A 2025 Ford Lightning electric vehicle (EV) at a Ford dealership in Antioch, California, US, on Thursday, Dec. 18, 2025.

David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images

DETROIT — Ford Motor said it will report pretax charges of $600 million in its fourth-quarter results due to adjustments in its employee pension plans and other postretirement benefits.

The Detroit automaker said the special charges, which will affect its net income but not its adjusted results or cash, are split between domestic plans and those outside the U.S.

“The remeasurement loss for U.S. plans was largely driven by actuarial losses compared to plan assumptions,” Ford said in a public filing after markets closed Thursday. “The remeasurement loss for non-U.S. plans was largely driven by changes in key plan measurement assumptions, such as improved life expectancy.”

On an after-tax basis, Ford said the remeasurement loss is expected to decrease its net income by about $500 million based on the tax impact in the jurisdictions where there are remeasurement gains and losses.

Ford said its retirement plans remain fully funded and the charges would not change its expectations for pension contributions in 2026.

The new special charges are in addition to about $19.5 billion in special items the company disclosed last month related to a restructuring of its business priorities and a pullback in its all-electric vehicle investments, most of which Ford said would occur during the fourth quarter.

Automakers commonly exclude “special items” or one-time charges from their adjusted financial results to provide investors with a clearer picture of their core, ongoing business operations.

Ford is scheduled to report its fourth-quarter results after markets close on Feb. 10.

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Oracle CEO Clay Magouyrk speaks at a Q&A session following a tour of the OpenAI data center in Abilene, Texas, on Sept. 23, 2025.

Shelby Tauber | Pool | Reuters

Three months ago Oracle named Clay Magouyrk and Mike Sicilia as its new CEOs. They’re off to a rough start.

Oracle shares have plummeted 30% so far this quarter. With four trading days remaining in the period, the stock is on pace for its sharpest decline since 2001 and the dot-com bust.

Investors have grown skeptical about the database software vendor’s ability to open more server farms for ChatGPT operator OpenAI, which agreed in September to spend more than $300 billion with Oracle.

Earlier this month, Oracle reported weaker-than-expected quarterly revenue and free cash flow. On the earnings call, newly appointed finance leader Doug Kehring called for $50 billion in fiscal 2026 capital expenditures, 43% higher than the plan in September and double the total from a year earlier. Additionally, Oracle is plotting $248 billion in leases to boost cloud capacity, on top of building data centers.

Such growth will require boatloads of debt. In September, Oracle raised $18 billion in a jumbo bond sale, one of the largest debt issuances on record in the tech industry. Kehring committed on the earnings call to keeping Oracle’s investment-grade debt rating. But some skeptical investors are betting otherwise, pushing up the prices of Oracle’s credit default swaps.

“Considering Oracle is already barely hanging on to an investment grade rating, we would be concerned about Oracle’s ability to live up to these obligations without restructuring its OpenAI contract,” analysts at D.A. Davidson wrote in a note to clients on Dec. 12. They have the equivalent of a hold rating on the stock.

Oracle declined to comment.

Magouyrk and Sicilia’s tenure began at a time of historic optimism.

About two weeks before they took the reins from Safra Catz, Oracle reported a 359% revenue backlog tied heavily to OpenAI’s commitment. That deal represented a major endorsement for Oracle, which was left off Gartner’s list of top five cloud infrastructure providers by revenue for 2024.

Following reports about the OpenAI agreement on Sept. 10, Oracle’s stock shot up almost 36%, the third-sharpest rally since the company’s 1986 IPO. The shares reached an intraday record of $345.72.

“We think $340 was terrifying,” said Zachary Lountzis, vice president at Lountzis Asset Management, in an interview. Lountzis held $25 million in Oracle shares as of Sept. 30, according to a filing.

The stock has since lost 43% of its value, closing on Wednesday at $197.49, though it got a bump last Friday after TikTok said it had agreed to sell part of its U.S. business to Oracle and other investors. Oracle has for years delivered cloud services to TikTok.

Not ‘betting against Larry’

Lountzis said his team first bought Oracle shares in 2020, when the stock was below $60. It’s held onto it stake through the recent highs and lows, picking up another roughly 30,000 shares in the first quarter of this year.

“Our philosophy is that we’re OK with short-term overvaluation if the economics of the business have not changed, and that was the case with Oracle,” Lountzis said. “We didn’t feel the economics of the business changed with all the largely positive news that came out. And I think what we’ve seen from $340 down to $180 is actually a very healthy correction.” 

For Lountzis, much of his trust in the company comes down to Larry Ellison, who founded Oracle in 1977 and is now the world’s second-richest person, according to Bloomberg.

“You would have gone bankrupt 40 times betting against Larry over the last 50 years,” Lountzis said. “He sees the future.”

In October, Sicilia, Magouyrk and Kehring laid out a vision for a much faster-growing Oracle, with revenue set to step up to $225 billion in the 2030 fiscal year from $57 billion in fiscal 2025. Most of that growth will come from artificial intelligence infrastructure, with Nvidia’s graphics processing units at the center of it.

But while Magouryk was telling analysts to prepare for “hypergrowth,” such expansion would come at the expense of profitability, because Oracle’s core software business commands much higher margins.

In fiscal 2021, Oracle’s gross margin was 77%. Analysts polled by FactSet see it falling to about 49% in 2030, with about $34 billion in total negative free cash flow over the next five years before that figure turns positive in 2029.

Eric Lynch, managing director at Florida’s Suncoast Equity Management, said it’s hard as an investor to get comfortable with Oracle’s plans.

“Four or five years is a long time,” Lynch said. “That’s just not within our investment discipline.”

Lynch also said he’s worried about such heavy dependance on OpenAI, which is burning cash at a rapid rate and has committed to more than $1.4 trillion in total AI build-outs and investments.

“Will the demand be there from OpenAI?” Lynch said.

Wells Fargo analyst Michael Turrin launched coverage of Oracle earlier this month with the equivalent of a buy rating and a $280 price target. He said the industry’s perception will likely improve if Oracle follows through with OpenAI, which could account for more than one-third of the company’s revenue by 2029, according to Turrin’s estimate.

“They’re kind of shifting away from more of a value-oriented business to a more growth-oriented business,” Turrin said.

A big challenge for Oracle remains picking up market share in cloud infrastructure, where the company badly trails Amazon, Microsoft and Google even though its customer roster includes names like Meta, Uber and Elon Musk’s xAI.

Databricks, which was just valued at $134 billion in a funding round, doesn’t make its popular data processing software available on Oracle’s cloud.

That will happen “when customers start banging on my door, saying, ‘You need to run on Oracle,'” Databricks CEO Ali Ghodsi said in an interview. “Maybe it’s getting there, but we just haven’t heard that.”

Databricks rival Snowflake hasn’t brought its services to Oracle either.

Turrin said that Oracle’s credibility in the market will hinge on the success of its AI build-out.

“Then customers start to look at this and say, wow, this company was trusted to build some of the largest training clusters in the world, and they’re delivering on them,” Turrin said. “We should take a look at that too and figure out what’s happening here.”

WATCH: How the massive power draw of generative AI is overtaxing our grid

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Dell, HP and Lenovo laptops on display at the Consumer Electronics Show 2025 in Las Vegas, on Jan. 8, 2025.

Artur Widak | Nurphoto | Getty Images

Personal computer shipments rose in the first quarter of the year as companies sped up deliveries to gear up for incoming tariffs.

Research firm Canalys estimates that shipment for PCs jumped more than 9% during the period, while data from IDC Research pegged the growth at nearly 5% from a year earlier. That equated to roughly 63 million units.

Companies worldwide are bracing for the knock on effects from President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariff plans, which threaten to suppress demand for computers and other electronics that largely rely on Asian countries for manufacturing.

“The market is clearly showing some level of pull-in in the first quarter this year as both vendors and end-users brace for the impact of US tariffs,” IDC wrote.

Concerns about a slowing economy and a decline in discretionary spending have pressured global markets in recent days, and pushed some consumers to stock up on products affected by the levies. The PC market has been largely stagnant in recent years following a surge in purchases during the Covid-19 pandemic. In 2024, shipments increased 1% after two straight years of declines, according to IDC.

The latest round includes a 104% tariff on goods imported from China, home to hefty amounts of PC manufacturing. Vietnam, Thailand and India, which are responsible for a growing number of electronics production, also face import tariffs.

IDC’s Ryan Reith told CNBC that some original design manufacturers have already weighed holding back sending out additional PCs as the retaliatory tariffs went into effect.

“The real interesting stuff is in front of us,” Reith said. “It’s either going to be inventory backup, you keep sending something somewhere where no one’s buying it, and it builds up inventory, or nothing gets sent over here.”

Canalys said notebook shipments grew 10% during the period to more than 49 million units, while desktop shipments rose 8%. The U.S. saw the biggest increase, but shipments will likely ease as “inventory levels normalize” and higher prices kick in, the firm said.

IDC estimates shipments from Apple jumped 14% in the first quarter from a year earlier, while ASUS shipments rose more than 11%. Shipments from Lenovo and HP — the top two PC makers — grew about 11% and 6%, respectively.

— CNBC’s Kif Leswing contributed to this report.

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Photo illustration showing the Samsung Group company logo displayed on a smartphone screen.

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Samsung Electronics on Friday reported that its operating profit dropped sharply from the previous three months as it ramps up R&D spending, while flagging a slowdown in its chips business.

The South Korean company posted better-than-expected fourth-quarter revenue, though its operating profit missed expectations.

Here are Samsung’s fourth-quarter results compared with LSEG SmartEstimate, which is weighted toward forecasts from analysts who are more consistently accurate:

• Revenue: 75.8 trillion Korean won ($52.2 billion) vs. KRW 75.4 trillion
• Operating profit: KRW 6.5 trillion vs. KRW 6.8 trillion

Revenue rose about 12% from last year, while operating profit grew about 130%, year on year. However, operating profit fell nearly 30%, and revenue slipped by over 4%, quarter on quarter, amid soft market conditions and an increase in company expenditures.

Fourth-quarter revenue beat Samsung’s own guidance of KRW 75 trillion, while operating profit came in line with the company’s forecast.

Samsung is a leading manufacturer of memory chips, which are utilized in devices such as laptops and servers, and is also the world’s second-largest player in the smartphone market.

“Although fourth quarter revenue and operating profit decreased on a quarter-on-quarter (QoQ) basis, annual revenue reached the second-highest on record, surpassed only in 2022,” Samsung said in its statement.

For the full year, Samsung reported KRW 300.9 trillion in revenue and KRW 32.7 trillion in operating profit. In 2023, the company posted an annual revenue of KRW 258.94 trillion and an operating profit of KRW 6.57 trillion.

For the current quarter, Samsung said that earnings might be limited due to weakness in its semiconductor business but that it would pursue growth through AI smartphones and other premium devices. 

“For 2025 as a whole, the Company plans to enhance technological and product advantages in AI, continue to meet future demand for high-value-added products and drive sales growth in premium segments,” it added.

Samsung shares fell 2.2% in South Korea on Friday morning, while SK Hynix stock fell over 11% as South Korean markets resumed trading after a four-day break. Asian tech majors have faced pressure from the latest artificial intelligence model from China’s DeepSeek that threatens to upend the U.S.-led AI ecosystem.

Memory business

Samsung Electronics’ chip business posted an operating profit of KRW 2.9 trillion in the fourth quarter, down over 25% from the three months ending in October, while its annual numbers came in below that of SK Hynix.

This was despite Samsung’s memory business achieving a record-high fourth-quarter revenue of 30.1 trillion helped by demand for its advanced memory products used for AI applications. 

“[O]perating profit decreased slightly compared to the previous quarter as a result of increased R&D expenses to secure future technology leadership, as well as the initial ramp-up costs to secure production capacity for cutting-edge nodes,” Samsung said. 

Samsung and SK Hynix both provide DRAM, or dynamic random access memory, products — a type of semiconductor memory needed for data processing. 

However, SK Hynix has left Samsung behind in HBM, or high bandwidth memory, a type of DRAM, in which chips are vertically stacked to save space and reduce power consumption. HBM products have seen booming demand due to there use in high-performance computing applications such as AI.

“They’ve lost share in the high bandwidth DRAM business… that’s where SK Hynix has really leapfrogged ahead of Samsung,” Eric Ross, analyst at Cascend Securities, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Asia,” on Friday.

He noted that U.S. DRAM maker Micron has also gained ground on the company.

“Samsung is kind of in the wrong pieces of the DRAM market right now because they missed the high bandwidth piece, and they really need to catch up on that,” he said, adding that the PC and smartphone DRAM markets are under price pressure.

According to Samsung, its memory business is cutting down legacy products to better align with market demand and increasing its proportion of high value-added products, such as HBM. 

“In 2025, overall memory market demand is expected to recover from the second quarter,” Samsung said, warning that its earnings are expected to remain weak in the current quarter.  

Smartphones focus

Samsung’s mobile experience and networks businesses, tasked with developing and selling smartphones, tablets, wearables and other devices, reported a quarter-over-quarter decrease in sales and profit.

Samsung said the performance was in part due to the fading effects of new flagship smartphone model launches.

The segment saw a consolidated revenue of KRW 25.8 trillion and an operating profit of KRW 2.1 trillion in the fourth quarter.

“However, on a full-year basis, flagship sales saw robust growth on the back of double-digit growth of the Galaxy S24 series featuring Galaxy AI, with tablets and wearables also increasing in both value and shipments,” Samsung said. 

In the current quarter, Samsung plans to drive sales growth with new flagship models, particularly its newly launched Galaxy S25 series and will continue to push into the AI smartphone market.

“What Samsung is doing, and has done really well in the last few years, is it’s really focused more on value and its flagship devices,” Nabila Popal, senior director with IDC’s Data & Analytics team, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Asia” on Friday.

Given that focus, Samsung’s share of the premium market has inched closer to Apple’s, the leader in the premium smartphone segment, she added.

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