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ALEX: Welcome to Beta Finch, your AI-powered earnings breakdown! Today we're digging into Goldman Sachs' third quarter 2026 results, and Jordan, this is a juicy one.

JORDAN: It really is. But before we get into it — this podcast is AI-generated content for educational and entertainment purposes only. Nothing we discuss should be considered investment advice. Always do your own research and consult a qualified financial advisor before making any investment decisions.

ALEX: Right, so let's set the scene. Goldman posted net revenues of $18.7 billion for Q3 — the second highest in company history — with EPS of $17.01. ROE came in at 18.7%, ROTE at 20.5%.

JORDAN: And here's the twist — those numbers actually understate how strong the quarter was. Goldman made an accelerated charitable contribution of about $450 million, pulling forward roughly five years of planned philanthropic giving. Strip that out, and EPS would've been closer to $18, with ROE near 20% and ROTE around 21.5%.

ALEX: Interesting move — basically front-loading generosity during a strong quarter. Let's talk segments. Global Banking & Markets was the engine here, $13.5 billion in revenue, second-highest ever.

JORDAN: Advisory revenue hit a record, $1.7 billion, up 18% year-over-year. Goldman's still the king of M&A — they advised on $1.5 trillion in announced deals year-to-date, with a lead over their closest competitor of about $430 billion. That's the biggest lead they've ever had.

ALEX: Big names in there too — the Hugging Face sale to NVIDIA for $13 billion, Integer Holdings' $6 billion sale to KKR.

JORDAN: Equities was the real standout though — $6.4 billion in revenue, up 72% year-over-year. Financing revenue within equities rose 96% to a record, driven by elevated prime balances and a lot of activity in Asia.

ALEX: That Asia buildout keeps coming up. Management's been investing there deliberately for years, and it's clearly paying off now.

JORDAN: FICC was more muted — basically flat year-over-year — but financing revenue there rose too. And here's the headline stat for anyone tracking Goldman's long-term strategy: financing now makes up over 40% of combined FICC and Equities revenue year-to-date. That's a durability story, not just a trading story.

ALEX: Which ties into something David Solomon kept hammering — durable revenues have more than doubled since the 2020 Investor Day and now represent about 45% of total revenue year-to-date. That's a structural shift in how Goldman makes money.

JORDAN: Let's not skip Asset & Wealth Management, because the growth there was staggering. Management and other fees hit a record $3.6 billion, up 22% year-over-year. Assets under supervision reached $4.1 trillion — a record — with $97 billion in long-term inflows. That's 35 consecutive quarters of net inflows.

ALEX: Thirty-five quarters. That's not luck, that's a flywheel.

JORDAN: Wealth Management alone pulled in $47 billion in long-term inflows, way ahead of their 5% annual growth target — they're annualizing at 12%. And on the alternatives side, they raised their full-year fundraising target to roughly $150 billion, up from the original $75 to $100 billion range.

ALEX: They're also buying their way into new capabilities — the NEOS acquisition for derivative income ETFs, and LCN Capital Partners for triple net lease real estate. Solomon was clear this isn't opportunistic; it's a six-plus year strategy to scale the asset management platform.

JORDAN: Now, the Q&A had some great moments. One analyst asked David Solomon directly about succession rumors that had been circulating in the press.

ALEX: And Solomon shut that down pretty firmly, saying there's "no succession transition or timeline underway" and that he and the board are singularly focused on growing the firm.

JORDAN: There was also a really candid exchange about AI infrastructure financing. Sol

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WELCOME TO BETA FINCH, your AI-powered earnings breakdown. Let's get into Dell's blowout quarter.

ALEX: Welcome to Beta Finch, your AI-powered earnings breakdown. I'm Alex, here with Jordan, and today we're digging into Dell Technologies' fiscal Q2 2027 results. Before we get started — this podcast is AI-generated content for educational and entertainment purposes only. Nothing we discuss should be considered investment advice. Always do your own research and consult a qualified financial advisor before making any investment decisions.

JORDAN: And Alex, this is one of those quarters where you just have to start with the headline numbers, because they're kind of staggering. Revenue of $47 billion, up 58% year-over-year. EPS of $7.04, up 203%.

ALEX: Up 203%! That's not a typo. And it wasn't a fluke — this caps off a first half where revenue hit $90.8 billion, up 71%, and EPS grew 208% to $11.90 over the two quarters combined.

JORDAN: Right, and the engine behind all of this is the Infrastructure Solutions Group — ISG. Record revenue there, $31.8 billion, up 89%. Operating income of $4.8 billion at a 15% margin, up 620 basis points year-over-year.

ALEX: Let's talk AI servers specifically, because the numbers are honestly hard to wrap your head around. Dell booked $60.9 billion in AI orders in just this one quarter — a record. They recognized $16.4 billion in AI server revenue, and they're exiting the quarter with $95 billion in AI backlog.

JORDAN: And zoom out — over the trailing twelve months, that's $131.7 billion in AI orders booked. CEO Jeff Clarke even floated that the total addressable opportunity here, factoring in agentic AI and inference demand, could be over $1 trillion through 2030.

ALEX: But here's what I thought was the most underrated storyline — it's not just AI. Traditional servers grew 122%. CFO David Kennedy said in just the last two quarters, Dell generated almost as much traditional server and networking revenue as in any full prior year in company history.

JORDAN: That's a huge data point. And when analysts pushed on this during Q&A — asking essentially, "is this just pricing and prebuys, not real demand?" — Clarke was pretty direct. He said demand actually outstripped supply. The driver is a genuine refresh cycle: 1.2 million assets in customers' installed base are still on 14th-generation servers or older. Those need to be consolidated onto newer 17G or 18G hardware, and the consolidation ratios are wild — up to 12 to 14 old servers replaced by a single new 18G box.

ALEX: Plus there's a security angle — things like post-quantum cryptography requirements are forcing infrastructure upgrades regardless of AI.

JORDAN: Storage was another bright spot people might've overlooked. Revenue up 26%, and this is Dell's sixth consecutive quarter of above-market demand growth for its own Dell IP storage products. PowerStore grew for the ninth straight quarter. Clarke made the point that AI agents are generating massive new volumes of log and trace data that all needs to be stored and protected — so storage is picking up an AI tailwind too.

ALEX: And Client Solutions Group — the PC business — grew 20%, its fastest pace in five years. Commercial revenue up 22%, eighth straight quarter of growth.

JORDAN: What really stood out to me on the financial discipline side is the operating expense story. Dell's full-year OpEx guide is now roughly 8% of revenue — the lowest in the company's 42-year history. That's genuine operating leverage from internal modernization efforts, not just riding a demand wave.

ALEX: That shows up directly in margins — operating income grew 160% to $5.9 billion, way outpacing revenue growth. And on capital returns, they bought back $3.9 billion in stock and returned an all-time record $4.3 billion to shareholders this quarter alone.

JORDAN: One nuance from the Q&A worth flagging for listeners: when asked about supply constraints, Clar

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WELCOME TO BETA FINCH, YOUR AI-POWERED EARNINGS BREAKDOWN

ALEX: Welcome to Beta Finch, your AI-powered earnings breakdown. Today we're diving into Citigroup's third quarter 2026 results, and there's a lot to unpack. But before we get into it, this podcast is AI-generated content for educational and entertainment purposes only. Nothing we discuss should be considered investment advice. Always do your own research and consult a qualified financial advisor before making any investment decisions.

JORDAN: Alright, Alex, let's get into it because Citi had a genuinely strong quarter. Best third-quarter revenue in a decade. That's not a small claim.

ALEX: It's not. Net income came in at $5.2 billion, EPS of $2.85, and return on tangible common equity — ROTCE — at 11.5%. Revenue was up 8% year-over-year to $23.8 billion, and they grew in four out of five business segments.

JORDAN: And the standout was services, up 15%. That's the transaction banking and custody business — deposits, commercial card spend, trade loans, cross-border activity, all of it moving in the right direction. Assets under custody grew 16%.

ALEX: CEO Jane Fraser called it broad-based growth, and the numbers back that up. ROTCE for services alone was over 31% this quarter. That's an incredibly profitable business.

JORDAN: Wealth management was another bright spot — revenue up 15%, ROTCE over 14%, and they brought in $38 billion in net new investment assets, more than double what they pulled in a year ago.

ALEX: Markets revenue was up 6%, with equities particularly strong — up 14%, largely on the back of their prime services build-out. Prime balances grew over 40%. CFO Gonzalo Luchetti talked about them scaling that business after admittedly being late to invest in equities.

JORDAN: Banking was up 6% too, with ECM — equity capital markets — up 77%. They played a role in six of the quarter's largest transactions, including the SK Hynix deal and an $11 billion high-yield bond offering, the largest of its kind ever.

ALEX: The one soft spot was U.S. consumer cards — revenue flat, mostly because of higher payments to co-brand partners and rewards costs as they lean into growth. But the underlying business, general-purpose card loans and spend, is still growing nicely, and that segment put up a 21.8% ROTCE.

JORDAN: Let's talk expenses, because this is where it gets interesting. They pulled forward about $500 million in planned investments and severance into this quarter — roughly $200 million of that was severance alone. And they still delivered positive operating leverage, holding expense growth to just 3% excluding last year's Banamex impairment.

ALEX: Right, and that's part of a bigger story — they're funding growth investments through what they call "structural efficiency," cutting stranded and transformation costs, a lot of it powered by AI and automation. Fraser mentioned around 100 of their most manual processes are being re-engineered end-to-end.

JORDAN: The AI angle came up a lot in the Q&A. Mike Mayo from Wells Fargo basically asked: is Citi an AI victim or beneficiary? Meaning, could AI-powered cash management tools cause deposits to flee the bank?

ALEX: Fraser's answer was essentially "not worried." She pointed to Citi's network effects in services — custody, clearing, tokenized deposits in seven markets — as a moat that's hard to replicate. And internally, she said AI is already paying for itself: faster product launches, 14,000 engineers using an in-house coding tool called Devon, and a 30% cut in tech vendor spend year-over-year.

JORDAN: On capital, they returned over $4 billion to shareholders this quarter, including $3 billion in buybacks. Their CET1 ratio — that's a core measure of capital strength — sits at 12.8%, about 120 basis points above the current regulatory minimum.

ALEX: There was a long back-and-forth with analysts about whe

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WELCOME TO BETA FINCH, YOUR AI-POWERED EARNINGS BREAKDOWN

ALEX: Welcome to Beta Finch, your AI-powered earnings breakdown. I'm Alex, joined as always by Jordan. Today we're digging into BlackRock's third quarter 2026 results, and this is a loaded one. Before we get into it — this podcast is AI-generated content for educational and entertainment purposes only. Nothing we discuss should be considered investment advice. Always do your own research and consult a qualified financial advisor before making any investment decisions.

JORDAN: Okay, with that out of the way — Alex, this was a genuinely eye-popping quarter for BlackRock. Where do you want to start?

ALEX: Let's start with the headline numbers because they're hard to ignore. Revenue of $7.8 billion, up 19% year over year. Operating income up 27% to $3.3 billion. And EPS of $15.93, up 38% from a year ago.

JORDAN: Thirty-eight percent EPS growth for a company this size is wild. And it's not just one lever — operating margin hit 47.8%, up 320 basis points year over year. That's margin expansion at scale, which is genuinely hard to do once you're already this big.

ALEX: Right, and the flow story backs it up. $205 billion of net inflows in the quarter, and organic base fee growth of 11% — that's nine straight quarters at or above their 5% long-term target.

JORDAN: Nine consecutive quarters. CFO Martin Small made a point of saying this isn't one product or one region carrying the firm — it's broad-based across ETFs, private markets, systematic equity, SMAs, even digital assets. iShares alone pulled in $135 billion, with index bond ETFs leading at $61 billion.

ALEX: And this is the first full comparable quarter since the HPS acquisition closed, plus a full year of GIP and Preqin integration. Larry Fink called this "the clearest view yet of the earnings power of our integrated platform." AUM is now $15.5 trillion, up over $2 trillion in a year.

JORDAN: Let's talk strategy, because Fink's commentary here was honestly some of the more striking stuff I've heard on an earnings call. He said that for the first time in his 50-year career, he's seeing genuine shortages of capital — governments running record deficits while private capital demand is exploding.

ALEX: And he tied that directly to AI infrastructure. BlackRock partnered with Meta on financing a $14 billion data center in Texas, combining GIP's infrastructure expertise with HPS's private credit capabilities. Their AI Infrastructure Partnership also closed its first deal — the Aligned Data Centers transaction, about $40 billion in enterprise value.

JORDAN: The part that really stuck with me was Fink's mortgage-backed securities analogy. He's essentially arguing that compute capacity — GPUs, chips, data centers — is going to follow the same path mortgages did in the 1980s: illiquid and hard to price until standardized data and performance history made them tradable. He thinks BlackRock, through Aladdin's analytics, can be at the center of building that market for compute.

ALEX: It's a big bet, but it fits their whole thesis — combining public markets, private markets, and technology into one integrated offering. And the numbers back up the private markets push too. $68 billion raised in private credit over the trailing twelve months, $25 billion of that in their first full year owning HPS.

JORDAN: Now, the Q&A had some great color. On margins, Martin Small noted that excluding performance fees entirely, the "recurring fee margin" was still 48.6%, up 230 basis points — so this isn't just a performance-fee sugar high. He talked about pushing margins toward the 50%-plus range that top private markets firms post, partly because GIP and HPS already operate above that level.

ALEX: And when Goldman's Alex Blostein pushed Fink on where BlackRock fits in the AI financing stack — compute, data centers, capital structure

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**BETA FINCH — Bank of America Q3 2026 Earnings Breakdown**

ALEX: Welcome to Beta Finch, your AI-powered earnings breakdown. I'm Alex, joined as always by Jordan, and today we're digging into Bank of America's third quarter 2026 results, reported October 14th.

JORDAN: Lots to unpack here — there's a regulatory charge, a stock that opened down sharply, and honestly a pretty solid underlying business hiding behind the headline noise.

ALEX: Before we get into it — quick reminder that this podcast is AI-generated content for educational and entertainment purposes only. Nothing we discuss should be considered investment advice. Always do your own research and consult a qualified financial advisor before making any investment decisions.

JORDAN: So let's start with the headline numbers. Reported net income was $6.9 billion, EPS of $0.91. But that includes a $1.2 billion non-tax-deductible regulatory settlement charge tied to historical AML and compliance issues — a $0.17 per share hit.

ALEX: Right, and if you strip that out, adjusted net income was $8.1 billion, about $1.08 per share, actually up from last year. So the "clean" story is a company that grew earnings — the messy story is a chunky one-time penalty that spooked the market.

JORDAN: And it did spook the market — the stock opened down around 7-8% on the print, according to analysts on the call. Part of that is the charge itself, part of it seems to be a confidence question: is this really the last of it?

ALEX: CEO Brian Moynihan and CFO Alastair Borthwick were pretty direct about that. They said the remediation costs — thousands of employees, billions in technology spend — are already baked into the current expense run rate. Borthwick pointed out adjusted expenses were actually down slightly quarter-over-quarter at about $18.5 billion.

JORDAN: That's the key investor question though, isn't it — "is it in the run rate" versus "will there be another charge next quarter." Management's answer was basically: the penalty itself is paid, resolved, no asset cap, no restriction on business operations. The ongoing cost is just embedded going forward.

ALEX: Let's talk about what's actually driving the business, because it's a tale of two banks here. The "Main Street" side — consumer banking, wealth management, commercial lending — was firing on all cylinders. Net interest income hit $16.6 billion, up 8% year-over-year, and the net interest yield improved to 2.16%, inching toward their 2.3% medium-term target.

JORDAN: And the growth numbers are genuinely impressive. They added 200,000 net new checking accounts — now 39 million checking customers, eight straight years of growth. Card balances up almost 5%. Wealth management client balances crossed $5 trillion for the first time, with $41 billion of flows in the quarter. Commercial loans grew across every single segment, from small business to the largest corporate clients.

ALEX: Meanwhile, markets and investment banking were the drag. Equities had a record quarter, up 10%, but FICC trading — their bread-and-butter credit, mortgage, and municipal businesses — fell 17% because rates moved 85 basis points in the quarter and clients just pulled back.

JORDAN: Management was careful to frame that as client-activity-driven, not some structural problem — Borthwick said they haven't seen the same rate volatility so far in the fourth quarter, so that FICC pressure could ease.

ALEX: Let's hit guidance, because this is where it gets interesting for anyone modeling the stock forward. They raised full-year 2026 NII growth guidance to approximately 8%, up from the original 5-7% range at Investor Day. And for 2027, they're now guiding to 8% or higher — even assuming markets-related NII could actually decline next year due to further rate hikes.

JORDAN: That's a notable distinction one analyst pushed on — Erika Najarian from UBS asked

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WELCOME TO BETA FINCH, your AI-powered earnings breakdown.

ALEX: Welcome to Beta Finch, your AI-powered earnings breakdown. I'm Alex, joined as always by Jordan, and today we're digging into Adobe's third quarter fiscal 2026 results — and this one's got a lot more than just numbers in it. There's a big leadership story here too.

JORDAN: Yeah, this is a loaded episode. Before we get into it, though, the usual reminder: this podcast is AI-generated content for educational and entertainment purposes only. Nothing we discuss should be considered investment advice. Always do your own research and consult a qualified financial advisor before making any investment decisions.

ALEX: Right, so let's start with the headline news — Adobe announced a CEO transition. Shantanu Narayen, who's led the company for close to two decades, is stepping into an Executive Chair role, and Anil Chakravarthy, currently president of Digital Experience, is taking over as CEO effective December 1st.

JORDAN: And it's worth noting this isn't a crisis move — Adobe just posted record revenue of $6.76 billion for the quarter, up 12% year over year in constant currency. GAAP EPS came in at $4.62, up 11%, and non-GAAP EPS hit $6.13, up 15%. This is a transition happening from a position of strength, not weakness.

ALEX: Exactly. And they didn't just meet expectations — they raised full-year guidance. For fiscal 2026, Adobe is now targeting total revenue between $26.576 and $26.626 billion, with non-GAAP EPS of $24.45 to $24.50. Operating margin assumption is around 45%.

JORDAN: The user growth numbers are honestly the more interesting story here, though. Adobe crossed 1 billion monthly active users across the business, growing over 20% year over year. And creative freemium MAU — that includes Firefly, Express, web versions of Photoshop and Premiere — just crossed 100 million, growing more than 70% year over year.

ALEX: That's the freemium strategy they've been leaning into hard. Get people in the door for free, build engagement, then convert later. Firefly ending ARR — that's across the Firefly app and credit packs — grew 40% quarter over quarter, which is a pretty striking acceleration.

JORDAN: Right, but I want to flag something analysts pushed on in Q&A — net new ARR was actually down 36 to 37% year over year. Management's explanation is that this is intentional: they're funneling traffic toward freemium acquisition rather than immediate monetization, and they explicitly said they chose not to pursue Creative Cloud pricing increases this quarter because they didn't want to sacrifice user growth for short-term revenue.

ALEX: That's a real trade-off to watch. It's a bet that scale now turns into monetization later — through credit consumption, premium conversion, that kind of thing. The company's framing it as patience paying off, but it's also why RPO growth came in at just 8% year over year — the slowest pace since early fiscal 2023.

JORDAN: CFO Steven Day did push back a bit on that, saying it's seasonal — RPO and CRPO typically step up in Q4 and stay flat the rest of the year, and this year's shape is tracking consistent with prior years. So not necessarily alarming, but definitely something to keep an eye on next quarter.

ALEX: Let's talk strategy, because "agentic" was the word of the day on this call. Adobe's really leaning into building AI agents directly into its core products — the Adobe Creative Agent now works inside Photoshop and Premiere, there's a new Productivity Agent inside Acrobat and Express, and on the enterprise side there's something called CX Enterprise CoWorker that's already got 1,700 customers and early adopters.

JORDAN: And AI-first ending ARR is now over $650 million, growing more than 150% year over year. That's still a small slice of the $27.5 billion total ending ARR, but the growth rate tells you where the energy is.

ALEX: There was also a notable acquisition — T

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Writing the Beta Finch podcast script for Accenture's Q4 FY2026 earnings call now.

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**BETA FINCH: ACCENTURE (ACN) — Q4 FISCAL 2026 EARNINGS BREAKDOWN**

ALEX: Welcome to Beta Finch, your AI-powered earnings breakdown. I'm Alex.

JORDAN: And I'm Jordan. Today we're digging into Accenture's fourth quarter and full fiscal 2026 results, reported October 1st.

ALEX: Before we get into it — quick disclaimer. This podcast is AI-generated content for educational and entertainment purposes only. Nothing we discuss should be considered investment advice. Always do your own research and consult a qualified financial advisor before making any investment decisions.

JORDAN: Good to have that out of the way. So, Alex, Accenture — this is one of the biggest IT consulting and professional services firms on the planet, over 800,000 employees. What'd they post?

ALEX: Strong quarter. Q4 revenue came in at $18.7 billion, up 7% in local currency, and that actually beat the top end of their own guided range. And here's the headline stat I loved: growth was 7% across every single geographic market, every industry, and both types of work — consulting and managed services. That's about as broad-based as it gets.

JORDAN: Broad-based growth is the thing to watch for with a company this size, because it tells you it's not one lucky mega-deal propping up the number — it's systemic demand. What about bookings, because that's really the forward indicator here?

ALEX: Bookings were $22.2 billion for the quarter, and get this — 37 clients had bookings north of $100 million. For the full year, they closed $84.5 billion in bookings with 141 clients over that $100 million threshold.

JORDAN: That's a huge number of whale clients. And it fits the narrative management kept hammering — that their biggest relationships just keep expanding over time. They used FedEx as the case study: Accenture started by moving some applications to the cloud, and now they're embedded in FedEx's entire "One FedEx" digital transformation, plus AI fluency training across the whole workforce.

ALEX: Right, and CEO Julie Sweet's line was basically "each success creates the opportunity for the next." That's the whole land-and-expand playbook.

JORDAN: Let's talk profitability, because revenue growth is only half the story.

ALEX: Operating margin for the quarter hit 15.3%, up 20 basis points year-over-year on an adjusted basis. Diluted EPS grew 9% to $3.29. And free cash flow for the quarter was $2.8 billion. For the full year, revenue was $74.2 billion, up 5% in local currency, adjusted EPS was $13.97 — up 8% — and free cash flow for the year was $11.6 billion.

JORDAN: And shareholders did well too — they returned a record $11.5 billion in fiscal 2026, that's 38% more than the prior year, between buybacks and a dividend that was bumped up 10%.

ALEX: Now let's get into the strategic stuff, because this is where it gets interesting. Accenture deployed $4.9 billion across 17 acquisitions this year, and they're not slowing down — they're planning roughly $5 billion more in fiscal 2027.

JORDAN: And the acquisitions tell a story about where they think the puck is going. They closed Ookla for network intelligence analytics, Whalar — a creative and social agency — and a couple of SAP-focused deals to push deeper into mid-market Japan and the Netherlands. Plus the Cyber OT acquisitions, including Dragos, which actually got delayed into September due to regulatory timing — about $3 billion of that capital shifted from Q4 into fiscal Q1 2027.

ALEX: The AI story is really the throughline for the whole call. They now have nearly 110,000 AI and data professionals — which actually blew past their own three-year goal of doubling that workforce from 40,000 to 80,000. And nearly 400 clients started their first "advanced AI" engagement with Accenture this fiscal year alone.

JORDAN: What struck me in the Q&A was the Palantir question — an

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ALEX: Welcome to Beta Finch, your AI-powered earnings breakdown. I'm Alex, joined as always by Jordan, and today we're digging into PepsiCo's third quarter 2026 results, reported October 8th. Before we jump in, quick reminder: this podcast is AI-generated content for educational and entertainment purposes only. Nothing we discuss should be considered investment advice. Always do your own research and consult a qualified financial advisor before making any investment decisions.

JORDAN: And there's a lot to unpack here, Alex, because this is one of those quarters where the headline numbers look fine, but the guidance cut tells a very different story.

ALEX: Right, let's start with the numbers. Organic revenue grew 3.1% — that's actually the fastest growth rate PepsiCo has posted since Q4 2023. Reported revenue was north of 5%. Core operating profit was up 3%, and EPS grew 2%.

JORDAN: Those top-line numbers are genuinely good news, especially the fact that it was volume-led — global beverage volume up 3%, global snacks volume up 4% excluding a commodity-heavy South Africa grains business. But here's the catch: PepsiCo lowered its full-year EPS guidance, and it's entirely margin-driven.

ALEX: Right, so let's split this into the two stories — international, which is firing on all cylinders, and North America, which is clearly the problem child. CFO Steve Schmitt said international organic revenue grew 8% with operating margin expansion of 105 basis points. CEO Ramon Laguarta noted international is now 45% of the company's profit year-to-date.

JORDAN: That's a massive shift in the company's center of gravity. Meanwhile in North America, it's a mixed bag. Foods — meaning the Frito-Lay snacks business — actually improved sequentially. Laguarta made a point of saying that last year snacks volume was negative low-single-digits, and this year it's flipped to positive low-single-digit growth. He credits the price reset strategy plus innovation platforms like portion-controlled packs and the "permissible" portfolio — think SunChips, Smartfood, PopCorners, Simply.

ALEX: But beverages in North America is where things get ugly. Schmitt said the beverage business actually decelerated in the quarter. Laguarta was blunt about it — he said they're competing well in hydration and energy, pointing to Gatorade, Propel, and the pending integration of Alani Nu and Celsius, but they are explicitly "not competing well" in soft drinks, meaning Pepsi, Mountain Dew, and that whole core carbonated lineup.

JORDAN: And that word kept coming up over and over — "urgency." Multiple analysts pushed on what that actually means in practice, because it's easy to say urgency and mean nothing. Laguarta's answer was essentially twofold: cut every cost that isn't tied to growth — overhead, corporate unallocated spending, duplications — and reinvest that money into A&M, advertising and marketing, behind the core brands. He also name-checked a new partnership with Publicis for more data-driven, targeted marketing.

ALEX: Now let's talk about why guidance actually got cut, because this is the part investors should really sit with. Schmitt said input costs are trending higher than expected, mix has been a headwind, and — this is a detail that's easy to miss — PepsiCo got a tariff-related benefit in North America beverages in Q3 that won't repeat in Q4. So that's a double hit: inflation ramping as hedges roll off, plus losing a one-time tariff tailwind.

JORDAN: And importantly, they're not pulling back on investment to protect the bottom line. Schmitt was explicit that A&M spending actually increased in both international and North America this quarter — double-digit increases in the U.S., in fact. So the margin pressure is a deliberate choice to keep funding growth rather than a sign the business is falling apart.

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WELCOME TO BETA FINCH, your AI-powered earnings breakdown.

ALEX: Welcome to Beta Finch, your AI-powered earnings breakdown, where we take the numbers and the noise from the latest earnings calls and turn them into something you can actually use. I'm Alex, joined as always by Jordan.

JORDAN: Hey everyone. And we've got a big one today.

ALEX: Before we get into it — this podcast is AI-generated content for educational and entertainment purposes only. Nothing we discuss should be considered investment advice. Always do your own research and consult a qualified financial advisor before making any investment decisions.

JORDAN: With that out of the way, let's talk Micron. Fiscal Q4 2026, and Alex, I don't think "exceptional" even covers it.

ALEX: It really doesn't. Let's start with the full-year picture because it sets the stage. Fiscal 2026 revenue came in at $133.2 billion, up 256% year-over-year. Data center revenue alone was up fourfold. And get this — Micron's DRAM revenue by itself topped $100 billion for the year.

JORDAN: $100 billion from one product category. That's a company-sized number for most chipmakers.

ALEX: Right. And the margins tell the same story. Gross margin expanded to 81.1% for the year, a 40-point jump from fiscal 2025. EPS was up 811% to $75.52.

JORDAN: Eight hundred and eleven percent. Let's zoom into the quarter itself, because Q4 alone was a record-breaker. $54.2 billion in revenue, up 31% sequentially, up 379% year-over-year. That's their sixth straight quarterly revenue record.

ALEX: DRAM revenue hit $39.8 billion, 73% of total revenue, with prices up in the high teens percentage range. NAND revenue was $14.1 billion, up 526% year-over-year, with prices up around 30%. Consolidated gross margin for the quarter: 87%.

JORDAN: And every single business unit posted a record. Cloud Memory at $16.3 billion, Core Data Center at $18 billion with 90% gross margins — 90%, Alex — Mobile and Client at $13.1 billion, and Automotive and Embedded at $6.8 billion. There's genuinely no weak link here.

ALEX: So the obvious question is: what happens next? And CEO Sanjay Mehrotra didn't hedge at all. He said fiscal 2026 was outstanding, but fiscal 2027 is expected to be even better.

JORDAN: That's a bold thing to say after a year like that. But the reasoning is interesting — it's not just "AI demand is strong," it's that supply is structurally behind. Micron says they don't have line of sight to when memory supply and demand even return to balance. For calendar 2027 and 2028, both DRAM and NAND are expected to stay supply-constrained.

ALEX: And they're backing that up with something new to this cycle — strategic customer agreements, or SCAs. These are multi-year take-or-pay contracts. Micron now has 26 of them signed, representing over 35% of revenue through 2030, with customer cash deposits now at $32 billion.

JORDAN: That's the part I find most interesting, honestly. More than 75% of Micron's 2027 output is already committed — between SCA and non-SCA customers. That's a company that's basically pre-sold most of next year before it even starts.

ALEX: It also explains the CapEx story. Mark Murphy, the CFO, said they're increasing fiscal 2027 CapEx versus prior plans — first-half CapEx alone around $25 billion, with more in the back half. But the key detail is the mix: a lot of this is construction spending, not equipment, aimed at getting clean room space ready for late 2028 and beyond.

JORDAN: Which tells you this isn't a short-term chase of today's prices — they're building for a multi-year runway. On HBM specifically, Sanjay noted they've completed agreements for the vast majority of 2027 HBM bit supply, with significant price increases that are narrowing the margin gap versus conventional DRAM.

ALEX: Let's talk guidance, because it's just as striking. Fiscal Q1 revenue guide is $61.5 billion, plu

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WELCOME TO BETA FINCH, YOUR AI-POWERED EARNINGS BREAKDOWN

ALEX: Welcome to Beta Finch, your AI-powered earnings breakdown, where we take the numbers straight from the source and translate them into something you can actually use. I'm Alex.

JORDAN: And I'm Jordan. Today we're digging into Costco's fiscal fourth quarter and full-year 2026 results.

ALEX: And before we get going, our standard reminder — this podcast is AI-generated content for educational and entertainment purposes only. Nothing we discuss should be considered investment advice. Always do your own research and consult a qualified financial advisor before making any investment decisions.

JORDAN: Okay, let's get into it, because there's a lot here. Costco just closed out fiscal 2026 with over 10% top-line sales growth for the year, and Q4 net sales came in at $93.87 billion — up 11.2% year over year.

ALEX: And comparable sales were up 9.4% overall, 6.7% once you strip out gas price inflation and foreign exchange. That's actually been a pretty steady band for them — Gary Millerchip, the CFO, mentioned that 6-7% range has held for basically a full year now.

JORDAN: Right, and net income was $2.998 billion, or $6.75 a share. But here's a wrinkle — that includes a one-time $0.15 per share benefit from IEEPA tariff refunds. Strip that out, and net income and EPS were still up a healthy 12.3% and 12.4% respectively.

ALEX: The tariff refund story is worth pausing on. Costco got $184 million back in Q4 — that's about a third of what they expect total — and instead of just banking it, they plowed a chunk of it back into member value. Price cuts on everyday stuff: produce, meat, beverages, even home furnishings and hardware.

JORDAN: Which is very on-brand for Costco. CEO Ron Vachris basically said it outright — when they see lower prices, they see an opportunity. And it's not just talk; they're planning to keep reinvesting the majority of future tariff refunds the same way into fiscal 2027.

ALEX: Let's talk membership, because that's always the metric everyone obsesses over. Executive members hit an all-time high — 42.3 million, up 9.4% year over year. Total paid membership was 84.1 million, up 3.8%.

JORDAN: But an analyst on the call — Scot Ciccarelli from Truist — pushed on this pretty hard. Membership growth has been slowing for eight straight quarters. Gary's answer was essentially: this is more of a normalization than a red flag. New sign-ups are still growing, renewal rates ticked up to 92.3% in the U.S. and Canada, and the real story is quality over raw headcount — more executive members, more gas engagement, more digital engagement, all of which correlate with higher spend and stickier loyalty.

ALEX: The under-40 member cohort is a big part of that story too. It's grown nearly 60% since COVID and now makes up more than a quarter of Costco's total membership base. They spend less initially, but the expectation is they mature into higher-value members over time.

JORDAN: Now, on the ancillary business side — gas, pharmacy, and travel were the real stars. Gas had a record year, with comps up in the mid-30s, and Costco says it saved members over $3.2 billion at the pump versus market average pricing.

ALEX: Pharmacy grew nearly 20%, even absorbing headwinds from Medicare pricing changes on drugs, partly thanks to GLP-1 programs and their fertility program driving double-digit script growth. And travel — vacation packages, cruises, car rentals — all grew double digits. There was this incredible anecdote about a member booking a 154-night cruise for over $218,000 and getting an $8,800 shop card back.

JORDAN: That's a wild flex for what's supposed to be a value retailer, but it kind of shows the range Costco's operating in right now — from Kirkland walnuts down four bucks a bag to six-figure cruise bookings.

ALEX: Let's touch on digital, because there wa

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