U.S. FIRST TO MARKET

Research evidence excerpt

U.S. FIRST TO MARKET

North America Equity Research

U.S. First to Market 20 July 2026

Top Stories

Global Data Watch (Bruce Kasman)

The ins and outs of a cyclical lift

• Cyclical lift speaking loudly and calls for earlier rate hikes

• China 2Q disappoints but bounce back expected; Imbalances unchecked

• Policy and regulatory reform could spark Latam capex revival

• Next week: DM flash Jul PMI; ECB hld; CBRT ease; BI, SARB +25bp

US Equity Strategy (Dubravko Lakos-Bujas/Bhupinder Singh)

Hyperscalers vs. AI Hardware, AI Capex & Monetization, Momentum Unwind, 2Q Earnings

The AI cycle remains intact. The key theme this reporting season remains centered on the hyperscaler capex guide,

but with a greater focus on more tangible evidence of monetization. This includes incremental use cases such as Meta’s

move to sell excess AI compute capacity. Additionally, the potential implications of the Anthropic Mythos development suggest

that security concerns could accelerate the timeline for moving workloads onto cloud-based platforms across both the private

and increasingly the public sector, creating another long-term tailwind for cloud providers, data centers, semiconductors, and

enterprise software (see Frontier AI Escalates Security Costs ) .

| Truist Financial Corp (Vivek Juneja) (TFC, UW, PT $53.00)

Mixed 2Q; NII Outlook Cut Again; Loans Exit To Pressure NII, Moving To UW

Truist posted mixed 2Q EPS of $1.23. Truist lowered net interest income outlook for second quarter in a row due to continued

deposit and loan spread pressures and slow loan growth. Truist is exiting Marine/RV lending and plans to reduce its auto loan

portfolio - these loan runoffs will likely pressure net interest income over the next couple of years. The bank raised non-interest