Samsung Electronics
South Korean tech giant Samsung Electronics posted record quarterly profits Thursday, riding massive market demand for the memory chips that power artificial intelligence.
A global frenzy to build AI data centres and develop the fast-evolving technology has sent orders for advanced high-bandwidth memory microchips soaring.
That is also pushing up prices for less flashy chips used in consumer electronics — threatening higher prices for phones, laptops and other devices worldwide.
In the quarter to December 2025, Samsung said it saw "its highest-ever quarterly consolidated revenue at KRW93.8tn ($65.5bn)", a quarter-on-quarter increase of 9%.
"Operating profit was also an all-time high, at KRW20.1tn," the company said.
The dazzling earnings came a day after a key competitor, South Korean chip giant SK hynix, said operating profit had doubled last year to a record high, also buoyed by the AI boom.
The South Korean government has pledged to become one of the top three AI powers, behind the US and China, with Samsung and SK hynix among the leading producers of high-performance memory.
Samsung said Thursday it expects "AI and server demand to continue increasing, leading to more opportunities for structural growth".
Annual revenue stood at 333.6tn won, while operating profit came in at 43.6tn won. Sales for the division that oversees its semiconductor business rose 33 % quarter-on-quarter.
The company pointed to a $33.2bn investment in chip production facilities — pledging to continue spending in "transitioning to advanced manufacturing processes and upgrading existing production lines to meet rising demand".
Major electronics manufacturers and industry analysts have warned that chipmakers focusing on AI sales will cause higher retail prices for consumer products across the board.
This week US chip firm Micron said it was building a $24bn plant in Singapore in response to AI-driven demand that has caused a global shortage of memory components.
SK hynix announced Wednesday that its operating profit had doubled last year to a record 47.2tn won.
The company's shares have surged some 220% over the past six months, while Samsung Electronics has risen about 130%, part of a huge global tech rally fuelled by optimism over AI.
Both companies are on the cusp of producing next-generation high-bandwidth "HBM4" chips for AI data centres, with Samsung reportedly due to start making them in February.
American chip giant Nvidia — now the world's most valuable company — is expected to be one of Samsung's customers for HBM4 chips.
But Nvidia has reportedly allocated around 70% of its HBM4 demand to SK hynix for 2026, up from the market's previous estimate of 50%.
H&M
Swedish fast fashion giant H&M reported on Thursday a jump in net profit in the fourth quarter, beating market expectations thanks in part to inventory and cost controls.
The company said net profit rose to 4.3bn kronor ($48mn) in the September-November period, up from 2.9bn kronor a year earlier.
That was higher than the 3.8bn kronor expected by analysts surveyed by the financial data firm FactSet.
For 2025 as a whole, net profit rose to 12bn kronor from 11.6bn kronor a year earlier.
"Through a strengthened customer offering, good cost control and improved inventory productivity, we continue to take important steps towards all our long-term targets in a challenging environment," chief executive Daniel Erver said in a statement.
Operating profit for the fourth quarter climbed to 6.4bn kronor, up from 4.6bn kronor a year earlier.
Nokia
Finland's Nokia said on Thursday that longtime chair Sari Baldauf planned to step down and the telecom gear maker would propose Timo Ihamuotila as her successor, after a push into artificial intelligence helped it meet quarterly earnings expectations.
Shares of Nokia fell 6% in early Helsinki trading, among the worst performers on Europe's benchmark Stoxx 600 index. Baldauf, one of Nokia's longest-serving executives, has chaired the board since 2020 after returning to the company in 2018. Her earlier tenure from 1994 to 2005 coincided with Nokia’s rise as a global leader in the mobile phone market.
Ihamuotila, who already serves as vice chair, was Nokia’s chief financial officer between 2009 and 2016. He is set to leave Swiss group ABB by the end of 2026.
Nokia's comparable operating profit fell 3% to €1.05bn ($1.26bn) in the fourth quarter, broadly in line with the average estimate of €1.01bn from analysts polled by LSEG. Nokia is carrying out one of its biggest restructuring drives since it sold its iconic mobile phone business more than a decade ago, banking on AI and data centre demand to offset weak spending and contract losses in the 5G field.
Last year, it appointed former Intel executive Justin Hotard as its CEO to speed up the transition. Still, a profit warning tied to US import tariffs and a weaker dollar have hit the margins, mounting pressure for deeper cost cuts.
Fourth-quarter net sales reached €6.12bn, also meeting analysts' forecast.
Lloyds
Lloyds Banking Group said on Thursday that its net profit rose six % last year as higher income offset compensation for consumers caught up in a UK car loans scandal.
Profit after tax grew to £4.76bn ($6.58bn) in 2025 from £4.48bn a year earlier, the company said in a statement.
Britain's financial regulator in October proposed that lenders pay consumers a combined £8.2bn in compensation after some car loans were deemed unlawful.
Lloyds has set aside £1.95bn for its own compensation, with the most recent provision of £800mn booked in the third quarter of last year.
The lender is the first of Britain's major retail banks to report annual earnings, with Barclays, HSBC and NatWest to follow.
Lloyds "demonstrated sustained strength in financial performance in 2025, including in the final quarter, with continued balance sheet and income growth, as well as strong cost discipline and credit performance", chief executive Charlie Nunn said in the statement.
"The sustained strength in performance means we are well positioned for 2026 and beyond," he added.
The bank said revenue climbed 8% last year to £19.42bn.
Tesla
Tesla reported a 61% drop in fourth-quarter profits on Wednesday due to lower auto sales and increased expenses as CEO Elon Musk ramps up technology investments.
The results conclude a turbulent year for the electric vehicle maker that included a controversial Musk stint in Donald Trump's White House and a shareholder vote in November to award the outspoken CEO a pay package worth as much as $1tn in anticipation of massive technology breakthroughs at Tesla.
Profits came in at $840mn in the quarter ending December 31, down from $2.1bn a year earlier.
Revenues were $24.9bn, down 3.1 %.
Lower profits had been expected after Tesla reported a drop in fourth-quarter and full-year auto deliveries early in January.
A company presentation cited a litany of other factors. These included higher restructuring costs, increased research and development funding for AI pursuits, the drag from higher tariffs and a decline in revenues tied to emission tax credits following Trump's reversals on US environmental policies.
Musk opened a conference call by saying he was committed to "very, very big investments" to realise the mission of working to ensure "the best future," an "era of abundance" where the "environment is great, nature is great, and people can have whatever they want."
Chief Financial officer Vaibhav Taneja said the 2026 capital spending budget would be "in excess of $20bn," more than that double the $8.5bn last year.
Musk said Tesla plans to wind down production of the Models S and X luxury EVs and will convert plant capacity in Fremont, California to build humanoid robots.
Tesla's outlook did not include a projection for its expected 2026 auto sales, saying it would depend partly on "aggregate demand for our products."
In its January 2025 earnings release, Tesla projected a return to growth in vehicle sales. But Tesla's 2025 auto sales fell nine %, reflecting increased competition from rivals and blowback to Musk's embrace of Trump and far-right political figures.
Musk has touted Tesla's technological prowess on artificial intelligence and autonomous driving as a decisive advantage against rivals that justifies the company's lofty stock market valuation. The company describes itself as in "transition from a hardware-centric business to a physical AI company."
At the World Economic Forum earlier this month, Musk described self-driving cars as "essentially a solved problem at this point," adding that the robotaxi service will be very widespread in the US by the end of 2026.
Musk has also spoken optimistically about the expected growth in revenue tied to subscriptions of the driver-assistance "FSD" program.
Many analysts have learned to take Musk's utterances with a grain of salt after earlier predictions about the nearness of fully autonomous driving didn't come to pass.
Meta
Meta on Wednesday reported quarterly earnings that topped market expectations, as revenue grew along with investments in artificial intelligence.
The parent of Facebook and Instagram said it made a profit of $22.8bn on revenue of nearly $60bn in the recently ended quarter, adding it could take in as much as $56.5bn in the current quarter.
"We had strong business performance in 2025," Meta co-founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said in an earnings release.
Some 3.58bn people used apps owned by Meta daily in the quarter, which are being enhanced with the help of AI, according to the social networking giant.
Meanwhile costs tallied $35.15bn, an increase of 40% from the same period a year earlier, the earnings reported noted.
"Zuckerberg is clearly going all in on AI, and it wouldn't be surprising to see the share reaction cool as investors absorb those aggressive investment plans," said Hargreaves Lansdown senior equity analyst Matt Britzman. "Even so, Meta is assembling one of the largest AI compute clusters outside the cloud giants, all aimed at strengthening its family of apps."
Capital expenses, including infrastructure such as data centres to power AI, were $22.14bn in the quarter, according to the company.
Meta expects to spend more than $100bn this fiscal year, driven by increased investment in Meta Superintelligence Labs and its core business.
"I'm looking forward to advancing personal superintelligence for people around the world in 2026," Zuckerberg said.
Zuckerberg has predicted that AI-infused smart glasses will be the "next major computing platform," eventually replacing the smartphone.
But Reality Labs — Meta's virtual and augmented reality unit — has consistently posted big losses.
Meta is locked in a bitter rivalry with other tech behemoths racing to invest heavily in AI, aiming to ensure the technology benefits society and generates profits in the not-so-distant future.
Most analysts believe Meta will make the investment pay off by improving advertising efficiency and creating new opportunities, such as with its smart glasses through a partnership with Ray-Ban maker EssilorLuxottica.
Microsoft
Microsoft on Wednesday reported a 60% jump in net income for the last quarter of 2025, as spending on artificial intelligence surged.
Shares in the cloud and software giant sank about 4% in after-hours trading, with investors keeping a close eye on capital expenditures as the company spends heavily in the AI race against rivals Google, Amazon and Meta.
The company posted net income of $38.5bn on revenue of $81.3bn for the three months ending December 31.
This was up from $24.1bn in profit on $69.6bn in revenue a year earlier.
Analysts said that the net income figure was boosted by gains from Microsoft's investment in OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT.
With this earnings result, "Microsoft didn't declare victory on AI-but it made a credible case that the spending has a path to payback," said Emarketer principal analyst Jeremy Goldman.
The company said that capital expenditures, which largely consist of the massive buildout for AI and cloud infrastructure, grew by 66% to $37.5bn.
Microsoft has continued to invest heavily in AI, including its big investments in data centres and its partnership with OpenAI.
Microsoft now holds a 27% stake in OpenAI, which has quickly grown to become the world's most valuable private company with a $500bn valuation.
Azure and other cloud services saw revenue surge 39%, while Microsoft 365 commercial cloud revenue rose 17%, both roughly in line with analyst expectations.
The LinkedIn professional network saw revenue grow 11% while revenue from Xbox
ASML
Dutch tech giant ASML, which sells cutting-edge machines to make semiconductor chips, reported a significant gain in annual net profit Wednesday but said it would cut hundreds of management jobs to improve internal organisation.
ASML is a critical cog in the global economy, as the semiconductors crafted with its tools power everything from smartphones to missiles.
The company, Europe's biggest tech firm by market value, posted after-tax profit of €9.6bn ($11.5bn) for last year, up from €7.6bn in 2024.
CEO Christophe Fouquet said ASML customers were bullish on the medium-term outlook "primarily based on more robust expectations of the sustainability of AI-related demand".
Fourth-quarter net bookings, the figure traders track most closely, came in at €13.2bn, a sharp rise from the €5.4bn in orders booked in the previous quarter.
Total 2025 net sales were a record €32.7bn. The firm had previously said it did not expect sales to be below the €28.3bn banked last year.
"ASML just delivered a thumping set of numbers, with new orders blowing past expectations and pointing to a market gearing up for the next leg of growth," said Matt Britzman, senior equity analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown.
The company expects net sales this year to reach €34bn to €39bn, it announced in new forecasts, with first-quarter sales hitting €8.2bn to €8.9bn.
"We expect 2026 to be another growth year for ASML's business," Fouquet said.
Deutsche Bank
Deutsche Bank said Thursday it aimed to become a "European champion" after reporting record profits in 2025, even as the results were overshadowed by a money-laundering probe reportedly linked to Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich.
Germany's biggest lender reported pre-tax profits of €9.7bn ($11.6bn) for last year, an 84 % jump on 2024, extending a run of good performance in part due to higher long-term interest rates.
But the shine was taken off the results by the money-laundering investigation, which saw prosecutors and police raid the bank's headquarters in Frankfurt and its office in Berlin on Wednesday.
Media reports said it was linked to Abramovich, who has been sanctioned by the European Union.
The investigation is a blow for a bank that had worked hard in recent years to shed its reputation as a magnet for scandals, and CEO Christian Sewing sounded disappointed.
"We had actually hoped that your full attention this week would be focused on our annual results," he told reporters.
"Since yesterday, we know that this is not entirely the case," he added, while refusing to answer questions when asked about the bank's past business with Abramovich.
Sewing nevertheless struck an upbeat note about Deutsche Bank's results and future prospects, saying it had hit all its 2025 goals.
"This gives us the strongest possible foundation for the next phase of our strategy," he said, adding that the bank aimed to become "the European champion".
Earnings rose last year across all main divisions, including investment and corporate banking as well as asset management, and revenues were up 7% to €32.1bn.
Net profit attributable to shareholders was €6.1bn, more than double that of 2024, when it was weighed down by legal costs related to a troubled takeover.
The Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper reported details of the money-laundering probe, which it said involved the bank's dealings with companies linked to Abramovich.
Abramovich, who had ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin and is the former owner of English football club Chelsea, was sanctioned by the EU following Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Prosecutors have not confirmed who was being targeted.
Sewing said the probe involved allegations that a report related to suspected money-laundering was filed late, and concerned transactions between 2013 and 2018.
"We are of course co-operating fully with the authorities," he added.
Deutsche Bank has faced scrutiny on several occasions in recent years over suspicious transactions, and has previously been fined for failing to report suspicious activity quickly enough.
The bank also ran into trouble after expanding aggressively in the early 2000s in a bid to compete with Wall Street giants.