Daily newsletter · Fri 9 Oct 2026
 | Sharespective Wall Street, before morning tea | Daily newsletter Fri 9 Oct 2026 |
 Counting the Revenue Plus: Starbucks has looked at buying Chipotle, the chain its boss used to run. |
Good morning. US markets fell for a second day on Thursday, and the NASDAQ Composite did most of the falling. It dropped 1.25% to 27,193.34. The S&P 500 lost 0.47%, while the Dow edged up 0.10%.
Chipmakers took the worst of it after a report shrank OpenAI's revenue. Oil went the other way. Brent crude settled 4.1% higher at US$104.28 a barrel on Iranian attacks on tankers, then gave up some ground when Donald Trump promised no strike on Iran before the 3 November midterms.
In company news, Pacira BioSciences jumped 44.4% after Viatris agreed to buy the maker of non-opioid painkillers for US$36.50 a share in cash, about US$1.65 billion. Elsewhere, PepsiCo rose 3.73% because quarterly earnings beat forecasts, even as it cut its full-year profit growth outlook to between 1% and 2%. Finally, Palantir gained 2.4% after Goldman Sachs turned positive on the shares.
Hold the chips.
Market snapshot
S&P 500 7,765.36 ▼ 0.47% | | NASDAQ 27,193.34 ▼ 1.25% | | NZX 50 13,691.85 ▲ 0.06% |
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ASX 200 8,660.95 ▼ 0.77% | | Oracle US$135.69 ▼ 5.48% | | Haemonetics US$119.47 ▲ 17.46% |
| TECH |
A report put OpenAI's revenue US$20 billion short, and Oracle fell 5.48%
Oracle fell 5.48% to US$135.69 on Thursday, and Nvidia lost 2.94% to US$230.48. The Financial Times reported that OpenAI told investors its annualised revenue was approaching US$50 billion. Figures widely reported last month put it nearer US$70 billion.
So what is annualised revenue? It is a recent month's sales multiplied by 12, a quick way for a fast-growing company to show its size. The FT put part of the gap down to counting. Anthropic, OpenAI's closest rival, includes sales made through cloud partners such as Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud, and OpenAI does not.
Oracle has the most riding on the answer. OpenAI is one of its largest cloud customers, and Oracle builds data centres for it. Its remaining performance obligations, revenue it has signed up but not yet booked, stood at US$664 billion last quarter.
The Wall Street Journal added to Oracle's day. It reported that Oracle is talking to Apollo and Goldman Sachs about a new way to pay for chips: investors would fund a separate company to buy them, and Oracle would lease them over time.
The selling spread through the chip sector. Intel lost 5.34% to US$107.08, even though it confirmed it is still working on Elon Musk's Terafab chipmaking venture.
The open question whether a US$20 billion gap is just two companies counting differently, or a sign that AI customers are bringing in less than the build-out assumes. I'd want to see OpenAI report on one consistent basis before reading much into a single day. |
| DEALS |
Starbucks has looked at buying Chipotle, and Chipotle's shares rose 6.21%
Chipotle Mexican Grill rose 6.21% to US$32.68 on Thursday. The Financial Times reported that Starbucks has worked with advisers in recent months on a possible takeover of the burrito chain, which was worth nearly US$39 billion before the report.
Why would a coffee chain want burritos? The link is Brian Niccol. He ran Chipotle for six years and joined Starbucks as chief executive in September 2024. He is widely credited with Chipotle's long run of sales growth.
Chipotle has struggled since he left. Its shares closed on Wednesday 37% below where they finished on the day his move was announced. Reuters reports softer traffic as diners cut back, and higher food and labour costs.
Starbucks shares had a wild day. They fell as much as 6.7% to US$87.35, then recovered to close 0.40% lower at US$93.21. Neither company responded to Reuters.
Starbucks is worth about US$107 billion, so a deal is possible. Lale Akoner of eToro said one could require heavy borrowing or issuing new shares.
Not so fast exploring a deal is a long way from making an offer. Starbucks is still paying for its own turnaround, and Niccol would have to persuade his shareholders that fixing two chains at once beats fixing one. |
| HEALTH CARE |
CSL is moving its American plasma centres back to Haemonetics, and the shares jumped 17.46%
Haemonetics rose 17.46% to US$119.47 on Thursday. CSL Plasma, the collection arm of Melbourne's CSL, now plans to move all its current US centres onto Haemonetics' NexSys collection machines by the end of 2027.
Why does a plasma machine matter so much? CSL collects plasma from donors and turns it into medicines. Each donation needs a machine and a single-use kit, and Haemonetics sells both. CSL runs more than 300 centres in America, so the kits mean repeat sales for years.
This is a reunion. In 2021 CSL told Haemonetics it would not renew their supply contract, which brought in US$88.6 million that year, or 10.2% of revenue. CSL moved its centres to Terumo's Rika machines and finished the switch in mid-2025.
The two signed a new agreement in August, covering only some centres, with the timing left open. Thursday's update covers all of them. The deal is still non-exclusive, and Haemonetics says the scope and timing can change.
What to watch the November results call, where Haemonetics has promised to put a number on the deal. Until then the 17% rise is the market's estimate. Our read is that the non-exclusive clause matters, because CSL has switched suppliers once already. |
Newsworthy numbers
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5.618% the yield America paid on Thursday to sell US$22 billion of 30-year bonds, up from 5.308% at September's sale. Bids came in at 2.54 times the amount on offer, so somebody still wants to lend to Washington for three decades. | | 29.5% the growth FactSet expects in S&P 500 companies' September-quarter earnings. That would be a third straight quarter above 25%. |
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A$364 how much more a month someone with a A$600,000, 25-year mortgage is paying than in January, after the Reserve Bank's four rises this year. | | NZ$8.7 billion New Zealand's government deficit for the year to June, excluding ACC. That is NZ$3.2 billion smaller than the Budget forecast, mostly thanks to higher tax revenue. |
Worth a read
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01 | Have rates peaked? Brokers and economists weigh in — William Farrington on where Australian rates go after the Reserve Bank's fourth rise of 2026. AMP's Shane Oliver thinks they have probably peaked but doesn't expect a cut until August 2027. |
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02 | Awkward: Saudi Arabia's new EV brand takes on the U.S. rival it already controls — Indranil Ghosh on Ceer, a carmaker owned by the same Saudi wealth fund that holds about 58% of Lucid. Its factory near Jeddah is built for 240,000 cars a year. |
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03 | From what babies wear to who they are: Carter's big shift — Bill Meincke on the 161-year-old baby-clothes maker, which holds 21% of the American market and saw adjusted operating income fall 39% last year. |
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04 | Scientists Found Homo Erectus 200,000 Years Earlier Than Expected — Jesse Martin's La Trobe University team describes a 2-million-year-old adult skull fragment from Drimolen Cave in South Africa. A rival species there outnumbered our ancestor more than 10 to one. |
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05 | Inside the Subreddit Where Men Share Their Dinners - And Their Most Intimate Feelings — Zack Hauptman's GQ piece on r/BoyDinnerDiaries, where men post photos of modest meals and say what is actually bothering them. |
Wrapping up
America's September consumer price index lands at 1.30am Thursday in Auckland and 11.30pm Wednesday in Sydney. Producer prices follow a day later. With Brent back above US$100, the energy line is the one to watch.
Goldman Sachs and Johnson & Johnson report before Tuesday's New York open, early Wednesday here; Goldman's trading revenue is the line to watch. Australia's September jobs figures land at 11.30am Thursday, Sydney time, after unemployment rose to 4.6% in August, its highest in almost five years.
The kiwi barely moved, leaving USD/NZD at 1.78. USD/AUD held at 1.44.
Last weekend of the school holidays in New Zealand. See you tomorrow.