NEW YORK, Feb 17, 2026, 10:40 EST — Regular session
Applied Materials shares were down about 0.8% at $352.23 in morning trading on Tuesday, as chip stocks slipped when Wall Street reopened after a long weekend. The iShares Semiconductor ETF fell about 1.8% and the Nasdaq-tracking Invesco QQQ was off around 1.1%.
The move matters because investors are still trying to pin down whether last week’s upbeat outlook marked a step up in equipment demand, or just a good quarter in a noisy tape. The next near-term checkpoint is what executives say in March, when the company is due to talk with investors again.
Broader risk appetite has been shaky in tech. “You are seeing a rebalance,” said Stash Graham, managing director and CIO at Graham Capital Wealth Management, as U.S. stocks fell in choppy trade with AI worries still hanging over the sector. (Reuters)
Applied said Dr. Prabu Raja, president of its Semiconductor Products Group, will join a fireside chat at Morgan Stanley’s Technology, Media & Telecom Conference on March 2. CFO Brice Hill is set to speak at Cantor Fitzgerald’s Global Technology & Industrial Growth Conference on March 10, with webcasts available. (GlobeNewswire)
Last week, the Santa Clara, California-based chipmaking equipment maker forecast second-quarter revenue of about $7.65 billion, plus or minus $500 million, and adjusted profit of about $2.64 per share, plus or minus 20 cents. CEO Gary Dickerson said the results were “fueled by the acceleration of industry investments in AI computing,” and analyst Timm Schulze-Melander at Rothschild & Co. Redburn said memory spending was the bigger near-term driver. (Reuters)
HBM, short for high-bandwidth memory, is built by stacking layers of DRAM to move data faster. Advanced packaging is the set of techniques used to combine multiple chips into a single, dense package — a bottleneck area as AI systems scale.
Applied shares jumped 11% on Friday after the forecast, and at least 22 brokerages raised price targets following the results. “Artificial intelligence infrastructure demand is immense, and supply is scarce,” said William Kerwin, a senior equity analyst at Morningstar. (Reuters)
Other chip-equipment names were also lower on Tuesday. Lam Research fell about 0.8%, KLA slipped roughly 0.5%, and ASML’s U.S.-listed shares eased about 0.4%.
But there’s a risk side that has nothing to do with cycle timing: export controls. Applied agreed to pay $252 million to settle U.S. allegations that it illegally shipped chipmaking equipment to China’s SMIC, and the company said the Justice Department and SEC had closed related investigations without action. (Reuters)
Dividend watchers have a nearer date on the calendar as well. Applied has a quarterly cash dividend of $0.46 per share that goes ex-dividend on Feb. 19 and is payable on March 12, the company said. (GlobeNewswire)
Next up, investors will listen for any shift in demand language when Raja speaks on March 2, followed by Hill on March 10 — with memory capacity plans, AI data-center builds and China-related constraints likely to draw the toughest questions.
