Trading Ideas

If You Invested $1000 In United States Oil Fund Stock 5 Years Ago, You Would Have This Much Today

Benzinga Insights — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 23:45:19 +0000

United States Oil Fund (NYSE:USO) has outperformed the market over the past 5 years by 14.13% on an annualized basis producing an average annual return of 25.5%. Currently, United States Oil Fund has a market capitalization of $1.98 billion.

Buying $1000 In USO: If an investor had bought $1000 of USO stock 5 years ago, it would be worth $3,043.83 today based ...

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If You Invested $1000 In Broadcom Stock 5 Years Ago, You Would Have This Much Today

Benzinga Insights — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 23:30:22 +0000

Broadcom (NASDAQ:AVGO) has outperformed the market over the past 5 years by 44.38% on an annualized basis producing an average annual return of 55.76%. Currently, Broadcom has a market capitalization of $1.96 trillion.

Buying $1000 In AVGO: If an investor had bought $1000 of AVGO stock 5 years ago, it would be worth $8,968.67 today based on a price ...

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Here's How Much You Would Have Made Owning SPDR Gold Shares Stock In The Last 5 Years

Benzinga Insights — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 23:15:21 +0000

SPDR Gold Shares (NYSE:GLD) has outperformed the market over the past 5 years by 9.64% on an annualized basis producing an average annual return of 21.01%. Currently, SPDR Gold Shares has a market capitalization of $158.00 billion.

Buying $100 In GLD: If an investor had bought $100 of GLD stock 5 years ago, it would be worth $258.63 today based on ...

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Here's How Much $100 Invested In Coca-Cola Consolidated 10 Years Ago Would Be Worth Today

Benzinga Insights — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 23:00:43 +0000

Coca-Cola Consolidated (NASDAQ:COKE) has outperformed the market over the past 10 years by 14.96% on an annualized basis producing an average annual return of 28.21%. Currently, Coca-Cola Consolidated has a market capitalization of $12.90 billion.

Buying $100 In COKE: If an investor had bought $100 of COKE stock 10 years ago, it would be worth $1,179.48 today based on a ...

Full story available on Benzinga.com

Here's How Much $100 Invested In Nebius Group 5 Years Ago Would Be Worth Today

Benzinga Insights — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 22:45:25 +0000

Nebius Group (NASDAQ:NBIS) has outperformed the market over the past 5 years by 5.83% on an annualized basis producing an average annual return of 17.2%. Currently, Nebius Group has a market capitalization of $36.23 billion.

Buying $100 In NBIS: If an investor had bought $100 of NBIS stock 5 years ago, it would be worth $214.03 today based on a ...

Full story available on Benzinga.com

Here's How Much You Would Have Made Owning ON Semiconductor Stock In The Last 15 Years

Benzinga Insights — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 22:30:21 +0000

ON Semiconductor (NASDAQ:ON) has outperformed the market over the past 15 years by 3.96% on an annualized basis producing an average annual return of 15.68%. Currently, ON Semiconductor has a market capitalization of $38.59 billion.

Buying $100 In ON: If an investor had bought $100 of ON stock 15 years ago, it would be worth $888.85 today based on a ...

Full story available on Benzinga.com

Kforce Q1 2026 Earnings Call: Complete Transcript

Benzinga Insights — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 22:25:22 +0000

Kforce (NASDAQ:KFRC) reported first-quarter financial results on Monday. The transcript from the company's first-quarter earnings call has been provided below.

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View the webcast at https://events.q4inc.com/attendee/458426539

Summary

Kforce Inc reported Q1 2026 revenues of $330.4 million, marking the first year-over-year growth since Q4 2022, with earnings per share of $0.46 exceeding expectations.

The company anticipates revenue growth in Q2 to accelerate to mid-single digits, driven by increased demand for flexible workforce solutions and AI-related projects.

Kforce Inc continues to focus on its integrated strategy and global talent strategy, including expanding its India Development center and establishing AI Innovation Studio and AI pods.

Management highlighted strong execution in pricing and service delivery, leading to higher gross margins and operating leverage.

The company returned $18.6 million to shareholders through dividends and share repurchases, maintaining a conservative leverage ratio of 1.2 times net debt to EBITDA.

Full Transcript

OPERATOR

Good day everyone and welcome to the Kforce Q1 2026 earnings call. As a reminder, this call is being recorded at this time. I would like to hand the call over to Mr. Joe Liberatore. Please go ahead Sir.

Joe Liberatore

Good afternoon and thank you for your time today. This call contains certain statements that are forward looking, are based upon current assumptions and expectations, are subject to risks and uncertainties. Actual results may vary materially from the factors listed in Kforce Inc's public filing and other reports and filings with the SEC. We cannot undertake any duty to update any forward looking statements. You can find additional information about our results in our earnings release and our SEC filings. In addition, we have published our prepared remarks within the Investor Relation portion of our website. We are extremely pleased to have successfully driven results in the first quarter that again exceeded our expectations from both a revenue and profitability perspective. The momentum that we carried into the beginning of the year has continued to strengthen resulting in year over year revenue growth for the first time in several years. As Jeff Hackman will cover in more detail, our trajectory has continued to improve in the first month of the SECond quarter, which we expect will lead to accelerating year over year growth in Q2 in the mid single digits. I cannot be prouder of the tenacity of our people or more appreciative of the trust that our world class clients are increasingly placing in Kforce to drive more meaningful and valuable engagements with them. Our go to market approach which was born out of our integrated strategy efforts, appears to be paying dividends. Our people continue to operate more fully as one Kforce, leveraging the firm's capabilities across all service offerings. While recent economic data continues to point to a generally softer labor market and professionally oriented roles, our performance reflects strong execution and a clear shift we're seeing across our customer base. However, several of the leading indicators we track which have historically signaled strengthening demand for our services, are improving. Companies are increasingly turning to flexible talent strategies to move forward on significant backlog of high priority technology initiatives, especially in the age of artificial intelligence where CEOs remain cautious to add permanent headcount. At the same time, heightened geopolitical uncertainty, including the conflict involving Iran, has contributed to significant volatility in the global energy markets, resulting in sharp price increases across oil, gasoline, natural gas and electricity. In this environment, clients are focused on agility. We believe uncertainty is reinforcing the value of flexible workforce solutions as organizations seek to adapt while they gain greater clarity around geopolitical developments and the longer term impact of emerging technologies on their business and talent strategies. Against this backdrop, we remain optimistic that our recent operational data and several conSECutive quarters of improving revenue performance reflect a more typical historical cyclical pattern consistent with prior demand recoveries. As we have stated, we've witnessed and participated in transformative technology shifts before, such as personal computing, the emergence of the Internet, the mobile revolution and the move to cloud computing. Each of these periods of technological change impacted labor markets. Yet over time, workers, including technologists, have continued to upskill and retrain themselves to improve the relevancy of their skill sets. As technology has evolved over the last 50 plus years, we've placed skill sets that include mainframe operators, COBOL programmers, database administrators, web developers, mobile application developers, DevOps engineers, cloud architects, UI UX designers, data scientists, data engineers, AI platform engineers, AI product managers, prompt engineers, etc. The point is, the tasks change or in some cases completely go away. Job titles change, skill composition shifts and at the end of the day, new roles are created, new businesses are spurred, new industries are created resulting in a net positive amount of technology oriented job growth as society's unquenchable thirst for technology advancements and productivity gains. We believe generative AI, and its offshoots into agentic AI and cognitive AI is in the early stages of the evolution and may just be starting to align with historical patterns we've experienced. Recruiting the right in demand talent, assembling effective teams and implementing target enterprise level initiatives are crucial for organizations seeking to successfully integrate and leverage these new tools to maintain a competitive advantage. Our strong position enables us to grow our client portfolio and bring on new client opportunities, thereby sustaining our history of consistent above market performance fueled by client share growth, ultimately strengthening the foundation that delivers enduring value to our shareholders. Our business model is intentionally simple, organically driven and intensely focused. By limiting inorganic growth within our existing service areas, we protect our teams from unnecessary complexity and distractions. That focus allows our people to do what they do best, build deep relationships and partner with clients to solve their most critical business challenges. Our strategy has been thoughtfully refined over time, not overhauled because it has proven durable. That focus, combined with unified and resilient culture, is a real differentiator for us and essential to our consistent market outperformance. As our operating trends continue to improve, we're also making great progress on our key strategic initiatives, including the implementation of Workday scaling, our India Development center, advancing our internal AI initiatives and continued refinement of the execution of our integrated strategy. Further to that point, we are pleased to have recently announced the establishment of our AI Innovation Studio within our headquarters and associated AI pods in India to support evolving client needs. As I conclude my remarks, I want to acknowledge the outstanding people who make up the Kforce team. I'm incredibly proud of their fortitude, adaptability and dedication demonstrated across the firm, particularly given the challenging business environment over the past three years. I am grateful every day for the opportunity to work with colleagues who bring this level of skill and commitment. Thanks to their efforts, we are well positioned strategically and I feel confident in our trajectory and and the opportunities ahead. Dave Kelly, our Chief Operating Officer, will now give greater insights into our performance and recent operating trends. Jeff Hackman, Kforce's Chief Financial Officer, will then provide additional detail on our financial results as well as our future financial expectations.

Dave Kelly (Chief Operating Officer)

Thank you, Joe. Total revenues of $330.4 million represented a return to overall revenue growth for the first time since the fourth quarter of 2022. Encouragingly, we were successful at delivering year over year flex revenue growth in both our technology and FA&A businesses. The first quarter is typically characterized by sequential revenue declines on a billing day basis due to calendar year assignment ends. This is a very normal part of our business and the broader sector. There's been a lot of discussion about our ability and the sector's ability to deliver revenue growth given the much speculated demand impact of AI tools, and technologies. A data point that we think is particularly relevant is that our first quarter performance was meaningfully better than the average sequential decline over the past 15 years. Prior to AI becoming an hourly topic of conversation. Our results were driven by a combination of lower levels of project ends and a faster than normal rebound in new assignment activity. Further to this point, as Jeff Hackman will cover in his particular remarks, the midpoint of our guidance contemplates year over year growth in Q2 of approximately 4%. While clients continue to take a measured approach to technology spending amid an uncertain macroeconomic environment, investments in critical initiatives, particularly in data, digital and platforms that underpin long term AI strategies are actively being prioritized by our clients. Our recent momentum and operating trends suggest clients are increasingly green lighting long postponed initiatives through the use of flexible workforce solutions that are strategic to their needs and don't have an easy or obvious AI related solution. Importantly, improvements in our business have been broad based with positive trends evident across a wide range of industries within our client portfolio and utilizing a wide range of skill sets. While we certainly continue to see growth in AI related data, digital and cloud projects, we're also seeing a ramp in demand for platform and application development roles and projects. The demand for technology is broad based. We continue to make targeted organic investments in our consulting solutions business to meet rising client demand for cost effective access to highly skilled talent. These investments are strengthening our value proposition by expanding flexible delivery models and deepening differentiated expertise. As a result, our consulting led offerings are positively contributing to the performance of our technology business supported by a strong pipeline of high quality opportunities. Our fully integrated delivery model offering a seamless client experience across consulting, project based work and staff augmentation spanning multiple technologies and skill sets remains a clear point of differentiation in the market. We've seen clear signs of improvement improving demand across the entire spectrum of our service models. This integrated approach has been a core driver of our technology performance, enabling meaningful gross profit expansion over the past year despite a challenging macroeconomic backdrop while maintaining stability in average bill rates. We leverage long standing client relationships as the foundation of our model and focus on simplifying the buying process and accelerating decision making. An increasingly important component of our ability to deliver cost effective solutions is our global talent strategy, including access to highly skilled professionals outside the United States. Our development center in Pune, combined with strong domestic sales and delivery capabilities and a high quality vendor network enables a scalable multi shore delivery model that comprehensively addresses client needs. Demand for this channel continues to accelerate, reinforcing its strategic importance and strengthening our confidence in the durability of this model. We now have a multi shore delivery model being utilized within 60% of our 25 largest clients. We've been able to maintain a stable average bill rate of approximately $90 per hour over the last three years while building a higher quality, higher margin revenue stream. The increasing mix of consulting oriented engagements which command higher bill rates and significantly stronger margin profiles, along with disciplined management of wage inflation and core technology skill sets is effectively offset the downward pressure on bill rates from a greater mix of consultants based outside of the US Demand across our core practice areas including data and AI, digital platform engineering and cloud remains strong and our pipeline of consulting opportunities continues to expand. These disciplines represent foundational capabilities for the development and deployment of AI solutions and we believe organizations will increasingly require access to specialized talent to execute their strategies, creating meaningful and durable growth opportunities for our firm. Over the last several years, we have made responsible adjustments to align headcount levels with revenue levels and productivity expectations. As noted in last quarter's call, we implemented further refinements to our organization in the first quarter. Despite these actions, we believe we have sufficient capacity to absorb the near term improvements in demand levels without the need for significant incremental resources, particularly as we continue to enable greater efficiency through our use of AI Solutions. We remain committed to investing in our consulting solutions business and other strategic initiatives that we believe will drive long term revenue and profitability growth. The actions taken in the quarter provide increased confidence in our ability to continue making these investments while maintaining our previously stated profitability objectives. We are energized by the opportunities ahead and confident in our ability to sustain recent momentum while continuing to deliver strong results. Our success reflects the deep trust and long standing partnerships we built with our clients, candidates and consultants. These are relationships that continue to serve as the foundation for our growth and innovation. I will now turn the call over to Jeff Hackman, Kforce's Chief Financial Officer.

Jeff Hackman (Chief Financial Officer)

Thank you Dave first quarter revenue of 330.4 million exceeded our expectations and earnings per share of 46 cents was above the high end of our guidance. Our results for the first quarter demonstrate our ability to grow revenues while also driving a higher quality of business as evidenced by better than expected gross margins in the quarter as well as generating enhanced operating leverage. Overall gross margins of 27.3% were up 60 basis points on a year over year basis due to expanding flex margins which more than offset the impact from lower direct hire mix. Sequentially, gross margins were up 10 basis points in a quarter when they were expected to be seasonally down as improved flex spreads and favorable health care costs more than offset the seasonal payroll tax resets. The success we have had expanding our margin profile can be attributed to our teams pricing more effectively with clients to more appropriately reflect the value of our services and the benefit of higher quality business that we have been strategically driving. We have discussed that solutions oriented engagements have an appreciably higher ...

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Full Transcript: Bed Bath & Beyond Q1 2026 Earnings Call

Benzinga Insights — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 22:20:31 +0000

On Monday, Bed Bath & Beyond (NYSE:BBBY) discussed first-quarter financial results during its earnings call. The full transcript is provided below.

Benzinga APIs provide real-time access to earnings call transcripts and financial data. Visit https://www.benzinga.com/apis/ to learn more.

View the webcast at https://events.q4inc.com/analyst/478993577?pwd=g7emtfMu

Summary

Bed Bath & Beyond Inc reported a 7% increase in revenue year-over-year, marking the first revenue growth in 19 quarters, despite discontinuing Canadian operations.

The company achieved its lowest operating cost structure in over 12 years, contributing to a $5 million improvement in adjusted EBITDA and a $24 million decrease in net loss.

Strategic initiatives included acquisitions of Kirklands and the Container Store, with plans to integrate these into a three-pillar ecosystem focused on omnichannel retail, product and financial services, and home services.

Future outlook includes a target to remove $60 million in costs over the next nine months and a strategy to leverage data and AI for operational efficiency and customer engagement.

Management emphasized a shift towards being a data and technology company within the home space, with plans to use blockchain and tokenization for customer and home lifecycle management.

Full Transcript

OPERATOR

Hello everyone. Thank you for joining us and welcome to the Q1 2026 Bed Bath & Beyond Inc Earnings Conference Call. After today's prepared remarks, we will host a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one to raise your hand. To withdraw your question, press star one again. I will now hand the conference over to Melissa Smith, the General Counsel and Corporate Secretary. Melissa, please go ahead.

Melissa Smith (General Counsel and Corporate Secretary)

Thank you. Good afternoon and welcome to Bed Bath Beyond Inc.'s first quarter 2026 earnings conference call. Joining me on the call today are Executive Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Marcus Lemonis, President Amy Sullivan, Chief Financial Officer Adrian Lee, and Chief Operating Officer Lisa Foley. Today's discussion and our responses to your questions reflect management's views as of today, April 27, 2026 and may include forward looking statements including without limitation, to statements regarding our future business strategy goals, financial performance outlook for the remainder of the quarter or any other period, anticipated growth, stock price, profitability, macroeconomic conditions, the value of any of our brands and investments, relationships with third parties and agreements we are entering into with them, margin improvement, expense reduction, marketing efficiencies, conversion, customer experience, changes to brands or websites, product offerings, the merger agreement with the Container Store, blockchain and tokenization efforts and strategies, and the timing of any of the foregoing. Actual results could differ materially from such statements. Additional information about risks, uncertainties and other important factors that could potentially impact our financial results is included in our Form 10K for the year ended December 31, 2025, in our Form 10Q for the quarter ended March 31, 2026 and in our subsequent filings with the SEC. During this call, we'll discuss certain non GAAP financial measures. Our filings with the SEC, including our first quarter earnings release which is available on our Investor relations [email protected]">[email protected] contain important additional disclosures regarding these non GAAP measures, including reconciliations of these measures to the most comparable GAAP measures. Following Management's prepared remarks, we will open the call for questions. A slide presentation with supporting data is available for download on our Investor Relations website. Please review the important forward looking statements disclosure on slide two of that presentation. With that, Marcus, it's all yours.

Marcus Lemonis (Executive Chairman and Chief Executive Officer)

Thank you so much. I am both honored and privileged to be serving as of January 1st as the CEO of Bed Bath & Beyond and I want to thank everybody for joining. Over the last two years our company has been focused on rebuilding this business, reconstructing the cost structure and lowering the hurdle for profitability with an intense amount of discipline and tough decisions around headcount, legacy technology and the cost of acquiring and retaining our customer base. The objective has been to reposition the company for growth with a definitive point of view of reclaiming profitability coupled with long term durability. That work was not about short term fixes or temporary solutions. It was about making structural changes to how we operate by simplifying the organization, removing layers, materially reducing our cost structure and aligning the team around a clear and consistent set of priorities focused on the homeowner asset allocation and data. These priorities have not changed. Were focused on driving top line growth, operating profitability and building something that is unique, durable and meaningful in the home space. In many cases those decisions were not immediately visible in the numbers last couple years were rough. Declining revenue while dramatically improving margins and lowering the cost structure created short term pressure on the perceived value of our company. Those changes were necessary because without resetting the foundation, there was no path to substantive profitability or to building something with purpose that would last. I knew the changes would take time to show up, but that when they did, they would appear in a way that were durable and repeatable. This is the eighth quarter in a row where the bottom line has improved. Back in January when I laid out our long term plan with our Everything Home 3 Pillow ecosystem, we as a team committed to inflect top line growth while continuing to reduce costs. That happened. We delivered revenue of approximately $248 million up 7% year over year or 9.4%. When you exclude our discontinuing operations from Canada, which marks the first time in 19 quarters that this business has delivered year over year growth, that result occurred concurrently. While our operating cost for the quarter reflected the lowest operating cost structure in over 12 years, the growth we are seeing is emerging from a fundamentally reset operating mindset, not incremental spending or short term activity. That shift becomes clearer as you look beneath the top line. We're acquiring our customers more efficiently, our own channels are performing better and the engagement we are seeing is higher quality. As the quality of the business improves, the financial performance begins to reflect it adjusted ebitda improved by $5 million year over year and our net loss improved by $24 million. At the same time, the underlying trends are moving in the right direction. We're encouraged by the stability of our active customer file with returning customers and orders delivered improving sequentially. These trends are important because they show that the foundation is not only holding up, but it's beginning to build. Stabilizing the business was never the end goal. It was just my Starting Point Everything we are building starts with a simple idea. The home is not a single transaction. It is a life cycle that unfolds over time, providing us with an opportunity to use technology and data to create lifetime value from every single customer relationship. On average, homeowners remain in their home for approximately 11 to 12 years and during that period they move in, maintain their home, improve it, finance it, experience life events, and eventually transition out of it. Historically, those interactions have been fragmented across different companies and disconnected systems. What we are now building is a connected approach. As a reminder, we have organized the business into three pillars that reflect that life cycle. Lifecycle Lifecycle the Omnichannel platform is where the relationship begins. Yeah, the retail business online and in store. Our products and financial services platform allows us to participate more deeply in the economic activity tied to the home. And our home Services platform, maybe the one I'm most excited about, brings us directly physically into the home. Earlier this quarter we completed the first acquisition of our Omni Channel pillar. With the Kirkland's transaction, we acquired Strategic Real Estate, a product development and sourcing organization second to none and Exceptional Management. Additionally, we announced the deal to acquire The Container Store. That transaction gives us Trophy Real Estate that is wildly underutilized, a world class distribution and supply chain system and a home services business with Elfa and ClosetWorks that will move into Pillar 3, a foundational culture and process that will sit at the hub of Pillar one and it comes with exceptional leadership as well. Between those two, we will absorb the capabilities our businesses and our customers want and eliminate all of the redundancies and inefficiencies quickly. Pillar two, our product and financial services group, is just getting started and as noted previously, will include property and casualty insurance and home warranties through a nationwide relationship with Brown and Brown Insurance via the Beyond Home Agency. It will also include America's first homeowner credit union in partnership with a leading credit union. Additionally, this pillar will include our credit card program and product warranties. At the center of this pillar is a transaction agreed to in principle that includes a real estate brokerage, home title company and mortgage brokerage. This acquisition would not only create an origination engine for the overall ecosystem, but through technology and AI, will allow us to meet and transact with tens of millions of customers without a traditional cost of acquisition. The final pillar, and potentially the most exciting, is Pillar three, our home services business. Early this quarter we announced the intent to acquire F9 brands which includes Cabinets to Go Lumber Liquidators, Inc. and South Wind Building Products. This acquisition would serve as a platform Transaction bringing unbelievable executive management, warehouse and supply chain capabilities and over a half a billion dollars of revenue. Attached to that platform are ELFA and ClosetWorks organization systems which were part of The Container Store transaction. Lastly, we've agreed to in principle to acquire a nationwide network of installation and renovation professionals. We believe that's part of building our moat together. We believe this creates a high margin pillar that is defensible against E commerce competitors and firmly differentiate our company as a service provider regardless of what's happening with the economy. But what is equally important, what I want to be very clear about is how we are building this business. We are not acquiring companies for the sake of scale. We are acquiring capabilities. Many of these businesses and brands that I mentioned have had decades of success but struggled more recently as standalone entities. They became burdened with fixed costs, duplicative infrastructure and inefficient cost structures and debt that limited their ability to perform. What we see is something very different. We see capabilities that fill specific roles across our white paper for the entire homeowner life cycle. When you think about the white space of homeownership, each of these businesses represents a critical function that that customer needs over time, across those 11 or 12 years. Our strategy is to extract those capabilities, preserve what makes them valuable and eliminate very strongly eliminate the layers of cost and inefficiency that came with operating them independently. We preserve what works, we remove what does not work, and we connect everything through a single system. Earlier today we announced a partnership with BILT that allows that single operating connectivity system to work for the consumer. When we bring those capabilities together inside of one platform, supported by shared infrastructure and a unified data lake and a single customer identity, they become significantly more powerful together than they ever were apart. This is where our model is fundamentally divergent from traditional consolidation. Most consolidations focus on cost removal. That's part of our model. And we'll continue to eliminate those costs and inefficient operating expenses, including underperforming assets. But the real opportunity is not just cost. The real opportunity is the revenue that we believe we can create by understanding that single sign on unified customer layer, giving each of these brands and each of these businesses an opportunity to cross promote inside of one big data lake. By connecting these businesses through technology and artificial intelligence, we are building a system that allows us to engage with the same customer across multiple needs over time, dramatically lowering our cost of acquisition while increasing the lifetime value that customer could offer us. Each of these businesses has built and retained its own customer base by bringing those customer bases together into a single ecosystem. We create a competitive advantage that allows us to grow revenue at a disproportionate rate compared to standalone competitors. It's over 100 million unique homeowners. That's not theoretical, it's structural. That is our business model when you look across the brands we've acquired and are in the process of acquiring, including Overstock, Bed, Bath and beyond, The Container Store, Bye Bye Baby, Kirkland's Lumber Liquidators, Inc., Alpha Closet Works and Cabinets to go along with our partnerships across insurance, credit warranties and our planned acquisition in brokerage, mortgage, title, installation and renovation. What we are assembling is not a collection of businesses, it's an ecosystem. Each business contributes a capability, each capability strengthens the platform and together they create something significantly more value than the sum of its parts. Each of these pillars has value independently, but the real value is when they work together. That's what allows us to move from serving a customer once to serving the same customer repeatedly over time. With that, I'll turn the call over to Adrienne.

Adrienne Lee

Thank you Marcus. I'll now turn to our first quarter financial results. Revenue increased 7% year over year in the first quarter and 9% if you exclude the impact of discontinuing our Canadian operations. AOV improved 6% driven by our continued focus on improving assortment, driving a healthy mix in the living room, furniture and patio on the Bed Bath & Beyond site and an increased sales mix into overstock. Orders delivered increased by almost 1% in the period. Gross margin landed at 23.9% for the quarter, a decline compared to the same period last year but still within the bounds of our operating range. We maintained effective discounting tactics partially offset by lower sales and marketing expense, lapped loyalty points breakage from 1Q25 and saw benefits from improved carrier costs and exiting underperforming operations. Sales and marketing expense had improved efficiency of 50 basis points as a percent of revenue versus last year. This result was driven by disciplined spend and paid and improved return in own channels. G&A and tech expense of 36 million decreased by 5 million year over year or 8 million if you exclude the impact of one time costs from acquisition related activities. All in adjusted EBITDA came in at a loss of $8 million, a 41% or 5 million improvement versus the first quarter of 2025. Reported adjusted diluted Earnings Per Share (EPS) was a loss of $0.25 per share, a $0.17 improvement year over year. We ended the quarter with cash cash equivalents and restricted cash of 163 million. Cash used in operating activities improved year over year by more than 39 million or 77%, illustrating stabilization of operations. In the quarter, we invested approximately 26 million in acquisition related activities. With that, I'll turn the call over to Amy.

Amy Sullivan (President)

Thank you, Adrienne. Our focus on the operating side is simple. Translate the strategy into consistent, disciplined execution and ensure that as we scale these capabilities, we do it in a way that is efficient, scalable and built to drive sustainable returns. This work is being led by a strong operating team. Lisa is driving execution across operations and shared services, while Kyla, who we announced this afternoon, is leading our technology transformation. Together, they are building the unified data and intelligence layer that connects the ecosystem and enables how we operate and scale. Today, the majority of our revenue is driven by an asset light, increasingly productive e commerce platform. We're pairing that strength with a fleet of more than 320 stores, allowing us to serve the customer across channels while improving productivity and return on assets. As we scale, we are focused on identifying the capabilities that truly drive performance and building around them while decisively eliminating the inefficiencies that come from operating as fragmented, layered businesses. Across the fleet, we are evolving our store formats with clearer roles and stronger economics while taking a disciplined approach to underperforming locations through repositioning, consolidation or exit where returns do not meet our thresholds. That same discipline is driving our merchandising strategy where we are simplifying assortments, improving margin productivity and strengthening vendor partnerships across the organization. We are simplifying how we operate, consolidating systems and teams into a unified platform while removing layers that slow decision making and limit efficiency. This approach extends to our data and engagement layer as announced this morning. Our partnership with Bilt accelerates a unified customer identity and loyalty foundation across the portfolio, strengthening engagement and lifetime value across all our brands. Customer service is central to this transformation. As we consolidate these functions, we are raising the bar across every single brand and every touch point from so the customer experiences consistency regardless of how they engage with us. This is about building an operating model that scales, retaining what drives value and removing what does not. As we continue to integrate new capabilities into the platform, that same approach will apply across the ecosystem, ensuring we preserve what works and remove excess complexity across retail products and financial services and home services. The result is a simpler, more transparent and more accountable organization with a cost structure designed to drive profitable growth. With that, I'll turn back to Marcus to close.

Marcus Lemonis (Executive Chairman and Chief Executive Officer)

Thanks Jamie. What you're seeing this quarter is early proof of a model that is beginning to come together. ...

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Here's How Much You Would Have Made Owning ASML Holding Stock In The Last 5 Years

Benzinga Insights — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 22:15:51 +0000

ASML Holding (NASDAQ:ASML) has outperformed the market over the past 5 years by 5.81% on an annualized basis producing an average annual return of 17.19%. Currently, ASML Holding has a market capitalization of $554.47 billion.

Buying $1000 In ASML: If an investor had bought $1000 of ASML stock 5 years ago, it would be worth $2,162.24 today based on a ...

Full story available on Benzinga.com

Cadence Design Systems Q1 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

Benzinga Insights — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 22:11:23 +0000

On Monday, Cadence Design Systems (NASDAQ:CDNS) discussed first-quarter financial results during its earnings call. The full transcript is provided below.

This transcript is brought to you by Benzinga APIs. For real-time access to our entire catalog, please visit https://www.benzinga.com/apis/ for a consultation.

View the webcast at https://events.q4inc.com/attendee/818860995

Summary

Cadence Design Systems reported a strong Q1 2026 with 19% year-over-year revenue growth, driven by demand for their AI-enabled solutions, resulting in a record backlog of $8 billion.

The company raised its full-year 2026 revenue growth outlook to 17%, reflecting confidence in their expanding agentic AI offerings which are expected to drive increased EDA consumption.

Cadence continues to lead in the semiconductor design transformation with new AI superagents (VitaStack, InnoStack) and a strategic collaboration with Google Cloud, enhancing their cloud-native platform capabilities.

The IP business showed a 22% year-over-year growth with significant competitive wins, while the core EDA business grew 18%, showcasing strong customer adoption of their AI-driven solutions.

Management highlighted robust opportunities in physical AI and emphasized ongoing strategic investments in R&D and go-to-market capabilities, despite short-term dilution from the Hexagon acquisition.

Full Transcript

Abby (Operator)

Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon. My name is Abby and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Cadence first quarter 2026 earnings conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star and then the number one on your telephone keypad. Thank you. And I will now turn the call over to Richard Gu, Vice President of Investor Relations for Cadence. Please go ahead.

Richard Gu (Vice President of Investor Relations)

Thank you, operator. I'd like to welcome everyone to our first quarter of 2026 earnings conference call. I'm joined today by Anirudh Devgan, President and Chief Executive Officer and John Wall, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. The webcast of this call and a copy of today's prepared remarks will be available on our website, cadence.com today's discussion will contain forward looking statements including our outlook on future business and operating results. Due to risks and uncertainties, actual results may differ materially from those projected or implied in today's discussion. For information on factors that could cause actual results to differ, please Refer to our SEC filings, including our most recent Forms 10K and 10Q, CFO commentary and today's earnings release. All forward looking statements during this call are based on estimates and information available to us as of today and we disclaim any obligation to update them. In addition, all financial measures discussed on this call are non GAAP unless otherwise specified. The non GAAP measures should not be considered in isolation from or as a substitute for GAAP results. Reconciliations of GAAP to non GAAP measures are included in today's earnings release. For the Q and A session today, we would ask that you observe a limit of one question only. If time permits, you can re queue with additional questions now. I'll turn the call over to Anirudh.

Anirudh Devgan

Thank you, Richard. Good afternoon everyone and thank you for joining us today. I'm pleased to report that Cadence had a strong start to 2026 with accelerating AI demand and disciplined execution delivering one of the best Q1s in company's history. Our record backlog of of $8 billion was ahead of plan, reflecting strong customer confidence in our AI driven portfolio and its pivotal role in enabling delivery of their increasingly complex chip and system design roadmaps. Given the accelerating momentum of our business, we are raising our 2026 revenue growth outlook to 17% and expect to achieve the rule of 60 for the first time. Sean will provide more details in a moment. Agentic AI era is here, and Cadence is leading the transformation of semiconductor and system design. At Cadence live Silicon Valley 2026, we took a major step towards fully autonomous chip design, pioneering the industry's most advanced and comprehensive Agentic full flow platform. We introduced AgentStack, the head agent framework for our AI super agents which enables knowledge sharing across the design flow and extend autonomous designs from chips to three DIC to systems. Building on our revolutionary chip Stack AI Super Agent for RTL design and verification, we introduced two new breakthrough AI superagents, Vita Stack for analog and Custom Design and InnoStack for digital implementation and sign off. Together, these solutions span the entire chip design flow, creating a connected continuous learning platform that brings the industry closer to comprehensive automation. As the industry begins transitioning to Agentic AI, the need for physically accurate and highly mathematical EDA solutions become even more critical. Our AGENTI AI solutions are built on decades of domain expertise, proprietary data and tightly integrated physically accurate engines delivering high fidelity results. We continue to view our platform as a three layer cake with accelerated compute and data as the base layer, principle, simulation and optimization as the critical middle layer and Agentic AI as the top layer. As I've said before, we believe the greatest value comes from the tight coupling of these layers reinforcing each other to deliver much better results. As these super agents invoke our simulation, verification and implementation engines at scale, we expect them to materially expand to EDA consumption and drive higher usage across our platforms. We announced a strategic collaboration with Google to optimize the chip stack AI Super Agent with Gemini on Google Cloud by combining LLM Reasoning with GCP Scalable Compute. This collaboration delivers a cloud native platform for next generation chip development. In Q1, we furthered our long standard partnership with MediaTek through a wide ranging expansion across our new Agentic AI offerings and core EDA3 DIC and system analysis solutions. Physical AI is emerging as the next big wave of intelligence as AI moves into autonomous systems, autos, drones and robotics, and Cadence is uniquely positioned to lead this transition. The addition of Hexagon's DNE leading structural and multibody dynamics technologies transforms our system analysis portfolio to a leadership position in physical AI, enabling customers to build and train fundamentally new AI world models by narrowing the critical Sim 2 real gap. At cadence Live Silicon Valley, we announced an expanded partnership on AI and robotics with Nvidia. By combining our Agentic AI driven solutions with Nvidia's advanced technologies, we are accelerating engineering workflows and boosting productivity across chip design, physical AI systems and hyperscale AI factories. Now let me provide an update on our businesses. Our IP business continued its strong momentum with 22% year over year revenue growth driven by accelerating demand of AI, High Performance Computing (HPC) and automotive workloads. Growing complexity of advanced node designs and chiplet based architectures is driving strong demands of our differentiated star IP portfolio. Across interface, memory and foundation IP we achieved meaningful competitive wins and customer expansions at marquee accounts reflecting the breadth of our portfolio and more importantly the differentiated performance of our solutions. We closed a record deal with a leading global foundry marking our largest IP engagement with this customer to date and reinforcing our leadership at the most advanced nodes. With strong market tailwinds, focused strategy and expanding customer proliferation, we remain very well positioned for continued growth in ip. Our core EDA business delivered another strong quarter with revenue growing 18% year over year driven by increasing proliferation of our solutions at market shaping customers. Our AI driven solutions and increasingly our Agentic offerings are becoming an important part of customer renewals and expansions. Demand for a hardware accelerated in Q1 resulting in our best quarter ever led by AI, High Performance Computing (HPC) customers and increasing demand in automotive and robotics. Palladium Z3 continues to be the gold standard for emulation and drove multiple competitive displacement. Momentum on verification software grew particularly in Excelium and Verisim. Sim AI and chip stack generated tremendous customer interest with a large number of evaluations underway led by AI driven cadence cerebral solution. Our digital platform continues to gain share especially at the most advanced nodes. A global semiconductor design leader significantly increased their innovus usage and adopted our digital sign off solutions and a marquee AI infrastructure company expanded their usage of our sign off solutions and their leading edge ASIC designs in custom and analog. Our AI driven virtuoso studio continued its strong momentum in design migration and layout automation as it gets increasingly deployed by analog and mixed signal leaders seeking greater productivity. Our system design analysis business delivered 18% year over year revenue growth as AI driven multiphysics simulation and 3D IC become essential to addressing growing system challenges. We have strong momentum in 3Dic where our unified multi die integrated design to analysis flow is helping customers address their rising chiplet and advanced packaging complexities. We also saw strong momentum, insigrity and clarity with multiple memory and advanced IC packaging customers expanding their deployments as they move to higher speed interfaces. Customer adoption is increasing as they look to address signal integrity, power integrity and thermal challenges earlier in the design flow through deployment of a full cadence sign off flow. In closing, I'm pleased with our strong execution and the broad based momentum of our business. As the Agentic AI era unfolds, Cadence is leading the charge to realizing much higher design productivity. Increasing design complexity and the growing need for productivity is creating a compelling long term opportunity for Cadence. With our differentiated solutions and expanding agentiq AI portfolio, I believe we are very well positioned to lead this transition and continue delivering meaningful innovation and value to our customers. Now I will turn it over to John to provide more details on the Q1 results and our updated 2026 outlook.

John Wall (Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer)

Thanks Anirudh and good afternoon everyone. I'm pleased to report that Cadence delivered excellent Results for the first quarter of 2026 with accelerating momentum and broad based strength across all our businesses. Robust design activity coupled with our Solid execution drove 19% year over year Revenue growth and 45% operating margin for Q1 first quarter bookings were ahead of expectations, resulting in record backlog of $8 billion. Here are some of the financial highlights from the first quarter, starting with the P and L total revenue was $1,474,000,000. GAAP operating margin was 29.3%, non GAAP operating margin was 44.7% GAAP EPS was $1.23 and non GAAP EPS was $1.96. Next, turning to the balance sheet and cash flow. Our cash balance was $1,407,000,000, while the principal value of debt outstanding was $2,925,000,000. Operating cash flow was $356,000,000. DSOs were 67 days and we used $200,000,000 to repurchase Cadence shares. Before I provide our updated outlook, I'd like to highlight that it contains the usual assumption that export control regulations that exist today remain substantially similar for the remainder of the year. For our updated outlook for 2026, we expect revenue in the range of $6,125,000,000 to $6,000,000,000 and $225,000,000 dollars. GAAP operating margin in the range of 27.5 to 28.5% non GAAP operating margin in the range Of 43.5 to 44.5% GAAP EPS in the range of $4.39 to $4.49 non GAAP EPS in the range of 7.85 to $7.95 operating cash flow in the range of 1.875 to $1.975 billion and we expect to use approximately 50% of our free cash flow to repurchase Cadence shares in 2026. With that in mind, for Q2, we expect revenue in the range of $1,555,000,000 to $1,595,000,000 GAAP operating margin in the range of 28.5 to 29.5% non GAAP operating margin in the range Of 44.5 to 45.5% GAAP EPS in the range Of $1.07 to $1.13 and non GAAP EPS in the range of $2.02 to $2.08. And as usual, we published a CFO commentary document on our investor relations website which includes our outlook for additional items as well as further analysis and GAAP to non GAAP reconciliations. In conclusion, Cadence is off to a strong start for the year. We are raising our 2026 revenue outlook to approximately 17% year over year growth. As always, I'd like to thank our customers, partners and our employees for their continued support and with that operator we will now take questions.

Abby (Operator)

Thank you. At this time I would like to remind everyone who wants to ask a question to please press STAR and then the number one on your telephone keypad. As a courtesy to all participants, we ask that you please limit yourself to one question. We will pause for just a moment to compile the Q and A roster. And our first question comes from the line of Charles Shih with Needham. Your line is open.

Charles Shih (Equity Analyst)

Hi, good afternoon. Thanks for taking my question. Anirudh, I think I have a pretty high level question, but this is probably top of the mind for a lot of investors. We obviously learned agentic AI is probably good for EDA, good for license, consumption, etc. But we're still hearing some concerns around AI's ability to actually write the software. And there are some doubts around whether AI can actually write better EDA based tools like Based Tool, I mean Virtuoso Universe, those kind of tools. And obviously there are always many EDA startups happening at the same time. And so the question is AI's ability to write software worries you about the defensibility of the EDA based tool business? Obviously, once again we understand that agentic AI is good for consumption of the base tool business, but want to get your thoughts? Thank you.

Anirudh Devgan

Yeah, hi Charles, thanks for the question. So I mean there are multiple parts to this. Of course I'm super excited about agentic AI applied to chip design and eda. And your question is more specific to the base tool and whether AI can write those base tools. So first of all, I'm very confident in our position in the base tool and our competitive advantage. And just to remind everyone, I mean we have about 15,000 people now in cadence. About 10,000 are in R and D. We have more than half of them have advanced degrees. I think more than thousand of them have PhDs from the top universities. So we will anyway deploy AI internally like we are to write our software better. But I'm not worried that some other party will be able to write any better base tools. And our competitor of the base tool is anyway best in class. And I don't see any reason that will change going forward. Okay, now what I'm super excited that we launched in CadenceLIVE is the agentic part and the interplay of the agentic tools with the base tools, the AI orchestration combined with physical accurate based tools. And that creates new opportunities for us both in terms of TAM expansion. Because what agentic AI allows us to, is to sell products in spaces we didn't have products before, like RTL generation, verification, plan generation. And those products I think will be consumed more on a subscription plus consumption model. So this is entirely a new category for Cadence. And then in turn, like you said, agentic AI will drive more of our base tools. So I feel pretty good about this kind of three layer framework we have talked about and confident going forward.

Abby (Operator)

And our next question comes from the line of Jason Salino with Keybanc Capital Markets. Your line is open.

Jason Salino (Equity Analyst)

Great, thank you so much. Maybe just a clarifying question. So I noticed that the operating margin guide, you know, it's coming down, you know, by a little bit curious if, if like what are the main drivers of that? John and I know we're layering in kind of the Hexagon acquisition, but on like an absolute basis it's, it's relatively small layering in that, that opex. So maybe you can just help, help us understand the, the guide on the margin. Thank you.

John Wall (Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer)

Yeah, sure, Jason, thanks for the question. Yeah. What you're seeing there is primarily the impact of including the hexagon design and engineering business in the current outlook. The strategic opportunity there is very large. But the 2026 PNL reflects the timing of integration that the, we announced in the press release when we, when we closed the deal that we expect 160 million of revenue this year. That's, that's in the guide now. We expect it to be dilutive by about 28 cents. The margin impact on the 160 million is kind of in the 5 to 10% range. But, but the dilution comes from, because we paid 30% of the acquisition price in shares and 70% in cash. So the interest component or the loss interest income on the cash causes a lot of the dilution impact in the short term. We'd expect it to be accretive in 2027. So I think the way to think about it is financially 2026 is an integration year and the guide includes the acquired cost base, the financing impact, the acquisition related integration costs and kind of near term dilution. And that's why revenue moves higher while EPS and operating margin are lower than the February guide. So yeah, it's 160 million. And I think in Q1 the impact was slightly less on the EPS that we had about 20 million of revenue from Q1 from Hexagon, so only about $0.01 kind of dilution impact. So EPS would have been like $0.01 higher if we didn't have Hexagon.

Abby (Operator)

And our next question comes from the line of Vivek Arya with Bank of America securities. Your line is open.

Vivek Arya (Equity Analyst)

Thanks for taking my question. You know, Aniruddh, in the last year all we have been hearing nonstop are different news about chip shortages and growing kind of price of chips and just, you know, the pricing power that many of your customers have. And my question is what effect do shortages and the fact your customers have more pricing power, what effect does that have on their engagement with cadence? You know, does it restrict Chip start? Does it shift them towards higher ASP products? Just, just what impact do semiconductor shortages have on your growth and engagement trajectory? What, what has changed and ...

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Chris Katje — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 22:00:18 +0000

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Intel Vs. Nvidia: Dow Jones Swap Results

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Full Transcript: Amkor Tech Q1 2026 Earnings Call

Benzinga Insights — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 21:49:29 +0000

Amkor Tech (NASDAQ:AMKR) reported first-quarter financial results on Monday. The transcript from the company's first-quarter earnings call has been provided below.

Benzinga APIs provide real-time access to earnings call transcripts and financial data. Visit https://www.benzinga.com/apis/ to learn more.

The full earnings call is available at https://event.choruscall.com/mediaframe/webcast.html?webcastid=83oloXM1

Summary

Amkor Tech reported record first quarter revenue of $1.68 billion, a 27% increase year-on-year, driven by growth across all end markets, with communications showing the strongest growth.

The company continues to invest in advanced packaging platforms, including hdfo, flip chip, and test, and is expanding its geographic footprint with new facilities in Arizona and Korea.

Amkor Tech expects second-quarter revenue between $1.75 and $1.85 billion, with projected gross margins of 14.5% to 15.5% and a full-year CapEx estimate of $2.5 to $3 billion.

Management highlighted strong demand in the semiconductor industry, while closely monitoring risks such as geopolitical tensions and material supply constraints.

The company is preparing for a multi-year value creation journey, with a focus on advanced packaging and strategic partnerships, and anticipates a significant ramp-up in the compute segment driven by AI and data center applications.

Full Transcript

OPERATOR

Good day ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the Amkor Technology first quarter 2026 earnings call. My name is Diego and I will be your conference facilitator today. At this time all participants are in a listen only mode. After the speaker's remarks, we will conduct a question and answer session. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to Jennifer Ju, Head of Investor Relations. Ms. Ju, please go ahead.

Jennifer Ju (Head of Investor Relations)

Good afternoon and welcome to Amcor's first quarter 2026 earnings conference call. Joining me today are CEO Kevin Engle and CFO Megan Faust. Our earnings press release was filed with the SEC this afternoon and is available on the Investor Relations page of our website along with the presentation slides that accompany today's call. During this presentation we will use non GAAP financial measures and you can find the reconciliation to the comparable GAAP financial measures in the slides. We will make forward looking statements today based on our current beliefs, assumptions and expectations. Please refer to our press release for a disclaimer on forward looking statements and our SEC filings for a discussion on the risk factors and uncertainties that may affect our future results. I will now turn the call over to Kevin.

Kevin Engle (Chief Executive Officer)

Thank you Jennifer Good afternoon everyone. Thank you for joining us today. Amkor delivered a strong start to the year, achieving record first quarter revenue of $1.68 billion, up 27%. Year on year we saw growth across all end markets and we're encouraged by the breadth of demand we're seeing across our technology platforms. Communications delivered the strongest growth and mainstream posted its fourth consecutive quarter of both sequential and year on year growth. Leading chip companies continue to trust us for their advanced packaging and test needs. We are clearly benefiting from our partnerships and our leading technology as we execute on a growing set of advanced packaging programs. Earnings per diluted share were $0.33, significantly higher than last year, reflecting disciplined execution and continued progress on our margin initiatives. Overall, this was a quarter that reflected momentum and demand, disciplined execution by our teams and continued preparation for the advanced packaging ramps we expect in the second half of the year. As we discussed last quarter, overall semiconductor demand is robust. The industry backdrop remains dynamic. We are closely monitoring export controls and evaluating trade policies. We see supply dynamics around advanced silicon, advanced substrates and memory and are managing these risks with agility alongside our customers and suppliers. Some customer supplied materials are being delayed causing nonlinear loading. This has been expected and we are prioritizing production where materials are available to minimize impact. Uncertainty related to the geopolitical events in the Middle East have increased over the last few months to date, we have not seen any supply disruptions related to these dynamics. However, conditions in the region are putting additional pressure on material pricing. We're working closely with our customers to offset these increases across the supply chain. Now let me share an update on our strategic initiatives. First, elevating technology leadership. We continue to invest in advanced packaging platforms including HDFO, flip chip and test. These are critical to next generation AI and high performance computing as discussed last quarter. We are engaged on several HDFO programs this year and the newest Data Center CPU program is expected to begin ramping this quarter. Our preparations in Korea remain on track to scale this program into high volume the second half of the year. Overall, we see increasing opportunities for the compute market from a diverse customer base. Second, expanding our geographic footprint in 2026. Our priorities include meeting construction milestones of our Arizona facility and expanding manufacturing space in Korea. In Arizona, we are excited to see the progress as we wrap up foundation work and move towards building steel construction. Construction of phase one is planned to be completed in 2027 in Korea. The new test building is on track for completion at the end of this year. This will provide incremental space to support data center demand going into 2027. Third, enhancing our strategic partnerships in key markets, we continue to strengthen collaboration with customers across the ecosystem including foundries, fabless companies, IDMs and OEMs. As part of our partnership engagement model, our customers are making contributions that help align technology roadmaps, support our capital investment and enable rapid ramps as new capacity comes online. Across all three pillars, we remain focused on margin improvements driven by operational excellence, increased utilization, favorable pricing and a sustained mix shift towards higher value advanced packaging. Our mainstream factories in the Philippines are seeing improving demand and we're continuing to optimize cost. In Japan, utilization of our advanced sites in Korea and Taiwan is increasing, improving profitability. In just over three weeks, we will host our 2026 Investor Day. This will give us an opportunity to provide deeper view into our strategic pillars. We will explain Amcor's position as the semiconductor industry turns to advanced packaging for value creation. We are well positioned for this shift and we are at the beginning of a multi year value creation journey. We're excited about our future. We look forward to sharing more of our story at the event on May 21st. I'll now turn the call over to Megan to provide more details on our first quarter performance and near term outlook.

Megan Faust (Chief Financial Officer)

Thank you Kevin and good afternoon everyone. Amkor delivered record first quarter revenue of $1.68 billion, increasing 27% year on year revenue was above the midpoint of guidance driven by stronger than expected performance across all end markets except computing where we saw softness in PCs and laptops. The communications end market was the largest contributor to our year on year growth increasing 42%. We saw healthy demand across premium tier smartphones, especially iOS due to our strong footprint in the current generation. Android demand also remained healthy for the second quarter. Communications revenue is expected to be stronger than seasonal increasing mid to high single digits sequentially driven by continued strength in the iOS ecosystem. Revenue in the computing end market increased 19% year on year. Record revenue within AI data center applications was driven by broad based strength across multiple customers. This was partially offset by softness in PCs and laptops. Computing is expected to grow mid single digits sequentially in the second quarter driven by the ramp of the new HDFO data center CPU device that Kevin mentioned. Automotive and industrial revenue increased 28% year on year. ADAS and infotainment demand drove record revenue for advanced technology in this end market. The recovery in the mainstream portion of automotive and industrial continued with Q1 marking the fourth consecutive quarter of sequential growth. Revenue within the automotive and industrial end market is expected to grow mid single digits sequentially in Q2. Consumer revenue increased 4% year on year due to broad based improvement in demand across customers. Revenue in Q2 is expected to grow low teens percent sequentially driven by wearable products. Gross margin of 14.2% exceeded the high end of our Q1 guidance range primarily due to favorable product mix. Gross profit for the quarter was $239 million, up 52% from last year due to increased volume and focused cost management. Operating expenses for $139 million for Q1 operating income was $100 million and operating income margin was 6%, an improvement of 360 basis points year on year. Our effective tax rate for the quarter was 12.8% lower than our full year target of 20% due to discrete tax benefits recognized in the quarter. Net income was $83 million and EPS was $0.33. EBITDA was $285 million and EBITDA margin was 16.9%. As we have grown revenue by delivering high value advanced packaging technology to our customers, we are benefiting from the operating leverage in our model. In addition, our actions to structurally manage costs are showing up in our results demonstrating our ability to drive sustained margin improvement. As of March 31st we held $1.8 billion in cash and short term investments and total liquidity was $2.9 billion. Total debt was $1.4 billion and our debt to EBITDA ratio was 1.1 times. Our strong balance sheet provides the financial flexibility and liquidity for this next investment cycle. Now Turning to our second quarter outlook, building on the strong momentum in the first quarter, Q2 revenue is expected to be between 1.75 and $1.85 billion, representing a 7% sequential increase at the midpoint. Gross margin is projected to be between 14.5 and 15.5%. We expect operating expenses of approximately $120 million, which includes a gain on the sale of real estate of approximately $20 million. Our full year 2026 effective tax rate is expected to be around 20%. Net income is forecasted to be between 105 and $130 million, resulting in EPS between 42 and 52 cents. Our 2026 CapEx estimate remains at 2.5 to $3 billion. As a reminder, 65 to 70% is projected for facilities expansion including phase one of our Arizona campus. About 30 to 35% is projected for HDFO test and other advanced packaging capacity. The remaining spend is projected for R and D and quality programs. We anticipate elevated CAPEX spend for facilities expansion through 2027 as we complete phase one of our Arizona campus. At that point we will begin recognizing depreciation and other startup costs as we build and train the workforce ahead of production in 2028. Similar to our Vietnam ramp up phase, these preparation costs will be recognized in OPEX until programs are qualified for production, at which point they will transition to cost of goods sold. As a result, we anticipate this will start to dilute operating income margin by approximately 1 to 2% beginning in 2027 and improving in 2028. Once at full scale, we expect Arizona will be a significant driver of operating income margin expansion reflecting the benefits of high value advanced packaging at what is planned to be our most automated factory to wrap up we are pleased with our first quarter performance and the momentum we are building in 2026. We remain confident in the full year outlook we provided last quarter with revenue growth driven by acceleration in computing and strong growth in advanced automotive. Our focus and discipline as we execute on our strategic pillars positions us well to continue generating improved financial results and sustained shareholder value. I would like to emphasize Kevin's remarks regarding our upcoming Investor Day. We are embarking on a multi year value creation journey, investing today to drive materially stronger earnings power in the future. We look forward to sharing more with you at our event on May 21st. This concludes our prepared remarks. We will now open the call up for your questions. Operator.

OPERATOR

Thank you. And at this time we will conduct our question and answer session. In order to get through as many questions in the time allotted, please limit yourselves to one question and one follow up question. To ask your question, press Star 1 on your telephone keypad. The confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star two if ...

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