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Technology

Master & Dynamic’s MW08 Earbuds Finally Get Wireless Charging

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Image: Master & Dynamic

Every few years, Master & Dynamic gives us another excellent reason to splurge on wireless earbuds. The MW08s that debuted earlier this year were no exception, but for $300 they lacked a popular feature that is being included with the new Master & Dynamic MW08 Sport: wireless charging.

On top of incredible battery life, earbuds made of luxe materials, and 11mm drivers that made the M&D MW08s sound as good as they looked, the stainless steel charging case had a satisfying heft to it. The only problem was that wireless charging, a feature that’s becoming almost standard with wireless earbuds, doesn’t work through metal, so the MW08s shipped without it. It was far from a dealbreaker, but on $300 wireless earbuds, its omission didn’t go unnoticed.

Instead of releasing a more affordable version of the MW08s with a plastic charging case that made wireless charging possible, Master & Dynamic has gone the other way with its new MW08 Sport earbuds. The stainless steel charging case has been replaced by one made of woven Kevlar fibers so it’s still as durable and eye-catching, but with the added benefit of Qi compatibility.

The MW08 Sport earbuds are available in blue, green, silver, and black, but the charging case is only available in black Kevlar.
Image: Master & Dynamic

What makes the new MW08 Sport better suited for sports and other more active endeavors? They offer the same IPX 5 water resistance as the regular MW08s, but the earbuds themselves are now made from scratch and shatter-resistant sapphire glass instead of ceramic, so they’re lighter. Should they still fall out and accidentally take a tumble, there’s less of a chance of them getting scuffed up or damaged. Master & Dynamic is also reducing the risk of a loose fit with the MW08 Sport earbuds by including two additional sizes of memory foam ear tips that offer a more secure fit, in addition to the five different sizes of silicone ear tips that shipped with the MW08.

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The catch? The new MW08 Sport now come with an even steeper price tag. At $349 they’re about $50 more expensive than the MW08, so you’ll need to ask yourself just how important wireless charging is to you.

Image: Master & Dynamic

Alongside the new MW08 Sport, Mastery & Dynamic is also releasing its own Qi wireless charging pad today. The $69 MC100 features a durable coated canvas top paired with a cast aluminum base featuring an integrated heatsink design on the underside that should slightly improve wireless charging efficiency. The charging pad can “supply up to 10 watts of power to compatible devices,” including the MW08 Sport buds, but we’ll admit it would have been cool if Master & Dynamic had used the same woven Kevlar finish on the MC100 so the two new additions would perfectly match.

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Business

The main attractions arrive: Apple, Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Amazon and Tesla headline the biggest week of earnings

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The coming week will be the most important of this quarter’s earnings season — even if later weeks beat it on quantity, it will be nearly impossible to top this slate in terms of dollars and attention.

That is because all of Big Tech will report, and those five companies — Google parent Alphabet Inc.
GOOGL,
+3.58%
GOOG,
+3.37%,
e-commerce and cloud-computing powerhouse Amazon.com Inc.
AMZN,
+0.51%,
iPhone maker Apple Inc.
AAPL,
+1.20%,
social-media titan Facebook Inc.
FB,
+5.30%
and software giant Microsoft Corp.
MSFT,
+1.23%
— can determine the course of the market at this point in history.

Consider these stats, from Dow Jones Market Data Group:

  • The five Big Tech companies comprised more one-fifth of the total market cap of the S&P 500 index
    SPX,
    +1.01%
    as of the end of the second quarter, 22%.
  • In the first quarter, they provided nearly 10% of the total sales of the 500-member index, and nearly 18% of the total profit (9.7% and 17.8%, respectively).
  • That proportion of profit provided by Big Tech actually decreased from 2020, when the five companies provided nearly a quarter of the index’s full-year earnings, 23.8%, and accounted for 9.1% of the total sales.

In the coming week, the five companies are expected to reveal some large earnings and sales for the second quarter, which can typically be slower ahead of back-to-school and holiday shopping in the second half of the year. Collectively, they are expected to report profit of nearly $60 billion on sales of more than $310 billion, according to analysts’ estimates collected by FactSet.

Those estimates are likely conservative. So far this quarter, 88% of S&P 500 companies have surpassed analysts’ average estimates for earnings per share, and 86% have beaten on revenue with nearly a quarter of the index reporting, according to FactSet. Both of those figures would be records for overall surprise percentage, which FactSet has tracked back to 2008, according to senior earnings analyst John Butters.

Facebook and Google, for example, are widely expected to outdistance estimates after fellow online ad-sales companies Snap Inc.
SNAP,
+23.82%
and Twitter Inc.
TWTR,
+3.05%
blew away expectations in their reports last week, which helped boost Alphabet and Facebook to record stock highs Friday, along with Snap.

See also: Facebook earnings preview and Alphabet earnings preview

Stock movement is unlikely to be determined by the numbers those companies report, especially after the big bounce on Friday; forecasts have been more important for investors as they wait to see how long the current boom in corporate earnings will last. And all five companies have been careful with their forward-looking statements during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Apple has stopped providing guidance during the pandemic, which will obstruct the annual parlor game of trying to glean facts about the coming iPhone release from the company’s financial forecast. While Microsoft is expected to wrap up its fiscal year by breaking the records it put up the year before by a healthy amount, it will likely only provide official financial guidance for the coming quarter instead of the full year, as executives have done in the past.

Full earnings preview: What will Apple say about the next iPhone at earnings time? Maybe more than usual

Most Big Tech forecasts that have been shared ended up undershooting their actual performance, which can keep expectations low and produce big beats. Amazon, for instance, topped the highest end of its sales forecast by 2.3% in the first quarter, which equates to an additional $2.5 billion. And that was actually the closest Amazon came to an accurate prediction in Big Tech’s $1.2 trillion pandemic year, after beating the top end of its quarterly guidance by 3.8%, 3.4% and 9.8% looking backward from the fourth quarter.

So expect at least a couple of big earnings beats and a lot of questions about what comes next as these reports flood in during the week. Apple, Google and Microsoft all expect to report on Tuesday afternoon following the close of markets, while Facebook follows Wednesday afternoon and Amazon wraps it up on Thursday afternoon.

The call to put on your calendar
  • Tesla Inc. When Tesla
    TSLA,
    -0.91%
    Chief Executive Elon Musk speaks, the markets listen.

The most controversial CEO in Silicon Valley has sent cryptocurrencies like bitcoin
BTCUSD,
+4.38%
and dogecoin
DOGEUSD,
+3.44%
on crazy rides with his tweets and pronouncements so far this year, but when he kicks off the week’s after-hours earnings slate Monday afternoon, the focus should be on Tesla and its stock.

As always, there are plenty of issues to discuss with the electric-car manufacturer. After the departure of a longtime executive, the progress of Tesla’s Semi road map will need to be addressed, as will the gross-margin effects of the continuing semiconductor shortage, an issue across the automotive industry.

Full Tesla earnings preview: Semi truck, Cybertruck pickup and chip shortage in focus

Tesla is also likely to address its plans to sell its advanced driver-assistance features as a subscription package, even as Consumer Reports joins in a chorus of criticism about Tesla’s approach to autonomous driving. Musk’s recent pronouncement that Superchargers will be opened to electric vehicles from other manufacturers, as well as demand amid heated competition in China will also be topics to look for.

Also watch for chip-shortage commentary from other, more staid automakers, such as Ford Motor Co.
F,
-0.65%
on Wednesday, as well as chip supplier Qualcomm Corp.
QCOM,
+1.71%.

  • Hasbro Inc. and Mattel Inc. Could there be a more worrisome phrase than “toy shortage” as we approach the holiday shopping season?

Well, analysts raised the alarm last week that we could face exactly that, after parents purchased bundles of toys out of season to keep their kids entertained while home from school during the COVID-19 pandemic, which put a crimp on the industry’s supply chain. Expect executives to address any problems at Santa’s workshop when Hasbro
HAS,
-0.89%
reports on Monday and Mattel
MAT,
-1.60%
follows on Tuesday.

The numbers to watch
  • Boeing Co.’s bottom line. Boeing
    BA,
    +0.29%
    is expected to post another loss in the quarter, but analysts predict that it will go against the grain and post a loss much wider than the average consensus. “We think Boeing is set to announce another monster 2Q loss, with a free cash outflow of ~$2.8bn by our estimates,” Vertical Research analysts said, while Benchmark analyst Josh Sullivan predicted last week that Boeing would top $1 a share in losses, while the average analyst estimate currently is looking for a loss of about 83 cents a share.
  • Fast food sales. After strong reports last week from Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc.
    CMG,
    +1.81%
    and Domino’s Pizza Inc.
    DPZ,
    -2.48%,
    burger makers and other casual dining chains will detail if their pandemic-influenced boom continued as certain areas of the U.S. opened up. On the schedule this week are McDonald’s Corp.
    MCD,
    +1.80%,
    Shake Shack Inc.
    SHAK,
    +0.63%,
    Yum Brands Inc.
    YUM,
    +2.10%
    (and Yum China Holdings Inc.
    YUMC,
    +0.65%
    ), and Wingstop Inc.
    WING,
    +1.20%.
    Also look for signs of change from chain restaurants that depend more on in-house traffic but pivoted to more takeout during the pandemic, such as Cheesecake Factory Inc.
    CAKE,
    -0.31%
    and Bloomin’ Brands Inc.
    BLMN,
    +0.55%.
This week in earnings

Exactly one-third of the 30 Dow Jones Industrial Average
DJIA,
+0.68%
components and more than one-third of the S&P 500 components, up to 180, are expected to report earnings in the coming week, according to FactSet. Notable reports from outside the major indexes include Canadian e-commerce platform Shopify Inc.
SHOP,
+3.09%
and streaming-music service Spotify Inc.
SPOT,
-0.22%
reporting on the same morning Wednesday, which is bound to produce some confusion between the two similarly named companies, as well as growing Silicon Valley software maker Twilio Inc.
TWLO,
+1.07%
on Thursday afternoon.

Dow Jones Industrial Average reports: 3M Co.
MMM,
+0.71%,
Apple, Microsoft and Visa Inc.
V,
+2.00%
(Tuesday); Boeing and McDonald’s (Wednesday); Merck & Co. Inc.
MRK,
+1.32%
(Thursday); Caterpillar Inc.
CAT,
+0.18%,
Chevron Corp.
CVX,
+0.04%
and Proctor & Gamble Co.
PG,
+1.44%
(Friday)

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US

Armed suspects make off with electronics from Roseville Walmart

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Three armed suspects held up a Walmart in Roseville, and made off with an unknown amount of electronics, Roseville police said. Just before 6 p.m. on Sunday night, several suspects entered the store on 900 Pleasant Grove Boulevard and went straight to the electronics section, according to Roseville police. A firearm was brandished and shortly after the suspects exited the store with an unknown amount of electronics and fled the scene before officers could arrive, police said. “This is a brazen criminal act,” said Rob Baquera with the Roseville Police Department. “We intend to work with the store to get as much information as possible. We plan to thoroughly investigate this incident in an effort to bring theses suspects to justice.”Officers will remain on scene for several hours collecting evidence and conducting their investigation.

ROSEVILLE, Calif. —

Three armed suspects held up a Walmart in Roseville, and made off with an unknown amount of electronics, Roseville police said.

Just before 6 p.m. on Sunday night, several suspects entered the store on 900 Pleasant Grove Boulevard and went straight to the electronics section, according to Roseville police.

A firearm was brandished and shortly after the suspects exited the store with an unknown amount of electronics and fled the scene before officers could arrive, police said.

“This is a brazen criminal act,” said Rob Baquera with the Roseville Police Department.

“We intend to work with the store to get as much information as possible. We plan to thoroughly investigate this incident in an effort to bring theses suspects to justice.”

Officers will remain on scene for several hours collecting evidence and conducting their investigation.

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Science

Snapshots of Ultrafast Switching in Quantum Electronics Could Lead to Faster Computing Devices

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A team of researchers created a new method to capture ultrafast atomic motions inside the tiny switches that control the flow of current in electronic circuits. Pictured here are Aditya Sood (left) and Aaron Lindenberg (right). Credit: Greg Stewart/SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory

Scientists Take First Snapshots of Ultrafast Switching in a Quantum Electronic Device

They discover a short-lived state that could lead to faster and more energy-efficient computing devices.

 Electronic circuits that compute and store information contain millions of tiny switches that control the flow of electric current. A deeper understanding of how these tiny switches work could help researchers push the frontiers of modern computing.

Now scientists have made the first snapshots of atoms moving inside one of those switches as it turns on and off. Among other things, they discovered a short-lived state within the switch that might someday be exploited for faster and more energy-efficient computing devices.

The research team from the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Stanford University, Hewlett Packard Labs, Penn State University and Purdue University described their work in a paper published in Science today (July 15, 2021).

“This research is a breakthrough in ultrafast technology and science,” says SLAC scientist and collaborator Xijie Wang. “It marks the first time that researchers used ultrafast electron diffraction, which can detect tiny atomic movements in a material by scattering a powerful beam of electrons off a sample, to observe an electronic device as it operates.”

The team used electrical pulses, shown here in blue, to turn their custom-made switches on and off several times. They timed these electrical pulses to arrive just before the electron pulses produced by SLAC’s ultrafast electron diffraction source MeV-UED, which captured the atomic motions happening inside these switches as they turned on and off. Credit: Greg Stewart/SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory

Capturing the cycle

For this experiment, the team custom-designed miniature electronic switches made of vanadium dioxide, a prototypical quantum material whose ability to change back and forth between insulating and electrically conducting states near room temperature could be harnessed as a switch for future computing. The material also has applications in brain-inspired computing because of its ability to create electronic pulses that mimic the neural impulses fired in the human brain.

The researchers used electrical pulses to toggle these switches back and forth between the insulating and conducting states while taking snapshots that showed subtle changes in the arrangement of their atoms over billionths of a second. Those snapshots, taken with SLAC’s ultrafast electron diffraction camera, MeV-UED, were strung together to create a molecular movie of the atomic motions.


Lead researcher Aditya Sood discusses new research which could lead to a better understanding of how the tiny switches inside electronic circuits work. Credit: Olivier Bonin/SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory

“This ultrafast camera can actually look inside a material and take snapshots of how its atoms move in response to a sharp pulse of electrical excitation,” said collaborator Aaron Lindenberg, an investigator with the Stanford Institute for Materials and Energy Sciences (SIMES) at SLAC and a professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Stanford University. “At the same time, it also measures how the electronic properties of that material change over time.”

With this camera, the team discovered a new, intermediate state within the material. It is created when the material responds to an electric pulse by switching from the insulating to the conducting state.

“The insulating and conducting states have slightly different atomic arrangements, and it usually takes energy to go from one to the other,” said SLAC scientist and collaborator Xiaozhe Shen. “But when the transition takes place through this intermediate state, the switch can take place without any changes to the atomic arrangement.”

Opening a window on atomic motion

Although the intermediate state exists for only a few millionths of a second, it is stabilized by defects in the material.

To follow up on this research, the team is investigating how to engineer these defects in materials to make this new state more stable and longer lasting. This will allow them to make devices in which electronic switching can occur without any atomic motion, which would operate faster and require less energy.

“The results demonstrate the robustness of the electrical switching over millions of cycles and identify possible limits to the switching speeds of such devices,” said collaborator Shriram Ramanathan, a professor at Purdue. “The research provides invaluable data on microscopic phenomena that occur during device operations, which is crucial for designing circuit models in the future.”

The research also offers a new way of synthesizing materials that do not exist under natural conditions, allowing scientists to observe them on ultrafast timescales and then potentially tune their properties.

“This method gives us a new way of watching devices as they function, opening a window to look at how the atoms move,” said lead author and SIMES researcher Aditya Sood. “It is exciting to bring together ideas from the traditionally distinct fields of electrical engineering and ultrafast science. Our approach will enable the creation of next-generation electronic devices that can meet the world’s growing needs for data-intensive, intelligent computing.”

MeV-UED is an instrument of the LCLS user facility, operated by SLAC on behalf of the DOE Office of Science, who funded this research.

SLAC is a vibrant multiprogram laboratory that explores how the universe works at the biggest, smallest and fastest scales and invents powerful tools used by scientists around the globe. With research spanning particle physics, astrophysics and cosmology, materials, chemistry, bio- and energy sciences and scientific computing, we help solve real-world problems and advance the interests of the nation.

SLAC is operated by Stanford University for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science. The Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time.



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Technology

The remaining Fry’s Electronics stores are all shutting down

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Fry’s Electronics has been a mostly West Coast-based shopping destination for gadget heads of all kinds, but now the retailer is calling it quits. On Twitter, Wario64 pointed out a tweet by a former employee and AV store owner noting that employees found out Tuesday night that it was the last night the stores would be open and that the website is going offline.

Bay Area newscaster KRON4 confirmed the rumors, saying nationwide closure information will appear on the company website Wednesday morning. Fry’s was founded in 1985, and was known both for stocking whatever electronics parts you might need, and notoriously poor customer service. It was the sort of place where you could find a poorly-labeled Nokia N9, attend a midnight gaming launch and get scammed by a demo of the “Monster HDMI quality difference.”

The company’s West Coast stores were also themed to outlandish levels of detail, bringing sci-fi touches to one location, Aztec references to another, and even a NASA-themed Houston location that featured launch countdowns every hour. The number of locations had dropped in the last few years and even prior to the COVID pandemic shoppers noticed empty shelves and strange product choices that suggested Fry’s wouldn’t be in business much longer.

Update (5:10 AM ET): The Frys.com website has been updated with a goodbye saying it “has made the difficult decision to shut down its operations and close its business permanently as a result of changes in the retail industry and the challenges posed by the Covid-19 pandemic.” While changes in the industry and the pandemic can’t have helped things, the empty shelves, embezzlement and odd management decisions started long before that. The letter also doesn’t mention Fry’s past or present, but it does have some information for any customers still waiting on a repaired item.

After nearly 36 years in business as the one-stop-shop and online resource for high-tech professionals across nine states and 31 stores, Fry’s Electronics, Inc. (“Fry’s” or “Company”), has made the difficult decision to shut down its operations and close its business permanently as a result of changes in the retail industry and the challenges posed by the Covid-19 pandemic. The Company will implement the shut down through an orderly wind down process that it believes will be in the best interests of the Company, its creditors, and other stakeholders.

The Company ceased regular operations and began the wind-down process on February 24, 2021. It is hoped that undertaking the wind-down through this orderly process will reduce costs, avoid additional liabilities, minimize the impact on our customers, vendors, landlords and associates, and maximize the value of the Company’s assets for its creditors and other stakeholders.

The Company is in the process of reaching out to its customers with repairs and consignment vendors to help them understand what this will mean for them and the proposed next steps.



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Business

Apple, Tesla and Facebook ready to report record sales in busiest week of earnings

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U.S. companies have barely managed to eke out positive earnings growth so far in this quarterly results season, but the big test arrives in the week ahead.

Nearly a quarter of the S&P 500
SPX,
-0.30%
is set to report results, with those companies representing 39% of the index by market value, according to calculations based on FactSet data. Given that the S&P 500 is weighted by market capitalization, this roster of companies will have an outsize impact on the profit trajectory for the index.

Earnings are expected to decline for the fourth consecutive quarter once all results are in for the latest period, but those companies that have reported thus far have been beating expectations in aggregate.

The FactSet consensus now models a 5% earnings decline for the index, compared with the 6.3% drop projected a week ago. If profit growth for the S&P 500 ultimately ends up positive, it would mark an end to the current earnings recession, which takes place when corporate profits drop for two or more consecutive quarters.

Apple Inc.
AAPL,
+1.61%
and Facebook Inc.
FB,
+0.60%
are among the highlights of next week’s slate, along with Tesla Inc.
TSLA,
+0.20%,
which will deliver results for the first time since it became a member of the S&P 500. All three high-profile companies are scheduled to report Wednesday afternoon and expected to have produced record revenue in the holiday quarter.

The holiday quarter is always crucial for Apple, which releases new iPhones in the fall. With a slightly later launch than usual this year due to the pandemic pushing sales into the period, Apple is widely expected to post its largest quarterly revenue total ever and its first ever total above $100 billion. The technology giant likely also continued to see benefits from remote-work and remote-schooling trends, which have driven strong iPad and Mac sales throughout the COVID-19 crisis.

Full preview: Get ready for Apple’s first $100 billion quarter in history

Facebook is also expected to post what should easily be a record quarter given strong digital advertising trends during the holiday period. Still, the company will face questions about user engagement and a decision to ban Donald Trump from the platform indefinitely over his role in inciting the violent riot at the U.S. Capitol. Bernstein analyst Mark Shmulik points to “continued usage fatigue” across social media as well as a “conversation skewed towards unmonetizable political events.”

Full preview: Facebook earnings still flourishing amid pandemic, economic slowdown and antitrust scrutiny

Tesla already disclosed delivery numbers for the full year that came in ahead of analyst expectations, and all eyes will be on the company’s outlook for 2021. RBC Capital Markets analyst Joseph Spak anticipates a delivery forecast of 825,000 to 875,000 million units for the full year, even though Chief Executive Elon Musk said on Tesla’s last earnings call that an analyst was “not far off” for expecting 840,000 to a million deliveries during 2021.

Full preview: Can Tesla’s sales growth match stock’s rise?

Here’s what else to watch for in the week ahead, which brings reports from 117 members of the S&P 500 and 13 Dow Jones Industrial Average
DJIA,
-0.57%
components.

Up in the air

Boeing Co.’s
BA,
-0.76%
journey remains turbulent even as the company’s 737-MAX jets were recertified after being grounded for almost two years. Though the company began deliveries of these aircraft, “the pace of delivering all 450 parked 737-MAX will be dictated by airline customers ability to absorb aircraft as well as air traffic demand,” according to Benchmark Company analyst Josh Sullivan.

Boeing’s Wednesday morning report will offer perspective on the company’s recovery expectations amid the pandemic, though Sullivan sees volatility ahead stemming from a recent equity offering and the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on airlines.

The fourth-quarter reports from U.S. airlines have been bleak so far, and American Airlines Group Inc.
AAL,
-0.06%
and Southwest Airlines Co.
LUV,
-0.80%
offer more on Thursday morning.

Can you hear me now?

Verizon Communications Inc.
VZ,
+0.35%
leads off a busy week of telecommunications earnings Tuesday morning, followed by AT&T Inc.
T,
+0.35%
Wednesday morning and Comcast Corp.
CMCSA,
-0.92%
Thursday morning.

For the wireless carriers, a key issue will be the impact of iPhone 12 promotions on recent results. Investors will also be looking for information about a recent wireless auction offering spectrum that will be crucial for 5G network deployments. Though the bids haven’t been made public yet, the auction drove record spending and AT&T and Verizon are both expected to have paid up handsomely to assert their standing. The question for investors is what impact these bids will have on the companies’ financial positioning.

Full preview: AT&T earnings to kick off a defining year for telecom giant

AT&T and Comcast have more media exposure than Verizon, and those two companies have been trying to contend with the new realities brought on by the pandemic. Both companies have made moves to emphasize streaming more with their film slates given theater closures, and the financial implications of these moves will be worth watching.

Paying up

The evolving situation with the pandemic is reflected perhaps no more clearly than in the results of Visa Inc.
V,
-1.52%,
Mastercard Inc.
MA,
-1.63%,
and American Express Co.
AXP,
-1.01%,
which have a pulse on the global consumer spending landscape. The companies should provide insight on a travel recovery toward the end of the year, as well as the impact of recent lockdowns.

Susquehanna analyst James Friedman wrote recently that his Mastercard revenue projection of $3.97 billion is slightly below the consensus view, though he also asked: “does anyone really care about Q4 2020?” Friedman is upbeat about mobile-payments and online-shopping dynamics that suggest “positive trends ahead” for Mastercard, which reports Thursday morning. Visa follows that afternoon, while American Express kicks of the week with its Tuesday morning report.

The chip saga continues

Advanced Micro Devices Inc.
AMD,
+1.38%
is poised to keep benefiting from Intel Corp.’s
INTC,
-9.29%
stumbles, which analysts expect to last for some time even as Intel prepares for a new, technology-oriented chief executive to take the helm.

“We have low confidence that Intel will be able to close that transistor gap quickly, and therefore expect it to continue to lose share for the foreseeable future,” Jefferies analyst Mark Lipacis wrote after Intel’s latest earnings report. AMD will show how that dynamic has played out on its side of the equation when it posts numbers Tuesday afternoon.

Full preview: If Intel gets its act together, can AMD maintain swollen valuation?

Other chip makers reporting in the week ahead include Texas Instruments Inc.
TXN,
-1.31%
on Tuesday afternoon; Xilinx Inc.
XLNX,
+1.26%,
which is in line to be acquired by AMD, on Wednesday afternoon report, when it will be joined by chip-equipment maker Lam Research Corp.
LRCX,
-0.06%
; and Western Digital Corp.
WDC,
-5.23%
on Thursday afternoon.

Busy week for the Dow

Among the 13 members of the Dow Jones Industrial Average
DJIA,
-0.57%
set to report this week are 3M Co
MMM,
-0.96%.
, Johnson & Johnson
JNJ,
+1.13%,
American Express, Verizon, and Microsoft Corp.
MSFT,
+0.44%,
all of which report Tuesday.

“Near term, we see the company’s COVID-19 vaccine readout as a key upcoming catalyst and believe efficacy in the 80%+ range would suggest a clear role for the product in the market,” J.P. Morgan analyst Chris Schott wrote of Johnson & Johnson.

Cowen & Co. analyst J. Derrick Wood sees tough comparisons for Microsoft especially in its Azure and server businesses, though he expects a more favorable situation going forward.

Full preview: SolarWinds hack may actually be a good thing for Microsoft

Wednesday brings results from Boeing and Apple, while Thursday features McDonald’s Corp.
MCD,
-0.07%,
Dow Inc.
DOW,
-0.10%,
and Visa. Honeywell International Inc.
HON,
-1.45%,
Chevron Corp.
CVX,
-0.30%,
and Caterpillar Inc.
CAT,
-0.13%
round out the week Friday morning.

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