Earnings Call Insights: Argan, Inc. (AGX) Q1 fiscal 2027
“Our strong first quarter fiscal 2027 results reflect exceptional execution across our business with all 3 of our operating segments achieving significant revenue growth and maintained healthy backlog.” (CEO, President & Director David
Seeking Alpha’s Disclaimer: This article was automatically generated by an AI tool based on content available on the Seeking Alpha website, and has not been curated or reviewed by humans. Due to inherent limitations in using AI-based tools, the accuracy, completeness, or timeliness of such articles cannot be guaranteed. This article is intended for informational purposes only. Seeking Alpha does not take account of your objectives or your financial situation and does not offer any personalized investment advice. Seeking Alpha is not a licensed securities dealer, broker or US investment adviser or investment bank.
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Shares of Oscar Health (OSCR) rallied on Thursday after Wells Fargo upgraded the health insurer to Equal Weight from Underweight, citing greater confidence in the marketplace for Affordable Care Act plans, also known as Obamacare plans.
Analyst Stephen Baxter pointed out
One of the memorable moments of Venezuela’s crazy January ‘26 was ExxonMobil Chairman Darren Woods sitting across from President Trump, telling him Venezuela was “uninvestable.” His company is owed billions from Chávez-era expropriations, spent years in arbitration tribunals, and had watched its assets nationalised without fair compensation. Four months later, ExxonMobil’s technical teams were on the ground in Venezuela, evaluating assets including the Cerro Negro project. Woods was telling investors he felt positive about the opportunities.
The arc from expropriated creditor to ¿partner? is not happening by accident. In April 2026, the IMF and World Bank resumed dealings with Venezuela for the first time since 2019, opening the path to a formal economic assessment and potentially unlocking $4.9 billion in frozen special drawing rights. In May, the Delcy administration announced a “comprehensive restructuring of its sovereign debt” and PDVSA obligations, appointing Centerview Partners as financial adviser and pledging a macroeconomic framework by June. This did not include a request for a macroeconomic programme established by the Fund, which distanced itself from Venezuela’s announcement shortly after. According to Reuters, Venezuela’s total liabilities could be above $150 billion.
On June 2, Venezuela added Hogan Lovells as legal counsel for the restructuring under a dual mandate that also covers strategic lobbying for the Venezuelan embassy in Washington. The account is led by Norm Coleman, a former Republican senator with deep political connections in the capital. Neither selection has been free of political entanglement. Former Trump official Mauricio Claver-Carone, earmarked by The Washington Post as Venezuela’s unofficial viceroy, has vouched for Centerview. His business partner, Jessica Bedoya, was on the same chartered flight to Caracas as two Centerview executives on February 12, weeks before the firm finalized its contract (Centerview denied Bedoya played any role in their assignment).
Some of the companies that spent a decade winning arbitration awards against Venezuela may now be considering turning those claims into something more useful: an operating agreement, a new oil deal. Whether the game is actually changing, and the extent to which Delcy’s technical cadres can manage the process her government is trying to kickstart, are two of the huge questions for Venezuela’s “transition” observers.
Without the IMF as an anchor, the most aggressive litigants will extract preferential recoveries while others are left with worthless paper.
The shape of how Venezuela got here is also visible in a Delaware courthouse. In December, a judge signed the order transferring Citgo to Amber Energy, an affiliate of Wall Street hedge fund Elliott Management, for 5.9 billion dollars. The gavel came down, but the sale did not close. CITGO is now in legal and political limbo.
The transaction requires approval from OFAC, which has repeatedly extended the freeze on CITGO-related transactions. The State Department is now the main barrier blocking the sale, while Treasury, Commerce, and Energy favour letting it proceed. Ten days ago, OFAC issued General License 5W, extending the freeze on CITGO share transfers to June 19. A World Bank delegation visited Caracas last month. Everything suggests Delcy Rodríguez now feels compelled to show she can find a way to pay them back. That she has a plan.
In the meantime, Amber Energy is pressing daily for access to CITGO’s financial and operational details even though it is not formally in control, while CITGO itself cannot make major investment decisions or hire key personnel. A company valued at $13 billion is being run in slow motion, waiting for Washington to decide what Venezuela’s most valuable foreign asset is actually worth, to whom, and under what terms.
None of this happened overnight. The process was set in motion by Hugo Chávez when he went on a nationalisation spree that expropriated the assets of ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, Crystallex, and dozens of other foreign companies across the oil, mining, and manufacturing sectors. Those companies didn’t go home quietly. They went to arbitration. And they won.
The restructuring announcement tries to change the terms of the conversation. Venezuela is no longer being asked whether it will engage with its creditors. It has begun doing so. Centerview Partners is on the ground. A macroeconomic framework is due soon. The creditor committee, which includes GMO, Greylock Capital, Fidelity, and T. Rowe Price has been ready to negotiate since January.
ConocoPhillips has been explicit: recovering the billions owed from past expropriations takes priority over any new drilling.
An IMF programme, if it materialises, could signal credibility. It would serve as the anchor for the entire restructuring process. IMF conditionality establishes a debt sustainability framework that defines how much Venezuela can actually pay, which in turn defines what creditors can realistically expect. It also catalyses coordination. Rather than pursuing individual enforcement actions against Venezuelan assets, creditors have an incentive to wait for an orderly process. Without that anchor, the most aggressive litigants will extract preferential recoveries while others are left with worthless paper.
Delcy Rodríguez announced the restructuring without first securing that anchor. She has stated there are “no plans” to contract an IMF loan. The IMF, for its part, says it is willing to support a programme but requires clarity on economic data and external debt that Caracas has not yet provided. Very soon, we will find out whether Venezuela is building toward an IMF-anchored process or trying to engineer one without it.
Several of the companies owed the largest arbitration awards are well positioned to operate Venezuelan assets: ExxonMobil at Cerro Negro, ConocoPhillips at its former Petrozuata and Hamaca projects. ConocoPhillips has been explicit: recovering the billions owed from past expropriations takes priority over any new drilling. A negotiated settlement that converts arbitration claims into operational stakes, with revenue streams tied to production, would give creditors a return and Venezuela a rebuilt industry. The OFAC licensing architecture already enables this. Since January 2026, OFAC has issued or updated more than eight general licenses expanding authorised activity in Venezuela’s energy and financial sectors. Washington has built the tools, such as General License 58. The question is whether Venezuela can use them.
What this push does not resolve is the harder question: whether Venezuela has the institutional capacity to negotiate on its own terms rather than simply accept whatever is offered. Woods’s shift from “uninvestable” to “positive” in four months signals appetite, not commitment. ExxonMobil wants its assets back or a return on its claims. So does ConocoPhillips. So does every creditor in the queue. The question is whether Venezuela can show up to this negotiation as a party with a strategy, not just a debtor with a problem.
The path forward requires exactly what fifteen years of chavismo didn’t build: legal capacity, a coherent negotiating strategy, and the institutional infrastructure to distinguish between claims that should be settled, claims that should be contested, and claims that might be converted into something more useful than a judgment. The latter could amount to an oil agreement like the one Chevron got in the early 2020s. Venezuela’s reformed Hydrocarbons Law allows international arbitration to resolve disputes in the oil and gas sector. So does the new Mining Law for gold and strategic minerals.
The framework now exists in writing. Whether Venezuela can implement it coherently, and whether it can hold up against the inevitable tension between Venezuelan law as established in the new statutes and US jurisdiction as required by OFAC licenses, are the open questions that will determine whether this moment becomes the start of something durable or another lost opportunity.
None of that sounds like glamorous policymaking. It doesn’t play well in a speech. But the alternative, continuing to treat international arbitration as someone else’s problem, has a documented price tag. It is measured in refineries.
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The European Commission confirmed to Euronews on Wednesday that EU trade chief Maroš Šefčovič will meet his Chinese counterpart, trade envoy Li Chenggang, on the sidelines of an OECD ministerial meeting in Paris on Thursday.
The visit comes as EU-China relations remain strained, with Brussels seeking to crack down on Chinese overcapacity and tackle a record-high €359.9 billion trade deficit with Beijing.
After the EU unveiled the so-called Industrial Accelerator Act and the Cybersecurity Act which could exclude Chinese companies from the EU market, China threatened retaliation, fuelling fears of a trade war between the two trading partners.
Tensions escalated further last week when EU commissioners met to discuss the bloc’s strategy towards the Asian giant.
“The current state of the trade and investment relationship is not sustainable,” the Commission said in a statement after the meeting.
An EU official told Euronews that a majority of the Commissioners had agreed to strengthen the EU’s trade defence tools to help counter China. Proposals will be made to EU leaders during their summit on 18 June.
However, member states remain divided over the EU’s China policy. A non-paper signed by France, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands and Lithuania called for faster use of tariffs and quotas on imports threatening EU industrial sectors, with China the principle target. The idea is to restore a level playing field against Chinese trade practices that many in Europe describe as unfair.
Among those countries taking a different line is Germany, whose policy is to preserve access to the Chinese market for its companies even as it faces a deep trade deficit.
Meanwhile, the Commission said it will continue engaging with China. There have been reports that Commerce Minister Wang Wentao could visit Brussels on 28 and 29 June, but the visit has not yet been publicly confirmed.
A $50 billion refinery valuation tests liquidity across African capital markets.
Dangote Refinery’s initial public offering is shaping up to be one of the most historic capital markets events for the continent—a referendum on whether Africa can mobilize the liquidity and investor confidence required to finance a globally competitive industry.
Chinenyem Anyanwu, CEO of Lagos-based Dependable Securities, said the offering is attracting both institutional investors and first-time investors, including Nigerians in the diaspora.
“The expectation is very high among the investing public,” Anyanwu tells Global Finance. “Some are Nigerians outside the country, while others are foreign investors looking for exposure to a strategic African industrial asset.” Aliko Dangote, chairman of the Dangote Group, disclosed that requests for private placement had surpassed $2 billion.
Speaking during a visit by executives from First HoldCo, the parent company of First Bank of Nigeria, Dangote said the company would be unable to meet all requests. He added that the response demonstrates investors’ confidence in the project.
Interest has also come from prominent Nigerian investors. Femi Otedola, chairman of First HoldCo, has said he plans to invest $100 million in a private placement ahead of the IPO, with proceeds from the sale of his stake in Geregu Power.
Although early market estimates put the refinery at about $50 billion, Dangote has said advisers are still determining the final valuation. Despite plans to offer only 10% of the equity to the public, the IPO would still be unprecedented for African exchanges.
“Ten percent of the refinery is still a substantial offering,” Anyanwu said. “It is larger than the market capitalization of many companies currently listed on the Nigerian Exchange, so demand is unlikely to be a problem.”
The refinery, which began operations in 2024, has already begun reshaping Nigeria’s energy trade by reducing reliance on imported fuel and positioning the country as an exporter of refined petroleum products. Built at an estimated cost of $20 billion, the 650,000-barrels-per-day facility in Lagos, where Dangote Group is headquartered, is expected to expand capacity in the coming years.
This article appears in the June 2026 issue of Global Finance Magazine.
Venezuela holds the largest proven oil reserves on earth. It has lithium. It has agriculture, a coastline three hours away from Miami, and—for the first time in a generation a political window. The reconstruction investment case is real. So is the obstacle for every actor, across every ideology, that wants Venezuelan assets to perform.
The obstacle is not the oil price. It is not the OFAC sanctions framework, which has been substantially liberalized since January 2026. It is not even the absence of functioning institutions, though that is the proximate problem every investor will encounter. The obstacle has a nucleus with name, a title, and an active intelligence apparatus. And his continued presence in power is not merely a moral affront.
This is not a story about mismanagement. Mismanagement leaves a paper trail.
What happened across Venezuela’s infrastructure ministries between 2002 and 2012 lest almost none, deliberately. Over $150 billion in documented railway, housing, and infrastructure contracts were disbursed across that decade. The projects largely do not exist. The documentation largely does not exist. The Tinaco-Anaco railway, a $7.5 billion contract signed with China Railway Engineering Corporation, produced looted campsites and empty concrete columns. The National Railway Plan, budgeted at $150 billion, produced less than one percent of its projected track.
One of the ministers who oversaw that disbursement period of the infrastructure that is so dire, and who preserved an influence only surpassed by Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro, today is the Interior Minister of Venezuela. He controls the national intelligence apparatus, the police, and the armed colectivos. He is Diosdado Cabello, your competing General Partner that has acted without impunity. He carries a live indictment from a New York court on narco-trafficking charges. He is sanctioned by the US Treasury. He hosts a television program that airs every Wednesday evening.
By 2011, the beneficial ownership architecture built by Venezuela’s ruling network spanned more than forty trustees across multiple jurisdictions: a parallel private equity structure embedded inside a sovereign state.
The distinction that every institutional investor must internalize is this: a mismanaged State is recoverable. A State whose productive apparatus was deliberately extracted (not ruined by incompetence but hollowed out because extraction was more profitable than production) presents a categorically different investment problem. The destruction was not the side effect of the governance model. It was the point of it. Cabello remains an icon of that governance model.
Conventional private equity rests on a foundational assumption: your counterparty has an interest in the underlying asset performing. Returns depend on it. Exit depends on it. The entire structure of an LP agreement, a term sheet, a co-investment right, all of it assumes a counterparty whose incentive is aligned with asset value.
In Venezuela, the sophisticated actor on the other side of the table for two decades was running a competing structure. One with no limited partners, no fiduciary duty, no quarterly reporting, and a sovereign intelligence apparatus for compliance. That structure had a single mandate: maximum extraction, minimum documentation, zero accountability. It executed that mandate with precision.
By 2011, the beneficial ownership architecture built by Venezuela’s ruling network spanned more than forty trustees across multiple jurisdictions. This is not a warlord’s operation. This is a parallel private equity structure embedded inside a sovereign state.
That sophistication is precisely what makes the residual presence of these networks so consequential for reconstruction capital. They did not disappear with the January 2026 transition. They repositioned. The structures that governed Venezuela’s extraction apparatus are experts at corporate layering: shell companies, nominee directors, off-channel financial instruments designed to distance beneficial owners from the assets they control.
This is the counterparty environment that reconstruction capital is walking into. Not a post-conflict landscape with residual corruption. An active, sophisticated, multi-jurisdictional extraction network that has spent 25 years perfecting its operational security
These are not improvised operations, they are multi-jurisdictional corporate architectures spanning Switzerland, Brazil, Spain, the Caribbean, and more recently Turkey and the Middle East. Each node chosen for its specific regulatory gap or enforcement lag. The $5.2 billion in gold shipped to Switzerland between 2013 and 2016, the Alex Saab procurement network running through Turkey and Cape Verde, the Zapatero indictment revealing consulting structures designed to siphon money from China, Venezuela, and Spain simultaneously these are documented examples of the same operational capability.
These networks retain the best advisors money can pay. Former heads of state, international law firms, financial intermediaries operating across jurisdictions. The Zapatero case is not the exception, it is the template. And they operate with the enforcement discipline of a cartel: strategic asset moves backed by the implicit and sometimes explicit willingness to use coercion when commercial pressure is insufficient. The SDNY indictments against senior regime figures on narco-trafficking charges are not separate from the financial architecture. They are evidence that the same command structure manages both.
This is the counterparty environment that reconstruction capital is walking into. Not a post-conflict landscape with residual corruption. An active, sophisticated, multi-jurisdictional extraction network that has spent 25 years perfecting its operational security, asset acquisitions by “patriotic”expropriations to serve their drug-logistic hubs and is now repositioning for the reconstruction window.
China’s position in Venezuela is widely misread as unconditional support. The reality is more commercially specific. China has over $60 billion in loan-for-oil exposure through CNPC and the China Development Bank. Those loans require one thing: barrels flowing. Barrels require functional production infrastructure. Functional production infrastructure requires institutional stability, contract enforcement, and (critically) a counterparty with an interest in assets performing.
Beijing understands this better than any outside observer because its own institutions have investigated the damage. Xi Jinping’s Central Commission for Discipline Inspection placed a CITIC Group vice president under investigation for serious disciplinary violations, the same CITIC that embedded confidentiality clauses in Venezuelan housing contracts barring the Venezuelan government from accessing financial information about its own projects. An Andorran court documented $100 million in bribes paid by CAMC Engineering to Venezuelan officials. China did not need backchannel meetings to understand the corruption. Its own companies were defendants in it.
China also enforces its own code of conduct internally. The CCP’s anti-corruption apparatus, operating through the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, has a long reach, including over state enterprise executives who participated in overseas schemes that damaged China’s institutional reputation. Chinese firms implicated in Venezuelan bribery networks in Andorra for payments to PDVSA lobbyists related to Venezuela’s electricity system did not operate without consequence within their own system. Beijing does not publicize these accountability mechanisms, but they exist. The party does not tolerate reputational exposure that undermines its economic diplomacy, regardless of the geography.
Every dollar that disappears into the extraction apparatus is a dollar that does not produce the barrel that services the Chinese loans.
The Trump-Xi summit concluded in Beijing on May 15, 2026, the same day Lamargas exploded on Lake Maracaibo, a facility operated by China Concord Resources Corp under a PDVSA joint venture contract. At the moment, the US and Chinese governments are navigating toward economic stabilization and a framework for managed competition, building on their South Korea thaw. That G2 stabilization has direct implications for Venezuela: a China that is repositioning toward US capital markets, Boeing purchases, and agricultural commitments is a China with diminishing strategic incentive to backstop a Venezuelan network that embarrasses it commercially.
The Chevron model—US-anchored, internationally governed, with Chinese off-take embedded through structured contracts—is precisely the kind of framework that serves Beijing’s debt recovery needs without requiring it to defend the indefensible.
A ministry based in a kleptocracy whose financial architecture is premised on assets not performing for the state is structurally incompatible with Chinese debt recovery. Beijing is not sentimental about this. It is calculating.
China’s $50-60 billion in loan-for-oil exposure to Venezuela requires one thing above all else: barrels flowing. Barrels require functional production infrastructure. Functional production infrastructure requires institutional stability, contract enforcement, and a counterparty whose economic interest is aligned with assets performing. When the ministry overseeing oil production is the same apparatus that systematically extracted value from every sector it touched, railways that produced concrete columns and nothing else, housing programs with $76 billion in unaccounted deficits, power plants that were paid for and never built, you can see that the problem for Beijing is not political. Every dollar that disappears into the extraction apparatus is a dollar that does not produce the barrel that services the loans.
China tried to correct this internally before abandoning the effort. In 2018, Margaret Myers at the Inter-American Dialogue pointed out that Beijing “tried over the past couple of years to guide decision-making in Caracas by providing advice or by tying loans to production capacity projects in the oil sector, in order to try to help Venezuela right itself economically. That has not proven successful.”
By 2016, China stopped issuing new loans entirely. That is not a diplomatic signal. That is a credit committee decision. The same kind of decision any institutional lender makes when the counterparty’s governance structure has made repayment structurally unlikely.
Brazil’s relationship to Venezuela’s reconstruction is complicated by a paper trail that runs through the largest corruption scandal in Latin American history. Odebrecht paid the highest figure of any country outside Brazil itself. Venezuela’s own former prosecutor general, Luisa Ortega Díaz, formally linked those payments to senior Socialist Party figures including Diosdado Cabello after being removed from office and forced to flee the country. The investigation was halted by Venezuela’s highest court. The Swiss banking system was asked to provide a list of Venezuelan recipients. Neither process was allowed to reach its conclusion.
In Brazil, the Odebrecht network reached the highest levels of political life. Federal prosecutors investigated Lula for allegedly lobbying foreign governments on Odebrecht’s behalf after leaving the presidency, and for his role in directing state development bank BNDES financing toward Odebrecht projects abroad. The contracts that linked Odebrecht to Venezuela were not arm’s-length commercial transactions. They were, by Odebrecht’s own admission in its US Department of Justice plea agreement, instruments of a coordinated bribery architecture that spanned twelve countries and operated through a dedicated internal division (the Division of Structured Operations) whose sole purpose was managing political payments.
What does not yet exist is the decision—by US institutional capital—to arrive with a governance structure that the extraction network cannot penetrate.
Brazil has significant commercial interests in Venezuela’s reconstruction, across energy, agriculture, and infrastructure. Those interests are legitimate and Brazilian private capital is a natural reconstruction partner. The complication is not Brazil. It is the specific political-commercial network that governed Brazil’s prior engagement with Venezuela. Odebrecht did not select its Venezuelan counterparties through competitive markets. Contracts were directed through political relationships — between heads of state, with BNDES as the financing instrument, and with the Odebrecht Division of Structured Operations managing the payments in between.
Political networks have institutional memory. The preferred partners that flow through certain diplomatic channels into Venezuela’s reconstruction window carry relationships forged in that prior architecture. A governance framework serious about reconstruction cannot simply exclude Odebrecht, the legal entity. It must screen for the network that Odebrecht served. That screening is structural, not political. It is the difference between Brazilian capital that competes on merit and Brazilian capital that arrives pre-selected by the same diplomatic infrastructure that enabled the extraction.
One Venezuelan asset survived twenty-six years of chavismo with its value intact. One. CITGO Petroleum, incorporated in Delaware, governed under US fiduciary law, with its governance architecture anchored entirely outside Venezuelan legal jurisdiction. It survived not because of political protection but because of structural protection. US law held when every Venezuelan institution around it failed. That is not a coincidence. It is the blueprint.
Venezuela sits very close to Miami. Capital will flow in. The question is whether it arrives with a governance structure equal to the threat, or whether it arrives the way it always has in captured states: trusting counterparties who already demonstrated, at extraordinary scale, that trust was the wrong instrument.
The SDNY indicted the man who sits in the Interior Ministry. The US Treasury sanctioned him. He is still in the building. Turkish construction conglomerates, Asian commodity traders, and European energy juniors are already positioning—without FCPA compliance costs, without fiduciary obligations, without LP reporting requirements. They will move faster. They will price lower. This is what happened in Iraq after 2003. It is what happened in Libya.
The architecture to do this differently exists. Human capital exists in the diaspora: eight million Venezuelans left and within them there are over a million that hold verifiable credentials embedded in US and European institutions, carrying the technical and legal knowledge to rebuild what was taken. The OFAC licensing framework exists. The proof of concept exists in CITGO’s survival. What does not yet exist is the decision—by US institutional capital—to arrive with a governance structure that the extraction network cannot penetrate. That decision is the only thing standing between reconstruction and a second extraction with better letterhead.
Published on •Updated
The Spanish fashion giant behind Zara, Inditex, posted net income of €1.4 billion in the first quarter, up 5.4% year-on-year and ahead of market expectations.
Sales rose 5.8% to €8.7bn, or 8.8% at constant exchange rates, ahead of the roughly 8% analysts had anticipated.
Gross profit rose 6.9% to €5.4bn, helped by an improvement in profit margins, meaning the company kept a larger share of revenue as profit. EBITDA, a measure of underlying earnings, increased 7.3% to €2.6bn.
Inditex shares rose more than 5% on Wednesday after the company reported a strong start to the second quarter, with sales increasing 11.5% between 1 May and 1 June, reassuring investors that the Zara owner remains resilient despite signs of weakening consumer spending.
“Inditex continued its strong momentum with its latest results beating first quarter expectations, and also seen a strong start to the second quarter too, as sales grew more or less in line with the rate the company exited with in the previous quarter,” said Mamta Valechha, consumer discretionary analyst at Quilter Cheviot.
The revenue jump from one of the world’s largest listed clothing retailers points to solid consumer appetite heading into the summer, despite concerns that a more uncertain economic and geopolitical backdrop could weigh on spending in the months ahead.
The results come as businesses around the world face growing uncertainty over the global economy and concerns that consumers may cut back on spending.
Inditex said its wide-ranging supply chain and flexible transport network had helped it keep products flowing to stores around the world despite recent disruptions.
“Ultimately, Inditex continues to have a resilient business model that can withstand significant economic pressures and currency headwinds,” said Mamta Valechha, consumer discretionary analyst at Quilter Cheviot.
Valechha said strong customer demand and the company’s ability to source products close to its key markets had helped it keep collections up to date while limiting the need for discounts. Productivity improvements had also helped protect profitability.
Inditex also said that the current “geopolitical challenges” had an impact on the sales in the Middle East, a region that Barclays estimates accounts for about 5% of its revenue.
The company also warned that ongoing instability in the region could affect its performance in the months ahead.
Inditex faces a number of other challenges, including higher shipping costs and rising prices for raw materials such as cotton and polyester. Currency movements are also expected to weigh on results this year.
Inditex ended the quarter with 5,456 stores and a net cash position of €10.8bn.
The board has proposed a dividend of €1.75 per share for the last fiscal year, comprising an ordinary component of €1.20 and a bonus of €0.55, payable in two instalments in May and November 2026.
Despite the strong start to the year, Inditex left its outlook unchanged. It said it expects sales growth to continue into the second quarter, supported by strong demand for its spring and summer collections and ongoing improvements to its stores and operations.
However, the company said currency fluctuations are likely to reduce sales growth by around 1% over the full year. It also expects to invest about €2.3bn in the business during the current financial year.
Earnings Call Insights: Palo Alto Networks (PANW) Q3 2026
Seeking Alpha’s Disclaimer: This article was automatically generated by an AI tool based on content available on the Seeking Alpha website, and has not been curated or reviewed by humans. Due to inherent limitations in using AI-based tools, the accuracy, completeness, or timeliness of such articles cannot be guaranteed. This article is intended for informational purposes only. Seeking Alpha does not take account of your objectives or your financial situation and does not offer any personalized investment advice. Seeking Alpha is not a licensed securities dealer, broker or US investment adviser or investment bank.
Earnings Call Insights: Yesway, Inc. (YSWY) Q1 2026
Seeking Alpha’s Disclaimer: This article was automatically generated by an AI tool based on content available on the Seeking Alpha website, and has not been curated or reviewed by humans. Due to inherent limitations in using AI-based tools, the accuracy, completeness, or timeliness of such articles cannot be guaranteed. This article is intended for informational purposes only. Seeking Alpha does not take account of your objectives or your financial situation and does not offer any personalized investment advice. Seeking Alpha is not a licensed securities dealer, broker or US investment adviser or investment bank.
(Bloomberg) — UK mortgage approvals unexpectedly rose in April as the housing market displayed ongoing resilience to the economic fallout from war in Iran. Read More
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As SpaceX and Anthropic eye public listings, index providers brace for major market dislocations.
When mega-cap companies go public, index providers and investors will see it as dropping battleships into the old fishing pond. The resulting waves are going to soak everyone.
Privately held artificial intelligence (AI) vendor Anthropic announced its filing of a draft registration statement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for an initial public offering at a later date. According to the company’s website, Anthropic has not decided on the number of shares it will offer, nor at what price. The company recently closed a $65 billion fundraising round, valuing the company at $965 billion post-money.
The news comes as the SEC published SpaceX’s revised Form S-1 on the market regulator’s EDGAR database. The conspicuously absent OpenAI reportedly is filling out its underwriters bench for a possible September IPO. The AI company reached a post-money valuation of $852 billion, according to CNBC.
If index providers add these firms that would instantly become one of the 10-largest listed companies by market cap before their trading prices stabilize, it could cost them dearly due to resulting massive price dislocations.
“Leaving out a mega-cap company means the index is not doing its job,” James Angel, associate professor and faculty affiliate at Georgetown University’s Psaros Center for Financial Markets and Policy, tells Global Finance. “It thus makes sense to include a big IPO fairly quickly.”
“Big IPO” is not an understatement. Wall Street consensus expects SpaceX’s IPO to result in a market capitalization between $1.75 trillion and $2 trillion, would lower Meta’s and Tesla’s rankings in the10-largest Nasdaq-100 Index components by market capitalization while move Micron Technology out of the Top 10. If rumors of a SpaceX-Teslamerger prove true, only Nvidia, Alphabet, and Apple would have a larger market capitalization than the resulting $3.4 trillion behemoth.
Nasdaq has already addressed the mega-cap issue by updating the methodology for inclusion in its Nasdaq-100 Index, which represents the 100 largest Nasdaq-listed non-financial companies, in May.
Among the major changes made by Nasdaq was introducing quarterly index reconstitutions in March, June, and September, in addition to its regular December reconstitution. Nasdaq has also incorporated a “Fast Entry” pathway for new listings that rank among the top 40 of the current Nasdaq-100 constituents by full market capitalization, based on both listed and unlisted shares.
“These companies are evaluated on their seventh trading day and, if eligible, added shortly thereafter, with all existing liquidity requirements still applying,” explained Emily Spurling, Global Head of Index at Nasdaq Global Indexes, in an interview posted on the Nasdaq website. “The quarterly rebalance handles the broader population of eligible companies; Fast Entry ensures the index can respond in a timely way when a company of significant scale enters the public market.”
SpaceX stock could see its highest price jump not on June 12, its reported IPO day, but on July 7, the earliest it could be added to the Nasdaq-100 Index, according to The Motley Fool’s Sean Williams.
“Taking into account the Juneteenth (June 19) and Independence Day (July 3) holidays for the stock market, the 15th trading day, including its IPO day, is July 6,” he wrote. “Index funds that attempt to mirror the market-cap-weighted Nasdaq-100 will be required to purchase a jaw-dropping number of shares after this 15-day period comes to a close. Mandatory purchases from exchange-traded funds and index funds are estimated at $22 billion to $27 billion.”
“Nasdaq made the biggest change in the Nasdaq-100 rules as an inducement to listing on Nasdaq,” says Angel. “The other index providers have no similar incentive to shorten the seasoning period. I get the impression they are just doing it to make their indices more reflective of what is going on in the market.”
Meanwhile, S&P Dow Jones Indices (S&P DJI) is mulling methodology changes to its S&P U.S. Indices and Dow Jones U.S. Total Stock Market Indices. The company is considering whether to implement a “narrowly defined rule exception for MegaCap companies and adjustment to the IPO seasoning period,” according to a prepared statement.
The index vendor defines mega-cap companies as those with a market capitalization equal to or greater than the 100th largest company in the S&P Total Market Index, which was approximately $150 billion at the start of June.
According to reports from Bloomberg News, the major consideration is whether to reduce the seasoning period for IPOs before they are eligible for inclusion in an index to six months from 12 months
The consultation period ended on May 28, and any changes that S&P DJI proposes to implement would take effect “prior to the market open on Monday, June 8, 2026, unless otherwise announced,” the statement continued.
The company declined to comment beyond its published statement.
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SK Hynix (HXSCL) plans to double its memory-chip wafer production capacity over the next five years as it works to address soaring demand for AI-related memory chips.
Chairman Chey Tae-won told reporters in Taipei that the company is responding to
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Barrick Mining (B) is considering a possible London listing for its African business, potentially via an all-stock deal with U.K.-listed Endeavour Mining (EDVMF) as a possible option, Reuters reported Monday.
Under one scenario being explored, Barrick (B) would retain its
Looking ahead to the second half of the year, corporate finance chiefs are hardwiring contingency into strategy.
Global corporate finance leaders are entering the second half of 2026 facing the most complex operating environment of the post-pandemic era, requiring them to balance cost discipline, technology investment, and capital deployment against a backdrop of geopolitical volatility and renewed energy uncertainty.
At the center of that uncertainty is the Strait of Hormuz. Normally a conduit for around 20% of global oil and liquified natural gas (LNG) exports, the strait has remained largely blocked since war broke out in the Middle East in late February.
The conflict has added a new shock layer to an environment that was already fragile as a result of tariff turbulence, weakening demand, and declining consumer confidence.
The consequences for corporate finance professionals are direct and serious, forcing teams into defensive mode: conserving cash, deferring capital investment, and stress-testing portfolios against prolonged geopolitical disruption.
Cost pressures were already elevated before the war, and are continuing their upward trajectory. According to the ACCA and IMA Global Economic Conditions Survey (GECS), the further rise likely reflects some early impacts of the surge in energy and other commodity prices since the outbreak of hostilities in the Persian Gulf. Among the CFOs surveyed, the proportion reporting increased operating costs eased slightly in the first quarter of 2026, but remains high by historical standards.
Confidence across finance teams, meanwhile, fell sharply in the first quarter, taking sentiment to a low point previously seen only at the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. Since the GECS survey was conducted in the first half of March, the outbreak of hostilities would have been a major factor weighing on sentiment, owing to the surge in geopolitical uncertainty and the price jump in energy and some other commodities.
Logistics and energy are the most immediate concerns, according to findings of the Allianz Trade survey of 6,000 companies across 13 major economies: 60% said they are worried about supply chain disruption and rising commodity prices, with concern running highest in Vietnam, Poland, the UK, and the U.S.
One consequence of the war-induced shocks is that businesses are holding more inventory, adding to liquidity demand at precisely the moment rates are falling more slowly than expected, if at all.
When it comes to sustaining readiness in the months ahead, Naresh Aggarwal, associate director, Policy and Technical at the Association of Corporate Treasurers, says the framework is simple: “plan for the worst, hope for the best.” In practice, this means larger, more committed credit facilities, greater use of derivatives, and hedge duration adjusted to circumstances.
The effects of the war are extending far beyond the energy, shipping, and chemical manufacturing sectors. Alex Ashby, group treasurer at WPP, says the ongoing volatility has driven material change at the global media company.
“Geopolitical volatility has led us to materially step up our focus on foreign exchange risk management,” he notes. “We have invested heavily in training across the organization to raise capability and accountability and introduced new monitoring and reporting so that FX exposures and outcomes are reviewed regularly at executive and board level. Alongside more frequent liquidity stress-testing, this ensures risks are identified earlier, decisions are taken closer to the underlying exposure, and we remain agile as conditions evolve.”
The world remains deeply interconnected, says Raphael Savalle, CFO at Montblanc, and so shocks travel fast and wide. Businesses are no longer operating in a world where companies can remove volatility by hedging, but one where operating models must be built to absorb it.
“This isn’t going away; if anything, it’s increasing,” he says. “It’s the butterfly effect, times 10. The key is to maintain long-term strategic direction while also building agility into how you operate – what I call dynamic P&L management, or dynamic resource allocation – and still be on the lookout every day for risks that may not at first seem relevant but turn out to be, because of the way the world is connected.”
What impact will this level of uncertainty have on the day-to-day in the coming months? Beyond a structured routine of information exchange, it demands the confidence to be candid about these less-obvious risks.
The challenges of the coming months are also prompting some companies to review their technology needs. ERP systems are still the backbone of corporate finance, but their rigidity is fueling demand for smarter, more flexible tools to augment them.
Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) platforms are emerging as a viable contender, says Armand Angeli, AI and automation specialist and vice president of the Digital Transformation and AI Group at DFCG, the French network of CFOs, broadening their scope beyond finance to cover sales, purchasing, and logistics.
Major ERP transformation projects are stalling as companies wrestle with legacy integration, Angeli says; bridging old and new without discarding existing investment remains the central challenge.
“We can’t just abandon ERP,” he says. “We have to create bridges or APIs between AI tools and all the ERPs. So the question becomes, How do you create these bridges? It’s not easy.” While ERPs can be inflexible, they are still valuable tools, “thought through by experts, for CFOs.”
While the major ERP providers are working to embed AI in their offerings, corporate users are taking different routes, depending on individual views and budgets. In practice, then, AI adoption by corporate finance teams is advancing with extreme caution.
“If the pace of change for these tools is 100, the pace of change among individuals is 10, and for companies, it’s 1,” Angeli observes.
Predictive AI, built on auditable algorithms, has earned trust as a tool for reconciliations, fraud detection, and cash posting, while generative AI remains a source of deep skepticism. Hallucinations, compliance failures, and the risk of over-reliance are tangible concerns.
“We now see more and more suspicious posting, more and more duplicate payments,” says Angeli.
Agentic AI is further still from meaningful deployment, he adds: “CFOs don’t trust agentic AI. And given that studies show that hallucinations account for between 30% and 70% of Gen AI output, we don’t trust Gen AI, either. Maybe 1% or 2% of companies can say they have agents working.”
Aggarwal concurs, observing that corporate finance teams remain in the exploratory phase when it comes to AI, but with purpose. Companies are mandating structured upskilling; One treasury team of his acquaintance dedicates half a day every other week to some form of AI-related upskilling or evaluating AI processes, he says.
The priority for the second half of this year, however, will be data integrity and learning which insights are genuinely actionable, Aggarwal predicts; truly agentic AI is a story for 2027.
“The word I hear a lot in these circles is trust: trusted data, trusted algorithms, trusted outputs, trusted use of the outputs,” he says. Going forward, the deeper cultural question of if and when to remove the human from the loop will become harder to avoid as, presumably, AI systems accumulate error-free track records.
Progress may be cautious for now, but Gartner estimates that CFOs who get AI deployment right could unlock 10 additional margin points by 2029. It won’t be isolated pilots that deliver returns, however; the gains will come from managing technology as a portfolio. Three quarters of CFOs are already raising technology budgets for 2026, the research firm finds, with nearly half boosting them by 10% or more.
Quantifying return on investment is difficult for the majority of AI-based projects, however, and will continue to be so through this year, Angeli predicts: “We know that we have to implement AI and hope for financial ROI in the future, but most companies are not seeing it yet.”
Another aspect of the technology challenge that is intrinsically linked to wider geopolitical developments, says Montblanc’s Savalle, is digital sovereignty, or a nation’s ability to control, secure, and regulate its entire infrastructure: in accordance with its laws, but also its strategic interests. Different approaches to the governance of these technologies and the accompanying data have deepened geopolitical competition between the U.S., China, and the EU, according to the World Economic Forum.
“Many governments are now insisting that data centers sit within their own borders,” Savalle warns, “and increasingly, they’re looking at software dependency more broadly: not just AI, but email systems, video conferencing tools, the whole stack. As a CFO, you have to consider what that means for your IT architecture.” Under these circumstances, will the old ambition of a single global ERP still be viable in five years’ time? He is not so sure.
Whether physical war or digital friction, geopolitical risks are forcing the finance function into a state of permanent contingency thinking. The closing of the Strait of Hormuz is an extreme case, but it sits within a pattern that was already familiar to CFOs and treasurers. The post-Covid supply chain collapse, the Russia-Ukraine war’s impact on energy and commodities, the Red Sea disruptions of 2024–25 — each forced treasury teams to rethink counterparty risk, liquidity buffers, FX exposure, and supply chain financing.
What’s different this time is that finance leaders are no longer treating the shocks as exceptional.
Aggarwal sees the broader geopolitical realignment as structural rather than cyclical, and doubts even a change in US administration can reverse it: “The genie is out of the bottle around using trade as a way of imposing sovereignty.” Looking ahead, he foresees continued pressure on the finance function to operate against a challenging backdrop.
“What I understand from my CFO network is that there is no going back,” Savalle observes. “This is the new normal, and, if anything, it will continue and expand. So the question is about how you adapt your operating model. Make sure that you get that feedback loop and keep an open mind, because you are going into uncharted territory. Things used to work in a certain world order. This is changing.”
For corporate finance leaders, the priority is no longer waiting for stability to return, but operating effectively in its absence. While keeping to a long-term strategy is vital, so is reconsidering some of the operating model assumptions that a world divided into regional blocs is calling into question. That could include maintaining higher liquidity buffers, diversifying supply chains geographically, stress-testing cash flow forecasts against energy price scenarios, and investing in planning and forecasting tools that allow the organization to model disruption faster.
For the corporate finance function, these are no longer crisis measures, but the baseline.
This article appears in the June 2026 issue of Global Finance Magazine.
Laurie Pinto works on some of the biggest deals across the sports landscape, and the investor strategies he encounters are game-changing.
With the 2026 World Cup around the corner, the sports finance sector is heating up — and few advisers are at the center of more high-stakes talks than Laurie Pinto.
From cross-border M&A and private equity-style ownership structures to discreet football club deals, Pinto has spent decades navigating the intersection of finance and sport.
Through his eponymous firm, Pinto Capital LLP, he has advised everyone from Premier League clubs to emerging teams seeking new capital and international growth opportunities.
Pinto took part in this month’s Global Salon series, where he discussed the surging influence of American investors in European football and why sports franchises are increasingly viewed as scalable global assets.
He also weighs in on the future of cricket, the limits of SPAC-driven sports deals, and how geopolitical instability — from capital scrutiny to regional conflict — is reshaping the economics of today’s athletic events.
Global Finance: Set the stage for us. We’re just weeks away from the World Cup, and the atmosphere feels volatile. Fans are frustrated by skyrocketing ticket prices and logistical hurdles, and U.S. Soccer’s sporting director recently resigned. Is this one of the more chaotic build-ups you’ve seen in modern sports finance?
Laurie Pinto: It’s fast-moving, and tickets are incredibly expensive—the cheapest for the final is $5,000. Are things chaotic? Yes, fans are coming from 42 countries with vastly different expectations. Big football events always face skepticism. Qatar’s alcohol and LGBTQ restrictions sparked fears, but the tournament ran smoothly. Russia and Germany had logistical challenges, too. So I see this as part of the normal practice from naysayers. What’s different here is scale for the U.S.: This is a pivotal moment for soccer, especially for kids. Prices for tickets, flights, and hotels are eye-wateringly high, but that’s normal for major events.
GF: Has “Welcome to Wrexham” changed investor behavior?
Pinto: Ryan Reynolds has had a huge impact on English football, but American investors were already noticing the documentary “Sunderland ’Til I Die,” which drew 66 million viewers and I think was the second most-watched sports documentary on Netflix, after “The Last Dance” [about Michael Jordan and the Bulls]. That opened the eyes of American investors to the fact that these clubs have 100 years of history, amazingly sticky fan bases, great pedigree, and are affordable. If you want to buy into an American sport, name any franchise you can buy for under $8 billion. It’s hard, and there aren’t that many people who can stroke checks for $8 billion.
Americans also understand marketing and the creator economy. They say, “We can help manage these businesses better, both on the pitch and off the pitch.” American sports are an asset class and are incredibly professionally managed compared to the UK and Europe. And if you can transplant some of that expertise, you can take some of these loss-making clubs and make them profitable, and then the valuation goes up dramatically.
GF: With your cross-border experience, how do geopolitical factors like regulation and capital controls affect sports deals?
Pinto: What they do is, there’s an immense amount of KYC (Know Your Customer) and AML (Anti-Money Laundering). It’s not just a matter of “who is the buyer?” It’s more about “what is your source of funds?” and “who is the ultimate beneficial owner or UBO?” You see deals for clubs where their GP/LP structures are like private equity, and the LPs are the ultimate beneficial owners.
Private equity guys structure their investments that way, and they take a carry on the performance. They help manage the investment. And that’s a very commonplace thing in American sport and is becoming increasingly common in the UK and Europe. There’s no capital control, but there is a deep sense to make sure there isn’t money laundering going on. And can the people really afford it? And is it really their money? Because if people don’t disclose where their money comes from, generally, it’s not for a good reason.
GF: Have you seen a major shift in how clubs are valued in recent years? Is there a pre- and post-Ryan Reynolds era?
Pinto: About 10 years ago, there was no valuation methodology. Now, clubs are valued at multiples of revenue, even if they are loss-making. Intangible assets are better monetized through apps, second-screen connectivity, surge pricing, AI—more personalized user experiences, scalable and multilingual, enhancing valuation.
The lifetime value (LTV) of a fan is important. Consulting groups estimate £100–£2,000 per fan. Manchester United has a billion fans, worth roughly $10 billion. At smaller clubs, the value of a fan is even higher; in Sunderland, stadiums are always full, rain or shine. Loyalty is much higher, affecting valuation metrics. Swansea City AFC, pre-Luka Modric and Snoop Dog, had 500,000 fans; now they claim connections to over 100 million.
GF: Do you expect U.S. entities buying into top UK divisions to change the product, and if so, how?
Pinto: It’s already changing. The off-pitch professionalism is increasing—how clubs monetize non-match days, preseason tours, overseas fans, etc. Americanization brings deeper expertise. Big clubs benefit, and even smaller clubs in League One or League Two can become profitable quickly. Private equity investing in sport isn’t an issue; U.S. investors are comfortable with leverage, more so than Europeans.
GF: In recent years, we’ve seen several sports teams list on stock exchanges, often with mixed results and significant volatility. At the same time, SPACs emerged in the U.S. with ambitions to buy football clubs, including lower-tier European teams. What’s your take?
Pinto: A SPAC will pursue any deal that makes economic sense for its sponsors, but it’s very difficult for a SPAC to buy a UK or European soccer club because it takes so long for them to get to the vote, and the vote might not even happen, and the soccer club will give away all the optionality. John Textor’s Eagle Football would’ve been the best SPAC, with holdings including Lyon, Botafogo and Crystal Palace. They looked at it with James Dinan of the NBA’s Milwaukee Bucks and York Capital, but that didn’t get over the line. SPACs just take so long to get done.
GF: What new sports investing trends are you noticing?
Pinto: What we are starting to see are new platforms that try to create exposure without traditional ownership. Some firms are building instruments that resemble CFDs or synthetic shares in clubs, and I’ve been working with a platform called Vestible, which is exploring sports investment access in a different way.
The idea is to give investors economic exposure to performance without requiring full ownership obligations—things like governance, operational responsibilities, or capital calls. There’s also growing interest in fractional ownership and tokenized models, often linked to fan engagement or loyalty programs. These concepts are interesting, and they have a place, but they haven’t yet broken into mainstream investor behavior.
GF: Cricket is hugely popular in countries like India but hasn’t really taken off here. Given its unique global footprint, how easy is it for a sport like that to expand in the U.S.?
Pinto: I am super positive on cricket, which is the second-biggest sport on Earth. It’s the fastest-growing women’s sport on Earth. It’s also the most in-game bet on sport on Earth. When they had the World Cup in New York in 2024, I believe it was a big success. Winning a game meant it went from the back pages to the front page of the Wall Street Journal. Suddenly, one’s looking at the economics of cricket. We’ve been very active in cricket. It has largely been an Indian subcontinent game, but it’s exciting, it’s fun, and I see cricket growing in the States.
Major League cricket has few full storms, but I think it’s coming. San Francisco Unicorns, the guys you want to watch in terms of how to get it right, but you’re seeing a lot of money going into cricket right now from NFL owners. Two of the richest guys in America tried, but failed, to buy into Indian cricket less than a month ago—the Walton family and the Ford family, the owners of the Denver Broncos and Detroit Lions. The Glazers, who own Tampa Bay, have been buying into cricket, and I can assure you other owners have been talking to us about it, too.
GF: Do you know why?
Pinto: Because they see exactly the same demographics you see in the NFL. It’s a very big domestic fan base, with very few games. But each game is a huge occasion, with massive television deals and a huge moat around it, which means it can’t get challenged. Go to any park in New York on a weekend, and you will see people playing some version of either 20/20 or over 50. The challenge is for a game to really catch on; it needs to start with the kids, and this is why the NBA is so successful: you don’t need any equipment to play basketball. You just need a ball. And you can play it at any level and still enjoy it. Culturally, at the moment, cricket is nowhere near that in America.
GF: We have a lot of basketball talent here, with college programs, NIL deals, and players going overseas. When will European basketball reach the same competitive level as the NBA—or U.S. soccer could match European clubs in popularity?
Pinto: Will NBA Europe be successful? They just finished the first round of franchise bidding, but it’s been slow. Timing was terrible—the war in Iran disrupted three of the major bidders, all Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds. It’s hard to spend aggressively overseas when people back home are in bomb shelters. Give me the war’s end date, and I’ll tell you when that money comes back.
That said, European basketball is bigger than many realize. Many European players are thriving in the NBA. I went to the Paris Games last year—amazing, electric atmosphere. There are lots of talented French and Australian players making an impact. Do I think Europe will ever match the NBA in scale? No. Soccer dominates there. NBA Europe is growing, but it still has a long way to go.
Published on •Updated
Crude prices climbed in early Asian trading on Monday after Israeli troops pushed further into Lebanon over the weekend, fuelling investor fears that the broader Middle East conflict could escalate rather than move towards a peace deal.
At the time of writing, West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude was up 2.88% at $89.88 per barrel, while Brent crude rose 2.43% to $93.33 per barrel.
The Israeli advance has taken place despite a nominal ceasefire in place since 17 April and just days before the next round of direct talks between Lebanon and Israel, scheduled at the State Department on 2 and 3 June.
In other early trade dealings on Monday morning, Asia-Pacific markets were mixed with South Korea’s Kospi climbing 1.31%, while Japan’s Nikkei 225 edged up 0.17%. The broader Topix index, however, slipped 0.3%.
Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 fell 0.21%, while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index gained 0.73%. Mainland China’s CSI 300 dipped 0.32%.
Tokyo-listed shares in SoftBank Group, meanwhile, surged 5% after the Japanese conglomerate unveiled plans to invest €45 billion over the next five years to develop artificial intelligence infrastructure in France.
In the US, stock futures were flat after Wall Street pushed further into the record books on Friday. The major indexes extended the market’s recent winning streak and closed out a solid month of gains.
The S&P 500 rose 0.2%, notching its seventh consecutive gain and ninth straight winning week — the longest such streak since 2023. The benchmark index set an all-time high for the fourth day in a row.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 0.7% and the Nasdaq composite added 0.2%. The Dow and Nasdaq also reached new heights after posting record highs earlier last week.
Big technology stocks have been behind much of the market’s record-breaking streak. Their pricey stock values give them more influence in directing the market higher or lower. In May alone, technology stocks within the S&P 500 rose more than 15%, while most of the sectors in the benchmark index actually lost ground.
“The rally has been largely tech-led and supported by resilient earnings, but the key question is whether it can be sustained,” wrote Angelo Kourkafas, senior global strategist at Edward Jones, in a research note.
Tech stocks also powered the market higher Friday. Microsoft rose 5.4% and Broadcom gained 4.7%.
Additional sources • AP
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The man financing Britain’s clean energy future on doubt, policy risk, and the things no CFO can control.
As CFO of one of Britain’s most ambitious clean energy projects, EnergyPathways’ Max Williams has learned that securing capital is only half the job.
Since joining the firm in April 2025, Williams has been overseeing the finances of MESH, an £800 million offshore hub on the Lancashire coast set to combine long-duration energy storage, gas, and green hydrogen production in a single integrated facility.
With MESH still in the pre-FEED stage, the challenge lies not just in raising capital but in keeping government, institutional investors, and industry partners moving in lockstep toward a Final Investment Decision — and ultimately, execution.
A seasoned Chartered Accountant with three decades in energy and natural resources, Williams spoke with Global Finance about financing a first-of-its-kind project, the politics of clean energy, and what keeps him awake at night.
Global Finance: What is your main achievement leading finance at EnergyPathways (EPP)?
Max Williams: EPP is developing a unique solution for energy storage and supply to support Britain’s energy transition. The project, called Marram Energy Storage Hub (MESH), combines long-duration energy storage (LDES) and gas storage, while also growing hydrogen industries using its offshore storage facilities. The ability to drive the project forward has depended in the early stages on reliable and continuing support from equity shareholders who understand and believe in the company’s focus.
The signing of a financing agreement with a global institutional investor was an important step in the company being able to accelerate its pre-FEED (Pre-Front End Engineering Design) work program on both its LDES and gas storage license elements of its project. Our ongoing engagement with government, industry partners and banks will provide further significant funding to progress the project to and beyond the Final Investment Decision (FID). The company designed the full project to minimize government subsidies.
GF: What is the biggest challenge in funding operations for MESH, an £800 million integrated offshore facility in the UK (near the Lancashire coast)? What is the thing you spend most of your time on?
Williams: The Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero designated the MESH Project to be one of national significance. It is designed to meet clean energy goals and provide employment in the region, engaging with Team Barrow [a public-private partnership that aims to revive this port town in northwestern England] and gaining increasing parliamentary support. The biggest challenge is to ensure that all stakeholders, including government, are aligned and supportive, enabling the company to meet key milestones and secure appropriate capital as the development progresses through FEED to FID and first revenues.
GF: How important is it for you to have a good team, and what defines a good team for you?
Williams: With a new concept project such as MESH, success depends on a strong team across all disciplines, not just the finance team but also the teams overseeing EnergyPathways’ technical and commercial operations. Project delivery is going to be a key discipline in arranging project financing. In the energy transition space, a good team functions efficiently and effectively across disciplines with clear communication around objectives and strategies to achieve them. EPP also benefits by having world-class industry partners, including Siemens, Wood Group, and Costain.
GF: How do you see AI affecting your work?
Williams: For a small company with a small team, the use of AI has so far been limited within the accounting function. However, this will develop as the company grows. The company already uses AI to maximize productivity and assist with project design and implementation. An AI energy management system is a key part of our development design, enabling MESH to ensure a reliable and flexible energy supply to Britain’s energy markets.
GF: What advice do you have for aspiring CFOs?
Williams: Being CFO will always put you at the center of reporting, information flow, and decision-making. For EnergyPathways, this means identifying the project’s financing needs and providing suitable, timely solutions to those requirements. In addition, the CFO ensures information transparency for investors and the broader stakeholder community.
GF: What keeps you up at night?
Williams: Matters that are outside the control of the company. For instance, EnergyPathways is developing solutions for energy storage and supply, offering security of supply with a focus on clean energy supply. Development of the MESH project may require changes to government strategy and policy, and macro, global factors may affect policy. The MESH project, though, would benefit the UK’s future energy supply regardless of the polar arguments of clean energy versus exploitation of the North Sea.
The man financing Britain’s clean energy future on doubt, policy risk, and the things no CFO can control.
As CFO of one of Britain’s most ambitious clean energy projects, EnergyPathways’ Max Williams has learned that securing capital is only half the job.
Since joining the firm in April 2025, Williams has been overseeing the finances of MESH, an £800 million offshore hub on the Lancashire coast set to combine long-duration energy storage, gas, and green hydrogen production in a single integrated facility.
With MESH still in the pre-FEED stage, the challenge lies not just in raising capital but in keeping government, institutional investors, and industry partners moving in lockstep toward a Final Investment Decision — and ultimately, execution.
A seasoned Chartered Accountant with three decades in energy and natural resources, Williams spoke with Global Finance about financing a first-of-its-kind project, the politics of clean energy, and what keeps him awake at night.
Global Finance: What is your main achievement leading finance at EnergyPathways (EPP)?
Max Williams: EPP is developing a unique solution for energy storage and supply to support Britain’s energy transition. The project, called Marram Energy Storage Hub (MESH), combines long-duration energy storage (LDES) and gas storage, while also growing hydrogen industries using its offshore storage facilities. The ability to drive the project forward has depended in the early stages on reliable and continuing support from equity shareholders who understand and believe in the company’s focus.
The signing of a financing agreement with a global institutional investor was an important step in the company being able to accelerate its pre-FEED (Pre-Front End Engineering Design) work program on both its LDES and gas storage license elements of its project. Our ongoing engagement with government, industry partners and banks will provide further significant funding to progress the project to and beyond the Final Investment Decision (FID). The company designed the full project to minimize government subsidies.
GF: What is the biggest challenge in funding operations for MESH, an £800 million integrated offshore facility in the UK (near the Lancashire coast)? What is the thing you spend most of your time on?
Williams: The Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero designated the MESH Project to be one of national significance. It is designed to meet clean energy goals and provide employment in the region, engaging with Team Barrow [a public-private partnership that aims to revive this port town in northwestern England] and gaining increasing parliamentary support. The biggest challenge is to ensure that all stakeholders, including government, are aligned and supportive, enabling the company to meet key milestones and secure appropriate capital as the development progresses through FEED to FID and first revenues.
GF: How important is it for you to have a good team, and what defines a good team for you?
Williams: With a new concept project such as MESH, success depends on a strong team across all disciplines, not just the finance team but also the teams overseeing EnergyPathways’ technical and commercial operations. Project delivery is going to be a key discipline in arranging project financing. In the energy transition space, a good team functions efficiently and effectively across disciplines with clear communication around objectives and strategies to achieve them. EPP also benefits by having world-class industry partners, including Siemens, Wood Group, and Costain.
GF: How do you see AI affecting your work?
Williams: For a small company with a small team, the use of AI has so far been limited within the accounting function. However, this will develop as the company grows. The company already uses AI to maximize productivity and assist with project design and implementation. An AI energy management system is a key part of our development design, enabling MESH to ensure a reliable and flexible energy supply to Britain’s energy markets.
GF: What advice do you have for aspiring CFOs?
Williams: Being CFO will always put you at the center of reporting, information flow, and decision-making. For EnergyPathways, this means identifying the project’s financing needs and providing suitable, timely solutions to those requirements. In addition, the CFO ensures information transparency for investors and the broader stakeholder community.
GF: What keeps you up at night?
Williams: Matters that are outside the control of the company. For instance, EnergyPathways is developing solutions for energy storage and supply, offering security of supply with a focus on clean energy supply. Development of the MESH project may require changes to government strategy and policy, and macro, global factors may affect policy. The MESH project, though, would benefit the UK’s future energy supply regardless of the polar arguments of clean energy versus exploitation of the North Sea.
