Daily Brief United States: NVIDIA Corp, Samsonite, Advanced Micro Devices, Shell PLC, A10 Networks, Ethereum, Liberty Latin America , Abercrombie & Fitch Co Cl A, Talen Energy , Trimas Corp and more

• Nvidia’s H20 and upcoming B20 were launched to comply with China export controls, and have remained successful due to deficiencies and supply issues for Huawei’s Ascend AI accelerators.
• However, Nvidia’s China success will be short-lived due to increasing LLM compute requirements and no method for it to offer a more performance dense offering due to export controls.
• Not only will Huawei’s upcoming Ascend AI accelerator mitigate this issue, but it will likely also aim to address some of the other deficiencies of the Ascend platform too.

• Samsonite is a global luggage leader with three major brands: Samsonite, Tumi, and American Tourister
• Despite challenges during COVID, Samsonite has successfully executed a turnaround by closing stores and improving sales and margins
• The stock is undervalued in Hong Kong, with plans for a secondary US or European listing in the near future, potentially offering a 100% upside opportunity.

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• Q224 revenues of $5.8 billion, +5.5% QoQ, +9% YoY and $100 million above the guided midpoint
• AMD forecasted current quarter revenues of $6.7 billion at the midpoint, up 15% QoQ and about the same YoY.
• AMD shares are up 9% in premarket trading, hardly the response one expected from a good but not amazing report. But why?

• Shell forecasts a decline in upstream production, gas price realisations, and refining margins. Its QoQ Revenue & EPS are expected to drop 4.3% and 21.7%, respectively.
• Shell anticipates Q2 post-tax impairments of USD 1.5 to USD 2 billion due to halting a biofuels plant in Rotterdam and divesting its Singapore refinery.
• On a brighter note, Shell anticipates higher chemical margins, increased marketing sales volume, and improved refinery utilisation rates in Q2.

• ATEN reported Q2 results with greater success in winning enterprise orders while North American service providers limited their spending. 
• Over the past year, ATEN has shifted more of its sales and marketing effort to winning enterprise customers, which should have more of a meaningful benefit to recurring revenue. 
• ATEN reported revenue of $60.1 million compared to our forecast of $62.7 million. The second quarter results were lower than first quarter numbers, which is rare to see for ATEN.

• We are trading the newly launched U.S. Ethereum spot ETFs.We have decided to allocate ten percentage points of our Crypto Portfolio from our Bitcoin holdings to purchase more Ether for a short-term trade.
• We are buying Ethereum (ETH) at $3,315.18 and selling part of our Bitcoin (BTC) position at $66,203.95.
• This trade will be reflected on the Crypto Portfolio page later today.

Lucror Analytics’ ESG Scores are based on a 3-tiered scale and are adjusted for Controversies (if applicable).
We view Liberty Costa Rica’s ESG as “Adequate”. The score mirrors our assessment of parent Liberty Latin America (LLA), which discloses ESG-related information on a consolidated basis, without meaningful details on the bond-issuing credit pools that we cover (C&W Communications and Liberty Puerto Rico). 

We assess LLA’s Social and Governance pillars as “Strong” and “Adequate”, respectively, offsetting the “Weak” Environmental score. Controversies are “Immaterial” and Disclosure is “Adequate”. 

• We are reiterating our Buy rating, $25 price target and projections for a.k.a. Brands with the company announcing 2Q24 (June) results after the close on Wednesday.
• While 2Q is not a highly crucial period for the company, we believe management will be able to point to material progress on multiple fronts, from continued solid top line growth at Princess Polly, Culture Kings setting up for the shift to the “test and repeat” model and adding more exclusives to the mix, and Petal & Pup leveraging strong demand for dresses and new digital marketplace relationships.
• Further, we believe a.k.a. Brands is on track to open three new Princess Polly stores in 3Q24, with more on track for 2025.

• PJM published the Base Residual Auction results for the 2025-26 planning year that were the highest on record. PJM is the primary region TLN serves.
• TLN announced participation in the auction and cleared 6,820 megawatts of electricity at the auction price of $269.92 per megawatt. 
• TLN anticipates generating approximately $670 million in capacity revenue during the auction year. This compares to approximately $160 million run rate TLN had been reporting capacity revenue in recent quarters.

• TRS experienced a continuation of sales growing within its packaging and aerospace segments. TRS’s specialty products segment remains a laggard to the rest of the business with demand eroding. 
• The recovery within the packaging business should have been the main highlight of TRS’s Q2. However, the weakness within specialty products resulted in TRS missing our estimates for the quarter.
• We are updating our full year estimates after TRS lowered its adjusted EPS and sales guidance.