled by cloud computing, and then artificial intelligence

What would a $10,000 investment in Arista Networks back in mid-September 2015 be worth today? The graphic below shows its growth. With an average annualized return of about 42% per year, this position would now be worth $356,280.

Data by YCharts

Most of this gain would have been realized in just the past three years, driven by the rapid growth of artificial intelligence data centers that require high-performance networking solutions. Even prior to that, however, Arista was well equipped to capitalize on an expanding cloud computing market.

A repeat is unlikely, but…

Can ANET do the same again over the course of the coming 10 years? Never say never. But it seems unlikely.

The size of this gain is largely rooted in the sheer newness of AI, which forced the hurried purchase of any and all solutions capable of making artificial data centers function as needed. However, this explosive phase of the movement is now in the rear-view mirror.

Don’t dismiss this stock’s remaining upside potential, though. While the mathematical pace of AI’s relative growth will almost certainly slow from here, Global Market Insights still expects the worldwide artificial intelligence hardware market to grow at an average annual rate of 18% through 2034. The flexibility of its software-based networking solutions leaves Arista Networks well-positioned to capture at least its fair share of this growth.

It’s not often that a stock absolutely skyrockets right after it misses analysts’ expectations for both revenue and profits, but that was what Oracle (ORCL -4.50%) did following its recent fiscal 2026 first-quarter report. The market’s excitement about the stock appeared to stem from the company’s growing cloud computing business. The stock has now more than doubled so far in 2025.

Let’s take a closer look at Oracle’s earnings report and prospects to see whether or not it’s too late to buy the stock.

Cloud excitement

Sometimes there is a last-mover’s advantage, and in the cloud computing space, Oracle appears to have one. Before the artificial intelligence (AI) boom, the company’s cloud computing unit was new and pretty small. However, it’s now building it out quickly with all the latest technology. As a result, top AI model companies are flocking to its services, and even the big three cloud computing infrastructure providers — Amazon, Alphabet, and Microsoft — are partnering with it.

Oracle is particularly excited about its opportunity in the inference space. It said it has a big edge because its customers can connect all of their Oracle databases and cloud storage to “vectorize” their data. They can then apply the large language model (LLM) of their choice to answer questions using a combination of private enterprise data and publicly available information. It expects the AI inference market to become much bigger than the AI training market over time.

Image source: Getty Images.

Oracle’s cloud computing strength could be seen in its latest quarterly results. Its cloud infrastructure revenue surged 55% year over year to $3.3 billion. Meanwhile, within the segment, it said its multicloud database revenue from the big three cloud providers soared by 1,529% in the quarter. Meanwhile, it plans to build 37 new data centers for them in the coming years. What got investors really excited was the company’s forecast that its cloud infrastructure revenue would hit $144 billion by fiscal 2030, up from just $10.3 billion in fiscal 2025. It’s looking for cloud infrastructure revenue to increase by 77% to $18 billion this year, and then just continue to surge.

Below is a table of Oracle’s cloud infrastructure revenue projections.

Note: Oracle’s fiscal years end on May 31 of the calendar year.

Management said much of this revenue is already locked in: The company has $455 billion in remaining performance obligations (RPOs), with most of these contracts generally non-cancelable. That was a whopping 359% increase from a year ago when its RPOs were $99 billion, and up from just $138 billion a quarter ago. The huge increase was the result of Oracle signing four major contracts with three different customers in the quarter.

Oracle’s overall revenue increased 12% to $14.93 billion, which missed the $15.04 billion analyst consensus by less than 1%. Cloud revenue jumped 28% to $7.2 billion. Within the cloud segment, cloud infrastructure revenue soared by 55% to $3.3 billion while cloud application revenue rose 11% to $3.8 billion.

Adjusted earnings per share (EPS), meanwhile, rose 6% to $1.47. That came up just short of the $1.48 analyst consensus.

Looking ahead, Oracle maintained its forecast that its fiscal 2026 revenue will increase by 16% on a constant-currency basis. However, it upped its budget for capital expenditures to $35 billion from an earlier plan to spend just $25 billion. Management said most of those outlays will go toward things like graphics processing units (GPUs).

For its fiscal Q2, it guided for revenue to climb by between 14% and 16% year over year and for cloud revenue to soar by between 32% and 36%. It projected its adjusted EPS will rise by between 10% and 12% to a range of $1.61 to $1.65.

Is it too late to buy the stock?

Oracle’s projected cloud infrastructure growth over the next five years is nothing short of spectacular, and with contracts locked in, it has a clear line of sight into its future finances. However, it is worth noting that it will have to spend a lot of money to increase capacity so that it can meet these commitments, and it isn’t in as good financial shape as the big three cloud infrastructure providers.

Oracle currently has more than $80 billion in debt on its books, and it didn’t generate any free cash flow in the past year or in Q1, as it has been pouring all of its operating cash flow into expanding its data center capacity. Its cash flow from operations was $20.8 billion last year and $8.1 billion in Q1, so it likely will have to go further into debt over the next five years to build more data centers. That’s a sharp contrast to the financial situations of the big three cloud computing providers.

From a valuation perspective, Oracle now trades at a forward P/E of about 50 based on analysts’ estimates for its fiscal 2026, so it’s not cheap.

Given Oracle’s valuation, the state of its balance sheet, and the volume of capital expenditures in its future, I wouldn’t chase the stock after its huge surge.

Air taxi company Joby Aviation (JOBY 2.27%) announced Friday that it will participate in the White House eVTOL (electric vertical takeoff and landing) Integration Pilot Program (eIPP) announced back in June, aiming to “demonstrate eVTOL use cases, such as passenger transportation, cargo delivery, and emergency response, ahead of achieving type certification.”

Joby stock soared 5.7% through 10:10 a.m. ET Friday in response to the news.

Image source: Getty Images.

President Trump loves to fly

The eIPP in question was itself announced by executive order in June, with the White House promising to “create a pilot program testing flying cars, also known as electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft.” Joby notes that this program “directs the Department of Transportation (DOT) and Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to ensure that mature eVTOL (electric vertical take off and landing) aircraft can begin operations in select markets ahead of full FAA certification,” which could potentially give the company a revenue boost, and sooner than if full certification were required before operations begin.

Joby argues it has a leading position in this race because it “has the most mature eVTOL aircraft in the sector,” which has flown 600 times in 2025 alone, and it has amassed a total of more than 40,000 miles of flight across its fleet. Moreover, the company is already in stage four (out of five) in the FAA Type Certification process and expects to begin test flights with FAA pilots aboard next year.

Is Joby stock a buy?

Now, don’t get too excited. Even if Joby is in the lead here, this race is a marathon, not a sprint, and profits remain a long way off. Analysts who follow Joby don’t expect it to report its first profit until 2031.

Until Joby turns profitable, the stock remains speculative.