What you Need to Know for September 23rd

Wednesday: Cintas, Paychex, General Mills, Manchester United, Cracker Barrel, Stitch Fix

Thursday: Costco, Darden, TD Synnex, BlackBerry

Wednesday: US Flash Manufacturing PMI (53.5), US Flash Services PMI (55.9)

Thursday: Weekly Jobless Claims (204k), Economic Club of Washington, DC event with Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond President Thomas Barkin, New Home Sales (620), Kansas City Fed Survey

Friday: Durable Goods (-0.3%), U. Michigan Final Consumer Survey

Autozone $AZO ( ▲ 3.26% ) Missed on the top line but beat on the bottom line, with revenue of $6.60B vs. $6.71B and EPS of $56.05 vs. $54.30. Sales rose 5.6% YoY as strong commercial demand helped offset weaker DIY traffic, while gross margin expanded 53.3% on tariff refunds and a favorable LIFO comparison, driving operating profit up. Mgmt. expects FY27 domestic comps to be flat to low-single-digit growth, driven by roughly 4% ticket growth.

Thor Industries $THO ( ▲ 5.52% ) beat on the top line but missed on the bottom line with revenue of $2.31B vs. $2.18B and EPS of $0.78. Sales fell as high rates and inflation pressured North American RV demand, while weaker mix, promotions and higher material costs pushed gross margin down to 12.4% from 14.7%. European sales rose 5%, helping offset some of the weakness, while mgmt. said restructuring and cost savings should improve annual earnings by $100M+.

KB Home $KBH ( ▲ 1.53% ) revenue of $1.30B vs. $1.29B and EPS of $1.05 beat. Revenue fell 20% YoY as high mortgage rates and affordability pressure reduced demand, with deliveries down 19% and net orders down 12%, while a shift back toward built-to-order homes helped housing gross margin improve sequentially. Mgmt. cut FY housing gross margin guidance and narrowed housing revenue guidance to $4.9B–$5.1B, as weaker Southern California demand, lower pricing and fewer high-margin West Coast closings pressured the Q4 outlook.

Shopify $SHOP ( ▲ 7.12% ) rose after Meta integrated its Muse AI agent with Shop Pay. The assistant can now browse and complete purchases across all Shopify stores, while Amazon has blocked Muse from its site.

GameStop $GME ( ▲ 5.58% ) jumped after CEO Ryan Cohen bought roughly 1.1M shares for $26M. Shares are up 30% over the past month after the company reduced $1.4B in debt by swapping bonds for stock.

Planet Fitness $PLNT ( ▼ 9.46% ) fell after Deutsche Bank warned that rising low-cost gym competition is increasing growth risks at a time when membership gains are already slowing.

The New York Times $NYT ( ▼ 7.2% ) slid after August website traffic declined 1.5% to 618M visitors, extending its drop to more than 24% from its 2026 high.

GoDaddy $GDDY ( ▼ 6.23% ) slipped as it faces a securities fraud class action alleging it claimed to be attracting high-value customers while quietly offering discounted domain contracts that hurt revenue and bookings.

SanDisk $SNDK ( ▲ 6.82% ) gained after Rosenblatt initiated coverage with a Buy rating and a $2,400 PT. The firm argues AI is turning NAND storage into a system-critical part of AI infrastructure.

Qualcomm $QCOM ( ▲ 2.08% ) climbed after unveiling two new flagship smartphone chips built for agentic AI at its annual Snapdragon Summit.

SB Energy and Holtec Nuclear have delayed and paused their respective IPOs as public backlash against data centers makes it increasingly difficult to attract enough buyers.

Accelevation and backer Olympus Partners are targeting up to $720M in a US IPO at a ~$5.4B valuation, set to price Sept. 29. The data center power and cooling supplier nearly tripled H1 2026 revenue to $437.5M.

Oura, the smart ring maker, set terms for a US IPO of up to $2.2B, putting its valuation at ~$14.1B ahead of a Sept. 29 pricing. The company sold 3.6M rings in the past year and has 5M+ paid members.

Iambic Therapeutics filed for a US IPO to fund three early-stage cancer drug programs. The Nvidia-backed biotech uses AI to design new medicines and has raised $461.8M since launching in 2019.

ADARx Pharmaceuticals set terms to raise up to $371.9M in its US IPO at a valuation of up to $1.74B. The biotech is marketing 21.9M shares at $15-$17 each and will trade on Nasdaq as ADRX.

Data room triage: hundreds of files classified and indexed in the first hour

Financial spreading: normalized into your chart of accounts in hours

Screening memo: drafted in firm standards while diligence is still underway

Meta’s Muse overtook ChatGPT as the top free iOS app in the US on Friday, logging more than 2.5MM downloads since its September 8 launch. Meta $META ( ▼ 0.63% ) shares surged on the news, with Wells Fargo raising its price target to $796.

Anthropic released Claude Opus 5.5, priced 40% cheaper than its predecessor at $4/million input tokens and $20/million output tokens, while claiming performance close to its Fable 5.1 model.

Startups including Harvey, Abridge, Ramp, and Rogo are turning to open-weight models or training their own to cut reliance on OpenAI and Anthropic. Harvey’s gross margins went from 50% to -50% by June, then turned positive after it built its own model.

Citrini has a new article - this time covering AI agents. The paid newsletter provider put together a piece covering how subscriptions and aggregators are going to be worse off in an agentic driven world.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the Trump administration won’t give AI developers a “liability shield,” pushing back on industry calls for a slowdown while backing Trump’s opposition to regulatory crackdowns.

Paramount reached a settlement with a coalition of states, clearing the last major hurdle to its $111B Warner Bros Discovery acquisition. Shares of Paramount $PSKY ( ▲ 2.02% ) and Warner Bros $WBD ( ▲ 0.1% ) rose on the news.

Newark, LaGuardia, and JFK airports were subject to a groundstop Monday that snarled air traffic after a construction crew accidentally severed a fiber-optic cable near the airport, knocking out telecom lines at Philadelphia’s TRACON facility.

Gen Z is shunning PE-backed restaurants, saying “private equity” is shorthand for corporate, soulless food, with backlash intensifying after taco chain Los Tacos No 1 took an undisclosed investment from TSG Consumer this September.

Apollo is limiting redemptions of its flagship private credit fund to 5%, the industry standard. The $26B Apollo Debt Solutions BDC vehicle received 14.7% redemption requests this quarter, down from 16.8% last quarter.

KKR launched Akrapoint Commercial Capital, a new equipment finance platform, with a $350M commitment. It will finance industrial equipment and specialty trailers for small and mid-market businesses.

Clearlake and Charlesbank have agreed to inject $175M of preferred equity into Symplr as part of a broader debt restructuring, with both PE firms also deferring interest payments on the new junior paper.

PIMCO deep dive: AI capex may be lifting real rates, but there’s little evidence AI bond issuance is pushing Treasury yields higher. An event study of six surprise AI debt deals found little impact on 10-year yields, term premia, or swap spreads.

Private equity’s 10-year fund model is fading as buyout firms hold assets longer, with the median fund life now at 15 years. More than 32,000 unsold companies worth $3.8T are trapped in portfolios, and LP payouts are near a 16-year low.

KKR’s Henry McVey says investors should shift toward private markets as the traditional stock-bond hedge breaks down due to a positive correlation between the two.

Pensions and sovereign wealth funds are finding AI risk in nearly every asset class, making diversification harder. AI now accounts for about 40% of the S&P 500’s market value, nearly half of IG bond issuance, and 87% of VC funding.

A Cornell faculty report warns of a “jarring” skill gap among college graduates. Employers say new grads struggle with uncertainty, handling critical feedback, and working in teams.

US office CMBS delinquencies climbed to 12% last month, surpassing levels seen after the 2008 financial crisis. Chicago’s Aon Center sold for $712M in 2015 and now is valued at just $195M.