By coinnews 
00:00 Speaker A
We’ve got some trending tickers. We’re watching this morning, Apple, meta, Intel, and SAP here. First up, the EU hitting Apple and meta with fines totaling up to $798 million for violating its tough new antitrust rules. While the penalties under the EU’s new Digital Markets Act are lower than previous fines, the companies must comply within 60 days or face further charges here. We’re actually looking at shares of both of these companies higher, at least pre-market, but of course, there is pretty much a, everything rally as of right now coming into the start of today’s trade.
00:37 Speaker B
And of course, that’s going to lift these big tech names. But what’s really interesting about this fine is it’s actually a little bit lesser than the fines that we typically see coming out of the EU for these big tech firms. Is that a sign that the EU is trying to play ball with the Trump administration amid the ongoing tariff war, or is it something else? Of course, remains to be seen the fine. Some $700 million euros, obviously lower than the usual amount for these types of fines on these issues. But next up, let’s get to another name we’re watching. Intel set to announce plans to cut more than 20% of its staff this week. That’s according to Bloomberg News reporting. The troubled chip maker is looking to make big changes under its new CEO. The company looking to get rid of its current bureaucracy by trimming management and focusing on an engineering-driven culture. That really stood out to me when taking a look at this announcement. It is set to come this week. And of course, this is one of the biggest moves made by the current CEO after the ousting of Pat Gelsinger, after some of the company’s issues. You can see those shares up a little over five and a half percent right now.
01:55 Speaker A
Yeah, and the company has essentially been looking at the totality of its business and trying to figure out where it can offer up certain parts of the business to, and you could see a lot of private equity, similar to what they already did with that 51% stake that was sold of its Altera programmable chip business to Silver Lake. You could see even more of that private equity interest start to flow in around Intel, and we’ll see exactly what that does for the movement of shares, shareholder value, as of right now, pre-market, you’re seeing that move higher by about 5%. But on the whole, if you’re looking out to the past year, it’s been a rough go of it for Intel, and now trying to figure out where they’re going to continue to get some of, perhaps the earmarked dollars that actually get put forward. Now, it’s trickier because it’s administration over administration that they’re trying to get some of those profit promises fulfilled for chip investment and manufacturing as well here.
03:22 Speaker B
Absolutely.
03:24 Speaker A
Finally here, German software company SAP beating Wall Street’s expectations in its first quarter and maintaining its full year guidance sending shares higher. SAP, which is now Europe’s largest company by market cap, overtaking Novo Nordisk last month, saying it will be able to navigate President Trump’s changing tariff policies here. Shares of SAP up by about 9.7%. One of my former employers, proud enough to say, on this move to the upside for their overall value with Europe. And I think one of the larger things for SAP and how they’ve continued to insulate their business over time, regardless of administration, is making sure that they do have this strong portfolio of clients that they can sell further into. It’s very much been an acquired to grow type of business over the years. We’ll see how much of the dollars internally they start to put towards homegrown solutions as well here.
04:39 Speaker B
Yeah, and it’s certainly a good read on some of the other names in the space. Obviously, we’re seeing a lot of lift this morning off the back of a slew of positive catalysts for the market here. But certainly seen a lift in some of the peers in this space, particularly when you look at the likes of Oracle, Microsoft, and potentially a signal to come for IBM as they are set to report this week as well.