markets

10/31/24

Shares of Peloton surge on strong earnings, new CEO

Two wheels good, four wheels better!

Shares of Peloton are spiking like my heart rate during a Denis Morton ride after the embattled fitness company reported better-than-expected earnings and also tapped Peter Stern, president of Ford Integrated Services, to be its next CEO.

Stern, the latest in a series of new CEOs during a year of high turnover atop Corporate America, has extensive history leading divisions that are right in Peloton’s wheelhouse: at Ford, his role had him leading digital and subscription services — marrying hardware, software, and services. Prior to that, he oversaw Apple TV, iCloud, and Apple News+.

Peloton’s adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization were $115.8 million for the three months ending September 30, more than double what Wall Street had anticipated. While its outlook for next quarter’s revenues was shy of what analysts expected, a boost to its full-year earnings more than makes up for that in traders’ eyes. That’s proof its aggressive cost-cutting efforts — with operating expenses down 30% year on year — have borne fruit.

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2h

Deutsche Bank is cutting its estimate for 2025 US light vehicle sales by about 500,000 to 15.4 million in light of tariffs that are poised to roil auto supply chains and raise prices for producers and consumers.

Analysts led by Edison Yu noted that near-term sales are poised to rev up as part of a rush to beat higher prices associated with tariffs, but with a real burnout coming after.

Sales dropping by 500,000 is roughly the equivalent of Tesla’s most recent quarter of global sales vanishing into thin air.

“We estimate average transaction prices for essentially all automakers will need to increase,” Yu wrote.

GM and Ford are clawing back some of last week’s big losses in trading on Monday, while Stellantis is selling off.

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3h

Palantir fails to hold the line as momentum cracks

Last year’s retail trading fave Palantir tumbled alongside popular tech behemoths like Tesla and Nvidia in early trading on Monday.

The defense, data analytics, and enterprise AI software firm is on track for its fifth consecutive down day, which has lopped 15% of the shares and sunk the share price once again below its 50-day moving average, a technical level often seen as providing a modest support for share prices that it had recently cleared.

With the first hour of trading in the bag, Palantir is off its worst levels. (It was down as much as 8%.)

Palantir isn’t the only tech stock taking a beating on Monday, amid concerns about the Trump administration’s continued tariff threats as well as their effect on the economy, inflation, investor confidence, and what the Fed will do with interest rates this year.

But Palantir also has specific exposure to the Trump administration’s push to sharply reduce government spending, given that the US government is its top customer.

In a note published last week, Morgan Stanley software analysts put the company on a list of stocks “at higher risk for downward estimate revisions” because of their reliance on federal government spending.

US-POLITICS-TRUMP

Tariff talk rattles global markets as Q1 draws to a close, Goldman cuts S&P 500 price target

Markets in Europe and China were modestly red, while Japan’s Nikkei 225 dropped 4%.

David Crowther, Hyunsoo Rim, Claire Yubin Oh4h

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J. Edward Moreno

5h

Moderna stock drops after FDA vaccine chief resigns

Moderna shares fell 10% in premarket trading Monday morning after reports that the Food and Drug Administration’s vaccine chief, Peter Marks, resigned from the agency on Friday.

In his resignation letter, which was obtained by STAT, Marks said he was unable to quell Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s concerns about the safety of common childhood vaccinations. “It has become clear that truth and transparency are not desired by the Secretary, but rather he wishes subservient confirmation of his misinformation and lies,” Marks wrote.

Moderna still makes most of its revenue from COVID-19 vaccines. Novavax, another American vaccine maker, fell 14%.

Kennedy, a vaccine cynic, has questioned the safety of vaccines and now runs an agency tasked with containing diseases. It was previously reported that HHS is considering clawing back its $590 million grant to Moderna to develop a bird flu vaccine.

Peter Marks, FDA’s top vaccine regulator, forced out

Peter Marks, FDA’s top vaccine regulator, forced out

Moderna still makes most of its revenue from COVID-19 vaccines. Novavax, another American vaccine maker, fell 14%.

Kennedy, a vaccine cynic, has questioned the safety of vaccines and now runs an agency tasked with containing diseases. It was previously reported that HHS is considering clawing back its $590 million grant to Moderna to develop a bird flu vaccine.

3/28/25

US stocks slump into the weekend on turmoil with tariffs and tech

Friday was the same as Thursday — only worse.

Stocks tumbled and dip buyers were nowhere to be found, with the lowest share of up volumes across the New York Stock Exchange of this year. The S&P 500 fell just shy of 2%, the Russell 2000 was down 2.1%, and the Nasdaq 100 ended off 2.6%.

The pummeling of megacap tech stocks and tariff-sensitive companies was in focus to end the week. Consumer discretionary, communication services, tech, and industrials were the worst-performing S&P 500 sector ETFs, all down more than 2%.

Credit spreads also hit their widest levels of the year, signaling enhanced fear about a US economic slowdown.

Tesla tumbled as the analyst community warned the electric vehicle maker isn’t immune from tariffs and ahead of Q1 delivery results next week that are expected to be weak.

A fresh push from the US Department of Defense to cut software costs weighed on shares of Palantir.

Crypto-linked stocks like Strategy, Coinbase, and Robinhood sank along with bitcoin in the broad-based risk retreat.

(Robinhood Markets Inc. is the parent company of Sherwood Media, an independently operated media company.)

Lululemon had its worst day in more than a year after issuing a weak full-year sales forecast.

Ubisoft’s plans to spin off some of its major franchises were initially greeted warmly by investors before the stock got caught up in the sell-off and was shellacked.

Airlines continued their retreat, with Delta, Southwest, American Airlines, and United shedding about $5 billion in value this week.

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