Yahoo Finance

Now time for some of today's trending tickers. We're watching Informatica and Salesforce, Trump Media and PDD. First up, let's talk about Salesforce here, agreeing to buy Informatica for $8 billion. Salesforce paying $25 a share for the data management software firm. And the deal is expected to close in Salesforce's fiscal year 2027. Take a look at shares of Informatica jumping on this by about five, nearly six percent right now.

Yeah, and the two had been in talks previously, back in 2024, then they abandoned them. And interestingly, we don't know exactly why the fizzled, might have been overpriced, but Informatica shares have since gone down. So, the deal that at one point was talked about, I believe as a $10 billion deal, is now an $8 billion deal. So interesting. But the other interesting piece of it is that Salesforce has really backed off of M&A under pressure from shareholders. And so, um, now that they're doing this deal, which I believe is the biggest since they bought Slack, you know, are you going to get to, are you going to see a little friction coming from shareholders about it?

Yeah, especially given the acquired growth strategy that a lot of the companies in the ERP, CRM, a lot of the software landscape have been known for over the years here now. This, uh, the latest example for Salesforce. And I had the opportunity actually, um, to meet with some of the executives at Salesforce prior to this deal and how they're all focusing and talking about agents right now. Comes back to this announcement as well here, even Mark Benioff saying within a statement by essentially combining these two companies, Salesforce Informatica will create the most complete agent-ready data platform in the industry. Uh, and agent is perhaps the word that is going to be the new, uh, the new buzzword if you will, throughout the software and cloud enterprise management solutions, especially with the artificial intelligence layer on top of it.

Right. I, one other thing to note, um, Salesforce reports its earnings after the close tomorrow. It's not just Nvidia, we'll hear from Salesforce as well. And Jordan Klein over at Mizuho, he's a desk analyst over there. He said, you know, why would they announce this deal now instead of waiting maybe a couple weeks after earnings? He found the timing a little curious, but we'll see what they have to say tomorrow. Uh, next we got Trump Media announcing plans to raise capital. The company says liquid assets will jump to $3 billion as the company sells stock and convertible notes. Now, here's the important part of this. Yeah, there's been, they've done a bunch of these deals to raise money already. It's what they're using the money for. They intend to use the proceeds for creation of a Bitcoin treasury, following the MicroStrategy now strategy playbook in doing this. And so the shares are getting a bit of a pop on that plan.

Yeah. And we think back to what Trump has talked about, President Trump has talked about in trying to make the US the crypto capital of the world where we already are here in the US. We we hold the most Bitcoin on a government basis. Now it's just about where you're seeing some more of the inclination to annex the name, uh, his own name to some of the holdings of crypto, which has been notable within DJT's strategy there, I say. There've been so many different areas that they've kind of tried to pull on, whether that being streaming, and now whether that being trying to create some more capital that they can throw around as a whale within the crypto landscape. Um, which, and this comes after they just held a dinner, um, last week, uh, whole and bringing together some of the crypto profiles as well. And so, again, just a further move into the crypto landscape, but it's a larger question of, okay, are they going to, are they going to be holders long-term of this crypto or just try to cash in on it, um, next time we see a big pop?

Yeah, who knows? I mean, this continues the, um, the increasing enmeshment between the Trump family and uh, cryptocurrency. Uh, Trump himself, by the way, still owns over half of DJT of Trump Media and Telecom. Devin Nunes is the CEO and talked about the advantages of doing this. But as you say, it does follow on the dinner last week that was for the biggest holders of the, uh, Trump meme coin. So, um, probably not the last we'll see of these kinds of More dinners?

business entanglements.

Exactly.

Let's also talk about Temu-owned PDD missing first quarter expectations, taking a hint from trade tensions between the US and China. The Chinese e-commerce company marking its slowest growth since early 2022. Taking a look at shares right now, they are down by about 17 and a half percent on the back of this earnings. The operating profits, uh, that was a decrease of 38% during the quarter for PDD, uh, and shares as you can see reacting, uh, as they should on a miss like that.

Yeah, and the shares are down more than 30% over the past year or so. I mean, a lot of this, of course, um, goes back to the de minimis exemption going away. Remember, that was the rule that for small shipments into the US of under $800, they would not be tariffed. Then, uh, that went away. Even though there's some pause on some of the tariffs, there is some tariff on those items. So Temu has been trying to get ahead of that by shipping bigger amounts into warehouses in the US and then having local merchants sell it from there. Um, but you know, obviously it's a quickly changing situation. So, um, they were one of the companies that was really seen as affected by that.

I've got plenty of inventory in my closet, I'm all set. Me too. Maybe you should start selling it.

Maybe. Maybe.