(Reddit)

Reddit rips higher after crushing Q1 earnings estimates and offering upbeat guidance

Reddit’s blowout quarter had Wall Street smashing the upvote button.

5/1/25 4:03PM

Reddit shares soared more than 18% in after-hours trading after the social media company blew past earnings expectations and offered an upbeat outlook for the current quarter.

Earnings per share came in at $0.13, a huge beat versus the $0.02 analysts were expecting. Reddit’s revenue jumped 61% to $392 million, topping Wall Street’s estimates as well as its own guidance of $360 million to $370 million.

Reddit has been riding a wave of user growth, boosted by changes to Google Search and its own internal site tweaks. Global logged-in daily active users jumped 23% to 48.7 million, while logged-out DAUs surged 38% to 59.4 million.

In regard to recent global trade tensions, the company said it was “well-positioned” to meet the moment. “We’ve grown through challenging times before — people need connection and information just as much in uncertain times,” Reddit CEO Steve Huffman said in a letter to investors.

Looking ahead, Reddit expects Q2 revenue between $410 million and $430 million, well ahead of Wall Street’s $391 million estimate.

Claire Yubin Oh2h

Novo Nordisk rallies after FDA weight loss pill approval

Novo Nordisk’s US-listed shares are up 7% in pre-market trading on Tuesday after the US Food and Drug Administration approved its Wegovy weight loss pill on Monday evening.

Now the first pill of its kind to receive approval from the regulator, Novo’s Wegovy pill is expected to launch in the US in early January 2026, and awaits the European Medicines Agency and other regulatory authorities’ approval after submitting for review in the second half of 2025, per the company’s press release. The 1.5 milligram starting dose of the pill will be sold at an introductory price of $149 a month.

“The pill is here. With today's approval of the Wegovy^® pill, patients will have a convenient, once-daily pill that can help them lose as much weight as the original Wegovy^® injection,” said Mike Doustdar, president and CEO of Novo Nordisk.

The approval was based on Novo’s Oasis 4 trial, which found participants who took 25 milligram doses of Wegovy pills daily lost 16.6% of their body weight over a 64 week period.

The approval will give Novo — which lost more than 50% of its market cap this year after Eli Lilly took the crown in weekly US prescriptions for injectable weight-loss drugs with its product Zepbound — a first-mover advantage in the expanding market. Lilly, which is down some 1% in pre-market trading today, has said its own oral drug orforglipron could be approved by March 2026.

Tasha Matsumoto

16h

Stocks rise for the third-consecutive session, erasing December losses

Santa baby, just slip a rally under the tree...

CHICAGO, ILLINOIS - DECEMBER 23: Benny the Bull, the Chicago Bulls mascot, dresses as Santa Claus in the game against the Milwaukee Bucks during the second half at the United Center on December 23, 2024 in Chicago, Illinois.

Matt Phillips20h

‘Golden age of profit margins’ seen in 2026

Wall Street tends to be a pretty optimistic place. But on one measure, market watchers are the most optimistic on record.

FactSet data shows the consensus estimate for S&P 500 net profit margins in calendar year 2026 calls for the gauge to climb to 13.9% in 2026.

But if borne out by events next year “it will mark the highest (annual) net profit margin reported by the index since FactSet began tracking this metric in 2008,” wrote John Butters, senior earnings analyst at the financial data company.

A recent story from Barron’s also commented on the expectations for especially fat profit margins embedded into forecasts for next year.

“We are in the golden age of margins,” RBC’s Capital Markets’ head of US equity strategy, Lori Calvasina, told the magazine.

That’s good news for investors looking forward to next year. But the follow up question, of course, is where the growth in profitability is expected to come from. The answer, as you might have guessed, is tech. Though the precise mechanisms by which those profits land in the coffers of the giant tech firms remains something of a mystery. Barron’s doesn’t get into the details, saying “call it benefits from AI, pricing power, or whatever.”

That doesn’t exactly sound like money in the bank. But even die-hard haters of AI have to acknowledge that betting against the ability of giant tech companies to generate massive profit growth has been a bad trade for the last couple decades.

The Stock Market Needs to Focus on Lucky 13

A recent story from Barron’s also commented on the expectations for especially fat profit margins embedded into forecasts for next year.

“We are in the golden age of margins,” RBC’s Capital Markets’ head of US equity strategy, Lori Calvasina, told the magazine.

Luke Kawa21h

Opendoor rises after CEO Kaz Nejatian touts an explosion in its home-buying footprint

Opendoor Technologies gained in early trading after CEO Kaz Nejatian touted an explosion in the company’s home-buying footprint.

In a message on X, the former Shopify COO posted two maps: one of which depicts a fairly limited area in which the online real estate company would buy or sell homes, and the second of which suggests that has now expanded to include the entire lower 48:

Big launch week at @Opendoor.

ZIP codes where @Opendoor buys homes. pic.twitter.com/UplMd4sXJE
— Kaz Nejatian (@CanadaKaz) December 22, 2025

In a follow-up tweet, Nejatian attributed the gains to AI, writing, “First pic took 10 *years* of work without AI. Second pic took 10 *weeks* of work with AI.”

On his first earnings call as CEO, Nejatian said the company had adopted a “default to AI approach.”

One of his first pledges was to launch Opendoor everywhere in the lower 48.

Max Knoblauch21h

Hertz surges on bullish options activity

As millions begrudgingly make their way to the rental car counter amid the winter holidays, investors are pouring into calls and sending Hertz stock soaring.

As of 10:51 a.m. eastern, Hertz had seen 17,861 calls traded. That’s already significantly ahead of the 20-day average volume of 12,956. Hertz shares are up more than 12%.

Seemingly juicing the rally was a post on X that read “car rental companies could end up being the picks and shovels of autonomy” that was reposted by billionaire Bill Ackman, whose hedge fund is one of Hertz’s largest shareholders.

If Hertz’s price action holds, the move will mark its ninth-best trading day of 2025.