New York, February 26, 2026, 18:52 (ET) — After-hours
- Applied Materials slipped 4.87% to finish at $375.72, having dropped as low as $366.54 during the session.
- Chip stocks broadly retreated, with Nvidia slipping even after posting another upbeat outlook.
- Friday brings the U.S. PPI inflation data, and then traders shift focus to Broadcom’s results next week, both seen as potential guides for market direction.
Applied Materials (AMAT.O) ended Thursday down 4.87% at $375.72, having touched a session low of $366.54.
Investors stepped back from the tech giants after Nvidia’s results and outlook didn’t ease valuation jitters. Shares of Nvidia slumped 5.5%, pulling the Nasdaq down 1.2%. The S&P 500 slipped 0.53% as well, despite Nvidia projecting first-quarter sales near $78 billion. “People are getting concerned about lofty valuations,” Thomas Plumb, chief executive and portfolio manager at Plumb Funds, said. Reuters
That sentiment has started to move through the semiconductor space, hitting suppliers that provide crucial tools and components to chipmakers. “The competitive picture is also shifting,” said Jacob Bourne, an analyst at eMarketer, noting how rivals are rolling out new AI accelerators while major cloud players boost custom chip budgets. Hyperscalers like Meta project capital spending to hit at least $630 billion in 2026, most of it heading to data centers and processors, according to Reuters. Reuters
Applied had just notched a new 52-week high on Wednesday, closing up 4.50% at $394.95. But that momentum stalled Thursday. Shares dropped, ending roughly 5% off the $395.95 top. Trading volume? About 7.7 million shares—just under the 50-day average.
Another item crossed investor desks: a standard insider-sale alert. Board member Judy Bruner, according to a Form 144 dated Feb. 25, intended to offload as many as 2,500 shares. Instead, she ended up selling 3,969 shares on Feb. 23, pulling in about $1.50 million. The notice—Form 144—signals when an insider plans to sell restricted or controlled stock.
The bull case for Applied still leans on AI-related spending and memory refreshes—a message the company drove home with its February forecast. Management put second-quarter sales at roughly $7.65 billion, give or take $500 million, and guided to adjusted earnings of about $2.64 per share, plus or minus 20 cents. Both numbers landed ahead of what analysts were looking for. CEO Gary Dickerson described the outlook as “fueled by the acceleration of industry investments in AI computing.” Timm Schulze-Melander at Rothschild & Co. Redburn pointed to memory as “a greater growth driver near-term.” Reuters
Still, risks keep surfacing, and investors haven’t lost sight of them. Applied pointed out that Chinese demand for chipmaking equipment will likely drop in 2026, thanks to stricter U.S. export rules squeezing access to the market.
Macro data is up next. On Friday at 8:30 a.m. ET, the U.S. producer price index (PPI) lands — a key wholesale inflation reading that could jolt interest-rate expectations.
The spotlight shifts to earnings and signals on AI demand next week. Broadcom drops its results March 4, while Applied heads to Cantor Fitzgerald’s Global Technology & Industrial Growth Conference March 10.
