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As earnings season kicks off, AI investment remains front and center.

The Green Bay Packers believe Sean Rhyan — who played guard most of his NFL career — can develop into a high-level center this season.

It’s not often that dividend stalwarts are viewed as obviously mispriced, but Bank of America sees an exception in Coca-Cola (KO) stock. For generations of investors, Coca-Cola has delivered uninterrupted dividend income, paying every year since 1920, according to Investing.com.That record stretches back long before most modern blue-chip investors were born. More importantly, Coca-Cola belongs to an elite group of companies that have raised their dividends for 63 consecutive years, earning it the moniker “Dividend King,” according to Seeking Alpha.Now, in a note shared with me, Bank of America analysts argue that investors can scoop up this dividend machine at a compelling discount ahead of a key Q2 earnings release on July 28.BofA isn’t treating Coca-Cola as a tired defensive stock; in fact, it sees limited inflation exposure and ample financial flexibility to navigate macro headwinds with aplomb. Why BofA sees a rare opening in this dividend machineBank of America just gave Coca-Cola stock a big thumbs up before its Q2 earnings report.It reiterated its buy rating and, more importantly, raised its price target to $95 from $90, implying nearly 15% upside.BofA’s bullishness on KO stock has everything to do with the quality and durability of its resilient underlying business. More Dividend Stocks:Realty Income’s 5.3% yield dwarfs S&P 500 averageDoes Micron pay dividends? Its yield and payouts explained2 undervalued dividend stocks with growing payouts in 2026What makes it a standout among peers is its resilient demand, limited inflation exposure, and robust balance-sheet flexibility. Case in point: Its trailing 12-month gross margin has held steady at around 61.7%, or approximately 160 basis points above its five-year average of 60.1%, according to Seeking Alpha. That statistic is critical, especially given the current volatility in the macroeconomic environment and the troubling comments from PepsiCo’s CEO during the company’s Q2 earnings call. PepsiCo CEO Ramon Laguarta said U.S. consumer demand was weaker than the company expected due to gas prices, which pressured budgets and hurt impulse demand.“Is the volume as much as we expected? No, not in Q2. It’s a couple of elements. I think the consumer is worse than what we had anticipated, and it’s driven mainly by gas prices,” said Laguarta.Interestingly, BofA analysts argued that instead of weakness on the North American side, they feel sluggishness overseas. The regional picture is mixed, with BofA lowering Latin America expectations to +1.4% but raising EMEA to +2.3% and Asia Pacific to +2.9%, helped by better trends in Japan. North America stayed steady at +1.5%.Overall, BofA sees a slow-growth defensive stock that the market is underpricing. 

Bank of America sees more upside for Coca-Cola despite modest volume growth.John Nordell

Coca-Cola’s dividend is dependable, to say the leastCoca-Cola has been just as consistent with its dividend as it has been with the nostalgic taste of its iconic soda over the years.Seeking Alpha data credits the company with 63 consecutive years of dividend growth, compared with a sector median of just 3, and 63 consecutive years of dividend payments versus 20.5 for the sector. Another thing that stands out to me, especially after its recent dip (down 0.1% in the past month), is its high yield. According to Seeking Alpha, the stock’s trailing 12-month dividend yield is 2.49%, while its forward yield is 2.54%. These figures measure dividends paid over the past year compared to its current share price, while the forward yield uses the expected annual dividend.Interestingly, both figures are sitting below the consumer staples sector. The sector’s median trailing yield is 3.28%, meaning Coca-Cola yields 24% lower, while its forward yield is 21.6% below the sector median of 3.24%. Moreover, dividend growth remains remarkably healthy.Coca-Cola’s dividend increased 4.8% over the past year, comfortably ahead of the sector median of 2.82%, with its three-year dividend growth rate at 4.94%, tracking ahead of  Coca-Cola’s averages.Another metric that stands out to me is its cash-flow payout ratio, at 61%, indicating the dividend remains covered by underlying cash generation.The key numbers behind BofA’s $95 price targetBofA’s new $95 price target, up from $90, implies a 15% upside from the $82.63 share price, indicating considerable room for growth in an otherwise defensive consumer staples stock.The volume setup is steady, with BofA expecting Q2 unit case volume growth of 2%, close to Visible Alpha’s consensus of 2.2%.The earnings path backs up the potential rerating case, with EPS projected to rise from $3.27 in 2026 to $3.50 in 2027 and $3.75 in 2028.The valuation call rests on a 27-times calendar year 2027 estimated EPS multiple, above BofA’s prior 25.5-times assumption.The dividend case also strengthens, with DPS expected to climb from $2.11 in 2026 to $2.30 in 2028.
Source: Bank of America note on Coca-Cola stock
What could break BofA’s bullish KO caseBofA’s upside case isn’t risk-free, though.The first risk is the obvious, which is the macro volatility we’re seeing in developed and emerging markets, which matters because Coca-Cola’s growth engine is global.So any demand shock, sluggish consumer spending, or regional disruption will likely clip away at volume stability behind that $95 price target.Another major risk pertains to currency. BofA flags EPS headwinds from a stronger U.S. dollar, since Coca-Cola earns a massive share of its profits from overseas operations.Naturally, that points to translation risk; if foreign sales translate into fewer dollars, earnings growth can look much weaker, even if local demand holds up.The third big risk is consumer concern around sugar and calories. It’s no secret that we’re now in the GLP-1 era, and scrutiny of core carbonated soft drinks has never been stronger, compelling more investment in low-sugar, zero-sugar, and non-CSD brands.Related: Starbucks taps childhood nostalgia with 5 new drinks

Lalas’ views are far more grounded than the cartoonish picture many have painted. And his recent assessment of USMNT manager Mauricio Pochettino is entirely accurate.

Alan Jackson’s “Remember When” debuts on Billboard’s Digital Song Sales chart and multiple albums return following the country legend’s final concert.

Juan Hernandez, who now works as a welder at Jeff Bezos-owned rival Blue Origin, is one of more than 4,400 current and former SpaceX employees who became millionaires on paper when the company went public. When SpaceX hired Juan Hernandez as a welder in 2015, the company offered him $10,000 in stock alongside his $28-an-hour wage. He accepted the equity without giving it much thought, since none of his previous hourly positions had included company shares, Hernandez told CBS News.SpaceX priced its initial public offering at $135 per share ahead of the Nasdaq debut, valuing Hernandez’s 6,500 shares at roughly $880,000 at the offer price, Fortune reported. The offering raised $75 billion at an implied valuation of approximately $1.77 trillion, according to Nasdaq, and became the largest initial public offering in history, nearly tripling the previous global record set by Saudi Aramco’s $25.6 billion listing in 2019.However, the celebration has come with details that most headlines overlooked, and the reality of the windfall is more complex. Shares have dropped roughly 35% from their post-debut peak, and lockup agreements prevent most employees from selling their stock for months. SpaceX created thousands of employee millionaires from the factory floor to the C-suiteThe scale of wealth creation across SpaceX’s workforce makes this listing unusual among technology IPOs, which typically reward only executives and software engineers, Fortune reported. An analysis by Hill.com, a San Francisco-based investment platform, found that about 400 employees are expected to hold stakes exceeding $100 million, the New York Times reported.Ruchir Shah, CEO of SkillCat, an online skilled trades training startup, told Fortune that SpaceX is exposing a broader truth about the future economy, where some of the hardest-to-automate and hardest-to-fill roles sit in the physical world.If you think about it, these are some of the most critical people for SpaceX to grow. It’s just as hard to find good welders and good machinists as it is a software developer, if not harder because if there’s a massive shortage, so it makes sense that they were given equityThe new millionaires include welders, machinists, technicians, and manufacturing workers who built rockets and launchpad structures for years before the listing, Fortune reported. According to the SpaceX prospectus, the company distributed equity through stock option grants at hiring and promotion milestones, annual performance awards, and an employee stock purchase plan.Twice-yearly liquidity events also let employees sell portions of their holdings even while the company remained private, a former employee told the Next Web. Those periodic selling windows gave long-tenured staff an early signal of the wealth their accumulated equity could generate on open markets.SpaceX shares have dropped roughly 35% from their post-listing peakThe stock’s price trajectory since the first trading day illustrates why a brokerage account balance and a bank account balance are very different things. SpaceX shares opened at $150 on June 12, surged to an intraday high of $225.64 on June 16, and then trended lower through late June and early July, hitting an all-time low of $145.07 on July 10, according to TradingView data.More SpaceX:Elon Musk sets SpaceX IPO price in blunt message to Wall StreetVeteran hedge fund manager makes a brazen SpaceX betFranklin Templeton CEO sends strong message on SpaceXFor Hernandez, whose 6,500 shares were worth about $1.05 million at the $160.95 first-day close according to CBS News, that decline would cut his holdings to roughly $942,500 at the $145.07 low.Lockup restrictions add another layer of friction for employees hoping to convert paper gains into spendable cash. SpaceX’s prospectus allows most insiders to sell up to 20% of their holdings after the first quarterly earnings report, expected August 6, Fortune reported. An additional 7% unlocks at each of the 70-, 90-, 105-, 120-, and 135-day marks, with a further 28% released after the third-quarter earnings report and the remaining restrictions lifting at day 180, the SpaceX prospectus showed. 

SpaceX shares have plunged 35% since their post-debut peak, shrinking employee paper wealth while lockup rules delay access to cash gains.Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Why SpaceX millionaires may not stay that wayOn Hernandez’s 6,500 shares alone, the drop from $225.64 to $145.07 wiped out roughly $524,000 in paper wealth in under a month. Jason Schloetzer, an associate professor of accounting at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business, cautioned against reading SpaceX as a blueprint for blue-collar wealth creation.“This is largely venture-backed compensation attached to a company that happens to build rockets,” Schloetzer told Fortune.He noted that many employees accumulated shares through the company’s stock purchase plan, buying discounted equity with their paycheck deductions rather than receiving free grants. That structure shifts financial risk from the employer to the employee, replacing the guaranteed pensions and profit-sharing arrangements that once protected industrial workers, Schloetzer explained in the Fortune interview.SpaceX stock represents up to 90% of many employees’ total net worth, Jamie Battmer, chief investment officer at Creative Planning, told CNBC, creating substantial downside exposure in a single volatile holding.Morningstar equity analyst Nicolas Owens added a further layer of concern, placing SpaceX’s fair value at $63 per share, roughly 53% below the offering price.“Our valuation is the result of mathematics more than skepticism,” Owens wrote in the firm’s analysis of SpaceX’s financial outlook and IPO pricing.Newly wealthy SpaceX employees are reshaping the wealth management industryThe sudden flood of liquid wealth has pushed more than 100 SpaceX employees to band together and negotiate discounted advisory services as a group. That collective, representing between $1 billion and $5 billion in combined assets, signed with registered investment advisor Choreo at fees starting at 0.5%, CNBC reported. The fee falls below the industry standard range, giving the group a meaningful cost advantage over individual advisory relationships.Jason Van de Loo, Choreo’s chief executive officer, told CNBC that most investors spend decades building wealth, but SpaceX employees received theirs virtually overnight. He compared the windfall’s speed to receiving a large inheritance, noting the difficulty of processing so many financial decisions at once.Private banks, trust companies, and independent advisors have dispatched teams to California, Texas, and Florida to court the newly wealthy employees, CNBC noted.Related: SpaceX investors may be ignoring troubling trend

The group’s Dir. of Global Macro Jurien Timmer calls it an accumulation zone but notes the lack of a catalyst to bounce yet.

Spectrum, which is owned by Charter Communications, has decided to make another significant workforce change as it continues to battle mounting customer losses in its cable TV and internet business.Charter revealed in its latest earnings report that Spectrum lost 120,000 internet customers and 60,000 cable TV customers in the first quarter of this year. Amid these losses, the company’s revenue dipped by 1% year over year.The decline in customers comes after Spectrum increased the monthly prices of its TV Select packages by $5 and several older internet plans by $2 in July last year. On social media platform Reddit, customers have also flagged what they see as stealthy price hikes for Spectrum’s internet service this year.“The operating environment for new sales, in particular internet, continues to be competitive,” Charter Chief Financial Officer Jessica Fischer said during an earnings call in April.She also said Charter is betting on its $34.5 billion acquisition of Cox Communications, which received approval from the Federal Communications Commission in February, to help repair its business. The acquisition will enable Charter to invest billions of dollars in upgrading and expanding Spectrum’s network nationwide. Spectrum suffers another round of layoffsAs Charter works to reverse Spectrum’s customer losses, it continues to cut jobs, with its latest round affecting hundreds of employees.In a WARN notice filed on July 8, Charter announced its decision to “discontinue the operation of its network operations center” in Town and Country, Missouri, resulting in the layoff of 107 Spectrum employees. According to a recent report from Fox 2, the center is a regional office for Spectrum’s business, finance and corporate support teams. Also, Spectrum clarified to the news outlet that the office building is not closing entirely, as teams not affected by the layoffs will continue working at that location. The layoffs will officially take place on Sept. 8 and will primarily affect employees and managers in network engineering operations. To lessen the blow of the job cuts, Spectrum is outsourcing back-office roles to manage remote network monitoring. It will also offer laid-off employees a comparable role in the St. Louis area for at least the next eight months.Related: Spectrum suffers heavy loss as customers ditch serviceThe latest round of layoffs comes after Spectrum closed its call center facility in Appleton, Wisconsin, in March, which resulted in 313 employees losing their jobs. Back in October, Spectrum also reportedly laid off 1,200 workers, reducing its workforce by about 1%. Corporate employees and those who work in back-office functions across the country were impacted by this move. Spectrum’s recent layoffs come as Charter is aggressively investing in artificial intelligence to reduce its $8 billion in annual operational service costs.In November, it even entered a partnership with Amazon Web Services to deploy AI across its business to transform operations and software development capabilities.Charter CEO Christopher Winfrey said during the earnings call in April that the company’s new AI tools are so far yielding positive results across its business. “We have deployed new AI tools, now used by our service agents, driving higher customer satisfaction and reducing call times with higher job satisfaction for our employees as well,” said Winfrey. 

Spectrum faces another round of job cuts, affecting 107 employees.jetcityimage / Getty Images

Spectrum’s layoffs reflect a broader telecom workforce shiftSpectrum isn’t the only telecommunications company that has cut jobs this year. T-Mobile quietly conducted layoffs in January, March, and April, impacting workers in several departments such as consumer and retail, sales, end-user support, and product. Verizon also eliminated hundreds of jobs nationwide in May, impacting less than 1% of its global workforce, according to a Business Insider report. In June, AT&T employees took to social media platform Reddit to reveal that the company had also quietly axed jobs across multiple departments. According to recent data from Challenger, Gray & Christmas, tech layoffs are on the rise as more companies invest in AI.More Telecom News:T-Mobile warns customers that a key service will double in priceVerizon adds generous offers for customers after price increaseSpectrum suffers heavy loss as customers ditch serviceIn June, the tech industry announced 15,503 job cuts, the most of any sector. So far in 2026, the tech industry has announced 139,156 layoffs, up 83% from the 76,214 cuts announced in the sector through June 2025. “Tech remains the epicenter of this year’s cuts,” said Andy Challenger, workplace expert and chief revenue officer for Challenger, Gray & Christmas, in a press release. “AI is the dominant force as companies are restructuring around it, automating roles, and reallocating budgets toward new capabilities. The sector is being reshaped in real time.”In the telecom sector specifically, 2,269 layoffs have been announced so far this year. In a report from Mobile Europe in May, Matt Walker, chief analyst at MTN Consulting, said that as global telecom revenues remain flat, the industry’s top companies are “shifting from unrealistic growth targets to aggressive cost control” and using AI as an excuse to cut jobs. He warned that this move comes with several consequences. “Indiscriminate cuts can erode morale, institutional knowledge, service quality, and brand equity, hurting long-term profitability,” said Walker. “Telcos that rush to cut staff in response to AI may also create talent gaps that increase cybersecurity risk, churn, and lost innovation.”Related: Comcast launches new service to win back internet customers

Oracle’s annual filing cited AI adoption among the drivers of 21,000 job cuts in fiscal 2026. Snap cut 1,000 people and the CEO said rapid AI advances meant a smaller team could do the same work. At college graduation ceremonies this spring, speakers who brought up AI got booed.By May, Challenger, Gray and Christmas found AI was the primary reason cited for nearly 40% of U.S. job cuts. In January it was 7%. Mark Cuban had been watching this play out and posted on X. It drew nearly 2 million views.What Mark Cuban said AI companies owe workers and communitiesThe post, covered by Fortune within hours of going up, was blunt. Cuban said major AI companies have already lost the public relations battle. They keep talking about the technology and ignoring the people most threatened by it. He told them what to do: go to the towns losing jobs and ask what they need.”Billions of dollars is a lot of money across towns and city programs. Across the major LLMs, it’s a cost of doing business,” he wrote on X.”One thing I have learned is being hated is not good for business,” he wrote, adding that big AI companies “all suck at putting people first.”More Layoffs:JPMorgan Chase pushes fraud division layoffs, despite rising revenuesAnother major fintech firm cutting 10% of its workforceReal estate tech firm exits key hub, cuts 100s of jobsHe told companies to skip the celebrities and stop buying politicians. Neither works, he said. Instead, go to working artists and creative unions in Los Angeles and New York, not the studios, and ask directly what financial and creative support would look like. Then actually do it.”Given the number of data centers and power that is needed, today and going forward, if you don’t kiss the asses of the people that go to work every day, and are just trying to pay their bills, you will fall far far short of the capacity you need to make your business work,” he wrote.Why Cuban says data center protests are really about something else”It’s time for everyone to realize that the fight against data centers has nothing to do with data centers. They have become a proxy for the hate towards AI and the concentration and accumulation of wealth it’s creating,” Cuban wrote.At least 75 data center projects worth roughly $130 billion were blocked or delayed in Q1 2026 alone, the worst quarter on record, according to Benzinga.A Gallup survey from May found 71% of Americans oppose AI data centers near their communities. Nearly half strongly oppose them. Residents cited power use, water consumption, noise, and rising utility bills.Residents aren’t fighting the buildings. They’re fighting what the buildings represent: AI wealth concentrating at the top while their jobs disappear.

At least 16 U.S. companies have announced layoffs citing AI redundancies in 2026Andrey/Getty Images

The AI job loss numbers Cuban is pointing toAt least 16 U.S. companies have announced layoffs citing AI redundancies in 2026, including Snap, Cisco, and Coinbase, as TheStreet reported. AI went from 7% of cited layoff reasons in January to 10% in February, 25% in March, 26% in April, and nearly 40% in May.”AI is now the leading reason companies give for cutting jobs,” said Andy Challenger of Challenger, Gray and Christmas.The same morning Cuban’s post went up, Nobel laureate Paul Krugman published a multipart Substack critique of the AI industry, concluding the backlash is not “normal skepticism about change.” Cuban himself thinks AI will produce net job gains eventually. He just doesn’t think companies get to say that while doing nothing for workers losing jobs right now.Why blocked data centers are becoming an AI industry business problemPew Research found 71% of Americans thought tech companies had a positive impact in 2015. By 2022 that had broadly reversed after years of social media controversies, privacy scandals, and frustration over concentrated wealth. AI is inheriting all of that.Seventy-five blocked data center projects in a single quarter is a capacity problem, not just a narrative one. If communities keep saying no, the infrastructure buildout that underpins most AI growth projections slows down. The Q1 numbers show it’s already happening.Cuban’s case is that community spending solves it. Companies that fund local programs and actually show up in the towns being disrupted face fewer permitting fights and cleaner expansion paths. The ones still spending on politicians and celebrities keep hitting the same wall, and the wall keeps getting bigger.Related: Mark Cuban has strong words on minimum wage and employers

The Atlanta Braves’ former first-round pick and No. 1 prospect has had to play a flexible role with the St. Louis Cardinals this season.