HYBE, the South Korean entertainment giant behind BTS, posted its highest-ever quarterly results Tuesday, powered by a surge in concert, album and merchandise sales tied to comebacks and expanded world tours across its roster of K-pop groups, even as the company’s shares plunged more than 16% amid a broader selloff across South Korean markets.

HYBE said on the 28th that it posted second-quarter consolidated revenue of 1.45 trillion won and operating profit of 170.9 billion won, marking record highs on both fronts.

A Historic Quarter for Revenue and Profit

Tuesday’s results marked several milestones for the company that had not previously been achieved in a single quarter. Both revenue and operating profit hit all-time quarterly highs, with quarterly revenue topping 1 trillion won and operating profit surpassing 100 billion won for the first time in the company’s history. Cumulative first-half revenue also exceeded 2 trillion won for the first time.

Where the Growth Came From

The company’s revenue growth was spread across its core business segments, with concerts, albums and licensed merchandise all contributing to the record results. By segment, concert revenue reached 647.7 billion won and album revenue totaled 326.8 billion won. The merchandise and licensing segment also set a record high at 310.6 billion won, helped by the expansion of concert activity, while the company’s operating margin came in at 11.8%, remaining in double digits.

BTS Leads the Charge

BTS, which began a world tour in April following the group’s return from military service, was cited as a primary driver of the quarter’s growth. According to global music data analytics firm Luminate, the group’s new album “ARIRANG” ranked No. 1 in U.S. vinyl and CD sales. The world tour also generated broader economic ripple effects, boosting consumption and tourism demand in the regions hosting the group’s concerts.

A Deep Roster of Contributing Acts

BTS was far from the only act driving HYBE’s record quarter, with the company’s broader roster posting strong results across the board. In the first half, every HYBE artist released a new album, and HYBE artists accounted for half of the U.S. top 10 CD sellers during that period. In Korea’s official album sales tally, seven teams besides BTS, including Tomorrow X Together, Enhypen, and Team, Boynextdoor, TWS and Katseye, achieved million-seller status.

Katseye in particular stood out with a strong run of accolades and sales figures during the period. Katseye won three awards at the 2026 American Music Awards, and the group’s cumulative sales for its first and second mini albums surpassed 5.25 million copies. A joint digital single from LE SSERAFIM, ILLIT and Katseye titled “ICONIC BY MISTAKE” also drew a strong response overseas.

An Aggressive Touring Schedule

Live performances played a central role in the quarter’s results, with HYBE’s roster maintaining an unusually heavy touring calendar. HYBE music group artists held 119 shows across 12 teams in the first half of the year, with more than 200 additional shows slated for the second half. Enhypen, LE SSERAFIM, Boynextdoor and Katseye are among the acts set to embark on world tours in the months ahead.

Weverse Fan Platform Also Sets Records

Beyond music sales and touring revenue, HYBE’s fan engagement platform also posted its strongest performance to date during the quarter. Fan platform Weverse continued to grow, with average monthly active users reaching a record high of 14.43 million in the second quarter. Total payment volume and average revenue per paying user rose 12% and 24%, respectively, from the previous quarter.

CEO Highlights the Results

HYBE CEO Lee Jae-sang framed the quarter’s performance as evidence of the company’s broader significance to South Korea’s cultural export industry. “In the second quarter, HYBE redefined the global entertainment market and proved through results that it functions as a core export infrastructure for the domestic cultural industry,” Lee said, adding that the results reflect steady efforts toward business innovation and that the company will continue pursuing strategies for expansion and growth.

Shares Sink Despite Record Results

Despite the historic quarterly performance, HYBE’s stock did not escape Tuesday’s broader market turmoil in South Korea. Shares of HYBE fell 16.09%, or 36,200 won, to close at 188,800 won, caught up in a market-wide selloff that had little to do with the company’s own results.

A Brutal Day for South Korean Markets

HYBE’s decline came amid one of the most severe single-day selloffs South Korean markets have experienced this year, driven primarily by a rout in semiconductor and memory chip stocks. On the 28th, the Kospi index fell more than 8%, triggering a circuit breaker on the main board, marking the third such trading halt in South Korea during the month of July alone. That broader index-wide selloff, driven by heavy losses in chipmakers Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, appears to have dragged down shares across the market, including strong performers like HYBE, regardless of individual company fundamentals.

A Disconnect Between Fundamentals and Stock Performance

Tuesday’s trading illustrates a disconnect between HYBE’s underlying business performance and how its stock traded on the day results were announced, a pattern not uncommon when broader market forces overwhelm company-specific news. Even as HYBE delivered record revenue, record operating profit and a growing base of paying fans on its Weverse platform, its shares moved primarily in line with the sharp, market-wide declines affecting nearly every major stock on the Kospi that day.

With more than 200 additional shows planned across HYBE’s roster for the second half of the year, and several major acts, including Enhypen, LE SSERAFIM, Boynextdoor and Katseye, preparing for upcoming world tours, the company appears positioned to build on Tuesday’s record results in the coming quarters. Whether HYBE’s stock can recover from Tuesday’s steep decline is likely to depend heavily on how quickly the broader selloff across South Korean chip and technology stocks stabilizes, rather than on any change in the company’s own underlying business momentum.

Shares of Coforge surged 6.64% to Rs 1,630.20 in Tuesday’s trading session after the IT services firm reported a strong Q1FY27 performance. Net profit jumped 63% YoY, while revenue grew 49%, reflecting strong business momentum and improved operational efficiency. However, profit declined 15% sequentially compared with the previous quarter due to quarterly fluctuations.

Coforge reported revenue from operations of Rs 5,527.7 crore for the quarter ended June 2026, registering a growth of 24% quarter-on-quarter (QoQ) and 49% YoY. The company had reported revenue of Rs 4,450.4 crore in March 2026 and Rs 3,704.4 crore in June 2025. The strong revenue performance was supported by healthy demand across geographies, new deal wins, and continued momentum in AI-led engineering, cloud, and data services.

The company posted a consolidated net profit of Rs 518.6 crore in Q1FY27, down 15% from Rs 612.3 crore in the March 2026 quarter. On a yearly basis, however, profit increased significantly by 63% compared with Rs 317.4 crore reported in the same quarter last year. Profitability improvement was reflected in strong margin expansion during the quarter.

Coforge reported EBITDA of Rs 1,123.3 crore ($120.3 million), marking a 74% YoY growth in rupee terms and a 55% increase in dollar terms.

EBITDA margin expanded to 20.3%, improving by 285 basis points compared with the year-ago period.

EBIT stood at Rs 882.2 crore ($94.5 million), rising 101% YoY in rupee terms and 80% in dollar terms. EBIT margin improved to 16%, expanding by 414 basis points YoY.

Record order book strengthens growth outlook

The company reported a strong order intake of $691 million in total contract value (TCV) during the quarter.
Coforge’s executable order book for the next 12 months stood at $2.23 billion, increasing 27% QoQ and 44% YoY, providing strong revenue visibility for the coming quarters.
During the quarter, the company secured four large deals across North America, Europe, and Latin America, further strengthening its global growth pipeline.

AI-Led Services Drive Growth

Coforge highlighted that 86% of its revenues are now generated from AI-led engineering, data, and cloud services. The company said AI adoption across client delivery and internal operations has contributed significantly to margin expansion and business growth.

Commenting on the performance, Sudhir Singh, Chief Executive Officer and Executive Director of Coforge Ltd, said: “Q1 performance reflects the strength of our differentiated capabilities and execution intensity. With a next twelve-month signed order book of $2.23 billion, a strong large deal pipeline, and 86% of revenues coming from AI-led engineering, data, and cloud services, we are positioned to remain among the industry growth leaders.”

He added that the operational integration of Encora has been completed and that strong demand, record visibility, and expanding AI-led opportunities are expected to make FY27 a strong year for the company.

Dividend Announcement

The company’s Board has recommended an interim dividend of Rs 4 per share. The record date for determining eligible shareholders for the dividend payout has been fixed as August 3, 2026.

Stock Performance and Technical Outlook

Coforge shares have gained around 27% in the last three months. The company currently commands a market capitalization of approximately Rs 67,660 crore.

The stock’s 52-week high stands at Rs 1,989.70.

From a technical perspective, the stock’s 14-day Relative Strength Index (RSI) stands at 57.3. An RSI below 30 generally indicates oversold conditions, while a reading above 70 suggests overbought levels. The stock is currently trading with bullish moving average indicators, suggesting positive momentum.

With strong order visibility, expanding margins, AI-driven growth opportunities, and improving operational efficiency, Coforge remains positioned as one of the key players benefiting from the ongoing digital transformation and enterprise AI adoption cycle.

(Disclaimer: Recommendations, suggestions, views and opinions given by the experts are their own. These do not represent the views of Economic Times)

Foreword

By Rick Rieder, Tom Parker & Pat Haskell

Old assumptions, new markets

For much of recent history, fixed income investors have operated within a familiar policy framework. Central banks anchored markets, forward guidance often mattered more

Rich Paul, the longtime agent for LeBron James, is facing backlash from Los Angeles Lakers fans after suggesting that late Lakers great Kobe Bryant would have approved of James’ decision to sign with the Philadelphia 76ers, James’ hometown franchise.

The comments came after James signed a two-year, $8 million contract to join the Sixers, with Paul invoking Bryant’s name while discussing the move on his “Game Over” podcast.

Paul’s Comments on Kobe Bryant

Paul suggested that Bryant, who died in a helicopter crash more than six years ago, would have respected the competitive nature of James’ decision to join a new team late in his career. “This is something Kobe would be extremely… I don’t know if proud’s the right word, but like ‘hell yeah,’” Paul said on Monday.

Paul elaborated on why he believed Bryant would have viewed the move favorably, framing it as evidence of James’ continued competitive drive. “You know, because — it’s a competitive move, it’s a challenge. It shows that this guy really wants to compete,” Paul added.

Fans React Sharply on Social Media

The comments quickly drew criticism from Lakers fans online, many of whom objected to Paul speculating about what a deceased public figure would have thought or said. According to The Spun, Lakers fans on social media have been attacking Paul for assuming what Bryant would have said, more than six years after his passing.

Several fans expressed frustration directly on social platforms. “Lets not put words into dead peoples mouths,” one fan wrote. Another added, “Bro what has this story come to, enough already. Nobody knows what Kobe would’ve thought so let’s stop it with that.” A third fan pushed back on the relevance of invoking Bryant at all in the context of James’ move to Philadelphia, writing, “Respect to Kobe’s legacy, but not everything has to be made about him. He never played for the 76ers.” Another fan simply wrote, “Don’t talk about Kobe like that.”

Why James Chose the Sixers

James addressed his reasoning for the move directly in what he described as his “Last Decision” statement, emphasizing that the choice was driven by a desire to compete for another championship rather than by family considerations or financial motivations. “I still want to compete, to win and to have a chance at the feeling of winning another championship,” James wrote, before expressing enthusiasm about teaming up with fellow All-Stars Tyrese Maxey, Jaylen Brown and Joel Embiid on Philadelphia’s roster.

James also spoke to his broader ambitions for the franchise and its fan base in the statement. “I believe I can help make the Philadelphia 76ers a championship team and I am so excited to energize a new fan base and start this incredible journey one last time,” he wrote.

Personal and Basketball Factors Behind the Decision

Beyond the on-court motivations James cited publicly, multiple reports have pointed to additional personal factors that played into his decision to sign with Philadelphia. Per multiple insiders, James also chose Philadelphia due to its proximity to New York City, where he intends to stay during the course of the 82-game regular season.

ESPN’s Ramona Shelburne offered additional context on James’ decision-making process on Monday, reporting that basketball fit ultimately outweighed other suitors’ offers. James reportedly felt that the Sixers had a higher collection of high-IQ players than his other leading suitors, the Golden State Warriors, Miami Heat and Cleveland Cavaliers.

Shelburne detailed the reasoning behind that assessment further. “James ultimately decided that the Sixers had the kind of high IQ basketball players and high-end talent he was looking for,” Shelburne reported.

Longstanding Relationships Played a Role

Personal relationships within the Sixers organization also factored significantly into James’ decision, according to Shelburne’s reporting, particularly connections dating back decades. “His comfort level with Bob Myers and new general manager Mike Gansey, whom he’d known from their days as high schoolers in Ohio — Gansey was the runner-up to James for Ohio’s Mr. Basketball in 2001 — and shared time together in Cleveland, helped the cause,” Shelburne reported. “As did his agent Rich Paul’s strong working relationship with Philadelphia owners Josh Harris and David Blitzer.”

A Complicated Legacy for James in Los Angeles

The backlash toward Paul’s comments reflects broader sensitivities among Lakers fans regarding how James’ departure from the franchise is being framed, particularly given the team’s storied history and Bryant’s enduring status as one of the most beloved figures in franchise history. James spent eight seasons with the Lakers, helping deliver the team’s 2020 championship before ultimately signing with Philadelphia this offseason following a shift in the franchise’s long-term direction after the team’s blockbuster trade for Luka Doncic last year.

Paul’s Role as James’ Longtime Agent

Paul has served as James’ agent throughout much of his NBA career and has become one of the most prominent figures in basketball representation through his agency, Klutch Sports Group. His comments on the “Game Over” podcast reflect the kind of public commentary Paul has increasingly offered on James’ career decisions, though Monday’s remarks specifically drew criticism for the way they framed Bryant’s presumed reaction to a move involving a rival organization Bryant never played for during his own career.

As the backlash over Paul’s comments continues to circulate on social media, attention is likely to remain focused on how James’ move to Philadelphia is received more broadly by Lakers fans in the coming weeks, particularly as training camps open across the league and James prepares for his 24th NBA season. Whether Paul or James directly address the criticism surrounding the Bryant comments remains to be seen, though the episode underscores the emotional weight that still surrounds any public discussion connecting James’ career decisions to Bryant’s legacy within the Lakers organization.

Hundreds of user conversations with Anthropic’s Claude chatbot were found to have been publicly accessible through search engines, exposing personal and work-related information that users had believed was shared only with specific recipients rather than the broader internet.

Links to the chats, some containing sensitive personal and professional details, would surface when users of search engines like Google entered site-specific search terms, according to a report from the BBC.

How the Exposure Happened

The issue stemmed from Claude’s “share” feature, which allows users to generate a link to a specific conversation for others to view. The searches showed Claude chats for which a user had decided to “share” a link had been saved by search engines like Google, leaving them accessible to the broader public rather than remaining limited to whoever the user intended to share the link with directly.

The scale of the exposure was substantial before it was addressed. Users on Reddit initially discovered the publicly available chats, which covered more than 200 conversations with Claude across at least 25 pages of search results, some of which had taken place just weeks before being discovered.

Anthropic’s Response

The search availability of the chat logs was removed over the weekend, though many of the exposed conversations had already been saved and shared widely online by the time the fix was implemented.

An Anthropic spokeswoman addressed the situation, emphasizing that users retain control over whether their conversations become shareable in the first place. She said links to conversations were “not guessable or discoverable unless people choose to share them themselves.”

The spokeswoman further explained how the platform treats conversations once a user opts to share them. “When someone shares a conversation, they are making that content publicly accessible, and like other public web content, it may be archived by third-party services,” the spokeswoman added.

A Gap in How the Feature Is Explained to Users

The BBC’s reporting noted a potential disconnect between how Claude’s sharing feature is presented to users and what actually happens to shared links once created. The share option within Claude tells a user that “anyone with the link” may view the contents of that link, but does not explicitly state that the link may end up in Google and other search results, a distinction that appears to have caught some users off guard when their conversations turned up in ordinary web searches.

What Was Exposed

The exposed conversations spanned a wide range of topics and use cases, some of which involved potentially sensitive personal or professional information. Chat logs included a user asking Claude last year whether it wanted “to help me or do you want to help anthropic more,” to which the chatbot responded in part, “I experience something like wanting to help you.”

Other conversations touched on more work-related and creative uses of the tool. In one conversation from April, a user prompted Claude to draft an unpublished blog post about cloud security involving details of a corporate project. In another exchange from last month, a user asked Claude how to “become become Nine-tailed fox,” later clarifying they wanted to literally transform from human to the mythical creature, a request Claude responded to by attempting to show the user an AI-generated image claiming they had been given “fully functional fox powers.”

Beyond these more unusual exchanges, the exposed logs also included more conventionally sensitive material. Other conversations with Claude included users seeking help with their CVs, including their names, contact information and work history. Some users even conducted what appeared to be proprietary research for their work, such as in healthcare, including transcripts of private conversations, raising particular concern given the potentially confidential nature of that material.

Not the First AI Chatbot to Face This Issue

Tuesday’s revelations echo similar incidents that have previously affected other major AI chatbot platforms. When OpenAI last year experienced an almost identical issue with ChatGPT chat logs being made publicly accessible, the company ultimately changed the ease with which such logs were accessible, adjusting its sharing mechanism in response to the exposure.

A comparable episode also affected Grok, the AI chatbot built into Elon Musk’s social platform X. Grok also last year saw hundreds of thousands of chat logs made publicly available through online search, an incident of considerably larger scale than the one now affecting Claude.

Google’s Role and Response

Search engines themselves have pushed back on suggestions that they bear direct responsibility for indexing shared chat links, framing the issue as one governed by the choices of individual website owners. A spokesman for Google made clear to the BBC that the company does not control “what pages are made public on the web,” saying instead that responsibility for that lies with the websites themselves.

Google described the tools available to site operators for managing how their content appears in search results. “We give site owners clear controls to decide whether pages can be crawled or indexed, and we always respect those directives,” the spokesman said.

Given that the indexing of the Claude chat logs is no longer occurring, it appears likely that Anthropic used available tools to quickly block the chat log links from search results, a process that Google has described as straightforward for a website operator to initiate once identified, though it must be triggered by the site owner itself rather than automatically by the search engine.

Other Search Engines Also Affected

Beyond Google, the exposed Claude chat logs reportedly also appeared through other major search engines. Other search engines including Bing, Brave and Duck Duck Go, through which the Claude chat logs also appeared, were approached for comment as part of the BBC’s reporting.

With the immediate search exposure now addressed, questions remain about how many of the previously indexed conversations may still be accessible through cached versions, third-party archives, or screenshots that were saved and circulated before Anthropic removed the links from search results over the weekend. The incident is likely to renew broader scrutiny of how AI companies design and communicate their sharing features, particularly given that this marks at least the third major chatbot platform in the past year to experience a similar exposure of user conversations through standard web search.

This article was written by

Analyst’s Disclosure: I/we have a beneficial long position in the shares of CLS either through stock ownership, options, or other derivatives. I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it (other than from Seeking Alpha). I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.

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