Broadcom Inc. is a top five global fabless semiconductor company with leading franchises in wired and wireless communications, enterprise data center and storage, and other end markets. The former Avago acquired Broadcom for $37 billion in 2016 and changed its name to Broadcom Inc. The company has grown via hardware acquisitions, including Agere, LSI Logic, Brocade, and Emulex; and software acquisitions, including CA Inc. in November 2018 and Symantec's enterprise security business in November 2019. Broadcom completed the acquisition of VMware in December 2023.

The major indices are higher at midday. Wall Street continues to monitor the bond market and the stability of yields. A consensus is growing that interest rates are heading higher. Also on the watch list, the August nonfarm payrolls report is due out tomorrow morning. Crude oil continues to rise and is at $92 per barrel. The yield on the 10-year note is at 4.76%.

Broadcom is one of the largest semiconductor companies in the world and has also expanded into infrastructure software. Its semiconductors primarily serve computing and networking, with custom AI accelerators now accounting for the bulk of the business. It is primarily a fabless designer, but holds some manufacturing in-house, such as for its best-of-breed film bulk acoustic resonator filters that sell into the Apple iPhone. In software, it sells virtualization, infrastructure, and security software to large enterprises, financial institutions, and governments. Broadcom is the product of consolidation. Its businesses are an amalgamation of former companies like legacy Broadcom and Avago Technologies in chips, as well as VMware, Brocade, CA Technologies, and Symantec in software.

ASML is the leader in lithography systems for manufacturing semiconductors with 90% market share. Lithography is the process in which a light source is used to expose circuit patterns from a photo mask onto a semiconductor wafer. Lithography allows chipmakers to increase the number of transistors on the same area of silicon, with lithography historically representing a high portion of the cost of making cutting-edge chips. ASML outsources the manufacturing of most of its parts, acting like an assembler. ASML’s largest clients are TSMC, Samsung, Intel, SK Hynix, and Micron.