Fast Five (ASTS, BABA, CRCL, CSCO, NBIS) + Bonus one at the end...

Five earnings releases and the numbers that mattered for the week ended

Fast Five is a weekly snapshot, not a deep dive. Each week, earnings season delivers a flood of numbers, conference call transcripts, and analyst takes. Most of it is noise. Fast Five cuts through it. We pick five of the most important earnings releases from the week, pull out the numbers and moments that actually matter, and lay them out simply and fast. Companies are listed alphabetically, and that is intentional. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. What moves the needle for one investor may be completely irrelevant to another. By keeping the order neutral, you find what is relevant to you, and skip the rest. Think of it as the foundation before the research begins. If a name catches your eye, you will already know where to start. All delivered to you by the time the weekend rolls around.

For each company I will also provide my take on what to do with the stock. I have chosen to summarize the results into the following 3 categories:

• High Conviction: strong results, clear narrative, worth digging deeper into

• Worth Watching: interesting but not conclusive, something to monitor

• Proceed with Caution: results or signals that warrant skepticism before going deeper

Without further ado, let’s bust right into it, but first:

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AST SpaceMobile (ASTS)

AST SpaceMobile reported Q1 2026 revenue of $14.7 million against a consensus estimate of $37.48 million, with an EPS loss of $0.66 versus an expected loss of $0.21. AST SpaceMobile posted a net loss of $191 million in the quarter on total operating expenses of $164.1 million, while ending the quarter with $3.5 billion in cash. The cash is the key number. You cannot build a constellation of satellites from orbit on a tight budget. The company reaffirmed its full year 2026 revenue guidance of $150 to $200 million, supported by a commercial pipeline worth over $1.2 billion and recent government contract wins across both communications and non-communications segments. The quarterly revenue miss is a timing story, not a demand story. Gateway deployments and government contract milestones are lumpy by nature. Management was explicit that quarterly numbers are the wrong lens and that full year performance is how this business should be measured. The real test of this quarter was never the income statement. It was orbital progress. AST’s first seven BlueBird satellites are circling the earth and supporting beta commercial service, with the next group ready to ship and the target of 45 satellites in orbit by end of 2026 still on track. That satellite count is the milestone that unlocks meaningful commercial service in the second half of the year. There is one significant post-quarter development that cannot be glossed over. After quarter end, the Block 2 BB7 satellite was lost, with an expected Q2 2026 asset write-off of roughly $155 to $160 million, only partly mitigated by launch insurance and a replacement launch right. That is a real setback and a real cost. Satellite deployment does not always go to plan. The question is whether the remaining constellation can hit 45 birds by year end without BB7.

Rating: Worth Watching. AST SpaceMobile is one of the most audacious bets in public markets. The thesis is simple and enormous: build a space-based cellular network that turns every existing smartphone on earth into a satellite phone without any hardware changes. But this is a pre-revenue infrastructure build at scale with satellite loss risk, $191 million quarterly losses, and an execution timeline that has to be measured in orbital mechanics rather than quarterly earnings. Not for the faint-hearted. Absolutely worth understanding.

Alibaba Group (BABA)

Alibaba reported Q4 fiscal 2026 revenue of $35.28 billion, broadly in line with the $35.23 billion consensus estimate, as strong cloud and AI momentum was overshadowed by a sharp decline in adjusted earnings driven by aggressive AI investment and quick commerce expansion costs. The cloud story is genuinely impressive. Cloud Intelligence Group posted 40% external revenue growth, with AI-related products accounting for 30% of that revenue. CEO Eddie Wu described the quarter as Alibaba’s AI investments progressing from incubation to commercialization at scale, with the Qwen large language model demonstrating leadership in reasoning and coding while the company launched video generation and world models and integrated e-commerce capabilities directly into the Qwen app. That last point matters strategically. Alibaba is not building AI as a standalone product. It is weaving it into the shopping experience of over a billion consumers through the Qwen Shopping Assistant, which now provides end-to-end assistance across the entire Taobao purchase journey from product discovery to post-purchase support. The company also declared a $2.5 billion dividend, signaling balance sheet confidence even as free cash flow declined materially, primarily due to quick commerce investment and cloud infrastructure expenditure. The problem is the same one that has plagued Alibaba for three consecutive quarters. Adjusted EBITA for the China e-commerce segment contracted sharply again, continuing a deterioration that raises real questions about the timeline for margin recovery. The competitive pressure from PDD Holdings and JD.com in domestic e-commerce is not easing, the quick commerce subsidies are burning cash, and the geopolitical overhang of investing in a Chinese tech giant never fully goes away for Western institutional investors.

Rating: Worth Watching. Alibaba is one of the most genuinely complex investment cases in global markets right now. The valuation is not demanding at current prices. The execution track record over the past year has been. Watch for margin stabilization in the China e-commerce segment before building a conviction position.

Cisco Systems (CSCO)

Cisco reported Q3 fiscal 2026 record revenue of $15.8 billion, up 12% year over year, beating the $15.56 billion consensus. Non-GAAP EPS of $1.06 beat the $1.04 estimate. GAAP EPS of $0.85 was up 37% year over year. Networking revenue grew 25% to $8.82 billion, total product orders surged 35%, and non-GAAP operating income hit a record $5.4 billion. That is a clean beat across every metric that matters. But the number that is going to dominate the conversation is not in the income statement. Cisco raised its expected fiscal year 2026 AI infrastructure orders from hyperscalers to $9 billion, up from $5 billion guided just last quarter, representing 4.5 times the total AI orders booked in all of fiscal year 2025. AI infrastructure revenue expectations for the full year were raised to $4 billion from $3 billion. That is not a guidance tweak. That is a fundamental rerating of how fast AI infrastructure demand is accelerating through Cisco’s order book. CEO Chuck Robbins was direct on the call: Cisco is positioning itself as the critical infrastructure for the AI era, connecting and securing the AI buildout that hyperscalers are scaling at a pace that has consistently surprised even optimistic forecasters. The Acacia optical business, which Cisco acquired in 2021 and which many questioned at the time, is now the AI infrastructure story nobody expected. Acacia had its strongest quarter ever with over $1 billion in orders in Q3 alone and is on track to grow over 200% year over year in fiscal 2026. That is a $4 billion annual revenue run rate business growing at triple digits inside a company the market still largely thinks of as a legacy networking player. Q4 guidance of $16.7 to $16.9 billion in revenue and $1.16 to $1.18 in non-GAAP EPS blew past the $15.82 billion and $1.07 analyst consensus, while full year fiscal 2026 guidance was raised to $62.8 to $63.0 billion. There is one thing worth flagging honestly. Non-GAAP gross margin declined 260 basis points year over year to 66%, impacted by product mix shifts toward lower-margin AI infrastructure hardware and higher memory costs. The Splunk integration is also creating a near-term services revenue drag as the business transitions from on-premise to cloud subscriptions. Neither is alarming at this stage but both are worth monitoring as the AI hardware mix continues to grow as a percentage of revenue.

Rating: High Conviction. Cisco just delivered one of the most decisive beat-and-raise quarters of the entire earnings season. At roughly 20 times forward earnings for a business growing revenue 12% with $9 billion in AI orders locked in for the year, the valuation is not demanding. This is a core AI infrastructure holding that deserves to be taken seriously.

Circle Internet Group (CRCL)

Circle reported Q1 2026 total revenue and reserve income of $694 million, up 20% year over year, with adjusted EBITDA of $151 million, up 24%. USDC in circulation reached $77.0 billion at quarter end, up 28% year over year, while onchain transaction volume hit $21.5 trillion, up 263%. The revenue number missed the $715 million Wall Street estimate. Net income from continuing operations fell 15% to $55 million even as revenue grew 20%, with operating expenses surging 76% year over year driven by post-IPO stock-based compensation and infrastructure investment. Revenue also stepped back sequentially from $770 million in Q4 2025. Before you write this off as a warning sign, understand what Circle actually is. It is not a software company or a bank. It is a toll booth on the global movement of digital dollars. USDC represents 63% of all stablecoin transaction volume globally according to Visa Onchain Analytics. That is not a niche position. That is a structural monopoly in a market that is just beginning to go mainstream. The passage of the Genius Act established the first comprehensive US regulatory framework for stablecoin providers, effectively ending years of legal ambiguity and cementing Circle’s first-mover advantage as the premier regulated USDC issuer. The strategic announcements alongside the earnings were arguably more important than the numbers. Circle launched Agent Stack, a platform enabling AI agents to hold assets, discover services, and transact autonomously using USDC, with tools including Agent Wallets, an Agent Marketplace, and a nanopayments protocol capable of processing transactions as small as $0.000001. That is not a gimmick. If AI agents become economic actors, they will need a payment rail. Circle is building it. The company also closed a $222 million presale for its ARC Token at a $3 billion fully diluted network valuation, backed by a16z crypto, Apollo, BlackRock, ARK Invest, and Standard Chartered among others. That investor list is not a coincidence. It is a signal. The one structural risk that cannot be ignored: Circle shares its USDC reserve income with Coinbase, its partner in the stablecoin venture, meaning a meaningful portion of the economics from USDC circulation flows out the door before Circle sees it. And a declining interest rate environment compresses the reserve yield directly, as evidenced by the 66 basis point decline in reserve return rate this quarter. Circle is fundamentally a bet on interest rates staying elevated and USDC circulation continuing to grow.

Rating: Worth Watching. Circle is one of the most genuinely novel businesses to come public in years. A regulated stablecoin issuer with 63% market share, a regulatory moat from the Genius Act, an AI payments infrastructure play, and a roster of institutional backers that reads like a who’s who of global finance. At roughly 95 times forward earnings and nine times forward revenue the stock is pricing in a lot of growth that depends on interest rates, regulatory execution, and USDC adoption curves that are genuinely difficult to predict. Put it on the watchlist.

Nebius Group (NBIS)

Nebius reported Q1 2026 revenue of $399 million, up 684% year over year, beating consensus estimates of $316 to $375 million. Net income came in at $621 million and cash from operations swung to $2.26 billion. Those numbers would be extraordinary for any company. For a business that barely existed in its current form eighteen months ago, they are almost hard to process. Most investors have not heard of Nebius. It is a purpose-built AI cloud infrastructure company growing faster than almost anything in public markets right now. The origin story matters here. Nebius was spun out of Yandex, Russia’s dominant internet company, after the invasion of Ukraine forced a full corporate restructuring. What emerged was a clean, Western-listed AI infrastructure platform with deep engineering DNA, no legacy baggage, and a mandate to build GPU cloud capacity at scale from scratch. The customer validation is not speculative. Nebius secured multi-year agreements with Microsoft and Meta, received a $2 billion strategic investment from NVIDIA in March 2026, and management confirmed the company was fully sold out through Q1 2026. Nebius also announced a $643 million acquisition of Eigen AI, adding model optimization and inference capabilities to its full-stack platform, and secured up to 1.2 gigawatts of power and land for a new AI factory in Pennsylvania, alongside breaking ground on its flagship gigawatt-scale campus in Independence, Missouri. The capex commitment is staggering. Nebius expects to invest between $16 and $20 billion in AI infrastructure expansion during 2026 alone, which means EBIT will remain deeply negative for the foreseeable future. This is a company spending furiously to lock in capacity before competitors can catch up. The losses are the strategy, not the problem.

Rating: Worth Watching. The 684% revenue growth, the NVIDIA investment, the Microsoft and Meta contracts, and the gigawatt-scale infrastructure buildout all point to a company that has secured a real position in the AI infrastructure stack. But a $16 to $20 billion capex commitment in a single year from a company generating $399 million in quarterly revenue requires an enormous amount of trust in the execution team and the durability of AI infrastructure demand. The upside is real. So is the risk. Get to know this business before the market decides it is obvious.

BONUS NAME: Nokia

Nokia (NOK / NOKIA: Helsinki)

Most people still think of Nokia as the company that made indestructible phones in the early 2000s and then fumbled the smartphone era. That Nokia is gone. Here is what it actually is today and why it matters.

The transformation in five bullets:

• Nokia is now a pure-play network infrastructure and technology licensing business. No consumer products. No phones. Just the pipes, optical systems, and software that connect the world’s data centers, enterprises, and AI compute clusters to each other.

• In Q1 2026, AI and cloud customer revenue grew 49% year over year, now representing 8% of group sales. Nokia booked €1 billion in new orders from AI and cloud customers in a single quarter, with book-to-bill well above one in its Network Infrastructure division. That order book is the forward revenue signal that matters most.

• Comparable operating profit jumped 54% year over year to €281 million, beating the €250 million consensus. Gross margin expanded 320 basis points to 45.5% and free cash flow came in at €629 million for the quarter. This is not a company limping into the AI era. It is one being pulled in by demand it cannot fully satisfy fast enough.

• CEO Justin Hotard raised Network Infrastructure growth guidance to 12 to 14% for 2026, up from 6 to 8% guided in January, with Optical and IP Networks combined now expected to grow 18 to 20%. A guidance double in a single quarter is not a tweak. It is a signal that demand accelerated faster than anyone expected.

• On the earnings call, Hotard put the AI capex opportunity in stark terms: at Nokia’s Capital Markets Day in November 2025, the largest hyperscalers were expected to spend $540 billion on capex in 2026. That number has since risen to over $700 billion. Every dollar of that spend needs network infrastructure to connect it. Nokia is directly in the path of that capital.

The context most investors miss:

Nokia trades at a meaningful discount to Cisco and Dell despite comparable AI infrastructure exposure, leaving room for multiple expansion as profitability gaps close. The stock is up nearly 40% over the past year and hit its highest level in 16 years following the Q1 print. And yet it remains one of the least discussed AI infrastructure names in most portfolios.

The picks and shovels of AI are not just NVIDIA and TSMC. Every hyperscaler spending $700 billion on AI capex needs someone to connect the servers inside the data center and between data centers. Nokia builds those connections. The market is starting to notice. The question is how much of the runway is still ahead.

Rating: Worth Watching. The transformation is real, the numbers are accelerating, and the guidance raise is one of the most dramatic in the infrastructure sector this earnings season. The valuation discount to peers creates a potentially attractive entry point. But Nokia is still in the early innings of rebuilding investor trust after years of underperformance, and the Mobile Infrastructure business, while stable, is not growing. Watch for continued AI and cloud order momentum before building a full position.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed above are current as of the date of this document and are subject to change without notice. Materials referenced above are provided for educational purposes only. Nothing above constitutes investment advice, a recommendation or an offer to sell, or a solicitation of an offer to buy, any securities or investment products. Always conduct your own due diligence and consult a qualified financial professional before making investment decisions.