Stock market futures pushed modestly higher on Friday morning, positioning Wall Street for a favorable end to what's been a tumultuous but strongly positive week. Consumers seem bound and determined not to let anything stop them from returning to more normal conditions, and fears of the omicron COVID-19 variant are getting shunted to the sidelines. As of 8:15 a.m. ET, Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC 2.01%) futures were up 35 points to 16,183.
Nervousness about technology stocks has driven a lot of the market's recent volatility. On Friday morning, though, there was a lot to celebrate in the tech space, as favorable news from Broadcom (AVGO 2.92%) and C3.ai (AI 2.19%) sent their respective shares sharply higher. Below, we'll look more closely at both reports and why they're making shareholders happy on Friday.
Broadcom is broadly strong
Shares of Broadcom were up more than 6% in premarket trading on Friday morning. The semiconductor and infrastructure software company reported fourth-quarter and full-year fiscal 2021 results that gave investors a lot of optimism about its long-term future.
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The numbers Broadcom reported were all consistent with solid growth trends that have been in place for quite a while. Quarterly revenue was up 15% year over year to $7.41 billion. That helped send adjusted earnings up 23% to $7.81 per share for the quarter. As expected, strong conditions in the semiconductor arena helped that segment of Broadcom's business outperform its other operations.
What really got investors excited was the latest in an ongoing series of shareholder-friendly moves from Broadcom. The tech company boosted its quarterly dividend by 14% to $4.10 per share, which will lift its dividend yield back above the 2.5% mark. At the same time, Broadcom will also start a new $10 billion stock repurchase plan, returning even more capital to shareholders.
Perhaps best of all, Broadcom expects its sales growth to continue into fiscal 2022. With all signs pointing toward continued success, investors are quite pleased with how Broadcom has done and what's ahead for the chipmaker.
A big rebound for C3.ai
Meanwhile, shares of C3.ai were up even more strongly, rising 18% in premarket trading. After leaving investors wanting more on the earnings front in recent weeks, the enterprise artificial intelligence software company got a big contract win.
C3.ai announced that the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) had entered into an agreement with C3.ai to provide its software to DoD agencies for modeling and simulation. The scope of the agreement goes across the entire federal department as it seeks to ramp up its AI capabilities in order to counter rising threats on multiple fronts.
The award is a vote of confidence at a time when C3.ai badly needed one. The stock fell sharply after C3.ai reported fiscal second-quarter earnings on Dec. 1, even though revenue jumped 41% from year-earlier levels and losses were narrower than expected. Despite rising customer counts, C3.ai got caught up in a general downward wave for tech companies relying heavily on future growth.
With the DoD agreement in place, C3.ai is getting a high-profile win at an important time. The stock is still down 75% from its highs in February, but further adoption could help reverse those declines in 2022.
