By Sinéad Carew and Lewis Krauskopf

(Reuters) -Shares in Arm Holdings were down 4.6% on Tuesday, on track for their third daily decline out of the stock’s first four sessions as a listed company, as investor interest faded in the biggest initial public offering (IPO) for the year so far.

With short sellers looking to profit from the stock, it last traded at $55.31 after touching a high of $69 on Friday. The chip designer, in which Softbank holds a roughly 90% stake, closed at $63.59 on Thursday, which was almost 25% higher than its IPO price of $51.

Arm shares were underpforming the Philadelphia semiconductor index, which was down 0.7% on Tuesday as rising bond yields weighed on growth sectors such as technology.

Investors were also monitoring grocery delivery service Instacart, another high profile IPO, which was rallying at $36.91 in its debut session compared with its $30 IPO price.

On Tuesday, Redburn Atlantic, an equity research and trading company, launched coverage of ARM with a “neutral” rating and a $50 price target, arguing that recommending ARM at current valuations would require “higher conviction in a multi-year earnings acceleration from a weak (full year 2023) base.”

While bullish investors are pinning their hopes for the stock on demand tied to a surge in interest in artificial intelligence (AI), Daniel Morgan, portfolio manager at Synovus Trust in Atlanta, Georgia, said he needed more proof.

“People are sobering up a little bit from the initial excitement,” said Morgan, whose company holds shares in Nvidia but has not invested in Arm.

“My biggest concern is valuation and the fact that everyone is buying ARM because it’s a huge AI play in the eyes of investors. It does benefit from AI but it’s not Nvidia,” said the money manager. “We don’t have any direct evidence at this point that ARM has been directly positively impacted by AI like we have from Nvidia.”

Data from analytics company Ortex on Tuesday suggested that short sellers had started taking bets against Arm stock, with slightly more than 5 million shares of the newly listed chip designer “on loan,” or 2.7% of the stock’s free float. Short sellers need to borrow a stock to short it, and the relationship between shares on loan and shorted is normally quite close, according to Ortex. Initially with a new stock “there is often a lot of data missing, so there is a reasonable expectation that the real number is higher,” Ortex co-founder Peter Hillerberg said in an email. Arm’s average cost to borrow, which is the interest rate for borrowing, is currently at 12.76%, according to Ortex. By comparison, Tesla, a stock with a similar percentage of shorted shares, has a cost to borrow at 0.48%, Ortex said. Arm’s higher cost to borrow “can be an indication that the demand to borrow, and short, the stock is high,” Hillerberg said.

Analysts from Bernstein and Needham in recent days had published less than optimistic notes about the chip technology company and options on the stock starting trading on Monday at a brisk pace, with many investors positioning for further downside.

Late on Monday, Arm announced that its underwriters had exercised their full over-allotment option to buy an additional 7 million American depository shares (ADSs), boosting the total raised from the IPO to approximately $5.2 billion.

(Reporting by Lewis Krauskopf and Sinéad Carew; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Mark Potter)

By Anousha Sakoui

LONDON (Reuters) – Europe’s biggest private equity firm, CVC Capital Partners, is working towards a long-awaited initial public offering in November, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters on Tuesday.

A final decision on timing has not been made and could change, said the person, who was speaking on condition of anonymity because the plans remain private.

A spokesperson for CVC was not immediately available for comment.

A listing this autumn taps into bolstered sentiment for IPOs following the successful IPO of chip designer Arm Holdings in the U.S.

CVC is planning its listing in Amsterdam, the person said.

The IPO would mark one of the biggest from the European private equity sector, with CVC valued at around $15 billion after selling a minority stake to Blue Owl Capital Inc in 2021, according to Bloomberg News, which reported on the plans earlier on Tuesday.

The company manages about 90 billion euros ($96.1 billion) of private equity assets and its credit platform has 38 billion euros in assets, according to its website.

($1 = 0.9362 euros)

(Reporting by Anousha Sakoui in London; Editing by Josie Kao)

By Stephen Nellis and Max A. Cherney

SAN JOSE, California (Reuters) – A new Intel chip due in December will be able to run a generative artificial intelligence chatbot on a laptop rather than having to tap into cloud data centers for computing power, the company said on Tuesday.

The capability, which Intel showed off during a software developer conference held in Silicon Valley, could let businesses and consumers test ChatGPT-style technologies without sending sensitive data off their own computer. It is made possible by new AI data-crunching features built into Intel’s forthcoming “Meteor Lake” laptop chip and from new software tools the company is releasing.

At the conference, Intel demonstrated laptops that could generate a song in the style of Taylor Swift and answer questions in a conversational style, all while disconnected from the Internet. Chief Executive Officer Pat Gelsinger said Microsoft’s “Copilot” AI assistant will be able to run on Intel-based PCs.

“We see the AI PC as a sea change moment in tech innovation,” Gelsinger said.

Intel shares were down 1.5% after the company’s presentation.

Intel executives also said the company is on track to deliver a successor chip called “Arrow Lake” next year, and that Intel’s manufacturing technology will rival the best from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co, as it has promised. Intel was once the best chip manufacturer, lost the lead, and now says it is on track to return to the front.

Intel has struggled to gain ground against Nvidia in the market for the powerful chips used in data centers to “train” AI systems such as ChatGPT. Intel said on Tuesday that it was building a new supercomputer that would be used by Stability AI, a startup that makes image-generating software. China’s Alibaba Group Holdings is using its newest central processors to serve up chatbot technology, Intel said.

But the market for chips that will handle AI work outside data centers is far less settled, and it is there that Intel aimed to gain ground on Tuesday.

Through a new version of software called OpenVINO, Intel said that developers will be able run a version of a large language model, the class of technology behind products like ChatGPT, made by Meta Platforms on laptops. That will enable faster responses from chatbots and will mean that data does not leave the device.

“You can get a better performance, a lower cost and more private AI,” Sachin Katti, senior vice president and general manager of Intel’s network and edge group, told Reuters in an interview.

Dan Hutcheson, an analyst with TechInsights, told Reuters that business users who are weary of handing sensitive corporate data over to third-party AI firms might be interested in Intel’s approach.

If Intel Chief Gelsinger can make AI “so that anyone can use it, that creates a much bigger market for chips – the chips that he makes,” Hutcheson said.

(Reporting by Stephen Nellis in San Francisco and Max Cherney in San Jose, California; Editing by Peter Henderson, Lincoln Feast and Josie Kao)

BAGHDAD (Reuters) -Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al-Sudani met with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken in New York on Monday and received an invitation from U.S. President Joe Biden to visit the White House soon, a State Department spokesperson said.

Sudani, who is in New York for the U.N. General Assembly, said a date for the official visit to Washington would be set at a later time, Iraqi state media reported.

Biden and Sudani have yet to meet since Sudani took office last year after being appointed by a coalition of parties, predominantly Shi’ite Muslim groups close to Tehran.

He has since walked a diplomatic tightrope between the United States and Iran, two countries that in the past have fought out their rivalry on Iraqi soil.

Sudani and Blinken “renewed their commitment to continue strengthening the partnership between the two countries,” the State Department spokesperson said.

Iraq has been a close partner of Washington since the U.S. 2003 invasion and both sides say they are trying to broaden their relationship from a near-singular focus on defence and counter-terrorism towards economic and financial cooperation.

Blinken during the meeting “underscored U.S. support” for the re-opening of a pipeline between Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdistan region and Turkey, the State Department said. The pipeline has been shut since March, costing the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) roughly $4 billion in lost exports, according to sources.

Turkey said last week the pipeline, which contributes about 0.5% of world oil supply, would be ready to resume operations soon, though it is unclear whether Baghdad and Ankara have agreed to the terms of a resumption of crude flows.

Blinken also “commended the Prime Minister’s commitment to judicial independence in Iraq’s recent conviction and sentencing of multiple individuals on terrorism charges in connection with the killing of U.S. citizen Stephen Troell,” according to the State Department readout.

An Iraqi court in August sentenced an Iranian man and four Iraqis – all members of a Shi’ite Muslim militia – to life in prison over Troell’s November 2022 killing in a middle class neighbourhood in central Baghdad.

U.S. officials have also praised increased cooperation between Washington and Baghdad on financial issues.

In New York Sudani met with Brian Nelson, Treasury under secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, to discuss ways to “strengthen the Iraqi financial sector against fraud, sanctions evasion, terrorist financing, and other illicit activities,” a Treasury statement said.

Nelson “acknowledged the significant progress Iraq has made in their efforts,” the statement said.

Last week, a senior U.S. Treasury official said Iraq’s central bank must address continued risks of the misuse of dollars at Iraqi commercial banks to avoid new punitive measures targeting the country’s financial sector.

In July, the United States barred 14 Iraqi banks from conducting dollar transactions as part of a wider crackdown on the illicit use of the currency.

With more than $100 billion in reserves held in the United States, Iraq is heavily reliant on Washington’s goodwill to ensure oil revenues and finances do not face U.S. censure.

(Reporting by Timour Azhari in Baghdad; additional reporting by Natalie GroverEditing by Andrew Heavens, Peter Graff and Tomasz Janowski)

Intel Turns to Glass Based Substrates to Leverage AI Boom

Intel has lagged as the likes of Nvidia shine amid the artificial intelligence boom. However, the chip pioneer might have found a way to play catch-up as the focus remains on developing chips to power the AI revolution. The company has a chance to show its research and development capabilities by betting on glass-based substrates.

Glass Based Substrates

Glass-based substrates are the materials that sit between chips and connect components in motherboards. They are seen as the answer to enhance connections between chips and other motherboard components as processors become larger and more complex. There have been concerns that as processors become larger in the race to handle AI workloads; they will be unable to communicate with the rest of the computer.

The tiny metal paths that carry data and power between billions of transistors in a chip pass through a fiberglass and epoxy substrate. While the material has been the industry standard for over 50 years, it’s starting to show its limitations, as chips that power the AI revolution come with tens of billions of transistors.

Increasing the number of holes to accommodate the billions of transistors is already causing warping, which leads to loss of contact in some areas. The epoxy and fiberglass mixture also have limitations on the pathways for power and data. The limitations present tremendous opportunities that Intel intends to unlock with its new glass base substrates.

The glass push is part of Intel’s investment in R&D as it tries to innovate for an artificial intelligence world and win customers. It comes from its research and production facilities as Intel continues to look for ways to raise its business profile as it seeks to attract customers for its manufacturing operations.

Intel Long Term Plan

The push for glass-based substrates comes as Intel continues diversifying its core business as it tries to remain competitive in the highly competitive industry. The company used its factories for the longest time to produce and develop its designs. In the most recent past, it’s bundling up its foundry operations to develop semiconductors and other technology for other customers.

In the most recent past, the company’s chief executive officer has talked about packaging capabilities seen as one of the areas for unlocking value. The company has been signing clients looking for ways to package their chips even if they were made elsewhere.

The packaging business offers an exciting and lucrative opportunity for Intel to lure customers who may end up using its broader swath of chip-making capabilities, having invested billions of dollars in its foundry business. The company has already started spending billions of dollars on developing new plants worldwide as it looks to enhance the chip production process.

Intel has also ramped up its research and development spending to over $18 billion as it looks to accrue significant market share in the $580 billion chip industry. The glass packaging initiative could allow the company to commercialize the technology before other companies jump into it. The company is especially banking on existing techniques for packaging from running out of steam in the second half of the decade, which should present a tremendous opportunity for its glass-based substrate technology.

(Reuters) -SoftBank is looking for deals in artificial intelligence (AI), including a potential investment in OpenAI, after the blockbuster listing of its Arm unit, the Financial Times reported on Saturday.

SoftBank’s founder and chief executive, Masayoshi Son, is looking to invest tens of billions of dollars in AI, the newspaper said, citing two people familiar with Son’s thinking.

Son said in June that his tech investing conglomerate planned to shift its stance to “offence mode” amid excitement over advances in AI.

The Japanese tech investment company could also look to strike a broad strategic partnership with ChatGPT maker OpenAI, FT said.

Son has expressed excitement about AI technology, adding he is a “heavy user” of ChatGPT, the AI-powered chatbot from Microsoft-backed startup OpenAI. He has also said that he speaks “almost everyday” to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.

SoftBank is looking at a range of alternatives to OpenAI as well, including a preliminary approach to buy Graphcore, a UK-based AI chipmaker, the report added.

In an emailed response to Reuters, Graphcore denied there was an attempt or offer from SoftBank to buy the company.

SoftBank and OpenAI did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Chip designer Arm secured a $54.5 billion valuation in its U.S. initial public offering (IPO) on Wednesday, seven years after SoftBank took the company private for $32 billion.

In August, SoftBank posted a surprise loss but said it was dipping its toes back into new investments after its Vision Fund returned to the black for the first time in six quarters.

The investment giant has been in “defence mode” since May 2022 after tech valuations crashed due to sharply higher interest rates and jitters that hit the global banking sector.

(Reporting by Lavanya Ahire in Bengaluru; Additional reporting by Kanjyik Ghosh in Bangalore; Editing by William Mallard and Mark Potter)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A son of drug kingpin El Chapo was extradited to the United States on Friday, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement.

“Today, as a result of United States and Mexico law enforcement cooperation, Ovidio Guzman Lopez, a leader of the Sinaloa Cartel was extradited to the United States,” Garland said in a statement.

(Reporting by Kanishka Singh and Dan Whitcomb; Editing by Sandra Maler)

By Kevin Krolicki, David Shepardson and Steve Holland

DETROIT (Reuters) -The United Auto Workers said it plans to resume bargaining on Saturday after launching its first simultaneous strikes at General Motors, Ford Motor and Chrysler parent Stellantis, with effects of the limited shutdown starting to spread on Friday.

The most ambitious U.S. industrial labor action in decades has halted production at three plants producing the Ford Bronco, Jeep Wrangler and Chevrolet Colorado, along with other popular models.

But by Friday afternoon a ripple effect was felt.

“Our production system is highly interconnected, which means the UAW’s targeted strike strategy will have knock-on effects for facilities that are not directly targeted for a work stoppage,” Ford said in a statement.

It told 600 workers who are not striking not come to work on Friday and GM told some 2,000 workers at a Kansas car plant that their factory likely would be shut down next week for lack of parts, stemming from a nearby plant being struck.

At a rally on Friday afternoon and at picket lines during the day, union members protested loudly and took special aim at a two-tiered wage system that left new hires without the pay or benefits of seasoned hands. That was unfair and favored investors over workers, they said.

“We’re not going to wreck the economy. The truth is we are going to wreck the billionaire economy,” said UAW President Shawn Fain.

The union is demanding a bigger share of profits, shorter work weeks, restoration of defined benefit pensions and stronger job security as automakers shift to electric vehicles.

UAW vice president Chuck Browning, who is leading talks with Ford, told a rally of hundreds of UAW workers in downtown Detroit on Friday afternoon that recent talks have made “good progress, but we have far to go.”

U.S. President Joe Biden, who faces re-election next year, called for the auto companies to reward workers just as executives’ salaries have risen. “The companies have made some significant offers but I believe they should go further to ensure record corporate profits mean record contracts,” he said.

Striking workers said “tier two” employees can make only half the hourly wages of senior UAW workers and get worse benefits.

“That’s the biggest thing I hear in our plant: we were built on equal pay for equal work,” said Bruce Baumhower, the UAW president for the local including the striking Stellantis Jeep plant in Toledo, Ohio.

Some two-tier systems were set in place during bankruptcies more than a decade ago. The starting wage for tier two workers of $15.78 now is on par with fast food restaurants and has not changed since it was set 14 years ago, he said.

“Fourteen years later, our workers are still in bankruptcy,” he added.

None of the Detroit Three has proposed eliminating those tiered wage systems, a key UAW demand, but they have offered to cut the time needed to reach top pay to four from eight years.

“I think they are making progress at the table,” said Arthur Wheaton, who teaches collective bargaining at Cornell’s School of Industrial and Labor relations. Automakers have raised wage offers and the UAW appears to be focusing its demands. “You’re no longer hearing anything about the 32-hours work week from the UAW,” he said.

Executives say the union’s asks would make the automakers uncompetitive against other nonunion rivals. Ford CEO Jim Farley said the UAW’s 40% wage hike demand would “put us out of business.” GM CEO Mary Barra on “CBS This Morning” on Friday said “We still have a ways to go with the offer they put on the table last night.”

Senator Bernie Sanders, speaking at the Friday rally, retorted, “I say to Ms. Barra, do you have any idea what it’s like for one of your workers to survive on $17 an hour?”

Friday’s walkout was smaller than some analysts expected. “Keep the other plants open,” said Sofus Nielsen, a 29-year Ford veteran, outside the Wayne plant. “This way we can be out here longer and hurt them more.”

The UAW has an $825 million strike fund but the automakers have built up billions thanks to robust profits from trucks and SUVs.

Biden on Friday said acting Labor Secretary Julie Su and adviser Gene Sperling will travel to Detroit to offer support for talks but the White House said they would not mediate.

Ford shares ended barely changed on Friday, GM stock rose about 1% and Stellantis shares earlier closed up 1.9% in Milan.

The automakers have offered up to 20% wage hikes, without key benefits demanded by the union.

Ford said the UAW’s latest proposals would double its U.S. labor costs and make it uncompetitive against Tesla and other nonunion rivals.

Stellantis said it had immediately gone into “contingency mode” and would take structural decisions to protect the company and its North American operations, without elaborating.

Nearly half the 12,700 striking workers are at the Stellantis plant, although management has been preparing: a parking lot of finished Jeeps is more than a mile long outside the factory.

GM said on Thursday the UAW wage and benefits proposals would cost the automaker $100 billion, but did not elaborate.

Fain has rejected the automakers’ assertions, saying the companies have spent billions on share buybacks and executive salaries.

While Biden is pouring billions in federal subsidies into expanding electric-vehicle sales, this shift could threaten combustion powertrain jobs. The UAW has not endorsed his re-election.

Biden’s likely opponent, former president Donald Trump, on Friday criticized the shift to EVs as a job-killer for the UAW.

(Reporting by Joseph White and Kevin Krolicki in Detroit, David Shepardson and Steve Holland in Washington and Mehr Bedi in BengaluruEditing by David Gaffen, Peter Henderson, Matthew Lewis and Chris Reese)

By Kevin Krolicki, David Shepardson and Steve Holland

DETROIT (Reuters) -The United Auto Workers said it plans to resume bargaining on Saturday after the union launched simultaneous strikes at three factories owned by General Motors, Ford Motor and Chrysler parent Stellantis on Friday.

The walkouts at the Detroit Three by 12,700 workers, kicking off the most ambitious U.S. industrial labor action in decades, are halting production of the Ford Bronco, Jeep Wrangler and Chevrolet Colorado, along with other popular models, though the action was smaller than some expected.

The ripple effects of the strike began to spread on Friday, as Ford told 600 workers who are not striking that they should not come to work on Friday and GM told some 2,000 workers at a Kansas car plant that their factory likely would be shut down next week for lack of parts, stemming from a nearby plant being struck.

“We’re not going to wreck the economy. The truth is we are going to wreck the billionaire economy,” UAW President Shawn Fain said.

The action caps weeks of clashes between the union and Detroit Three executives over union demands for a bigger share of profits generated by combustion trucks, shorter work weeks, restoration of defined benefit pensions and stronger job security as automakers shift to electric vehicles.

The automakers’ previous contract expired at 11:59 p.m. EDT on Thursday. Fain said the union will hold off more costly company-wide strikes for now, but all options are open.

President Joe Biden, who faces re-election next year, called for the auto companies to reward workers just as executives’ salaries have risen. “No one wants a strike, but I respect workers’ right to use their options,” Biden said, echoing statements from union leaders. “The companies have made some significant offers but I believe they should go further to ensure record corporate profits mean record contracts.”

Dozens of workers picketed the main entrance at Ford’s Michigan assembly plant in Wayne on Friday as many passing drivers blew their horns in solidarity.

Workers said they have been hurt by a series of changes to their contract and work rules over the past 15 years which have shifted risks to “tier two” workers. Those employees can make only half the hourly wages of senior UAW workers and face a longer climb to reach the highest pay under the expired contract.

None of the Detroit Three has proposed eliminating those tiered wage systems – a key UAW demand – but they have offered to cut the time needed to reach top pay from eight to four years.

“There are times when I look in my pantry, I look in my fridge and I don’t know how I’m going to feed my family,” said Gerry Gunn, 38, a Ford worker who was on the picket line on Friday in Wayne.

Executives say the union’s asks would make the automakers uncompetitive against other nonunion rivals. “We still have a ways to go with the offer they put on the table last night,” said GM CEO Mary Barra on “CBS This Morning” on Friday, while Ford CEO Jim Farley said the UAW’s 40% wage hike demand would “put us out of business.”

In addition to Ford’s Wayne plant, the strikes are taking place at assembly plants operated by GM in Wentzville, Missouri, and by Stellantis’ Jeep brand in Toledo, Ohio. Those plants produce some of the automakers’ most profitable vehicles.

Friday’s walkout was smaller than some analysts expected, but workers in Michigan supported the plan. “Keep the other plants open,” said Sofus Nielsen, a 29-year Ford veteran, outside the Wayne plant. “This way we can be out here longer and hurt them more.”

Targeted walkouts could limit the cost of strike pay to the UAW, which has an $825 million strike fund. The automakers have built up billions thanks to robust profits from the trucks and SUVs UAW members build.

Biden on Friday said acting Labor Secretary Julie Su and adviser Gene Sperling will travel to Detroit to offer support for talks but the White House said they would not intervene or mediate. The White House declined to say if Biden supported the UAW’s 40% wage hike proposal.

Ford shares ended barely changed on Friday, GM stock rose about 1% and Stellantis shares earlier closed up 1.9% in Milan.

The UAW has said it wants a 40% raise, while the automakers have offered up to 20%, but without key benefits demanded by the union. The automakers have said the union’s demands would create an unsustainable financial situation and leave them exposed to losses in coming years.

Fain has rejected the automakers’ assertions, saying the companies have spent billions on share buybacks and executive salaries.

Ford said the UAW’s latest proposals would double its U.S. labor costs and make it uncompetitive against Tesla and other nonunion rivals.

Stellantis said it had immediately gone into “contingency mode” and would take structural decisions to protect the company and its North American operations, without elaborating.

GM said on Thursday that the UAW wage and benefits proposals would cost the automaker $100 billion, but did not elaborate.

While Biden is pouring billions in federal subsidies into expanding electric-vehicle sales, this shift could threaten combustion powertrain jobs. The UAW has not endorsed his re-election.

Biden’s likely opponent, former president Donald Trump, on Friday criticized the shift to EVs as a job-killer for the UAW.

(Reporting by Joseph White and Kevin Krolicki in Detroit, David Shepardson and Steve Holland in Washington and Mehr Bedi in BengaluruEditing by David Gaffen, Peter Henderson and Matthew Lewis)

By Noel Randewich and Ankika Biswas

(Reuters) – U.S. stocks ended sharply lower on Friday as chipmakers dropped on concerns about weak consumer demand, while rising Treasury yields pressured Amazon and other megacap growth companies.

Chip equipment makers Applied Materials, Lam Research and KLA Corp all dropped more than 4%after Reuters reported TSMC had asked its major vendors to delay deliveries.

Nvidia dropped 3.7%, Advanced Micro Devices lost 4.8% and Broadcom and Micron Technology each fell over 2%, pulling down the Philadelphia Semiconductor index down about 3% for the session.

Stoking worries over chip demand from automakers, the United Auto Workers’ union launched simultaneous strikes at factories of General Motors, Ford and Chrysler parent Stellantis.

China’s industrial output grew more than expected in August, data showed, suggesting that a recent flurry of support measures may be starting to slowly stabilize a stumbling economic recovery.

Data on Thursday showed U.S. retail sales rose more than expected in August, easing worries about a recession.

Treasury yields edged higher ahead of the Federal Reserve policy meeting next week, with the central bank facing a strong U.S. economy with inflation that remains above target.

“We really continue to see that growth resilience story, and I think that’s difficult for the market simply because there’s concern about what that could mean both for rates and inflation,” said Lisa Erickson, head of public markets at U.S. Bank Wealth Management in Minneapolis.

Traders’ bets on the Fed holding rates steady in its Sept. 20 policy meeting remained at 97%, while their odds for a pause in November stood at 67%, according to the CME FedWatch Tool.

Among growth stocks sensitive to higher interest rates, Amazon and Microsoft each lost more than 2%, and Meta Platforms declined 3.7%.

Adobe dropped 4.2% to a more than two-week low after the Photoshop software maker disclosed a commercial paper program of up to $3 billion on Sept. 8 following its third-quarter results.

The S&P 500 dropped 1.22% to end at 4,450.32 points.

The Nasdaq declined 1.56% to 13,708.34 points, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.83% to 34,618.24 points.

With the expiry of quarterly derivatives contracts tied to stocks, index options and futures, volume on U.S. exchanges was heavy, with 16.9 billion shares traded, compared to an average of 9.8 billion shares over the previous 20 sessions.

All 11 S&P 500 sector indexes declined, led lower by information technology, down 1.95%, followed by a 1.88% loss in consumer discretionary.

For the week, the S&P 500 fell 0.16% and the Nasdaq lost 0.39%. The Dow added 0.12%.

SoftBank’s Arm Holdings fell 4.5% after a stellar Nasdaq debut on Thursday that rekindled expectations of a turnaround in the initial public offering market.

Arm’s strong debut prompted grocery delivery app Instacart to raise the proposed price range for its IPO to target a fully diluted valuation of up to $10 billion.

Neumora Therapeutics, backed by Amgen and Japan’s SoftBank, made a tepid debut at $16.50 per share, below its IPO price of $17. It ended at $16.25.

Declining stocks outnumbered rising ones within the S&P 500 by a 4.4-to-one ratio.

The S&P 500 posted seven new highs and eight new lows; the Nasdaq recorded 48 new highs and 216 new lows.

(Reporting by Ankika Biswas and Shristi Achar A in Bengaluru, and by Noel Randewich in Oakland, California; Editing by Vinay Dwivedi and Richard Chang)