Chipmaker Nvidia (NVDA) was in focus on Tuesday, after South Korea announced it was looking to secure 10,000 high-performance graphics processing units (GPUs) this year for its national AI computing centre.
In a statement on Monday, South Korea's acting president Choi Sang-mok said: "As competition for dominance in the AI industry intensifies, the competitive landscape is shifting from battles between companies to a full-scale rivalry between national innovation ecosystems."
Nvidia (NVDA) holds around an 80% share of the global GPU market, according to Reuters.
Shares in the chipmaker were flat in pre-market trading on Tuesday, with US markets set to re-open later in the day after a closure on Monday for President's Day.
Matt Britzman, senior equity analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown (HL.L), said that South Korea's announcement "should be seen as another proof point that Nvidia’s (NVDA) demand extends well beyond the giant US tech companies.
"We’ve now seen several countries express an appetite for building their own computing clusters, with the massive US Stargate project grabbing the most headlines," he said. "This is supportive to the Nvidia investment case and presents a relatively new and scalable demand avenue for its market leading chips."
Investors were also keeping an eye on Tesla (TSLA) stock after the Financial Times reported on Monday that the company was bracing for a potential delay in getting approval for its autonomous driving technology in China.
The electric vehicle maker has reportedly been told there is no set timetable for regulators in China to approve a licence for it to start training its "full-self-driving" technology. The FT's report said this was despite an earlier suggestion that it could get approval in the second quarter of this year.
The news comes as trade tensions escalate between the US and China, with president Donald Trump having imposed a 10% tariff on the latter's imports and Beijing announcing retaliatory duties.
Tesla (TSLA) CEO Elon Musk is a close adviser to Trump, and China is a key market for the EV maker.
Spokespeople for Tesla (TSLA), and China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, had not responded to Yahoo Finance UK's request for comment at the time of writing.
Share in dairy-alternatives producer Oatly (OTLY) rocketed on Friday, after the release of its latest results, though the stock is still down nearly 60% over the past year.
The oat drink maker posted revenue of $824m (£653m) for 2024, up from $783m for the previous year. Oatly also reported a larger gross margin of 29% and a lower adjusted loss of $35m.
However, Oatly said it expected to drive its first full year of profitable growth in 2025. The company guided to revenue growth of 2% to 4% and earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation of $5m to $15m.
In addition, Oatly said it would look to continue "aggressively" pursuing cost efficiencies this year to simplify its business and generate fuel for additional investments.
Miner BHP Group (BHP.L) posted a 23% fall in underlying attributable profit to $5.1bn in the first half of its fiscal year, in results released on Tuesday.
The company also reduced its interim dividend to $0.50 per share, down from $0.72 for the same period last year.
Russ Mould, investment director at AJ Bell (AJB.L), said: "BHP has reminded the market why miners are not reliable dividend payers.
“The mining sector historically ploughed spare cash into acquisitions, but the narrative changed in 2013 when the commodities cycle went into a downturn."
"Miners leant on dividends to keep shareholders happy, effectively paying them to wait for the rebound in commodity prices," he added. "Unfortunately for these companies, investors got too accustomed to those juicy dividends, and the mining sector became a popular source of high yields.
"Fundamentally, that’s the last thing miners wanted to happen as the cyclical nature of their industry meant they would ultimately disappoint on dividends down the line."
Mould said that commodity prices had been particularly volatile in recent years, seeing miners cut back on dividend payments. He said this latest cut from BHP (BHP.L) came after the miner suffered lower iron ore and coking coal prices.
Despite this update from the company, shares in BHP (BHP.L) were trading less than 1% in the red on Tuesday morning.
This comes just a few weeks after BT (BT-A.L) issued a third quarter trading update, in which it posted a 3% dip in adjusted revenue to £5.2bn ($6.55bn). Reported profit before tax rose just 1% to £427m in the third quarter.
However, BT reconfirmed its financial outlook for the 2025 fiscal year and its mid-term guidance. BT said it was aiming for a cash flow inflection of around £2bn in 2027 and around £3bn by the end of the decade.
Other companies in the news on Tuesday 18 February:
