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First Solar plunges after CEO sounds the alarm on tariffs

The company said it expects to pay up to $90 million in tariffs this year.

4/30/25 10:47AM

First Solar, the largest US manufacturer of solar panels and modules, said President Trump’s tariff policies pose “a significant economic headwind” that will weigh on its bottom line this year.

The company also missed Wall Street’s profit estimates for the first three months of the year, reporting adjusted earnings per share of $1.95, much less than the $2.49 analysts polled by FactSet penciled in. But perhaps more concerning to investors is what First Solar thinks is in store for the rest of the year.

First Solar, which analysts had previously considered well positioned against tariff threats because it doesn’t rely on China, also cut its sales guidance for 2025 from between $5.3 billion and $5.8 billion to between $4.5 billion and $5.5 billion. The company said it expects to pay up to $90 million in duties for imported materials and components. It also expects to take a hit of up to $270 million from underutilization charges for lowering capacity at its factories in Malaysia and Vietnam.

“While the implementation of certain new trade policies was a possibility with the change in administration, the new tariff regime imposes — earlier this month has introduced significant challenges to 2025 that were not known at the start of the year,” First Solar CEO Mark Widmar told analysts.

First Solar has factories in Malaysia and Vietnam, which almost exclusively serve the US market, and a factory in India that serves the region as well as North America. On April 2, Trump imposed tariff rates of 26%, 24%, and 46%, on India, Malaysia, and Vietnam, respectively. While those tariffs are on a 90-day pause, the 10% universal tariff rate still weighs on the company’s bottom line, Widmar said.

There are things the company could do, like importing semi-finished modules to complete in the US, but as Trump’s tariff policy keeps changing, Widmar said his only option is to sit and wait.

“There’s a lot of strategies that we could do once we understand the policy environment and the tariff environment that we’re going to be in,” he said. “But I don’t know any of that right now.”

Widmar said that trade data for this year suggests Chinese manufacturers are importing through low-tariff countries like Laos and Indonesia. “We have no doubt that these Chinese manufacturers are also seeking to establish production in other regions around the world, such as Saudi Arabia, forcing us into a continued game of whack-a-mole,” Widmar said.

Max Knoblauch6h

Nike’s China business declines for seventh straight quarter

Sportswear kingpin Nike reported results for its third quarter, which ended in February, after the bell Tuesday. The stock fell about 3% in after-hours trading.

For fiscal Q3, Nike reported:

Earnings of $0.35 per share, comfortably above the Wall Street consensus of $0.29 per share compiled by FactSet.
$11.28 billion in total revenue, roughly in line with the $11.26 billion estimate.

Nike’s sales in China — where the company earns about 15% of its revenue — fell 7% to $1.62 billion. That’s its seventh straight quarter of sales declines in the market, though this quarter’s was less than feared. The company had issued weak guidance for this quarter considering continued softness in the region.

“This quarter we took meaningful actions to improve the health and quality of our business,” said Nike CEO Elliott Hill. “The pace of progress is different across the portfolio and the areas we prioritized first continue to drive momentum.”

Nike shares are trading near decade lows this month, as tariffs continue to weigh on profits and shipping costs rise amid the war with Iran. As of Tuesday’s close, the stock was down 17% year to date.

Luke Kawa, Tasha Matsumoto

Stocks end worst quarter since 2022 with best day since May

Optimism that the end of the war may be near sent stocks surging.

Max Knoblauch8h

Oil-sensitive travel stocks pop following Iran state media reporting on potential war resolution

Travel stocks are surging on Tuesday as oil prices fall following reports from Iranian state media that President Masoud Pezeshkian said the country has “the necessary will to end this war,” but would only do so with guarantees that “prevent the recurrence of aggression.”

The war has sent oil prices and refining margins surging this month, causing airlines and cruise lines to cut profit forecasts despite reported high demand.

Following Tuesday’s update, shares of the big four US airlines (Delta Air Lines, United Airlines, American Airlines, and Southwest Airlines) all climbed, along with smaller rivals including JetBlue. US airlines have stopped fuel hedging in recent years, increasing their exposure to upward swings in oil prices.

Cruise stocks also rallied, with Carnival and Norwegian up more than 6% and Royal Caribbean up about 5%.

J. Edward Moreno11h

The FDA is expected to lift restrictions on certain peptides, the NYT reports

The Food and Drug Administration is expected to lift restrictions on certain peptides, allowing the experimental, often injectable substances to be sold by compounding pharmacies, The New York Times reported Tuesday.

The potential move was previously reported by The Wall Street Journal, and teased by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on the “Joe Rogan Experience” podcast in late February.

Peptides have boomed in popularity recently, with search interest for “peptides” surpassing “ozempic” this month. Many of them are currently understudied and not approved for human use, a rule consumers are able to bypass by purchasing them from suppliers that sell them for, ostensibly, research purposes only.

As reports of the FDA changing its stance of peptides mount, consumer health companies like Hims & Hers and Superpower have been getting ready to roll out their peptide offerings as soon as they get the FDA's blessing.

The peptide gold rush: How impending deregulation could supercharge a shadow industry

Matt Phillips12h

Memory stocks bounce as Bernstein analyst calls TurboQuant fears “overdone”

Memory stocks rose Tuesday, after Bernstein analysts called the recent panic over Google’s TurboQuant AI algorithm “overdone.”

Bernstein analyst Mark Newman wrote:

“[Hard disk drive] and Memory stocks have sold off significantly due in part to fears from Google’s TurboQuant report. This however, should have zero impact on HDD demand and negligible impact on NAND demand. Given the stock sell-off we see this as an attractive entry point for Seagate Technology Holdings, Western Digital and Sandisk’s and upgrade WDC to Outperform.”

All three stocks were up early Tuesday, as was memory chip maker Micron.

Today’s rally stands in stark contrast to the pummeling these shares have endured over the last week, after Google Research published a technical paper on March 24 detailing its TurboQuant AI algorithm, which compresses the amount of data associated with AI operations without affecting the accuracy of AI models.

That was seen as a threat to surging AI demand for memory storage, which has supercharged prices for memory chips and memory-related stocks over the last year.