Benzinga

Essential Utilities (NYSE:WTRG) reported higher Q2 operating and maintenance costs, up about $5.1M (3.5%) year over year, mainly from employee costs and higher water and wastewater production, partly offset by lower insurance and bad-debt expenses. The company said its American Water merger has regulatory approvals in KY, OH and VA, targeting Q1 2027 close. It also outlined 2026 infrastructure spending of $1.7B, rate-case updates, acquisitions, and a 5.25% dividend increase.

Williams Companies (NYSE:WMB) discussed Q2 plans to support grid expansion via rapid deployment, scale, and hybrid structures. It formed a Power Innovation JV with Blackstone with $5.34B committed capital and capped 6.35% cost of equity. Williams also agreed to buy Momentum Midstream for $5.5B, adding 6 Bcf/d gathering and 4 Bcf/d pipeline capacity, plus Shelby Connector and Delta Access projects.

U.S. upstream M&A slowed to $9.1B in Q2 as crude price volatility eased, though Enverus expects acceleration in H2 2026. Deal highlights include Magnolia Oil & Gas buying WildFire Energy for about $4.06B, Crescent Energy acquiring Vital Energy for ~$3.1B and Eagle Ford assets for $905M, and Baytex selling Eagle Ford assets for $2.14B.

AMD agreed to acquire Toronto startup Taalas, which designs model-specific AI chips that etch neural network weights into transistors to avoid weight transfers during inference. Taalas’ first test chip reportedly ran Meta’s Llama 3.1 8B at 16,960 tokens per second. Closing is expected in Q4, with chips planned for AMD Helios racks using ROCm.

AMD confirmed it will buy Toronto AI inference chip startup Taalas, subject to regulatory approval, to integrate Taalas technology into its accelerator roadmap and pair it with Instinct GPUs. AMD reported Q2 revenue of $11.5B (+50% YoY), data center $6.7B (+107%), and adjusted EPS $1.66 (+246%).

AkzoNobel and Axalta Coating Systems said shareholders approved their merger, which will remove the AkzoNobel name and Amsterdam listing. A new name is not set. Regulatory clearance is still needed, with closing expected by year end or early next year. The combined firm will be Dutch-structured with dual HQs in Amsterdam and Philadelphia, led by AkzoNobel CEO Greg Poux-Guillaume. AkzoNobel shareholders get 55%, Axalta 45%, with projected €519m annual cost savings and nearly €15bn revenue.