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BAD DATE

Bumble drops after earnings and guidance miss Wall Street’s expectations

The company missed estimates for operating income and punted completely on reporting net income.

J. Edward Moreno

Bumble shares fell aftermarket on Tuesday as the company reported earnings that missed Wall Street estimates and gave first-quarter guidance that paints an even gloomier picture.

The company reported operating income of $37 million, compared to the $40 million analysts polled by FactSet were expecting. The company also said it expects to bring in between $242 million and $248 million in revenue in the first three months of 2025, compared to the $257 million analysts were expecting.

Bumble did not provide a figure for its quarterly net loss because it’s still finishing up some accounting. Analysts expect the company to bring in $27 million in net income for the quarter and rack up a net loss of $608 million for 2024.

Bumble shares fell 13% in after-hours trading minutes after the results were posted. Bumble is down nearly 40% in the past year and nearly 90% since its 2021 initial public offering.

The earnings report is the first since the company announced that its CEO, Lidiane Jones, would be stepping down for personal reasons. Come mid-March, she will be replaced by Whitney Wolfe Herd, Bumbles founder who herself had stepped down as CEO at the beginning of 2024.

Bumbles larger competitor, Match Group, also announced earlier this month that CEO Bernard Kim would be leaving his position and is being replaced by Spencer Rascoff, who was previously CEO of Zillow.

The executive shake-ups come as investors are frustrated with stagnating growth in dating apps. Sales for the two major dating app platforms stayed virtually flat from 2023 to 2024.

Now both Bumble and Match have started 2025 with lackluster guidances: Match, which owns Tinder, Hinge, and OkCupid, said it expects sales to range from $3.4 billion to $3.5 billion in all of 2025. Prior to that guidance, analysts were expecting a little over $3.5 billion.

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Retail traders are dumping Bloom Energy after near 300% rally, says JPMorgan

Retail traders are swarming for the exits in fuel cell company Bloom Energy, causing what was once a near 300% year-to-date rally to sour.

JPMorgan strategists led by Arun Jain flagged that Bloom’s net imbalance — the balance of buying versus selling among retail traders — was exceptionally negative as of 11 a.m. ET, even worse than during its double-digit drop on Wednesday.

JPM retail BE

The fuel cell company, which counts Oracle among its customers, eclipsed a market cap in excess of $20 billion earlier this week despite generating less than $2 billion in sales over the past year.

Wall Street began to sound some alarm bells about the extent of Bloom’s run this week, with Jefferies downgrading its rating for the stock to “underperform” from “hold” on Wednesday while Bank of America analysts wrote, “We are still not buying into BEs AI hype.”

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Duolingo rises as executives talk up China opportunity

Duolingo posted a solid gain Thursday, the latest in a series of relatively light-on-news moves in the stock this month as it has regained some attention among options-trading retail investors.

There was a story in China’s official China Daily where executives laid out their plans for the language-learning app’s push into the People’s Republic, which has been a focus of Wall Street analysts on recent post-earnings conference calls.

China, where the company began doing business in 2018, is Duolingo’s fastest-growing market for its language-learning app. It’s also the largest source of test takers for its Duolingo English Test proficiency exam business, a recent focus for management spotlighted in its recent Duocon product announcements.

It’s hard to say if the China Daily story is the reason for today’s upswing in the stock, but given the necessities of working within a country controlled by the Chinese Communist Party, a relatively favorable story appearing in its international propaganda organ suggests a relatively healthy working relationship is developing there.

China, where the company began doing business in 2018, is Duolingo’s fastest-growing market for its language-learning app. It’s also the largest source of test takers for its Duolingo English Test proficiency exam business, a recent focus for management spotlighted in its recent Duocon product announcements.

It’s hard to say if the China Daily story is the reason for today’s upswing in the stock, but given the necessities of working within a country controlled by the Chinese Communist Party, a relatively favorable story appearing in its international propaganda organ suggests a relatively healthy working relationship is developing there.

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Oklo dives after insider sale

Oklo dove Thursday after an SEC filing showed company director Michael Klein sold some $6.7 million in stock in transactions that, importantly, were not part of a pre-set insider sales plan.

Wall Street analysts forecast that the nuclear power startup will make losses for years to come. But the company’s ties to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who served as Oklo’s chairman until April, have helped make the stock a favorite of retail traders and a popular momentum play.

Even after today’s stumble, it’s up more than 400% this year and nearly 1,300% over the past 12 months.

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