The Point for CEEMEA

Research evidence excerpt

The Point for CEEMEA

Sector

Artificial Intelligence - Citi’s Inference Ahead - Models, Robots, & Captives

After the release of three models from frontier model providers this week, average

output token prices continued to climb while GPU rental prices rose across Hopper

and Blackwell instances (Figure 1). Both pricing trends reflect the impact of

accelerating enterprise adoption relative to supply, which remains constrained

even as new capacity comes online, with the temporary supply unlocks absorbed

as fast as they appear. We expect this excess demand to keep pushing pricing

through the stack from power to semi cap equipment to memory to compute, with

the beneficiaries of persistent scarcity continuing to outperform.

Heath Terry | Shelby Spencer | Ashley Kim | Janna Withrow

Retail, Internet and Brands - Citi’s Consumer Checkout: Updating World Cup

results tracker for Rounds of 32 and 16

Following our report on 06-Jul taking stock of the World Cup after the Group

stages, we update our results tracker for the Rounds of 32 and 16. We base our

Favorite/Underdog outcome on 90 minutes, with games going to extra

time/penalties counted as draws. Note that of the 24 knockout games analysed,

only 6 fall in 2Q26. Compared to the Group stages, the proportion of favorites

winning has increased to 68% (from 63%) and the proportion of underdogs

winning has increased to 12% (from 10%) – Figure 1. The 68% of favorites winning

is higher than the 63% in the 2022 WC knockout stages, but the 12% underdogs

winning is twice as high as the 6% in 2022 – Figure 2. We consider this an overall

positive directional signal for win margins (Hold), albeit the impact is blurred by

the lower proportion of draws (20% in 2026 vs 31% in 2022).

Monique Pollard | Jamie Bass | Vandita Sood | Elizabeth Moore