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Kohl’s tumbles after the department store chain slashes its dividend, warns of weak sales ahead

The OG department store chain sounded the alarm on a pullback from lower-income consumers.

3/11/25 9:38AM

Kohl’s shares sank as much as 20% in early trading after the department store dropped less-than-stellar earnings for the Q4 holiday quarter. The bright spot: adjusted diluted earnings per share came in at $0.95, well above the $0.73 consensus estimate. Revenue for the quarter reached $5.17 billion, just shy of the expected $5.18 billion. Meanwhile, comparable (same-store) sales slid nearly 7%, also missing estimates. To shore up cash flow, the retailer also slashed its quarterly dividend to $0.12 from $0.50.

Like its peers, Kohl’s is feeling the squeeze as more shoppers pull back on nonessentials. While inflation has eased, management noted on the earnings call that those earning under $50,000 — and even those under $100,000 — are cutting back, with the potential for more pullback in the coming months. Kohl’s also highlighted the ongoing challenge of fine-tuning its coupon strategy, as it tries to strike the right balance between popular national brands and its own in-house labels. Despite these challenges, Kohl’s says the company’s supply chain is still a “well-oiled machine” and “isn’t over indexed in any particular country.”

Looking ahead, it’s not pretty. Kohl’s expects net sales to fall 5% to 7% this year, well below expectations. Earnings guidance is also bleak, with full-year diluted EPS forecast between $0.10 and $0.60 — a far cry from analyst projections of $1.22. The high end of its EPS guidance is actually even below what the least optimistic sell-side shop had penciled in. This continues the discouraging trend of retailers’ guidance for 2025 coming in shy of Wall Street’s forecasts.

Kohl’s is also bracing for weaker comparable sales and is set to close its 27th store.

Palantir tumbles after delivering spectacular results

Palantir’s exceptional earnings receive ugly reaction

The valuation agita hitting high-flying stocks overshadowed the AI and intelligence software company’s blowout quarterly update.

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Luke Kawa4h

Fermi secures preliminary approval for a low-emissions natural gas plant to meet AI power demands

Power provider Fermi said it has received preliminary approval from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality for the planned 6 gigawatts of natural gas generation that’s part of its “Project Matador” to meet the ever-growing power demands of the AI boom.

“At Fermi, our private grid model ensures that the growing demand for AI is met privately,” Fermi America CEO and cofounder Toby Neugebauer said.

Final approval is still subject to a formal meeting and public comment.

The initial gas generators are already en route to the campus, with plans to have these installed and online in 2026, Fermi said.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella recently remarked that “the ability to get the builds done fast enough close to power” is the biggest constraint he faces, just ahead of an announced deal with IREN to purchase power-secured cloud computing capacity.

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The negative reaction after Palantir’s earnings is spreading to other volatile retail favorites

Palantir is the poster child for a richly valued, retail darling, megacap momentum stock. It’s going down on largely good news, and that’s cascading to hit smaller, volatile segments of the market also beloved by the retail community.

Fuel cell company Bloom Energy and no-revenues nuclear company Oklo are both off about 5% or more in early trading.
Neoclouds Nebius and CoreWeave are facing significant selling pressure.
The quantum space is getting rocked, with D-Wave Quantum, Rigetti, IonQ, and Quantum Computing all down between 3% and 5% as of 9:42 a.m. ET.
Other story stocks deep in the red include SoundHound AI, Rocket Lab, and Opendoor Technologies.

Goldman Sachs baskets that track retail favorites and nonprofitable tech stocks are down more than 2% and 3% as of 9:43 a.m. ET, respectively, while the Invesco S&P 500 High Beta ETF is also off more than 2%.

Long Island highway patrol officer using radar to check speed

Stocks are getting speed checked

A retail favorite failing to build momentum even when it “deserves” to, the most important part of the stock market being told it’s overheating, and the heads of banks warning of a broader pullback.

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Spotify notches another quarter of strong active user growth and improved profitability

Spotify shares are up 3.25% as of 6:45 a.m. ET as investors digest the streaming giant’s Q3 earnings, in which the company reported that it added more than 70 million monthly active users, posted revenues that were up 7% from last year, and improved profitability.

Total revenues climbed to €4.27 billion, or around $4.91 billion, for the quarter, while net income came in at €899 million ($1.03 billion), which translated into adjusted earnings per share of €3.28 — ahead of the ~€1.96 that analysts had expected, per FactSet figures cited by The Wall Street Journal. Spotify now counts a whopping 713 million monthly active users, including 281 million premium subscribers, compared to 640 million and 252 million, respectively, on the same quarter last year.

The boosted figures come on the back of a host of new features that the streaming platform’s introduced, such as “lossless listening,” playlist mixing controls, and direct messages. The company is now forecasting that its total monthly active users will climb to 745 million by the end of the fourth quarter.

With the latest gains today, Spotify is now up ~48% year to date, even as cofounder Daniel Ek announced in September that he’d be stepping down as CEO at the end of the year, almost 20 years on from the company’s inception.