Peltz offers $7.35 per share to take Wendy's private, and big chip techs buy back their own shares

Activist investor Nelson Peltz presented a US$1.4 billion offer to take Wendy's private, according to a report cited by Yahoo Finance's Sozzi Unleashed program. Peltz knows the network well: he was a member of the board for years and accumulated a relevant stake in the shares over time.

For presenter Brian Sozzi, the investor would be buying a problem that he helped create. He recalled six consecutive quarters of falling same-store sales, food quality problems, broken machines and the judicial recovery of one of the chain's largest franchisees, which intends to close restaurants. In the presenter's assessment, the account includes the pressure that affects the entire fast food sector.

Sozzi acknowledged that Peltz deserves credit for past activist campaigns, such as those at Disney and Procter & Gamble. Still, he stated that he should be held accountable for Wendy's performance, and left open the possibility that management as a closed company would improve results.

Serial buybacks in the chip sector

On the same day as the Federal Reserve's interest rate decision, the presenter pointed out signs of a recovery in technology stocks ahead of Google and Microsoft's earnings. The first would be a graph from BCA Research's chief economist, Peter Berezin, on the rental of old Nvidia GPUs (Blackwell and H100, from the Hopper line). Prices would be rising, which, in Sozzi's reading, contradicts the thesis of slowing demand for artificial intelligence, as customers are unable to obtain the newest chips. According to the program, Berezin, with a more cautious bias, does not see a surge in capex investments before 2028, if it occurs at all.

The second signal came from SK Hynix. The manufacturer reported a sixth straight quarter of record sales and profits and said it will repurchase 30 trillion won worth of shares this year, following a 30 to 40 trillion won program announced in August. The stock had fallen 24% in the month before the balance sheet. The program also cited a return of US$75 billion to investors via buybacks and dividends.

Micron, in turn, reported in a regulatory document that the board authorized discretionary repurchases of around US$35.16 billion, the highest ceiling in the company's history. Purchases should begin after December 9, when restrictions linked to the Chips Act end. Nvidia, whose shares fell 3% in the month and have been sideways for six months, announced a new US$150 billion program at the end of September, bringing the total authorization to US$235 billion.

Reading for the market

Sozzi said he is not a fan of buybacks, but interpreted the movement as a message from big tech: they disagree with the recent drop in their shares and will act to contain it. The third sign cited was Anthropic's prospectus, which, according to the presenter, shows more than US$131 billion in cash and strong demand in the first half of the year. He also cited a report that JPMorgan's Jamie Dimon will play a central role in bringing retail investors to the company's public offering, as he would have done at SpaceX's debut in June.

Interviewed on the program, Jeetu Patel, president and product director at Cisco, said he does not see a slowdown in demand. For him, the use of AI agents still affects less than 5% of people and already consumes the entire available infrastructure supply. Patel argued that agent security will be the issue of the moment and said that older chips maintain a useful life of several years, making them a lasting asset.

Regarding the consumer, Sozzi described "remarkable resilience": sales of Coca-Cola Zero rose 16% in the third quarter, Hilton reported strong spending on rooms and Delta continues to see strength in premium seats. He attributed the rise in shares of Target and Macy's and Walmart's appreciation of about 11% in the month to this resilience. On the eve of Chipotle's balance sheet, the presenter said he expected same-store sales to rise in the low single digits, possibly insufficient for the market.

Automatically translated from Portuguese.