Shares of NICE Ltd. climbed Wednesday morning, recovering modestly from a 52-week low hit just two weeks ago as a broader rally in beaten-down enterprise software stocks lifted the Israeli AI contact center technology company alongside peers that have been battered by investor fears over generative AI disruption to their core business models.

Shares of the Ra’anana, Israel-based company were trading at $95.37 as of 10:34 a.m. EDT, up $4.52, or 4.98%, on the day. The advance offers some relief after a prolonged and painful selloff that has carried NICE shares from a 52-week high of $175, reached in late July 2025, down to a 52-week low of $83.10 hit on June 18, a decline of more than 52% that has made the company one of the hardest-hit names in the enterprise software sector during 2026.

Wednesday’s bounce comes on a day when the broader software category has stabilized following weeks of broad-based selling attributed to fears, sometimes described by analysts as the “SaaSpocalypse,” that generative AI tools from companies such as Anthropic, OpenAI and Google could fundamentally disrupt traditional enterprise software subscription business models. That dynamic has weighed heavily on NICE in particular because the company’s flagship CXone Mpower platform competes directly in the AI-powered contact center space, a category that some investors fear could be hollowed out by AI tools capable of performing customer service interactions autonomously without requiring a dedicated third-party software platform.

NICE has pushed back forcefully against that narrative through its annual NiCE World 2026 customer conference, held June 8 through 10 at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida, where the company rolled out a series of product announcements designed to position itself not as a victim of the agentic AI wave but as one of its primary beneficiaries. The company announced that agentic AI is now natively embedded at the core of its CXone Mpower platform, framing the shift as a fundamental transformation of customer experience from human-driven support to an integrated model combining AI agents, human workers and enterprise data in a single operating environment.

NiCE said it introduced the Workforce Empowerment Suite, giving enterprises one operating model to manage, govern and empower both human employees and AI agents at scale. The company also launched NiCE Labs, a dedicated AI innovation lab established to conduct advanced research, rigorous benchmarking and rapid prototyping at the leading edge of agentic customer experience technology.

The financial results presented at the same investor and analyst day showed revenue of $768.62 million for the first quarter of fiscal 2026, up 8% year-over-year and modestly above analyst estimates of $760.92 million. Adjusted earnings per share of $2.64 also beat consensus expectations of $2.52, representing a year-over-year increase of roughly 39% in net income. Despite those beats, the stock fell sharply following the event, with multiple analysts cutting their price targets in response to concerns about the pace of longer-term revenue growth in an increasingly competitive AI-native contact center market.

Wedbush lowered its price target on NICE to $100 from $120 and maintained a Neutral rating on the shares following the investor day. Morgan Stanley maintained an Overweight rating but lowered its price target to $130 from $148. Citi reduced its target to $100 from $119, and RBC Capital lowered its target to $130 from $150.

The broadly negative analyst price target revisions reflected a common concern: while NICE’s near-term financial performance has held up reasonably well, investors are increasingly questioning whether the company’s competitive position in the contact center software market is durable over a multi-year horizon given the pace of development of AI-native alternatives. NICE has traditionally relied on its CXone platform’s breadth of capabilities, including workforce optimization, quality management, compliance recording, analytics and interaction management, as a defensible moat against competitors. That argument is now being stress-tested in real time as both established cloud software companies and smaller AI-native startups attempt to replicate those capabilities using foundation models.

A separate challenge has emerged from NICE’s European presence. Reports have circulated that France’s domestic intelligence agency was transitioning off Palantir’s tools in favor of domestic alternatives, and more broadly, a wider shift in European government and enterprise procurement sentiment toward prioritizing domestically developed or European-domiciled software vendors has created uncertainty around renewal rates for NICE’s international public-sector customer base, even if the company has not publicly quantified the impact.

Despite those headwinds, NICE has continued executing on its commercial expansion strategy. NICE Actimize, the company’s financial crime and compliance division, signed a major contract with DNB Bank ASA, Norway’s largest financial services group, to deploy the NICE Actimize X-Sight Enterprise platform, consolidating DNB’s fraud detection and anti-money laundering systems onto a single cloud-native intelligence-driven platform. The win illustrates that NICE’s financial crime compliance business, which serves banks and financial institutions rather than consumer-facing contact centers, has continued to grow independently of the contact center narrative that has dominated the stock’s recent performance.

According to 16 analysts, approximately 93.75% maintain a Buy rating on NICE shares, with an average 12-month price target of $131.43, implying roughly 30% upside from recent trading levels. That disconnect between the overwhelmingly bullish analyst consensus and the stock’s 52% decline from its 52-week high reflects a broader investor skepticism about the durability of enterprise software business models in an AI-saturated environment that has not yet been resolved by any individual earnings report or product announcement.

NICE’s next earnings report is expected in early August, a date that will give investors their next opportunity to assess whether the company’s pivot toward agentic AI as a platform-level strategy is beginning to translate into new bookings, expanded customer commitments and improved revenue visibility, or whether the competitive pressures bearing down on the contact center software market are more structurally challenging than the company’s current financial results reflect. For now, Wednesday’s advance represents a stabilization trade rather than a conviction reversal, with the stock still far below where it traded just a year ago even after this morning’s nearly 5% bounce.

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Buying a flat used to be a stepping stone to owning a house – but has this all changed?

Research is telling us that the gap in price between flats and houses has hit a 30 year high. According to the property platform Zoopla, so far this this year two-thirds of one and two-bedroom flats listed for sale still haven’t been sold.

The leasehold system in England is being blamed, in large part, for the declining popularity of flats. There are concerns about the length of leases and the maintenance and service charges often involved when owning a flat. The Government is in the process of introducing new measures to deal with some of these issues.

So today we’re asking – what does buying a flat mean for your finances? Maybe you live in one and love it! Perhaps your children do? Or are you struggling to sell and feeling a bit flattened?

Presenter Felicity Hannah puts listeners’ questions and concerns to an expert panel. Polly Gilbert is a director at the digital mortgage brokers Tembo, and Liam Spender is a trustee at the Leasehold Knowledge Partnership.

Presenter: Felicity Hannah
Producer: Craig Henderson
Editor: Jess Quayle
Senior News Editor: Sara Wadeson

(First broadcast 3pm Wednesday 1st July, 2026)

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President Donald Trump has decided not to extend the USMCA trade agreement and will instead pursue independent trade deals with Canada and Mexico, FOX Business has learned.

Wednesday marked the deadline for the six-year review, and a Trump administration official told FOX Business that the president opted against extending the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA).

The official indicated that Trump will instead pursue separate deals with Canada and Mexico that last for up to 10 years.

The USMCA runs until 2036, so it will remain in effect barring further actions during the negotiations over changes to the trade terms between the U.S. and two of its three largest trading partners.

Data from the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) showed that in 2024, Canada and Mexico were the two largest export markets for U.S.-made goods, while Mexico was the largest source of U.S. imports and Canada ranked third in that category.

Trump negotiated the USMCA during his first term as president as a successor to NAFTA. The agreement was signed in December 2019 and took effect on July 1, 2020.

The president has sought to renegotiate the terms of the USMCA since his return to the White House, and imposed 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico last year. That spurred negotiations over the tariffs and underlying issues Trump had with trade terms between the three countries, raising uncertainty over the agreement’s future.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

‘This sort of shopping centre is our bread and butter really’

Middleton Shopping Centre is under new management after a sale was confirmed on Friday.

Middleton’s main shopping complex was put up for sale last month with an asking price of £8.5m. AG Retail – a subsidiary of the Adhan Group – are the purchasers of the site for an undisclosed fee.

The giant shopping centre comprises 324,078 sq ft of retail space across 87 units, supported by a 430‐space multi‐storey car park.

The new owners’ main priority is to get the shopping centre full again and sorting some building works for new retailers coming in.

Following weeks of rumours locally, it has been confirmed that retailer BOYES will move into the closed down Wilko store in the shopping centre. Jon-Paul Hardman, the asset manager speaking on behalf of AG Retail, added that B&M will move into the Poundstretcher store.

He added that Poundstretcher and TG Jones in the shopping centre may not leave entirely though following their recent financial troubles.

Mr Hardman said: “We tried to buy Middleton Shopping Centre three years ago but we were unsuccessful. It works for our retail model.

“This sort of shopping centre is our bread and butter really. Our first priority is to fill the centre again, that is the main plan.”

The Adhan Group is one of the largest retail owners in the north west, with a large portfolio of shopping centres. They run Golden Square Shopping Centre in Warrington, The Mall Blackburn, Belle Vale in Liverpool and Rochdale Exchange Shopping Centre – to name just a few.

According to Knight Frank, who put the shopping centre on the market, it has an annual footfall of around four million people. The estate agents added that it has a gross income of £2,332,168 per annum and an annual net income of £995,719.

This is happening at an exciting time for the town, with the Metrolink tram service planned for the area as part of a wider investment strategy – the Middleton Development Corporation.

This forms part of the overarching Northern Gateway scheme, bringing with it 20,000 jobs, Metrolink to Middleton, 1,200,000 square metres of employment floorspace, 3,000 new homes and better public areas, roads and pathways.

To find all the planning applications, traffic diversions, road layout changes, alcohol licence applications and more in your community, visit the Public Notices Portal.

Nike shares slipped ​nearly 4% in premarket trading on Wednesday, ​as investors fretted over the slower-than-expected turnaround at the world’s largest sportswear maker, ​nearly two years after Elliott Hill took the helm to revive growth.

While the company posted a modest beat in fourth-quarter revenue on Tuesday, sales in China slumped 17% and it expects sales to continue to decline in the first half ‌of fiscal 2027, underscoring ⁠the uneven ⁠nature of its recovery and raising doubts about the pace of its turnaround strategy.

“The Nike turnaround is progressing slowly,” Telsey ​Advisory Group analyst Cristina Fernandez said, adding that sales trends remain weak in large parts of the business such as ​sportswear and in international markets, and are unlikely to rebound before fiscal 2028.

Shares of European peers Adidas and Puma dropped about 1% each.

Nike has been struggling to regain momentum after losing market share to rivals such ​as Anta, Li Ning and Hoka. The stock has already fallen ⁠about 35% ‌this year.

Under Hill’s plan, the company is refocusing on sports, accelerating product innovation ​and rebuilding wholesale partnerships.
“Launched ​a year and a half ago, CEO Elliott Hill’s “Win Now” plan has brought ⁠cost reductions, more efficient inventory management, and a reorganization to align product ​development and marketing around athletics. However, improvement in results has been limited,” Morningstar ​analyst David Swartz said.The sportswear giant’s fourth-quarter revenue fell 4% to $10.97 billion. It also projected a low-to-mid-single digit percentage drop in revenue in the first half of fiscal 2027.

CHINA WEAKNESS PERSISTS Nike expects sales in China to remain under pressure as it works with retail partners to clear excess inventory, outgoing finance chief Matthew Friend said.

Greater China, which accounts for roughly 15% of Nike’s annual revenue, is ‌its third-largest market after North America and Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Still, some analysts said there were early signs that Nike’s efforts to reset the business in ​the region were ​gaining traction, as evidenced by a ⁠smaller decline in fourth-quarter sales compared with the company’s earlier forecast of a roughly 20% drop.

Hill also said Nike plans to launch more than a dozen new footwear styles, though he cautioned that it would ​take time for the products to deliver sustained growth.

The company said stronger World Cup-related marketing, a faster pace of product launches and a rebound in soccer demand after a slowdown in April were proof of improving momentum. It also forecast a slight expansion in first-quarter gross margin.

“Sportswear and Jordan Streetwear remain an overhang and will take time to recover, but the core business is stabilizing,” Jefferies analysts said.

The Justice Department and attorneys general from 17 states announced proposed settlements Tuesday with three of the nation’s largest egg producers after alleging they coordinated to manipulate a key pricing benchmark that inflated egg prices for consumers nationwide.

Federal officials simultaneously filed a civil antitrust lawsuit against Cal-Maine Foods, Hickman’s Egg Ranch and Versova while lodging the proposed settlements, which – if approved by a federal court – would prohibit the companies from engaging in the alleged conduct going forward.

According to New York Attorney General Letitia James’ office, the companies agreed to pay a combined $3.3 million to participating states and donate approximately 53 million eggs to food banks and nonprofit organizations. The settlements also require the companies to adopt antitrust compliance measures and end the alleged coordination.

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The Justice Department alleges the companies manipulated daily price quotations published by Urner Barry, an industry benchmark that influences wholesale egg prices nationwide. 

According to the complaint, the companies coordinated bidding activity to create the appearance of stronger demand and artificially inflate prices for billions of eggs sold each year.

CALIFORNIA FOOD CHAINS MUST POST MENU ALLERGEN WARNINGS STARTING JULY 1

The complaint also alleges benchmark prices fell significantly after the companies learned of the federal investigation and were instructed to preserve documents in March 2025.

“No product more quintessentially represents affordability than the price Americans pay for eggs,” Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward said in a statement. “These actions prove this Department’s continued commitment to protecting competition and providing real relief for everyday Americans’ pocketbooks.”

BELOVED GAS STATION PIZZA CHAIN CEO REVEALS 400-STORE EXPANSION PLAN AS FOOD BUSINESS BOOMS

Cal-Maine, the nation’s largest egg producer, denied wrongdoing in a statement, saying it “was not assessed any fines or penalties” under the agreement. The company said it will pay $1.5 million to participating states and donate 30 million eggs to food banks and nonprofit organizations while implementing certain compliance and reporting measures.

Mantiqueira USA, the joint venture that acquired Hickman’s Egg Ranch in November 2025, said the conduct described in the complaint occurred before its acquisition of the company.

“This settlement fully resolves the allegations against Hickman’s Egg Ranch related to that period,” the company said.

The proposed settlements remain subject to court approval following a 60-day public comment period required under the Tunney Act.

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FOX Business reached out to Cal-Maine Foods, Hickman’s Egg Ranch and Versova for additional comment.

Reuters contributed to this report.