BEIJING: Oil prices rose in early trading on Friday following attacks on Saudi energy infrastructure, and as markets evaluated the risk premium from the ongoing closure of the Strait of Hormuz, despite a fragile truce agreed between the U.S. and Iran.
“The initial wave of relief following President Trump’s two-week ceasefire announcement has quickly given way to underlying doubts,” IG market analyst Tony Sycamore said in a note.
Iran and the U.S. agreed on Tuesday to a two-week ceasefire brokered by Pakistan, but fighting was still taking place following the announcement.
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“All eyes remain firmly on tanker tracker flows through the Strait of Hormuz for any signs of increased activity ahead of peace talks scheduled in Pakistan on Friday,” Sycamore said.
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Analysts say Pakistan will try to push in the talks for a more durable peace agreement but may lack the leverage needed to compel the reopening of the key Strait of Hormuz. Iran wants to charge fees for ships passing through the strait under a peace deal, a Tehran official told Reuters on April 7. Western leaders and the U.N.’s shipping agency have pushed back on the idea. The crucial artery for oil and gas flows has been effectively shut down by the conflict, which began on February 28 when the U.S. and Israel launched air strikes on Iran.
Brent prices could reach $190 a barrel if flows through the Strait of Hormuz remain at the current level, said John Paisie, president of energy consultants Stratas Advisors.
“If Iran allows increasing flows the price of oil will be more moderated, but still well above pre-war levels.”
Attacks on Saudi Arabia’s oil production capacity have cut the kingdom’s output by around 600,000 barrels per day (bpd) and reduced throughput on its East-West Pipeline by 700,000 bpd, the Saudi Press Agency reported on Thursday.
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The announcement “shifts the narrative from episodic disruption to a measurable supply shock,” JPMorgan analysts said in a research note.
Some 50 infrastructure assets in the Gulf have been damaged by drone and missile strikes over the nearly six weeks since the conflict started, and around 2.4 million bpd of oil refining capacity have been taken offline, according to JPMorgan.
Augusta National Golf Club, home of the prestigious Masters Tournament, has spent years and more than $200 million expanding its footprint in Augusta, Georgia. The club is buying up hundreds of acres of surrounding land for future development.
But one property, long considered a holdout, remains firmly in the hands of the family of its original owners.
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The home at 1112 Stanley Rd. was built in 1959 by Herman and Elizabeth Thacker, and it still stands just across from Gate 6-A.
It’s a modest, 1,900-square-foot three-bedroom house, but its story has become something of a local legend.
Over the past decade, nearly the entire neighborhood around it has been bought and cleared, with Augusta National Golf Club spending more than $40 million to convert the land into parking and infrastructure for tournament patrons. The club has spent more than $280 million on property acquisitions over the past 25 years, according to Golf.com.
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Dustin Johnson on the second green during the first round of the 2026 Masters Tournament at Augusta National Golf Club on April 9, 2026. (Jared C. Tilton/Getty Images)
Many of those homeowners became millionaires overnight.
The Thackers chose a different path. Despite multiple seven-figure offers, they refused to sell.
“Money ain’t everything,” Herman Thacker famously told NJ.com in a 2016 interview.
Herman Thacker died in 2019 at the age of 86. His wife, Elizabeth, lived in the home for many years after, becoming one of the last — and most well-known — holdouts against the club’s expansion.
Herman and Elizabeth Thacker. (Robin Thacker Rinder)
Since last year’s Masters, the Thacker family has experienced a significant loss: Elizabeth Thacker died in July at the age of 93.
Her daughter, Robin Thacker Rinder, confirmed to FOX Business that while her mother is gone, the home remains in the family.
Rinder says she is now living in the house herself, “taking good care of it,” and confirmed that the property has not changed hands. Notably, she says Augusta National has not approached the Thacker children with any new offers since the family originally declined to sell.
The Thacker family home near the Augusta National Golf Club in Augusta, Georgia. (Google Maps)
Augusta National did not respond to FOX Business’ multiple requests for comment.
The property is estimated to be worth roughly $330,000, but that’s a fraction of what Augusta National has paid out to the owners of nearby homes in years past.
The Thackers previously sold another nearby property they owned to the club for $1.2 million, but wanted to live the rest of their lives at 1112 Stanley Rd., the home where they raised two children, five grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.
The home remains, at least for now, not for sale. Still, Rinder left the door slightly open when asked if that could ever change.
“If the price is right,” she said with a laugh.
For now, one of the most famous holdouts in golf endures.
WA’s largest super fund GESB’s former chief Ben Palmer has emerged as the managing director of a new funds management division launched by Affinity Capital Group.
Convatec Group PLC (CNVVY) Analyst/Investor Day April 9, 2026 9:00 AM EDT
Company Participants
David Phillips Jonathan Mason – CEO & Director Tanja Dormels – President & COO of Advanced Wound Care Bruno Pinheiro – President & COO of Ostomy Care Mark Jassey – President & COO of Continence Care & Home Services Group Kjersti Grimsrud – President & COO of Infusion Care Divakar Ramakrishnan – Executive VP, Chief Technology Officer and Head of Research & Development Fiona Ryder – Group Financial Controller, CFO & Director
Conference Call Participants
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Kane Slutzkin – Deutsche Bank AG, Research Division Aisyah Noor – Morgan Stanley, Research Division Veronika Dubajova – Citigroup Inc., Research Division David Adlington – JPMorgan Chase & Co, Research Division Richard Felton – Goldman Sachs Group, Inc., Research Division Susannah Ludwig – Bernstein Institutional Services LLC, Research Division Sebastien Jantet – Panmure Liberum Limited, Research Division Christian Glennie – Stifel, Nicolaus & Company, Incorporated, Research Division Beatrice Fairbairn – Joh. Berenberg, Gossler & Co. KG, Research Division
Presentation
David Phillips
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Good afternoon. Welcome. I’m David Phillips, Head of Investor Relations here at Convatec. Can I just set some quick housekeeping rules for the day? And can I please ask that you switch your phones off or put them on silent. In 30 minutes, we will split into 4 groups for the category breakout sessions, which are across the corridor. This will bring the best of Convatec to life. Prerecorded videos of these — some of the presentations are online for those who are watching on the webcast. To enable us to keep the time today, we would respectfully ask if you keep your questions until the end. We’ve got ample time and then all of the presenters and guests will be in the atrium and able to speak. We now have a very short video to introduce Accelerate, and then Jonny will begin. So thank you very much and lights out.
In the Nifty500 pack, nine stocks’ closing prices crossed above their 200 DMA (Daily Moving Averages) on April 9, 2026, according to stockedge.com’s technical scan data. The 200-day daily moving average (DMA) is used by traders as a key indicator for determining the overall trend in a particular stock. As long as the stock is priced above the 200-day SMA on the daily timeframe, it is generally considered to be in an overall uptrend. Take a look:
The White House warned staff against improperly leveraging their positions to place bets in futures markets in an email on March 24, a day after President Donald Trump ordered a brief pause in some Iran strikes, a White House official said on Thursday.
Some of Trump’s major policy decisions have been preceded by well-timed bets, leading some experts to question whether information had somehow leaked ahead of time.
Exchange data and Reuters calculations showed an unidentified trader or traders bet $500 million on Brent and WTI crude futures in a one-minute period shortly before Trump called a five-day delay on March 23 in attacks on Iran’s energy infrastructure, after which oil prices crashed 15%.
“While he (Trump) seeks a strong and profitable stock market for everyone, members of Congress and other government officials should be prohibited from using nonpublic information for financial benefit,” White House spokesman Davis Ingle told Reuters in a statement.
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The Journal, which previously reported the news, said the announcement was made in a staff-wide email from the White House management office.
FREMONT, Calif. — Aehr Test Systems Inc. stock rocketed higher Thursday, climbing more than 8% to trade around $68 as investors bet on the semiconductor test equipment maker’s surging order book tied to artificial intelligence infrastructure, even after the company posted mixed fiscal third-quarter results.
Aehr Test Systems
Shares of the NASDAQ-listed company (AEHR) rose as much as 10% intraday Thursday, building on a 26% surge the previous session following its earnings release. The stock has now skyrocketed more than 210% year-to-date in 2026, turning it into one of the hottest small-cap plays in the chip sector amid booming demand for AI processors and data center components.
Aehr, which specializes in wafer-level and package-level test and burn-in systems, reported fiscal third-quarter revenue of $10.3 million for the period ended Feb. 27, missing Wall Street expectations of about $10.8 million and plunging 44% from $18.3 million a year earlier. The company swung to a non-GAAP net loss of $1.5 million, or 5 cents per share, compared with a year-ago profit of 7 cents per share. However, the loss was narrower than the consensus forecast of a 7-cent loss.
The revenue shortfall stemmed largely from a shift in product mix and timing of shipments, but investors quickly zeroed in on far stronger forward-looking signals. Aehr booked a whopping $37.2 million in new orders during the quarter — delivering a book-to-bill ratio exceeding 3.5 times — pushing its effective backlog to a record $50.9 million when including post-quarter wins.
“We are seeing significant demand from AI and data center customers,” Aehr President and CEO Gayn Erickson said in a statement accompanying the results. The company highlighted production orders for its FOX-XP wafer-level burn-in systems from a lead AI processor customer and follow-on wins in silicon photonics for hyperscale data center optical interconnects.
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Analysts and market watchers described Aehr as a “quiet bottleneck” in the AI supply chain. Its equipment stresses semiconductors through burn-in testing to weed out early failures, ensuring reliability for high-power AI chips used in training and inference workloads at massive data centers. Only a fraction of advanced AI accelerators currently undergo full wafer-level burn-in, leaving substantial room for adoption growth as hyperscalers ramp production.
Recent orders underscore that momentum. In February, Aehr landed a $14 million order for FOX-XP systems from its lead AI processor customer. It also secured follow-on business for silicon photonics devices critical to high-speed optical connections in AI servers. Earlier in the year, the company won initial orders for its Sonoma ultra-high-power systems to burn-in next-generation AI ASICs for a major hyperscale customer.
“These wins position Aehr at the heart of AI infrastructure buildout,” said one analyst who upgraded the stock following the earnings. Craig-Hallum upgraded Aehr to Buy from Hold, citing improving business momentum, while Lake Street raised its price target to $56 from $50.
Aehr also announced a $60 million at-the-market equity offering Thursday, giving it flexibility to fund growth or acquisitions as demand accelerates. The company completed the acquisition of Incal Technology last year to expand its footprint in AI semiconductor testing.
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For the full fiscal year ending May 2026, Aehr reaffirmed guidance for revenue on the high end of $45 million to $50 million. It expects second-half revenue between $25 million and $30 million and reiterated a path to non-GAAP profitability in the fourth quarter.
The upbeat bookings outlook helped offset concerns about the current-quarter softness, which management attributed partly to lumpy shipment timing and a temporary emphasis on package-level burn-in products.
Aehr’s technology addresses a critical pain point in semiconductor manufacturing. As chips for electric vehicles, AI, silicon carbide power devices and photonics become more complex and power-hungry, the need for rigorous testing and stabilization before deployment grows. Aehr’s FOX family of systems can test and burn-in full wafers or singulated die in parallel, improving yields and reducing costs for customers.
The company’s products serve diverse end markets, including AI processors, data center infrastructure, automotive, industrial and silicon photonics for optical I/O. Demand from hyperscale cloud providers building out AI training clusters has become a dominant driver.
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Wall Street’s view on Aehr remains mixed but tilting more positive. Consensus ratings hover around Hold with an average price target near $68, though some firms see higher upside if AI orders continue to materialize. The stock’s rapid run has left it trading at elevated valuations, with a market capitalization now exceeding $2 billion.
Investors appeared unfazed by the revenue miss, focusing instead on the massive backlog and potential for a strong second half. Broader market sentiment also helped, with a ceasefire agreement between the U.S., Israel and Iran easing some geopolitical tensions and lifting risk assets.
Aehr executives expressed confidence in a rebound. Management highlighted expectations for a “near-term follow-on production order” from its lead hyperscale customer and said bookings for the second half should land on the high side of prior $60 million to $80 million guidance.
Shares closed Wednesday at $63.16, up sharply on the earnings reaction and macro tailwinds. By mid-afternoon Thursday, they traded near $68.19, extending gains.
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The surge reflects growing recognition that Aehr’s niche expertise in reliability testing could prove essential as the AI boom demands ever-more robust semiconductors. Hyperscalers and chip designers cannot afford failures in massive AI clusters, making burn-in a non-negotiable step.
Still, risks remain. Aehr derives a significant portion of revenue from a handful of large customers, exposing it to order timing volatility. The company has yet to achieve consistent profitability, and competition in the test equipment space could intensify.
For now, momentum favors the bulls. With AI capital spending showing no signs of slowing and Aehr’s backlog at record levels, the company appears poised for a potential inflection as shipments ramp in coming quarters.
Aehr Test Systems, founded in 1977 and headquartered in Fremont, employs about 136 people. It has installed thousands of systems worldwide and continues to innovate in wafer-level solutions that enable parallel testing of hundreds or thousands of devices simultaneously.
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As the semiconductor industry grapples with exploding complexity driven by AI, companies like Aehr that provide critical enabling technology are drawing fresh attention from growth-oriented investors.
Whether the stock can sustain its blistering pace will depend on execution in the back half of the year and the ability to convert that hefty backlog into revenue and, ultimately, profits.
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