NEW YORK, Feb 17, 2026, 10:40 EST — Regular session
Applied Materials dropped roughly 0.8% to $352.23 early Tuesday, with chip names broadly weaker as Wall Street came back online after the extended weekend. The iShares Semiconductor ETF slid 1.8%, while Invesco QQQ, which mirrors the Nasdaq, dipped about 1.1%.
This shift is significant. Investors are still sorting out if last week’s optimistic outlook signals a real uptick in equipment demand, or if it was simply a strong quarter in an otherwise volatile environment. The next key update comes in March, when the company plans to address investors once more.
Appetite for risk across tech names has wavered. “You are seeing a rebalance,” said Stash Graham, managing director and CIO at Graham Capital Wealth Management. U.S. stocks lost ground in volatile trading, with concerns around AI continuing to cast a shadow on the sector. Reuters
Applied announced that Dr. Prabu Raja, who leads the Semiconductor Products Group as president, will appear in a fireside chat at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media & Telecom Conference on March 2. On March 10, CFO Brice Hill is scheduled to speak at Cantor Fitzgerald’s Global Technology & Industrial Growth Conference. Both sessions will be webcast.
Santa Clara’s Applied Materials last week put out second-quarter guidance: revenue landing near $7.65 billion, give or take $500 million, with adjusted earnings around $2.64 a share, plus or minus 20 cents. CEO Gary Dickerson pointed to faster industry moves on AI computing as the catalyst. Over at Rothschild & Co. Redburn, Timm Schulze-Melander flagged memory spending as the real short-term push.
HBM—high-bandwidth memory—stacks DRAM layers on top of each other, pushing data speeds higher. Advanced packaging, the process for bundling several chips tightly together, has emerged as a bottleneck as AI workloads ramp up.
Applied shares surged 11% Friday after the company issued its outlook, prompting at least 22 brokerages to hike their price targets post-earnings. “Artificial intelligence infrastructure demand is immense, and supply is scarce,” said William Kerwin, a senior equity analyst at Morningstar. Reuters
Tuesday brought declines for other chip-equipment stocks as well. Lam Research dipped close to 0.8%. KLA was off by around 0.5%, with ASML’s U.S. shares down about 0.4%.
Export controls remain a headache, no matter where we are in the cycle. Applied coughed up $252 million to resolve U.S. claims it shipped chipmaking gear to China’s SMIC without approval. The company also said both the Justice Department and SEC wrapped up their related probes without taking further steps.
Dividend-focused investors have a key date coming up. Applied’s quarterly cash payout of $0.46 per share will go ex-dividend on Feb. 19, with payment set for March 12, according to the company.
Investors are tuning in for Raja’s remarks on March 2, hunting for any tweak in demand commentary. Hill steps up March 10. Expect sharp questions around memory capacity plans, AI data-center construction, and ongoing China constraints.
