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- 👉 Cisco and CoreWeave Report Into a Nasdaq Correction
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Welcome to your new week.
Cisco and CoreWeave report after Thursday's 1,800-point Dow plunge pushed the Nasdaq into a correction. Tuesday's CPI is the first inflation read since Democrats swept Congress, Anthropic tries to sell its IPO into the selloff, and oil hangs on U.S.-Iran talks.
Let’s dive in.
Key Earnings Announcements:
CoreWeave and Cisco test the AI buildout from two sides: the borrower and the supplier.
Monday (11/9): AST SpaceMobile, Barrick, Constellation Energy, Hims & Hers, KKR, monday.com, Occidental Petroleum, Rocket Lab, Take-Two Interactive.
Tuesday (11/10): CoreWeave, D-Wave Quantum, Firefly Aerospace, On Holding, Rigetti Computing, Sea Limited, TransDigm.
Wednesday (11/11): Corteva, Franco-Nevada, Rumble.
Thursday (11/12): Applied Materials, Cerebras, Cisco, Intuitive Machines, Nebius, Nu Holdings, Wise.
Friday (11/13): Noodles & Company, PAVmed
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What We’re Watching:
Cisco Systems (CSCO)
Cisco (+21.8% YTD) reports Thursday after the close, with shares ending Friday at $93.85 after falling 10.2% last week. Morgan Stanley downgraded the stock to Equal-weight, arguing that Cisco’s fastest-growing business — AI infrastructure — could also pressure profitability. Consensus calls for roughly $18.1 billion of revenue and $1.32 in EPS. Thursday is less about proving AI demand exists and more about proving Cisco can turn that demand into profitable growth.
Last quarter, revenue rose 18% to a record $17.3 billion as product orders jumped 35%. Hyperscaler AI infrastructure orders reached $4 billion in the quarter and $9.3 billion for the year, while Cisco expects roughly $7.5 billion of related revenue in fiscal 2027. The tradeoff showed up in margins: adjusted gross margin fell 2.1 points to 66.3% as a heavier hardware mix and higher memory costs weighed on profitability.
This quarter, gross margin is the number to watch. Management guided to roughly 65.5%, and any further pressure would strengthen concerns that the AI mix is diluting Cisco’s traditional economics. But Cisco argues hyperscaler revenue requires very little incremental operating expense, meaning lower gross margins can still produce attractive operating leverage. Watch whether margins hold, whether AI orders keep accelerating, and whether management raises its $7.5 billion fiscal 2027 hyperscaler AI infrastructure revenue target. If all three move in the right direction, last week’s margin fears start looking much less threatening.
"So you should expect a slight gross margin headwind as we move through FY 2027 as we address these very high growth opportunities."
Cisco Systems (CSCO) Stock Performance, 5-Year Chart, Seeking Alpha
CoreWeave (CRWV)
CoreWeave (-35.2% YTD) reports Tuesday after the close, with shares ending Friday at $46.40 after falling another 15.4% last week. The stock is now 66% below its May high and down nearly 48% in the past month as investors question how cheaply CoreWeave can finance one of the most aggressive AI infrastructure buildouts in the market. Consensus calls for roughly $3.54 billion of revenue, up more than 150% year over year. Demand is not the question anymore. The cost of funding it is.
Last quarter, revenue jumped 112% to $2.58 billion while backlog reached $104 billion, before more than $25 billion of additional commitments signed early in Q3. Active power climbed to 1.5 gigawatts, and CoreWeave raised its full-year capex outlook to as much as $39 billion. But that growth requires enormous amounts of outside capital: Q3 interest expense alone is expected around $900 million versus roughly $230 million of adjusted operating income.
This quarter, the financing plan matters as much as the revenue number. Some CoreWeave bonds have recently yielded 15% or more, raising questions about what another year of rapid capacity expansion will cost. Watch whether management can still reach more than 1.85 gigawatts of active power by year-end, whether adjusted operating margins remain on track for the low teens in Q4, and most importantly, how it plans to finance the 2027 buildout. If borrowing costs stay elevated, even a $100+ billion backlog becomes less valuable if too much of the economics flow to lenders instead of shareholders.
"In a market where new capacity is supply-constrained and costs are rising, AI cloud infrastructure in production is a scarce, valuable asset."
CoreWeave (CRWV) Stock Performance, All-Time Chart, Seeking Alpha
Investor Events / Global Affairs:
Oil's peace trade, a Kraft Heinz reset, and China's biggest shopping day.
Oil’s Peace Trade
Source: Euronews
Oil opens the week after its biggest weekly drop since April 2020. Brent lost more than 16% last week and trades near $97 a barrel, as the Democratic sweep and Qatari-led talks lowered the odds of a wider war with Iran, according to Bloomberg.
President Trump said Sunday that renewed U.S. strikes are "highly unlikely" as long as talks progress, but any deal must fully reopen the Strait of Hormuz and bar Iran from building a nuclear weapon. The U.S. naval blockade of Iranian ports remains in place, and shipping was hit near the strait over the weekend.
Traders have seen this before. Raymond James analyst Pavel Molchanov warned of "false dawns" over the past several months, and Goldman Sachs sees Brent reaching $140 in 2027 if Gulf supply stays impaired. Watch for a signed framework, tanker traffic through Hormuz, and whether cheaper oil eases the inflation pressure in this week's CPI and PPI.
"It depends on whether or not they sign a very strong agreement."
A Kraft Heinz Reset
Source: NBC News
Kraft Heinz lays out its long-term strategy and financial outlook at an investor day in New York on Thursday. It's the biggest test yet for CEO Steve Cahillane, who paused the planned two-company breakup in February and has since put $700 million back into prices, marketing, and R&D. The stock is up 1.5% this year at $24.61.
Last week's results showed a business split in two. Organic sales fell 1.1% in the third quarter as North America dropped 3.2%, while emerging markets grew 15.6%. Kraft Heinz also agreed to sell its North American coffee business, including Maxwell House, to One Rock Capital for $650 million and will use the proceeds to pay down debt.
The pressure point is 2027. Management expects input costs to rise slightly more than 5% next year and says price increases are likely, while spending stays at this year's level. Before the results, only two of 20 analysts rated the stock a buy, according to Investing.com. Watch for dated volume and margin targets, any word on reviving the split, and whether more brands follow coffee out the door.
"We have a different innovation pipeline coming in 2027, which we'll talk more about next week, which we feel is significantly better than 2026, still not sufficient."
China's Biggest Shopping Day
Source: KrASIA
Singles' Day lands Wednesday, capping a promotion season that Alibaba and JD.com opened in mid-October. Alibaba expects a record one million brands and more than 70 million products on Tmall and Taobao, but it stopped publishing total sales in 2022.
Growth is slowing. Sales across platforms rose 14.2% to 1.695 trillion yuan during last year's festival, about half the prior year's pace, according to data provider Syntun. Beijing's 250 billion yuan trade-in subsidies stack on top of platform discounts, and AI is the new category, with Alibaba saying sales of AI token plans jumped 450% in early October from the prior month.
The festival is still China's best read on consumer demand. Watch third-party sales tallies from Syntun, Alibaba's AI shopping metrics, and whether discounting deepens. Weak numbers would add to the case for more stimulus from Beijing.
"They look … more for substance and the real value that (they) extract from purchases."
Major Economic Events:
CPI and PPI show whether the energy shock is still feeding into prices.
Monday (11/9): September wholesale inventories (final).
Tuesday (11/10): NFIB small business optimism; ADP weekly employment; October CPI; October real earnings.
Wednesday (11/11): Veterans Day; bond market closed, stock market open.
Thursday (11/12): Initial and continuing jobless claims; October existing home sales; October federal budget statement; New York Fed President John Williams speaks.
Friday (11/13): October PPI.
What We’re Watching:
October CPI
October's consumer price index lands Tuesday at 8:30 a.m. ET. Without a year-over-year figure, the monthly numbers carry the report, and it is the last CPI before the Fed's December 9 meeting.
Headline inflation has pulled away from core this year. The annual rate climbed from 2.4% in February to a peak of 4.2% in May as the Iran war lifted energy prices, and it stood at 3.7% in September. Core inflation, which strips out food and energy, was 2.6%. September's headline rose 0.6% for the month.
Core decides the reaction. RBC expects core to rise 0.3%, above the 0.2% consensus, with tariffs pushing up apparel, toys, and IT equipment. A hot core reading would lock in a December hike, while a soft one would give the Fed room to pause. Last week's oil plunge comes too late to show up in October data.
Economists expect the following:
CPI (MoM): +0.3% vs. +0.6% prior
"We expect the report to reinforce the slow and uneven nature of the disinflationary process, underpinning our expectation for the FOMC to hike once more in December."
October PPI
The producer price index lands Friday at 8:30 a.m. ET. Producer prices jumped 1.3% in September, the biggest monthly gain of the year, lifting the annual rate to 6.3%.
Energy did most of the work. Final-demand energy prices rose almost 11% in September, and transportation and warehousing services rose 3.4%, according to U.S. Bank. Freight remains a pressure point, with producer prices for deep-sea shipping up a record 37% from a year ago, RBC notes.
The pipeline is the story. RBC sees a 4.3-point gap between core producer prices and core goods consumer prices, a sign that more cost increases could reach shoppers. Watch trade services, which track retailer margins. A positive reading would suggest companies are passing costs on rather than absorbing them.
Economists expect the following:
PPI MoM: +0.4% vs. +1.3% prior
"With costs already flowing through the price pipeline, the damage is likely done, and the evidence is imminent."
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