MORNING NEWS

The construction chemicals group Sika is taking over the British Azpects Group, thereby expanding its landscaping business.

Samsung Electronics expects operating profit to exceed $80 billion for the first time this quarter, continuing its streak of record profits. The world’s largest memory chip manufacturer continues to benefit from the artificial intelligence boom. Operating profit for the three months ending in September is forecast to increase nearly ninefold year-over-year to 107.4 trillion won—equivalent to about $80.18 billion—the company confirmed.

LG Electronics forecast third-quarter operating profit well below market estimates amid lingering business uncertainties, sending shares tumbling, though continued earnings improvement keeps the South Korean consumer-electronics giant on course for a recovery this year.

Boeing has been awarded a contract from Lockheed Martin worth approximately $14.7 billion to increase production of PAC-3 Missile Segment Enhancement (MSE) seeker heads. Boeing stated that this non-binding contract will enable the company to triple production of PAC-3 MSE seeker heads under its existing seven-year master agreement with the Department of Defense.

Akzo Nobel AKZA has agreed to sell its decorative paints business in Southeast Asia to Nippon Paint 4612 at an enterprise value of $1.35 billion. The Dutch paint company said Monday that net cash proceeds after taxes and minority partners are expected to be about $1 billion.

Nike NKE is planning to be a smaller company. After two straight quarters of falling revenue, Nike said it expects sales to keep declining this fiscal year and it will shrink its operations, cut jobs and merge regional businesses to adjust. “This work will result in fewer roles across Nike,” Chief Executive Elliott Hill wrote in a memo to employees.

Micron MU Technology profit and revenue surged in the fiscal fourth quarter, as the company said the shortage of memory chips that has propelled its explosive growth in the past year shows no signs of slowing down. “Industry demand has strengthened since our last earnings call, and we expect memory and storage supply demand conditions to be much tighter in fiscal 2027 and 2028 than they were in 2026,” Chief Executive Sanjay Mehrotra said on a Wednesday call with analysts. Mehrotra’s comments come as investors have debated the durability of the memory shortage that has fueled Micron’s blowout earnings.

Smart-ring maker Oura said it was delaying its previously announced initial public offering due to market uncertainty. The San Francisco-based company, which was expected to fetch a valuation well above the $11 billion achieved in a funding round last year, said Tuesday it was postponing its listing “despite strong demand, due to uncertainty in the IPO market.” Oura made its IPO paperwork public earlier this month. It said the issue had attracted strong investor demand, but that the timing wasn’t right. The company was aiming to list on the Nasdaq as soon as this month.

Advanced Micro Devices AMD agreed to acquire artificial-intelligence research firm World Labs in an all-stock deal valued at about $8.2 billion, an acquisition that reflects chip makers’ ambitions to control more of the AI stack. AMD, a semiconductor company that recently touched a $1 trillion valuation, said the deal would bring leading AI research and development talent and help the company develop better AI hardware, software and systems, especially in the growing field of physical AI and robotics. World Labs focuses on spatially intelligent AI models that can generate and simulate interactive 3-D environments.

German chemicals producer BASF BAS said it entered initial talks over a takeover of smaller peer Evonik, a tie-up that would bolster BASF’s dominant position in Europe’s chemicals industry.