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Monday, May 5, 2025
The S&P 500 registered its first down-day in the stock market in the past 10 sessions. Warren Buffett announcing he is stepping down from his post as President and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.B) had a negative effect on not just Berkshire shares, but Apple AAPL shares as well; Berkshire is a major holder of Apple Inc.
Overall, we saw the Dow slip -98 points on the day, -0.24%, with the S&P 500 -36 points, -0.64%. The tech-heavy Nasdaq and the small-cap Russell 2000 were in a race to the bottom of the major indexes today: the Nasdaq fell -133 points, -0.74%, while the Russell 2000 was off -16 points, -0.82%.
Services Sector Gives Mixed Results for April
After today’s opening bell this morning, we saw two separate reports on the U.S. Services sector for the month of April. These metrics do not always move in lock-step with one another, but today they moved in clearly opposite directions: S&P final Services PMI came in at 50.8 — slightly below the 51.0 estimate, and 60 basis points (bps) beneath the previous read of 51.4. ISM Services reached 51.6% today — nicely ahead of the 50.4% estimate and 50.8% reported earlier.
Q1 Earnings Reports After the Bell: Ford, Palantir & More
Shares of Ford Motor Co. F are down -2% following the U.S. automaker’s Q1 beats on both top and bottom lines this afternoon. Earnings of 14 cents per share easily surpassed the $0.00 per share expected — a figure that the company had guided down toward a couple weeks ago. Revenues of $37.42 billion were almost $2 billion ahead of the consensus estimate $35.48 billion.
However, Ford has suspended its full-year guidance at this time, citing tariff implications which the automaker expects will cost the company $1.5 billion this year. That’s equal to the cash burn reported in today’s release: $1.5 billion. Ford shares are now trading basically flat from the first of the year.
Check out the updated Zacks Earnings Calendar here.
Palantir PLTR, on the other hand, is the stock market’s biggest gainer this year so far, and its Q1 report this afternoon has sent after-market activity into a volatile tizzy. The defense software analytics company only just met expectations on earnings of 13 cents per share, whereas revenues of $884 million surged past the $863 million in the Zacks consensus. U.S. government revenue grew +43% year over year.
The company also upped guidance for next quarter and the full year: to a range of $934-938 million for the quarter (from $898.5 million forecast) and to $3.89-3.96 billion (from $3.77 billion previously expected). But shares are down -8% on the news, after having grown +63% from the first of the year and +390% from this time last year.
Clorox CLX missed expectations on both top and bottom lines in its fiscal Q3 results after the closing bell today: earnings of $1.47 per share missed the $1.57 expected (and $1.71 per share from the year-ago quarter) on $1.67 billion in revenues which missed the $1.71 billion anticipated. Fill-year earnings remain in the previous range, but next-quarter guidance has come down. Shares are lower -4% in late trading.
Hims & Hers HIMS telehealth firm solidly beat Q1 expectations on both top and bottom lines today — earnings of 20 cents per share on $586 million in revenues outpaced the 12 cents per share on $538.1 million in sales estimated, but then guided lower on revenues for the current quarter. The company also announced it would have access to disburse weigh-loss drug Wegovy, and has nabbed long-time Amazon AMZN executive Nader Kabbani as its new COO. Shares are up slightly in late trading.
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