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Luke Kawa

Lithium Americas spikes on plans for the Department of Energy to take 5% stake in exchange for early access to financing and deferred debt service

Shares of Lithium Americas are up more than 30% as of 7:35 a.m. ET after the miner announced a nonbinding agreement for the US government to receive an equity position in the company, in exchange for providing accelerated funding of a loan and offering more favorable repayment terms.

The DOE would get a 5% equity stake in the company via warrants in exchange for advancing $435 million of its previously announced loan (now worth a total of $2.23 billion) to Lithium Americas this quarter, as well as deferring interest payments on $182 million of those funds for five years.

“There can be no assurances that definitive documentation memorializing the First Draw Terms will be completed on the terms currently contemplated or at all,” the Vancouver-based company cautioned in its press release.

The first draw of Lithium Americas’ loan from the DOE is slated to be used to advance its joint venture with General Motors, a mine being developed in northern Nevada. GM is also amending the terms of this joint venture to facilitate the sale of production it does not expect to purchase. The DOE will also receive a 5% nonvoting, nontransferable economic stake in this particular project, also via warrants.

This planned pact comes on the heels of separate deals earlier this year that saw the government receive an equity stake in MP Materials and Intel, which has helped spur massive gains in those stocks.

“This proposed stake is another example of the Trump Administration taking equity stakes with American companies to promote industries seen as critical to national security with the majority of lithium reserves coming from foreign adversaries, especially China with the Thacker Pass Facility Buildout seen as crucial to national security,” Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives wrote. “This is important as the Trump Administration is now looking far and wide (globally) for stakes in strategic companies, not just US names.”

As we’ve written, why follow the Fed when you can just follow the feds?

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Max Knoblauch & David Crowther

Nike’s China business declines for seventh straight quarter, stock sinks as soft guidance outweighs Q3 earnings beat

Sportswear kingpin Nike reported results for its third quarter, which ended in February, after the bell Tuesday. At a headline-level, the fiscal Q3 numbers were pretty solid, with Nike reporting:

  • 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.

However, weakness in China and a revenue forecast that implies sales will continue to drop are weighing on the shares, which are down more than 9% in early trading on Wednesday.

On the earnings call, management said that revenue is expected to drop 2% to 4% in the coming quarter, and that overall they “expect revenues to be down low-single-digits versus the prior year, with gains in North America offset by declines in Greater China.” That's a disappointment to analysts, who were anticipating 2% growth in the coming quarter, and even more in the latter stages of the year, per Bloomberg.

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
14h
Stocks end worst quarter since 2022 with best day since May

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

Group of bulls being herded
Max Knoblauch

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%.

markets
J. Edward Moreno

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

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

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.

markets
Matt Phillips

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.

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