Market News: Earnings Edition

January 28, 2026

Earnings season is in full swing. Today alone, we get earnings from 28 members of the S&P 500. Below are highlights from some of the bigger movers.

ASML (ASML)

ASML is the world’s only maker of EUV lithography machines, which use light to print microscopic circuits onto silicon boards.  (They have to use light because the chips are impossibly small now.  Their technology is the equivalent of shining a laser from earth to hit a coin on the moon.) 

Results for last quarter were roughly inline with street estimates.  But new orders from strong AI demand were much higher than expected.  As such, revenue guidance for the full year is now higher than expected. 

Texas Instruments (TXN)

Yes, this is the same company that made your calculator in high school.  Well, TXN also makes analog semiconductors — thousands of small chips that make electrification of the world possible.  These are the chips in your refrigerator, car, or home electric thermostat.  As such, these chips are more economically cyclical from the industrial and telecom markets.  For the first time, mgmt broke out sales related to data center demand.   It’s relatively small  but growing rapidly – up 70% vs last year.

Reported sales were inline, but margins were slightly better than expected.  Importantly, guidance for next quarter was stronger than expected.  That’s driving the shares higher.

Seagate Tech (STX)

Seagate technology makes storage.  Specifically, mega-size disk drives and high capacity storage.  This is much different than the storage chip you’d find in your iPhone or in a high-speed server.  Their drives are used for massive “data lakes” used to train AI models.  Again because of AI, demand is very strong.  Operating margins set a new record.   STX and its main competitor Western Digital (WDC) are rising on the news.

Amphenol (APH)

APH makes fiber optic connectors and networking cable.  Needless to say, its products are in demand at data centers.  The stock is down on confusing guidance, as well as very high expectations going into the print. 

Guidance for next quarter was well above street estimates, but only because of a recently completed acquisition.  Without the accretion from the acquisition, sales growth was about inline.  It’s unclear if all street estimates included the acquisition or not.  Shares are falling sharply. However, they were up over 20% this month, perhaps anticipating a blowout quarter.

Starbucks (SBUX)

SBUX reported strong numbers, under an ongoing turnaround led by new CEO Brian Niccol (the former CEO of Chipotle). Same store sales grew healthy +4%.  Total transactions grew for the first time in two years.  Perhaps most importantly, gross profit margins increased y/y for the first time in two years.  Growth is still at the slow end, and the numbers look good partially because they were so weak last year.  But you cant argue with results!  We’ll see if Brian can keep moving the ship in the right direction.

MSCI (MSCI)

MSCI reported continued strong revenue growth and margin expansion.  MSCI is the investment world “referee”.  They have maintain over 280,000 equity indices that track the specific markets or sectors within the stock market.  When a new ETF is created to track one of those indices, they get licensing fees.  As such, much of their revenue is steady recurring subscription revenue.  The company reported double-digit EPS growth for the 11^th straight year.

Corning (GLW)

We talked about Corning yesterday after their big new deal with Meta.   They also reported earnings this morning and everything was about inline.  The company reported over 20% revenue growth, driven primarily by the optical communications and solar segments.