By Shashwat Chauhan and Ragini Mathur
Feb 26 (Reuters) – U.S. stock index futures were flat on Thursday as Nvidia’s stellar earnings garnered a tepid reception from investors and downbeat results from software company Salesforce weighed on sentiment.
Nvidia rose 1.2% in premarket trading after the chipmaker posted better-than-expected results for the January quarter and forecast current-quarter revenue above market estimates.
“The needle has clearly shifted when it comes to what its going to take to convince investors that the billions being poured into AI infrastructure will pay off,” said Raffi Boyadjian, lead market analyst at Trading Point.
“Markets are now moving into a phase where they want to see tangible results of AI monetization before pushing AI stocks above their recent ranges.”
Most megacap and growth stocks including Apple and Microsoft
At 07:13 a.m. ET, Dow E-minis were down 6 points, or 0.01%, S&P 500 E-minis were down 0.75 points, or 0.01%, and Nasdaq 100 E-minis were down 12.75 points, or 0.05%.
Salesforce shed 3.7% after the cloud software provider forecast fiscal 2027 revenue below expectations, signaling sluggish spending on enterprise business software.
Results from software-related companies could gather extra attention this earnings season given the S&P 500 software and services index has dropped nearly 21% so far this year as concerns of AI-related disruptions hit the sector.
While software has been one of the worst hit, financial brokerage, data analytics and legal services, real estate services and trucking are some other sectors that clocked heavy losses amid growing AI disruption fears earlier this year.
February has been a choppy month for U.S. equities, with the main indexes swinging sharply between gains and losses as sentiment towards AI and technology stocks waver, with investors questioning if massive planned AI spending is actually paying off.
The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq closed at two-week highs on Wednesday, fueled by a rally in heavyweight technology stocks.
A weekly jobless claims reading is due later in the day and January producer prices data is scheduled for release on Friday.
Among other stocks, Trade Desk tumbled 16.8% after the advertising technology firm forecast first-quarter revenue below estimates amid mounting pressure from larger rivals.
C3.ai fell 24.8% after the software provider forecast current-quarter sales below estimates and said it was cutting 26% of its global workforce.
Celsius Holding jumped 14% after the energy drink maker reported fourth-quarter revenue above estimates.
Investors also monitored the latest round of U.S.-Iran talks in Geneva aimed at resolving their longstanding nuclear dispute and averting new U.S. strikes on Iran following a large-scale military buildup.
(Reporting by Shashwat Chauhan in Bengaluru; Editing by Devika Syamnath)
