| Ticker | Name | Research | View | What's said | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| LLY | Eli Lilly | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | Volume crushes price. Q2 revenue +48% Y/Y to $23.0B (a $2.3B beat) and adjusted EPS $8.38 ($1.80 beat), with growth coming from a 60% increase in volume more than offsetting a 13% decline in realized prices. Mounjaro +91% to $9.9B and Zepbound +46% to $4.9B take combined GLP-1 revenue to nearly $15B; international Mounjaro more than doubled to $5.2B "as Lilly expands access globally, despite significant price reductions including China reimbursement." Foundayo, the newly launched oral GLP-1 obesity pill, did $98M in its first quarter, and retatrutide — the triple-hormone injection targeting GLP-1, GIP and glucagon — cleared three more Phase 3 obesity trials, with an FDA filing planned for Q1 2027. FY26 revenue guidance raised $2.5B at the midpoint to $85–$87B; underlying EPS guidance rose $2.78 but $3.03 of acquisition-related R&D charges offset it, leaving reported guidance at $35.50–$36.50. Bottom Line: "The GLP-1 story remains a volume machine. Lilly is deliberately giving up price to expand access, and demand is more than compensating." | article ↗ |
| MRK | Merck & Co. | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | The bridge broadens. Q2 revenue +5% Y/Y to $16.6B ($240M beat) with adjusted EPS of −$0.13 ($0.13 beat) including a $2.31/share charge from the Terns acquisition. The key development is Keytruda Qlex, the subcutaneous version, at $463M versus $128M last quarter and well above expectations — combined Keytruda/Qlex sales of $8.4B (+5%) make Qlex "increasingly important ahead of Keytruda's 2028 patent cliff," because converting patients to a formulation with its own exclusivity is the cheapest defence available. The rest of the bridge improved too: Winrevair $588M (+75%), Capvaxive $184M (+42%), Ohtuvayre rebounding after Q1 reimbursement issues. Merck closed the $6.7B Terns acquisition on May 5 (adding MK-4208 to hematology) and won FDA approval for Lipfendra, its oral PCSK9 cholesterol drug. FY26 revenue guidance raised $0.4B to $66.3–$67.3B; adjusted EPS fell to $2.66–$2.76 "driven by Terns acquisition charges rather than weaker operations." "The post-Keytruda bridge is getting broader." | article ↗ |
| AMGN | Amgen | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | Growth outruns the cliff. Q2 revenue +10% Y/Y to $10.1B (a $680M beat) and adjusted EPS $6.29 ($0.67 beat), with product sales +9% on volume and 22 products posting double-digit growth. The growth portfolio is doing the work — Repatha +37% to $953M, EVENITY +38% to $714M, UPLIZNA +90% to $335M — and the six key growth drivers grew 26% collectively, now nearly 70% of product sales, more than offsetting Prolia's 32% decline to $759M under biosimilar attack. FY26 revenue guidance raised to $38.2–$39.4B (a $1.0B midpoint increase) and adjusted EPS to $22.30–$23.50. Two caveats: the obesity pipeline narrowed — early-stage AMG 513 was discontinued, leaving MariTide (now nine Phase 3 studies with three more planned) as the sole obesity asset, making its monthly-or-less-frequent dosing strategy load-bearing — and Tavneos remains an overhang, with Amgen submitting additional evidence in July for an FDA hearing while the drug stays on the market. "The patent-cliff replacement story strengthened materially in Q2, because growth is broadening faster than legacy products are declining." | article ↗ |
| NVO | Novo Nordisk | QT · SA · STK · FA | Neutral | Pill holds up. Q2 sales +2% Y/Y (+3% cc) to DKK 78.5B (~$12.1B) with adjusted sales +7% and underlying operating profit +11% excluding impairments and last year's DKK 340B distortion. Oral Wegovy generated DKK 3.2B (~$500M), +40% sequentially and past 5 million prescriptions since launch — an impressive ramp, though slightly below consensus. The rest is harder: injectable Wegovy grew just 1% cc to DKK 19.5B and Ozempic 5%, and Novo still expects US sales to decline this year on lower realized prices, reduced Medicaid obesity coverage and intensifying Lilly competition; CagriSema showed strong absolute efficacy but failed its head-to-head obesity endpoint against tirzepatide earlier this year. Novo nevertheless raised FY26 adjusted sales and operating-profit guidance dramatically to flat to −6% cc, from −4% to −12%, on stronger US GLP-1 demand and international launches. "Oral Wegovy is giving Novo exactly the boost it needed. But Lilly still has the stronger growth profile and next-generation pipeline, leaving Novo increasingly dependent on the pill and higher-dose Wegovy to close the gap." | article ↗ |
| PFE | Pfizer | QT · SA · STK · FA | Negative | Pipeline questions. Q2 revenue +3% Y/Y to $15.0B ($640M beat) and adjusted EPS $0.77 ($0.09 beat), with the non-COVID portfolio outperforming by roughly $1.5B against another sharp pandemic decline — Paxlovid fell 95% and Pfizer cut FY26 COVID revenue expectations to ~$4B from ~$5B. But the beat came from the old book: Eliquis +19%, Vyndaqel strong, Padcev +23% — against which Pfizer took a $3.8B impairment after an experimental Seagen lung-cancer drug failed a pivotal trial. The restructuring keeps growing: another $2.5B of productivity savings through 2029 takes the target to roughly $9.7B, protecting margins against an estimated $35B of revenue facing patent expiry by the end of the decade. FY26 revenue guidance raised $0.5B to $60.5–$62.5B with adjusted EPS maintained at $2.80–$3.00 despite ~$0.10 from the Innovent transaction ($650M upfront to the China-based biotech for 12 early-stage cancer programs). "Q2 reinforced the central problem: much of the upside still comes from older drugs, while expensive bets in oncology and obesity have yet to prove they can replace the looming patent cliff." | article ↗ |
| ANET | Arista Networks | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | Supply catches up. Q2 revenue +38% Y/Y to $3.0B (a $210M beat) and adjusted EPS $1.02 ($0.13 beat), with adjusted operating margin reaching 50% against the 46–47% guided. The change is supply, not demand: Arista has secured memory for 2026, expanded manufacturing and distribution capacity and extended visibility into 2027 — management still expects industry shortages to persist through 2028, but better availability is finally letting it convert backlog into revenue. AI demand stays exceptional: Etherlink AI fabrics now have 100+ cumulative customers, up from 4–5 in 2024, and purchase commitments climbed to $9.7B as Arista pre-buys components ahead of deployments. FY26 revenue guidance raised for the third time this year to roughly $12.6B (+40%) from $11.5B, with operating margin guidance lifted to 48–49%; Q3 revenue of $3.3B came in ~$350M above consensus. "The remaining constraint is no longer customer demand, but how quickly Arista can secure enough components to ship into it." A disclosed author holding. | article ↗ |
| SNDK | Sandisk | QT · SA · STK · FA | Neutral | AI eats NAND. Q4 (June quarter) revenue +372% Y/Y to $9.0B ($0.6B beat) with adjusted EPS $39.25 ($4.73 beat), non-GAAP gross margin at an extraordinary 85% and adjusted free cash flow of $5.0B at a 56% margin. Sandisk repurchased $4.5B of stock in the quarter — "a questionable decision after a 1,800% stock run-up." The driver is AI infrastructure: datacenter went from 12% of Sandisk's bits a year ago to 38% exiting FY26 on high-capacity enterprise SSDs, with management expecting NAND bits to stay on allocation beyond 2027. The durability attempt is the interesting part — eight multi-year "New Business Model" agreements with data-center and edge customers averaging more than four years and backed by $16.5B of financial guarantees, with more than half of FY27 bits and roughly two-thirds of FY28 production already committed. Q1 FY27 guided to $10.3–$10.8B (~18% sequential at the midpoint, though the midpoint fell short) with gross margin holding at 83–85% and EPS $44–$46. Bottom Line: "AI has turned NAND from a cyclical commodity into a bottleneck (at least for now)… The question is how much of today's extraordinary 80%+ gross margin survives once supply eventually catches demand." | article ↗ |
| NET | Cloudflare | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | Agentic acceleration. Q2 revenue +36% Y/Y to $696M ($30M beat), accelerating from 34% in Q1, with adjusted EPS $0.29 ($0.02 beat) and free cash flow +69% to $56M; shares jumped nearly 16% after hours "as the 20% workforce reduction showed no visible impact on growth." Large customers (>$100K ARR) grew 27% to 4,698 and now generate 73% of revenue, DBNR improved to 120% from 118%, current RPO +35%, and the Workers platform added nearly 2 million developers in Q2 alone — twice the Q1 pace and more than all of 2025. The positioning is infrastructure for the "agentic internet": non-human traffic exceeded human traffic on its network for the first time, and Cloudflare is building the tools agents need to interact and transact, including Wallets and payment rails — explicitly not competing with hyperscalers by buying GPU clusters, but supplying "the network, security, and orchestration layer around AI workloads." Adjusted gross margin rose sequentially to 73%, its first sequential increase in eight quarters (still below the 75–77% target), absorbing ~$151M of restructuring charges. FY26 revenue guidance raised again to $2.864–$2.870B and Q3 to $736–$737M, both above consensus. "The agentic-AI pivot is starting to look less like a restructuring narrative and more like a growth catalyst." A disclosed author holding. | article ↗ |
| DOCN | DigitalOcean | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | AI accelerates. Q2 revenue +29% Y/Y to $281M with non-GAAP EPS $0.45 (a $0.19 beat) and adjusted EBITDA margin holding at 40%. AI is the step-up: AI customer ARR +212% to $234M, ARR from $1M+ customers +214% to $259M, and a record $93M of incremental ARR added — nearly triple last year. The backlog is the eye-catching number: RPO increased 12x to $894M, while the new Inference Engine saw token volume up 30x in its first 60 days. Capacity is now the binding constraint — roughly 155 MW secured, most coming online through 2027, with the buildout weighing on near-term cash (FY26 adjusted FCF margin guided to 11–13%). FY26 revenue guidance raised ~$37M to $1.17–$1.18B (+30–31%) with Q3 growth accelerating to 32–34%, and management reiterated confidence in exceeding 50% revenue growth in 2027. "Demand is accelerating faster than capacity, and the key execution challenge is bringing enough infrastructure online without sacrificing margins." | article ↗ |
| DDOG | Datadog | QT · SA · STK · FA | Neutral | AI concentration bites. Q2 revenue +36% Y/Y to $1.12B ($40M beat), accelerating again from 32% in Q1, with adjusted EPS $0.65 ($0.07 beat), non-GAAP operating margin 23% and free cash flow $279M at a 25% margin; $100K+ ARR customers accelerated 23% to 4,720. Underneath, the business broadened: non-AI customers accelerated into the high-20s from roughly 18% a year ago, 58% of customers now use four or more products, and calls to Datadog through MCP — the standard letting AI agents interact with software — are up 22x since Q4. But Q2 exposed the downside of AI concentration: Datadog's largest customer has begun reducing usage — "a leading AI company that uses 17 products and recently signed a nine-figure renewal" — with the decline built into the second-half outlook. Datadog still raised FY26 revenue guidance to $4.45–$4.47B (from $4.30–$4.34B) and adjusted EPS to $2.50–$2.54, with Q3 above consensus — and shares still fell about 17%. "A single AI customer can now meaningfully move the growth curve… The question for the rest of FY26 is whether that broad-based acceleration can absorb the largest customer's pullback." A disclosed author holding. | article ↗ |
| TEAM | Atlassian | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | Enterprise breakout. Q4 (June quarter) revenue +28% Y/Y to $1.77B (a $110M beat) with adjusted EPS $1.87 ($0.37 beat), Cloud revenue accelerating again to 31% growth at $1.2B and GAAP operating margin at 12%; shares surged more than 30%. Atlassian signed its largest enterprise deal ever and set records for $1M, $3M and $5M ACV deals — the $3M+ ARR cohort grew 50%+ and the $5M+ cohort 70%+ — with RPO +44% to $4.8B. AI looks like part of the consolidation reason: Rovo is used across more than 80% of the Fortune 500, the Teamwork Graph connects 200B+ objects and relationships across Jira and Confluence, "that proprietary company context makes its agents more useful than a generic model alone," and Rovo adopters grow ARR at more than twice the rate of non-adopters. FY27 guidance looks slower — ~13% total revenue growth with Data Center revenue falling 17% as customers migrate and upfront license recognition rolls off — but the cleaner indicators are 18% subscription-ARR growth and 25.5% Cloud growth, with Q1 FY27 Cloud guided to +28.5% and GAAP profitability maintained at a 4.5% margin. "The underlying Cloud and enterprise business enters the year with more momentum than the headline 13% suggests." A disclosed author holding. | article ↗ |
| HUBS | HubSpot | QT · SA · STK · FA | Neutral | Pricing pivot bites. Q2 revenue +20% Y/Y to $912M ($13M beat) with adjusted EPS $3.26 ($0.24 beat) and non-GAAP operating margin at 20%, up ~3 points; customers +14% to 306,000 with average subscription revenue per customer +4%. The friction is self-inflicted: HubSpot's move toward free trials and outcome-based pricing for AI agents extended sales cycles as customers demanded proof of value before committing, against a more cautious buying environment of larger committees and more C-suite scrutiny — calculated billings grew 17% cc, slower than the revenue trajectory. Adoption itself is fine: Prospecting Agent at nearly 17,000 activated customers, Data Agent past 16,000, monthly agentic actions more than tripled this year, and the model is shifting "from charging for AI consumption toward charging for outcomes (such as qualified leads or resolved tickets) even if the transition creates near-term revenue friction." HubSpot cut FY26 revenue guidance by $22M to $3.678–$3.686B (cc growth 17%→16%), with Q3 at $924–$925M against ~$942M consensus, while maintaining a 21% operating-margin target and raising adjusted EPS. "The question is whether that friction produces stronger conversion and reacceleration rather than becoming the new normal." A disclosed author holding. | article ↗ |
| FIG | Figma | QT · SA · STK · FA | Neutral | AI credits scale. Q2 revenue +48% Y/Y to $370M (a $19M beat) — its third straight quarter of accelerating growth — with adjusted EPS $0.08 ($0.04 beat) and net dollar retention at 136%. Shares still fell about 15% after hours; separately CEO Dylan Field voluntarily forfeited roughly $46M of future stock awards without replacement, saying he wanted to reduce dilution during a period of heavy investment. This was the first full quarter of AI credit monetization, with roughly 20% of paid-plan credit consumption now coming from Figma Agent, and — the answer to Q1's margin worry — adjusted gross margin rebounded 2.5 points sequentially to 85% despite higher inference spending. Figma is pushing beyond design into full-stack creation with Code Layers and its agent in open beta; neither consumes paid credits yet, so neither is in guidance. FY26 revenue guidance rose another $40M to $1.463–$1.467B (39% growth) while operating income guidance stayed at $125–$135M as investment continues. | article ↗ |
| KVYO | Klaviyo | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | Agents gain traction. Q2 revenue +26% Y/Y to $371M (an $8M beat) with adjusted EPS of $0.19 in line; customers above $50,000 of ARR grew 36% to 4,477 and now represent roughly 40% of ARR, with NRR at 109%. The agent evidence is unusually concrete for this stage: Composer launched broadly in June and already has 95,000+ users with nearly a quarter returning weekly; Customer Agent adoption rose 40% Q/Q and autonomous resolutions increased nearly 80% since early June; and Klaviyo signed its largest deal ever, an eight-figure multi-product contract. Gross margin fell three points to 73% absorbing higher text-message carrier fees, "but those costs are now being passed through to customers." FY26 revenue guidance rose to $1.526–$1.534B while operating income guidance fell to $212–$218M, partly on costs from the Agency acquisition. "Q2 brought the first meaningful evidence that agents could become a real growth lever, with usage scaling quickly and enterprise adoption strengthening." | article ↗ |
| TWLO | Twilio | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | Voice AI reaccelerates. Q2 revenue +22% Y/Y to a record $1.5B (a $70M beat) with organic growth accelerating to 17% from 16%, adjusted EPS $1.47 ($0.15 beat), record adjusted operating income of $285M and record free cash flow of $353M. Dollar-based net expansion improved from 108% a year ago to 116%, comfortably ahead of expectations, with growth from both messaging and voice as "Twilio continues to benefit from AI-native companies building communication into agents" — it landed an eight-figure deal with a leading AI company and positions itself as the model-agnostic infrastructure connecting AI agents to customers. A redesigned Console launched in May converts developers at more than 90% above the legacy experience, and the new Conversations Layer adds persistent memory across interactions. FY26 organic revenue growth guidance was raised to 13%–13.5% from 9.5%–10.5%, with adjusted operating income and FCF around $1.14–$1.16B and Q3 revenue of $1.505–$1.515B above consensus. "Twilio is increasingly looking less like a turnaround and more like a renewed growth story." (Note: the issue's signature visual was deferred pending the 10-Q.) A disclosed author holding. | article ↗ |
| PAYC | Paycom Software | QT · SA · STK · FA | Neutral | Margins do the work. Q2 revenue +10% Y/Y to $531M (an $18M beat) with adjusted EPS $2.78 ($0.40 beat), adjusted EBITDA $235M and margin expanding 320 bps to 44.2%; net income +20% to $107M. The improvement was broad-based rather than one product launch — Paycom keeps leaning into automation with Project Arc, its largest platform overhaul to date, while July's Asset Management product extends the platform into tracking employee devices and equipment (neither contributed much to Q2). Capital return is doing a lot of the EPS work: $346M repurchased in Q2 and nearly 11 million shares for $1.4B across the first half, cutting shares outstanding by roughly 20%, with FY26 free cash flow now expected above $650M. FY26 revenue guidance raised to $2.197–$2.212B and adjusted EBITDA to $1.007–$1.022B, taking the midpoint margin from ~44% to ~46%. "Automation, tighter spending, and aggressive buybacks are converting modest growth into substantial EPS and free cash flow expansion. The next step is proving newer products can reaccelerate the top line rather than relying primarily on efficiency." A disclosed author holding. | article ↗ |
| AXON | Axon Enterprise | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | Dedrone breaks out. Q2 revenue +35% Y/Y to $904M (a $28M beat) — its tenth straight quarter above 30% growth — with non-GAAP EPS $1.88 ($0.04 beat) and adjusted EBITDA $242M at a 27% margin. Counter-drone is the new leg: Dedrone surpassed $100M of quarterly revenue as Platform Solutions surged 123% Y/Y, with World Cup security accelerating demand that management expects to persist beyond the event; Axon also signed two nine-figure agreements with major cities and future contracted bookings reached a record $15.1B. Software & Services +36% to $398M, ARR accelerating to 39% growth at $1.6B, net revenue retention 126%, and AI Era revenue up nearly 700% with more than a third of software revenue now from products beyond the core Evidence platform. The cost of scaling is visible: professional services and newer products pressured software margins, inventory climbed to $487M building capacity ahead of demand, and memory inflation is expected to pressure Q3 margins before improving in Q4. FY26 revenue growth guidance raised again to 32–34% with the 25.5% adjusted EBITDA margin target maintained. Bottom Line: "The constraint has shifted from finding growth to funding and executing against it without sacrificing margins." A disclosed author holding. | article ↗ |
| MELI | MercadoLibre | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | Brazil bet pays off. Q2 revenue +50% Y/Y to $10.2B (a $410M beat), its fastest growth in four years, with GAAP EPS $9.19 ($0.25 beat), GMV +44% to $21.9B (+36% FX-neutral) and Mercado Pago TPV crossing $100B for the first time, +56%. The free-shipping experiment worked: MercadoLibre lowered the minimum order value for free shipping to BRL 19 last year, deliberately subsidising low-value purchases to raise frequency — one year on, items per buyer are up 19% and conversion improved 1.1 points, with users active across both MercadoLibre and Mercado Pago +37%. Mercado Pago revenue +49% and the credit portfolio +75% to $16.4B, with card delinquencies near historical lows despite that growth. The trade-off is margin: operating margin was just 7%, roughly flat sequentially, and adjusted free cash flow only $214M after $2.1B of credit expansion and $441M of CapEx. Bottom Line: "Commerce, payments, and credit are all compounding faster, and the Brazil shipping investment is changing customer behavior. For now, management is trading margins for long-term growth a la Amazon." A disclosed author holding. | article ↗ |
| DASH | DoorDash | QT · SA · STK · FA | Neutral | DashPass takes over. Q2 revenue +36% Y/Y to $4.45B (a $110M beat) with GAAP EPS $0.46 (a $0.01 miss) and adjusted EBITDA $914M, +40% and roughly $70M ahead of consensus. Unit economics improved too: net revenue margin held at 13.5% while contribution profit margin rose to 5.0% of GOV from 4.7%. Including Deliveroo, orders +27% to 970 million and Marketplace GOV +36% to $33.1B — but excluding Deliveroo, GOV still grew 23%, revenue 24% and orders 17%, "showing the headline growth isn't just acquisition-driven." DashPass is the flywheel: paid membership additions over the past year exceeded the prior two years combined, and in grocery and retail DashPass members now generate roughly 75% of orders on higher frequency and larger baskets. New verticals are still expected to turn gross-profit positive in the second half, with the gains being reinvested into autonomous delivery (its own Dot robots now doing real deliveries in Phoenix) and unifying DoorDash, Wolt and Deliveroo onto one stack. Q3 GOV guided to $33–$34B and adjusted EBITDA to $950M–$1.1B, with the profit midpoint comfortably above consensus. A disclosed author holding. | article ↗ |
| CPNG | Coupang | QT · SA · STK · FA | Neutral | Customers return. Q2 revenue +4% Y/Y to $8.9B (+10% cc); excluding a $410M Korean administrative fine related to the data incident, GAAP EPS was −$0.09, with adjusted EBITDA recovering sequentially to $163M from just $29M in Q1 but still far below $428M a year ago. Product Commerce revenue +8% cc to $7.4B with active customers at 24.7 million (+3%): "most customers who left after the incident have returned, and returning customers are now spending more than before," with the remaining gap concentrated in those who haven't come back. Profitability lags — Product Commerce EBITDA margin at 5.1%, down 3.9 points Y/Y, because Coupang still carries network capacity built for pre-incident demand while spending on reacquisition; management expects margins back to pre-incident levels by mid-2027. Developing Offerings +24% cc to $1.4B on Taiwan, Eats and Farfetch, with segment losses improving slightly to $219M (FY26 losses still $950M–$1B). Q3 cc revenue growth guided to 8–9%. "Q2 strengthened the case that the data incident caused a temporary demand shock rather than permanent customer damage." A disclosed author holding. | article ↗ |
| CART | Instacart (Maplebear) | QT · SA · STK · FA | Neutral | Customers come back. Q2 revenue +14% Y/Y to $1.04B, slightly ahead, though adjusted EPS of $0.45 missed by $0.09. GTV accelerated 14% to $10.35B with orders +9% to 90.3 million and average order value at $115, and Instacart is adding new customers at its fastest pace since 2022. Advertising and other revenue +16% to $297M, again outpacing GTV — the higher-margin engine — while adjusted EBITDA +19% to $313M, or 3.0% of GTV, growing profit faster than transactions. AI is becoming a demand lever: the AI assistant is rolling out across North America after early users generated larger-than-average baskets, and Instacart acquired Arpalus, whose computer vision scans store shelves to improve inventory accuracy, alongside continued enterprise-software expansion with US and European retailers. Q3 guidance of 14% GTV growth and $320–$340M of adjusted EBITDA both landed ahead of consensus, with advertising up 15–18%. "The next test is whether AI and enterprise software can extend the acceleration beyond the core grocery marketplace." | article ↗ |
| ETSY | Etsy | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | Back to Etsy. Q2 revenue +6% Y/Y to $668M (a $22M beat) with GAAP EPS $0.98 ($0.25 beat) and adjusted EBITDA +15% to $195M, margin expanding more than 2 points to 29%. Etsy GMS grew 8% to $2.6B, accelerating from 6% in Q1 (+7% cc). Active buyers were roughly flat at 87 million on a trailing-twelve-month basis while GMS per active buyer rose 3% to $124 — "the turnaround remains driven more by getting existing buyers to spend more than by expanding the audience." The company is also getting radically simpler: it completed the sale of Depop to eBay for $1.4B after quarter-end (following last year's Reverb sale), then announced a 12% workforce reduction (~220 roles) to speed decision-making, alongside a new $2B share repurchase authorization. "Etsy is now essentially back to being Etsy, with one core marketplace and a leaner organization. The remaining question is whether buyer growth can follow spending higher." A disclosed author holding. | article ↗ |
| TOST | Toast | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | Locations reaccelerate. Q2 revenue +23% Y/Y to $1.91B (a $40M beat) with GAAP EPS $0.26 ($0.06 beat), adjusted EBITDA $221M (+37%) and ARR accelerating 25% to $2.4B. The standout answered Q1's worry directly: Toast added a record 9,500 net locations, up sharply from 7,000 in Q1 and 1,000 above its previous record, taking total locations to roughly 180,000 with GPV +22% to $61B — and "most of the new adds still came from the core restaurant business, even as enterprise, international, and retail expand the TAM." AI monetisation is becoming tangible: Toast IQ Grow, its agentic marketing product, "is now the fastest-growing product Toast has ever launched and is on track to become its fastest to $10 million in ARR," with the roadmap extending into voice, scheduling, payroll, inventory and accounting agents. FY26 recurring gross profit growth raised to 23–25% (from 21–23%) and adjusted EBITDA to $805–$825M (a $145M raise) even while reinvesting a $10M tariff refund. "Q1 raised the question of whether location growth was slowing. Q2 answered it with a record quarter." A disclosed author holding. | article ↗ |
| XYZ | Block (Square / Cash App) | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | Square catches up. Q2 revenue +9% Y/Y to $6.6B (a $140M beat) with adjusted EPS $1.02 ($0.15 beat), gross profit +25% to $3.2B, adjusted EBITDA $1.17B and adjusted operating margin at a record 27%. The fix investors were waiting for landed: Square gross profit grew 13%, in line with GPV, finally closing the gap between payment volume and monetization, with US GPV accelerating to 10% — its fastest since Q2 2023 — and international at +28%. Cash App gross profit +31%, primary banking actives +17%, consumer lending originations +59% to $18.9B. Neighborhoods, which connects Cash App consumers with Square sellers, crossed $1B in annualized seller GPV — "an early sign that Block's two ecosystems are starting to reinforce each other." The AI-driven operating model shows in throughput: code changes per engineer up 150% since the start of the year, with roughly three times as many features shipped in H1 as a year ago. FY26 gross profit guidance raised to $12.51B, adjusted operating income to $3.47B and adjusted EPS to $4.02. A disclosed author holding. | article ↗ |
| FI | Fiserv | QT · SA · STK | Negative | Reset gets deeper. Q2 revenue −4% Y/Y to $5.3B (an $80M miss) with adjusted EPS $1.84 ($0.08 miss); organic revenue declined 5%, Merchant Solutions −1% and Financial Solutions worsening to −8%, with operating margin down to 19% (free cash flow rebounded to $1.1B partly on working-capital timing). Financial Solutions is the core problem as client implementations take longer than expected, while Clover faces weaker hardware sales after two unusually strong replacement years; management insists the slowdown is "primarily timing rather than lost business, with recurring revenue still growing." New CEO Takis Georgakopoulos is spending into it — an additional $100M into technology infrastructure and cybersecurity in H2 plus a broad portfolio review, with student-loan servicing, managed ATMs and some unprofitable India businesses already being exited and "larger divestitures on the table." FY26 organic revenue guidance cut to −1% to flat (from +1–3%) and adjusted operating margin to 31–31.5% (from ~34%). "Fiserv still maintains its medium-term growth targets. But the burden of proof is now much higher." | article ↗ |
| CRCL | Circle Internet Group | QT · SA · STK · FA | Neutral | Arc hits the P&L. Q2 revenue and reserve income +7% Y/Y to $701M (a $12M miss) with GAAP EPS $0.18 ($0.02 beat). The model's weakness showed plainly: reserve income grew just 5% because a 25% increase in average USDC circulation was mostly offset by a 66 bp decline in reserve yields to 3.5% — Circle's revenue is a bet on rates as much as on adoption. USDC circulation ended at $73.3B (+19% Y/Y) but down from $77B in Q1 as crypto markets slowed, though on-chain transaction volume grew 151% to $14.8 trillion. The story was Arc: Circle roughly doubled FY26 Other Revenue guidance to $310–$330M (from $150–$170M), "primarily reflecting Arc token sales and milestones" — diversification away from interest income, "although Arc-related revenue is not yet the same thing as a recurring software revenue stream." Circle received final OCC approval for its national trust bank in July, putting institutional custody under direct federal oversight, with Arc's public mainnet scheduled for September 16; the through-cycle 40% USDC circulation CAGR target was maintained. A disclosed author holding. | article ↗ |
| Z | Zillow Group | QT · SA · STK · FA | Neutral | Growth without traffic. Q2 revenue +18% Y/Y to $772M (a $14M beat) with adjusted EPS $0.52 ($0.07 beat) and adjusted EBITDA $176M against ~$161M consensus, despite $36M of restructuring and impairment costs. Rentals remained the standout at +31% to $209M, Residential +7% to $465M despite a weak housing market, and Mortgages +75%. The problem is the top of the funnel: average monthly unique users fell 2% to 239 million and visits declined 2% to 2.5 billion. Management's defence is that roughly 80% of traffic still arrives directly, limiting search dependence, while AI-powered experiences get users viewing more homes and contacting agents more often — and Zillow is extending into ChatGPT and Gemini, "treating AI platforms as another acquisition channel rather than purely a threat." The cost base got another reset: ~500 roles eliminated and CFO Jeremy Hofmann's remit expanded to include COO after Jun Choo stepped down for health reasons. Q3 revenue guidance of $745–$760M fell below the ~$773M consensus, partly because mortgage originations are now expected to decline; FY26 revenue $2.92–$2.96B (13–15% growth). "But can this revenue growth sustain without requiring audience growth?" A disclosed author holding. | article ↗ |
| BKNG | Booking Holdings | QT · SA · STK · FA | Neutral | Travel holds up. Q2 revenue +8% Y/Y to $7.4B (a $160M beat) with adjusted EPS +15% to $2.54 ($0.11 beat); room nights +5% to 325 million and gross bookings +9%, both ahead of guidance — "the feared travel slowdown from the Middle East conflict was therefore less severe than expected." The conflict still lingers indirectly: elevated airfares and reduced flight capacity continue to pressure long-haul travel, with those effects now expected to persist through Q3, while the accommodation outlook was largely unchanged — "the weakness is concentrated more in flights than hotels." Higher-tier Genius members now represent more than 30% of active customers and nearly 60% of room nights, Connected Trip transactions grew low double digits, and restructuring savings were raised to ~$650M from $550M. On AI, Booking was notably restrained: traffic from LLMs is still "well below 1% of room nights" and its own AI tools remain early — optionality, not a growth driver. Q3 guided to 3–5% room-night growth with revenue, bookings and adjusted EBITDA +4–6%; FY26 still high-single-digit. "The Middle East conflict interrupted the travel cycle rather than broke it." | article ↗ |
| ABNB | Airbnb | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | Hotels check in. Q2 revenue +17% Y/Y to $3.6B (a $30M beat) with GAAP EPS $1.37 ($0.12 beat), GBV +16% to $27.2B and Nights and Seats Booked accelerating to 10% growth at 148 million — North America posting its strongest growth in nearly three years — with adjusted EBITDA of $1.3B at a 35% margin. The hotel expansion is becoming meaningful: thousands of boutique and independent hotels across more than 20 destinations, still a single-digit percentage of nights but growing roughly 3x faster than the core homes business and bringing new travellers who later cross over into home rentals — "less about competing head-on with Booking and more about widening Airbnb's top of funnel." The World Cup added 150,000+ first-time home listings, and major events "continue to give Airbnb a repeatable playbook for quickly adding supply." Product work shows underneath: customer support cost per booking fell 16% Y/Y, with conversational AI search and personalised trip planning in preparation. FY26 revenue growth guidance raised again to at least mid-teens and adjusted EBITDA margin to at least 35.5%; Q3 revenue of $4.69–$4.77B above consensus. A disclosed author holding. | article ↗ |
| MAR | Marriott International | QT · SA · STK · FA | Neutral | US momentum holds. Q2 revenue +5% Y/Y to $7.1B (a $120M miss) with adjusted EPS +20% to $3.19 ($0.11 beat). Global RevPAR grew 3.4%, with US & Canada accelerating to 5.0% from 4.0% — broad-based across segments and tiers, luxury RevPAR +9.1%, helped by summer travel and the World Cup and driven mostly by higher room rates. International RevPAR fell 0.5% as Middle East RevPAR plunged 43%, pulling EMEA down more than 5% despite European growth — worse than Marriott anticipated, though offset at the company level. The structural development is Bonvoy: new long-term co-brand card agreements with JPMorgan Chase and American Express, where Marriott earns high-margin fees on card spending plus brand-licensing royalties — fees were already expected to grow ~35% this year before any benefit from the renegotiated deals. Marriott added 17,900 net rooms with a record 629,000-room pipeline, 44% under construction; FY26 RevPAR guidance raised to 3.0–3.5% and adjusted EPS to $11.64–$11.81, though Q3 EPS guidance of $2.74–$2.82 came in below consensus. "The main risk ahead is Marriott's outsized Middle East exposure." | article ↗ |
| EXPE | Expedia Group | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | Consumer catches up. Q2 revenue +14% Y/Y to $4.3B (a $150M beat) with adjusted EPS $5.76 ($0.51 beat), gross bookings +12% to roughly $34B "well ahead of expectations" and adjusted EBITDA of $1.1B at a 26% margin. B2B remained the engine — bookings +21% and revenue +23%, its 20th consecutive quarter of double-digit growth — but the news is that consumer finally joined: consumer bookings +8%, including the fastest US growth in 15 quarters, with Vrbo gaining traction as more than 40% of its bookings used partner-funded offers. Demand proved more resilient than feared: APAC rebounded as Middle East disruption eased while Europe stayed pressured by higher airfares and reduced capacity, and "the FIFA World Cup provided only a modest bookings boost, meaning the underlying strength was broader than the event itself." FY26 guidance raised across the board — gross bookings growth to 8–9% (from 6–8%), revenue to 9–10% (from 6–9%) and adjusted EBITDA margin expansion to 150–175 bps (from 100–125 bps). "The turnaround is becoming less dependent on a single engine." | article ↗ |
| APP | AppLovin | QT · SA · STK · FA | Neutral | Model timing miss. Q2 revenue +53% Y/Y to $1.92B — but a $20M miss — with GAAP EPS $3.77 ($0.02 beat) and adjusted EBITDA +58% to $1.61B at an 84% margin, slightly below guidance; shares plunged more than 20%. The cause was AI model cadence: AppLovin "had fewer meaningful model improvements during Q2 than usual, with the next major performance upgrade landing just after quarter-end. Because better targeting improves advertiser returns and unlocks more spend, the cadence of model releases can materially move quarterly growth" — management says demand and competition did not weaken and Q3 has already reaccelerated. The consumer expansion is slower than June's launch implied: AXON, its AI ad-buying platform, opened to broader self-serve advertisers, but growth still comes from a small number of advertisers scaling spend, with creative the biggest onboarding bottleneck — its GenAI tools can't yet consistently produce the 30–60 second videos many advertisers need. Q3 guided to $2.06–$2.09B revenue and $1.71–$1.74B adjusted EBITDA, both slightly below consensus, absorbing higher AI compute spend. One overhang cleared: the SEC concluded its inquiry with no recommended enforcement action. Bottom Line: "Q3 now needs to prove the miss really was timing rather than a lower growth ceiling." A disclosed author holding. | article ↗ |
| TTD | The Trade Desk | QT · SA · STK · FA | Negative | Growth stalls. Q2 revenue grew just 3% Y/Y to $715M (a $36M miss), "its slowest growth since 2020," with adjusted EPS $0.34 ($0.06 miss) and adjusted EBITDA −11% to $241M, margin compressing to 34% from 39%; shares plunged more than 20%. Management blamed macro and execution: CPG and auto advertisers — roughly a quarter of the business — remain pressured by tariffs and weaker consumers, while "some brands are shifting budgets toward cheaper fixed-price advertising rather than TTD's targeting," and CEO Jeff Green admitted the company "underperformed our own expectations." Underneath there is traction: 217 Joint Business Plans with large advertisers (+38% Y/Y) whose revenue grows roughly 6x faster than the company overall, EMEA and APAC up nearly 30% YTD, and the Publicis dispute resolved. But the guide is the problem: Q3 revenue of at least $650M against ~$805M consensus — at the floor, revenue would decline about 12% Y/Y — with adjusted EBITDA around $160M. TTD is also rebuilding its senior team (new CFO, CMO and Chief Commercial Officer after a string of departures) and simplifying Kokai into Zuma. "The company now has a lot to prove, with few near-term datapoints for investors to lean on." A disclosed author holding. | article ↗ |
| PINS | QT · SA · STK · FA | Neutral | Growth speed bump. Q2 revenue +18% Y/Y to $1.18B (a $30M beat) with adjusted EPS $0.43 ($0.07 beat), adjusted EBITDA +24% to $311M and free cash flow of $270M. MAUs hit another record at 640 million (+11%), an 11th consecutive quarter of double-digit user growth. But the advertiser headwind rotated: large US retailers were last quarter's concern, and now Pinterest flagged weaker spending from Asia-based cross-border retailers following regulatory actions in Europe, with CFO Julia Donnelly saying the pressure emerged mid-quarter and continues into Q3. AI is central to the strategy — Performance+ automating bidding, targeting and creative — and Pinterest committed $4 billion to AWS through 2031 to support its AI infrastructure; Gen Z remains its largest and fastest-growing cohort at more than half of users. The slowdown is the issue: Q3 revenue guided to $1.19–$1.21B, implying 13–15% growth, and shares fell as much as 9% after hours despite the beat. "Advertiser concentration keeps creating volatility." A disclosed author holding. | article ↗ | |
| SNAP | Snap | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | Reset starts working. Q2 revenue +19% Y/Y to $1.60B (a $70M beat) with GAAP EPS of −$0.10 ($0.02 beat), adjusted EBITDA surging more than 500% to $250M, free cash flow more than quadrupling to $121M and net loss narrowing 38% to $164M; shares jumped more than 10% after hours. The operating leverage is the story: the adjusted cost base grew just 4% against much faster revenue growth, adjusted gross margin reached 59% (just shy of the 60% FY26 target), and April's 1,000-person layoff is expected to remove more than $500M from the annualized cost base by H2. Advertising revenue +9% to $1.28B on better large-North-American-advertiser performance, SMB momentum and AI-powered automation, with Sponsored Snaps gaining traction and ARPU +13% to $3.25 — while the faster-growing piece is direct revenue, Other +85% to $316M on Snapchat+, Memories Storage and Lens+. DAUs 493 million (+5%) and MAUs 971 million, with US growth helped by users over 35, broadening relevance in automotive, healthcare and financial services. Q3 guided to $1.70–$1.74B (~12%) with adjusted EBITDA $300–$350M. The $2,195 Specs AR glasses launch in September — "Snap's largest long-term opportunity" per Evan Spiegel — remain speculative, "but unlike past Spectacles launches, Snap is funding the experiment with a much healthier core business." | article ↗ |
| SPOT | Spotify Technology | QT · SA · STK · FA | Neutral | 300 million paid. Q2 revenue +14% Y/Y to €4.8B, essentially in line, with adjusted operating income +61% to €655M, gross margin at a record 33.4% (+190 bps) and free cash flow +14% to €797M. MAUs reached 777 million (+12%) and Premium subscribers crossed 300 million for the first time (+9%, 7 million net adds); automated channels reached nearly 40% of ad-supported revenue, up from 30% in Q1. On AI spending, management is framing cost as controllable rather than structural — building its own model-routing infrastructure to lower inference costs while developing more personalised products and higher-priced AI features. Reserved concert tickets with Live Nation gained early traction, with nearly 100,000 tickets claimed since June. The weak spot was guidance: Q3 MAUs of 788 million against ~794 million consensus, because Spotify is deliberately increasing ad load and adjusting the free product in some emerging markets to push users toward paid tiers, with operating income guidance of €670M also slightly light. "The near-term tradeoff is deliberate." A disclosed author holding. | article ↗ |
| MTCH | Match Group | QT · SA · STK · FA | Neutral | Tinder stabilizes. Q2 revenue −1% Y/Y to $853M (a $4M miss) with GAAP EPS $0.70 ($0.05 beat) and adjusted EBITDA +14% to $331M despite the revenue decline. Tinder revenue fell 1% to $458M as payers stayed under pressure, but engagement improved again: DAUs declined just 4% Y/Y, the best in 10 quarters, and management says daily users are close to turning positive for the first time in more than three years, helped by new recommendation algorithms, Double Date, Music Mode and Tinder's first major rebrand in years. The gap is monetization — Match Group payers still fell 6%, and Tinder revenue is now only expected to return to growth in 2027. Hinge remains the engine at +22% to $204M with MAUs +13% and European direct revenue +86%. Q3 revenue guided to $885–$895M, down 2–3% Y/Y, though adjusted EBITDA of $330–$335M implies another ~10% increase. "Tinder's product turnaround looks increasingly real, but Q2 exposed the next hurdle: converting better engagement into payers and revenue." A disclosed author holding. | article ↗ |
| DUOL | Duolingo | QT · SA · STK · FA | Neutral | Streak revival. Q2 revenue +18% Y/Y to $298M (a $3M beat) with GAAP EPS $0.66 ($0.05 beat) — but bookings grew just 8% to $289M, the number that matters for future revenue. DAUs grew 23% to 59 million, accelerating from 21% in Q1, with management expecting DAU growth above 20% for the rest of the year. The asterisk: a one-time Streak Revival campaign brought millions of lapsed users back by letting them recover lost streaks, while current-user retention hit an all-time high — "management says those revived users are retaining unusually well, but Q1's concern isn't fully settled yet. The company still needs sustained new-user acquisition, not just better retention and reactivation." On costs, Video Call has fallen below one cent per session as Duolingo shifts appropriate workloads to open-source models, letting the feature expand from Max into the far larger Super base, with longer free trials as another conversion experiment. FY26 bookings growth held at roughly 11% and revenue 16%, with Q3 revenue of ~$302M slightly below consensus; shares fell more than 10% despite the DAU acceleration. "The real test is whether growth stays above 20% once the reactivation campaign rolls out of the comparison." A disclosed author holding. | article ↗ |
| NYT | The New York Times Company | QT · SA · STK · FA | Negative | Subscriber growth slows. Q2 revenue +11% Y/Y to $762M (an $11M beat) with adjusted EPS $0.69 ($0.02 beat), adjusted operating profit +16% to $155M, digital subscription revenue +16% and digital advertising +21%. The weak spot is the funnel: NYT added 280,000 net digital-only subscribers, down from 310,000 in Q1 and below the ~295,000 expected, for 13.35 million total, with digital ARPU +3% to $9.94. Management acknowledged that declining search and referral traffic from big tech platforms is making acquisition harder — the clearest statement in the issue of AI search eroding publisher distribution — reinforcing the push toward direct relationships. Video is the biggest investment area, with thousands of videos produced per quarter and a dedicated Shows tab, aiming "to become as relevant for watching the news as it is for reading it," though monetization is early while operating costs rose 11%. Q3 digital subscription revenue growth is guided to slow to 12–15% with digital advertising in the mid-to-high teens; shares fell more than 15%. "Q2 exposed the challenge of acquiring subscribers as platform traffic declines." | article ↗ |
| PTON | Peloton Interactive | QT · SA · STK · FA | Negative | Profit without growth. Q4 revenue essentially flat Y/Y at $608M (an $11M beat) with GAAP EPS of $0.13 beating by a penny and adjusted EBITDA of $142M — and Peloton closed FY26 with its first full year of GAAP profitability, $63M of net income, $378M of free cash flow and net debt down to $123M from roughly $500M. But the subscriber base keeps shrinking: paid Connected Fitness subscriptions −9% to 2.55 million, paid App subscriptions also −9%, and monthly churn jumped to 2.2% from 1.2% in Q3 and 1.8% a year ago; subscription revenue still grew 7% purely on prior price increases lifting ARPU, while hardware revenue fell 14%. Peloton is broadening the product off the stronger base — Commercial grew double digits in FY26, Spotify extends distribution beyond Peloton hardware, and the Skōp acquisition adds connected Pilates. FY27 makes the trade explicit: revenue of $2.3–$2.4B, down ~4% at the midpoint, with adjusted EBITDA rising to ~$500M and gross margin expanding another 140 bps to 54%, and Q1 subscriptions falling nearly 10%. "Peloton must prove the business can grow again. FY27 guidance says that probably won't happen yet, with higher margins still being asked to outrun a shrinking subscriber base." A disclosed author holding. | article ↗ |
| SONY | Sony Group | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | Beyond PlayStation. Q1 revenue +8% Y/Y to ¥2.84T (~$17.8B) with operating income +40% to ¥477B — though FX did most of the top-line work, since sales actually fell about 1% constant-currency. The standout was image sensors: revenue +26% and operating income more than doubling (+125%) on stronger mobile sensor sales, better mix and FX; Music revenue +21% with operating income +14% (US-dollar streaming +10% in recorded music, +8% in publishing). PlayStation was mixed — gaming revenue flat, operating income +37% to ¥202B helped by US tariff refunds and FX, MAUs at a June record 125 million (+2%) but total playtime −4% and PS5 shipments down to 1.5 million from 2.5 million. Guidance improved anyway: PlayStation operating profit raised 10% to ¥660B and company-wide operating income up 8% to ¥1.72T on revenue of ¥12.5T. On the memory squeeze: Sony says it has secured enough memory for planned PS5 volumes with hardware profitability similar to FY25. It also confirmed it will stop producing physical discs for new PlayStation releases from January 2028, completing the shift to higher-margin digital despite ownership/resale backlash. "The quarter reinforces Sony's diversification." | article ↗ |
| TTWO | Take-Two Interactive | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | GTA VI preorders explode. Q1 revenue +2% Y/Y to $1.53B with GAAP EPS of −$0.18 ($0.03 beat); net bookings fell 3% to $1.39B but exceeded guidance on better-than-expected NBA 2K and GTA performance, with recurrent consumer spending −1% including a 7% mobile decline. The story is GTA VI: preorders opened for just five days during the quarter, yet Strauss Zelnick called demand "unprecedented and astonishing," saying Take-Two has never seen anything comparable — standard edition launching November 19 at $79.99, Ultimate at $99.99. Despite that, Take-Two kept FY27 net bookings guidance at $8.0–$8.2B (roughly 20% growth), "with management unwilling to extrapolate preorder activity into launch sales yet"; Q2 bookings guided to $1.62–$1.67B. The open question the newsletter poses is whether Take-Two is sandbagging its GTA VI assumptions — "the answer is not definitive yet, but 'unprecedented' preorders certainly strengthen the case," ahead of "what could be the largest entertainment launch in history" (GTA V sold 29 million copies in its first six weeks). | article ↗ |
| FOXA | Fox Corporation | QT · SA · STK · FA | Neutral | World Cup windfall. Q4 revenue +28% Y/Y to $4.2B (a $570M beat) with adjusted EPS $1.79 ($0.43 beat) and adjusted EBITDA +27% to $1.20B, as advertising revenue surged 78% to $1.92B on the FIFA Men's World Cup; FY26 closed with record revenue of $17.1B and record adjusted EBITDA of $3.9B. The tournament also worked as a streaming funnel: Tubi revenue accelerated to 35% growth and FOX One recorded 2.8 million sign-ups in June, its strongest month since launch, with retention from World Cup-acquired subscribers exceeding expectations — "suggesting live sports can become an acquisition engine for Fox's direct-to-consumer business rather than simply a linear-TV event." That matters because of the bigger bet: the planned $22B acquisition of Roku would add a major connected-TV distribution and advertising platform alongside Tubi and FOX One. Fox also declined to renegotiate its NFL rights early, keeping current economics until the league's opt-out window around the 2030 season, and FY27 gets a midterm-election tailwind. "The harder question is whether Fox can turn event-driven spikes like the World Cup into durable streaming engagement before adding Roku's much larger cost base." | article ↗ |
| FLUT | Flutter Entertainment (FanDuel) | QT · SA · STK · FA | Negative | FanDuel needs a reset. Q2 revenue grew just 3% Y/Y to $4.3B (a $90M beat) with adjusted EPS of $0.49 missing by $0.06, and adjusted EBITDA plunged 45% to $508M — hit by customer-friendly sports results, higher UK gaming taxes, prediction-market investment and World Cup marketing. The US is the problem: FanDuel revenue fell 6%, including a 15% decline in sportsbook revenue, as the market stayed subdued after last year's unfavorable NFL season and elevated churn, and Flutter is responding by "increasing customer generosity and product investment rather than protecting near-term margins." The leadership reset escalated — after FanDuel CEO Amy Howe departed last quarter, Flutter CEO Peter Jackson steps down on September 30, with Dan Taylor taking over (Taylor was already tasked with fixing FanDuel in May). International revenue grew 10% and prediction-market market-making is now expected to contribute about $50M of FY26 revenue, with early Q3 trading improving during the World Cup knockout rounds. Flutter cut FY26 revenue guidance ~$400M to $17.91B and adjusted EBITDA ~$210M to $2.66B, partly reflecting another $270M of deliberate US investment. "Q2 confirmed the reset will take longer and cost more." A disclosed author holding. | article ↗ |
| DKNG | DraftKings | QT · SA · STK · FA | Neutral | Predictions get expensive. Q2 revenue fell 5% Y/Y to $1.44B (an $80M miss) with adjusted EPS of $0.09 missing by $0.10 and adjusted EBITDA dropping to $115M from $301M a year ago. The disconnect is the lesson: sports consumer volume still rose 15% to $13.1B and monthly unique payers +9% to 3.6 million, slightly ahead of consensus — but customer-friendly sports outcomes and heavier promotions pushed average revenue per payer down 13% to $132. "The quarter was a reminder that rising betting volume does not always translate cleanly into revenue." Predictions is scaling faster than management expected: the Super App is live nationwide, and Jason Robins said Predictions customer behavior increasingly resembles Sportsbook, supporting the view that DraftKings' existing base and lifetime-value advantage can win the category — at the cost of promotions that were "a meaningful drag on Q2 revenue and profitability." Despite the miss, FY26 guidance was maintained at $6.5–$6.9B of revenue and $700–$900M of adjusted EBITDA, with the core business still expected to generate roughly $1B of EBITDA before Predictions investment, "giving it room to keep spending ahead of football season." | article ↗ |
| MCD | McDonald's | QT · SA · STK · FA | Neutral | Value misfires. Q2 revenue +4% Y/Y to $7.1B (a $40M miss) with adjusted EPS $3.38 ($0.06 beat), but global comparable sales slowed to 1.3% from 3.8% and US comps to just 0.8% — "higher checks kept sales positive, but US traffic declined." The weakness was largely self-inflicted: McDonald's replaced popular digital deals and Buy One, Add One offers with an under-$3 value menu that was inconsistently executed, and management said those changes explained roughly two-thirds of the US traffic underperformance, with too many simultaneous launches also hurting service times and satisfaction. The response: Skye Anderson named US president and operations simplified around a new "McDonald's > NEXT" strategy; beverages exceeded expectations and loyalty sales surpassed $40B TTM (+20%). International held up better — IOM comps +1.5%, developmental markets +1.9% — while the 50,000-restaurant target slipped from 2027 to 2028 as inflation raises development costs. "Q2 looks more like an execution stumble than a demand collapse." | article ↗ |
| QSR | Restaurant Brands International | QT · SA · STK · FA | Neutral | Burger King breaks out. Q2 revenue +5% Y/Y to $2.5B (in line) with adjusted EPS $1.07 (a $0.03 beat), system-wide sales +6.4%, comparable sales accelerating to 3.8% and adjusted operating income of $715M. Burger King US was the standout, with comps surging 8.5% versus 5.8% in Q1 and roughly 3.5% expected — outperforming the broader US burger category by more than 9 points as four years of remodels, kitchen upgrades, marketing and value offers under "Reclaim the Flame" finally show up in traffic and sales. The rest was mixed: international comps +5.5% with system-wide sales +10.7%, but Tim Hortons Canada slowed to just 0.1% and Popeyes remained weak at −5.2% comps (improved from −6.5%), with management still expecting Popeyes to turn positive in H2. RBI returned $435M through dividends and buybacks and maintained its FY26 target of 8% organic adjusted operating income growth despite continued beef inflation and a modest FX headwind. "Burger King and International are increasingly responsible for carrying the portfolio." | article ↗ |
| KHC | Kraft Heinz | QT · SA · STK · FA | Neutral | Green shoots. Q2 revenue −1% Y/Y to $6.3B (a $140M beat) with adjusted EPS $0.56 ($0.03 beat), though GAAP results were distorted by a $7.4B non-cash impairment — another write-down of goodwill and brand values. Organic sales fell 1.3%, with 1.3 points of pricing offset by a 2.6% volume/mix decline, hurt by the Easter reversal and continued weakness in meats. The trajectory is the encouraging part: US consumption declined roughly 2.5% in Q2 but improved to around 1% in July, while market-share losses narrowed to roughly 20 bps versus 90 bps in 2025, with early traction in Capri Sun, Mac & Cheese and parts of the Taste Elevation portfolio. Profitability is the price: adjusted operating income −18% to $1.0B as higher advertising, manufacturing inflation and volume pressure outweighed pricing and productivity, with another $100M of mostly marketing investment taking FY26 incremental spending to ~$700M. FY26 organic sales guidance was nevertheless raised to −0.5% to −2.0% (from −1.5% to −3.5%) despite a ~1-point SNAP headwind, with adjusted EPS of $2.03–$2.09. "The next step is turning those green shoots into volume growth without sacrificing even more margin." | article ↗ |
| CELH | Celsius Holdings | QT · SA · STK · FA | Negative | Alani carries the portfolio. Q2 revenue +11% Y/Y to $818M — a $52M miss — with adjusted EPS $0.36 ($0.06 miss) and adjusted EBITDA −12% to $184M. The acquired brands are doing the work: Alani Nu revenue +21% to $364M with retail sales surging 56%, and Rockstar contributing another $66M post-integration — while the core Celsius brand fell 12% Y/Y, versus +6% in Q1 (retail sales declined a more modest 2%, the gap reflecting inventory rebalancing, higher promotions and shipment timing). Management admitted the SKU cleanup went too far, aggressively removing weaker flavors while slowing new launches and "creating shelf and inventory disruption just as competition intensified," with the club channel a further weak spot as Costco's private-label energy drink pressured sales; the core brand is now expected to stay soft through Q3 before returning to growth exiting 2026. Margins are also slower to heal — gross margin flat sequentially at 48%, down from 52% a year ago on aluminum, freight and promotional spending — and are now guided to stay in the high 40s in Q3, pushing out the expected H2 recovery. "The portfolio itself is healthy, but the core brand has a real execution problem." A disclosed author holding. | article ↗ |
| ROKU | Roku | QT · SA · STK · FA | Neutral | The acquisition target, re-priced. Fox's planned $22 billion acquisition of Roku "would add a major connected-TV distribution and advertising platform alongside Tubi and FOX One" — the second time this hub has carried the deal, and the price cited here is above the ~$22B EV framing of the original announcement. The Fox read frames Roku as the scaled distribution layer that turns event-driven audience spikes (the World Cup's 2.8 million FOX One June sign-ups) into durable streaming engagement — while also being "Roku's much larger cost base" that Fox must absorb. (Referenced; not a stance call.) | article ↗ |
| EBAY | eBay | QT · SA · STK · FA | Neutral | The buyer on the other side of Etsy's simplification: eBay completed the purchase of Depop for $1.4 billion (including adjustments and interest) after quarter-end — the second Etsy disposal after Reverb, and the transaction that leaves Etsy "essentially back to being Etsy." Adds a scaled resale/Gen-Z fashion marketplace to eBay's own recommerce push. (Referenced; not a stance call.) | article ↗ |
"View" here is referenced — App Economy Insights is financial-analysis journalism; this is a set of earnings breakdowns, not buy/sell calls (BUY/SELL/HOLD ratings are shared only with App Economy Portfolio members). Following the source's convention, rows are Neutral by default, with Positive/Negative used only where the section's own closing "Bottom Line" clearly leans — 19 Positive, 7 Negative, the rest Neutral. Research: QT Qualtrim · SA Seeking Alpha · STK Stock Analysis. The "Source" links open the newsletter (no per-name timestamps — it's a written post). Author disclosure: he owns ANET, TEAM, DDOG, NET, HUBS, TWLO, PAYC, AXON, MELI, DASH, CPNG, XYZ, CRCL, TOST, ETSY, Z, ABNB, APP, TTD, SPOT, PINS, MTCH, DUOL, PTON, FLUT and CELH. Named only in passing and not given rows: Amazon/AWS (Pinterest's $4B commitment through 2031; DigitalOcean's and Snowflake-style capacity comparisons), Costco (its private-label energy drink pressuring Celsius in the club channel), Live Nation (Spotify's reserved concert tickets, ~100,000 claimed since June), JPMorgan Chase and American Express (Marriott's renegotiated Bonvoy co-brand agreements), OpenAI/ChatGPT and Google Gemini (Zillow treating AI platforms as an acquisition channel), Publicis (the resolved Trade Desk dispute), Deliveroo and Wolt (inside DoorDash), Superbank-style subsidiaries, Terns Pharmaceuticals ($6.7B, inside Merck), Apogee-style bolt-ons, Seagen and Innovent Biologics (inside Pfizer), Farfetch (inside Coupang), Arpalus and Skōp (Instacart's and Peloton's tuck-ins), Depop and Reverb (Etsy disposals), Rothera-style prediction-market JVs, Susquehanna, FIFA (the World Cup driving Fox, Marriott, Airbnb, Expedia and Axon), and the NFL (Fox's un-renegotiated rights; Flutter's unfavorable season).
A jargon-free summary of the read behind the names with a genuinely argued thesis this week. (Plain-language companion to the table above; renders on each ticker's consolidated page.)
Lilly makes the weight-loss and diabetes drugs Mounjaro and Zepbound. Sales rose 48% to $23.0 billion, beating expectations by $2.3 billion. The important detail is how: the number of doses sold rose 60%, while the average price Lilly actually collected fell 13%.
That is a deliberate strategy. Rather than defend a high price for a smaller number of patients, Lilly is cutting prices — including agreeing reimbursement terms in China — to get the drugs to far more people. Volume is growing more than four times faster than price is falling, so revenue rises anyway. International Mounjaro sales more than doubled to $5.2 billion on exactly that trade.
Two new products matter for the next few years. Foundayo is a weight-loss pill rather than an injection, and did $98 million in its first quarter on sale — small, but pills reach people who won't inject. Retatrutide is a next-generation injection that works on three hormone pathways instead of two; it passed three more late-stage obesity trials, with an application to US regulators planned for early 2027.
Full-year sales guidance rose by $2.5 billion. Reported earnings guidance did not go up, because about $3.03 per share of charges from buying other companies' research offsets the underlying improvement — an accounting drag, not an operating one. The newsletter's verdict: "the GLP-1 story remains a volume machine."
Novo Nordisk is Lilly's main rival in weight-loss drugs, with Wegovy and Ozempic. Its quarter was much quieter: sales up 2%, or 3% stripping out currency moves.
The bright spot is the pill version of Wegovy, which brought in about $500 million — up 40% in three months and past five million prescriptions since launch. That is the product Novo needed, because a tablet is far easier to distribute and take than a weekly injection.
Everything else is harder. The injectable version of Wegovy grew just 1%, Ozempic 5%, and Novo still expects its US sales to fall this year — squeezed by lower realised prices, reduced Medicaid coverage for obesity, and Lilly taking share. Its next-generation candidate, CagriSema, works well in absolute terms but lost a head-to-head trial against Lilly's tirzepatide earlier this year, which is why the pipeline comparison favours Lilly.
Novo did raise its full-year outlook substantially — from a 4–12% decline to somewhere between flat and −6% — so the trajectory is improving. But the read is balanced rather than positive: the company is now leaning heavily on one product, the pill, to close a gap against a competitor with both the faster growth and the deeper pipeline.
Pfizer beat expectations, and it still isn't the good news it looks like. Sales rose 3% to $15.0 billion, with the non-COVID business outperforming by roughly $1.5 billion — enough to absorb Paxlovid, the COVID antiviral, falling 95%.
The problem is where the strength came from: older drugs. Eliquis, a blood thinner launched over a decade ago, grew 19%. Meanwhile the newer bets stumbled — Pfizer wrote off $3.8 billion after an experimental lung-cancer drug from its Seagen acquisition failed a decisive trial.
That matters because roughly $35 billion of Pfizer's revenue loses patent protection by the end of this decade. When a patent expires, cheap copies arrive and the revenue largely evaporates. The company's response so far is mostly cost-cutting: another $2.5 billion of savings, taking the total programme to about $9.7 billion. Cost cuts protect profits; they don't replace lost sales.
Pfizer is buying options too — $650 million up front to a Chinese biotech, Innovent, for access to twelve early-stage cancer programmes. But early-stage means years away and mostly likely to fail. The newsletter's conclusion is blunt: the upside still comes from old drugs, while the expensive new bets have yet to prove they can fill the hole. Analysis, not a recommendation.
Arista makes the high-speed switches that move data between servers inside data centres — the plumbing of an AI cluster. Sales rose 38% to $3.0 billion, and half of every dollar of revenue became operating profit, better than the 46–47% margin management had promised.
The change this quarter was on the supply side. Arista has now locked in the memory chips it needs for 2026, expanded its manufacturing and distribution, and has visibility into 2027. It still expects the industry-wide shortage to run through 2028 — but with parts secured, it can finally convert orders it already holds into shipped revenue.
Demand is not in question. Its Etherlink AI networking product went from four or five customers in 2024 to more than 100. Arista has also committed $9.7 billion to buying components in advance — a company only pre-pays on that scale when it is confident the orders are real.
Guidance rose for the third time this year, to roughly $12.6 billion (up 40%), with margins raised too. The line that captures it: the constraint is no longer finding customers, it is getting enough parts to serve them. The author owns it; analysis, not a recommendation.
Sandisk makes flash memory (NAND) — the chips inside storage drives. Its revenue rose 372% in a year to $9.0 billion, and 85 cents of every dollar of sales was gross profit. Those are not normal numbers for a memory company; they are shortage numbers.
The cause is AI. Training and running AI models requires enormous amounts of fast storage, and data-centre customers now take 38% of Sandisk's output, up from 12% a year ago. There isn't enough supply: management expects to be rationing chips to customers beyond 2027.
Historically this is exactly when memory investors get hurt — prices spike, everyone builds factories, supply floods in, prices collapse. Sandisk is trying to break that pattern by locking customers into long contracts: eight multi-year deals averaging more than four years, backed by $16.5 billion of financial guarantees, covering over half of next year's output and about two-thirds of the year after. In effect it is selling forward the shortage.
One odd decision: Sandisk spent $4.5 billion buying back its own shares after the stock had risen roughly 1,800% — buying high, which the newsletter flags as questionable.
Next quarter is guided higher again. The reason this is a neutral rather than a positive read is stated in the article itself: the whole question is "how much of today's extraordinary 80%+ gross margin survives once supply eventually catches demand." Analysis, not a recommendation.
Cloudflare sits between websites and the internet, making them faster and blocking attacks. Revenue grew 36% — faster than last quarter's 34% — and the shares jumped 16%, largely because the company had cut 20% of its staff and growth didn't suffer at all.
The strategic story is what the company calls the "agentic internet." For the first time, more traffic on Cloudflare's network came from software than from humans — AI agents fetching pages, calling services, and increasingly trying to buy things. Cloudflare is building the tools those agents need, including digital wallets and payment rails.
Crucially, it is not trying to be an AI company in the expensive sense. It isn't buying warehouses of graphics chips to compete with Amazon, Microsoft and Google. It sells the network, security and traffic-management layer that wraps around whoever's AI is running — a much less capital-hungry position in the same boom.
The supporting numbers are healthy: large customers (over $100,000 a year) up 27% and now 73% of revenue, existing customers spending 120% of what they did a year ago, and nearly 2 million developers joining its Workers platform in a single quarter — more than in all of 2025. Guidance rose again. The verdict: what looked like a cost-cutting story is turning into a growth one. The author owns it; analysis, not a recommendation.
Datadog monitors software systems — it tells companies which part of their application is slow or broken. Revenue grew 36%, accelerating again, profits beat, and guidance went up. The shares fell about 17%.
The reason is concentration. Datadog's single biggest customer — described only as "a leading AI company," using 17 of its products and having just signed a contract worth more than $100 million — has started reducing how much it uses. Management has built that decline into its second-half forecast. When AI labs grow explosively, their suppliers grow with them; when they optimise their costs or build tooling in-house, the supplier feels it immediately.
The encouraging half is that everything else is getting better, not worse. Customers outside AI accelerated from around 18% growth a year ago to nearly 30%, and 58% of customers now use four or more Datadog products — a stickier relationship. Usage by AI agents is exploding too: calls into Datadog through MCP, the standard that lets agents operate software, are up 22-fold since Q4.
So the quarter poses a clean question rather than answering one: can broad-based growth from thousands of ordinary customers absorb the pullback of one enormous AI customer? That is why the read is neutral. The author owns it; analysis, not a recommendation.
Atlassian makes Jira and Confluence — the tools software teams use to track work and write things down. Revenue grew 28%, its cloud business accelerated to 31%, and the shares rose more than 30%.
What changed is the size of its customers. Atlassian signed its largest enterprise deal ever, and the number of customers paying more than $3 million a year grew over 50%, with the $5 million cohort up over 70%. Contracted-but-not-yet-delivered revenue rose 44% to $4.8 billion, which gives unusually good visibility into next year.
AI appears to be why big companies are consolidating onto Atlassian rather than buying separate tools. Its assistant, Rovo, is used somewhere inside more than 80% of the Fortune 500, and it draws on a "Teamwork Graph" of over 200 billion connections between tickets, documents and people. A general-purpose AI model doesn't know how your company works; one wired into your own project history does. The proof point: customers who adopt Rovo grow their spending at more than twice the rate of those who don't.
One thing to look past: next year's headline growth guidance is only about 13%. That is because Atlassian's old self-hosted "Data Center" product is being retired as customers move to the cloud, and the accounting for those licences rolls off. The forward-looking numbers — 18% subscription growth and 25.5% cloud growth — describe the actual business. The author owns it; analysis, not a recommendation.
Axon makes Tasers and police body cameras, and — increasingly — the software that stores and analyses the footage. Revenue grew 35% to $904 million, its tenth consecutive quarter above 30%.
The new engine is counter-drone. Dedrone, the business Axon bought to detect and neutralise unauthorised drones, passed $100 million of revenue in a single quarter, with the broader Platform Solutions segment up 123%. World Cup security accelerated the demand, but management expects it to persist — cheap drones are now a permanent problem for stadiums, airports and prisons, not an event-specific one.
Two other numbers stand out. Axon signed two agreements with major cities worth more than $100 million each, and total contracted future business reached a record $15.1 billion — years of revenue already under signature. Revenue from AI products grew nearly 700%.
The cost of growing this fast is visible: newer products carry lower margins, inventory has been built up to $487 million ahead of demand, and rising memory-chip prices will squeeze margins next quarter. Guidance still went up. The article's framing: Axon's problem is no longer finding growth, it is funding and executing it without giving away margin. The author owns it; analysis, not a recommendation.
MercadoLibre is Latin America's Amazon and PayPal combined. Revenue rose 50% to $10.2 billion — its fastest in four years — and payment volume through Mercado Pago passed $100 billion in a quarter for the first time.
The most interesting thing here is a deliberate experiment with a measurable result. A year ago MercadoLibre lowered the order value at which shipping becomes free in Brazil to just 19 reais — roughly the price of a few household items. That means subsidising a lot of small orders. One year later, the number of items each buyer purchases is up 19% and the share of visits that turn into orders improved by 1.1 points. Cheap shipping on small baskets changed how often people shop, which is exactly what it was meant to do.
Lending is compounding alongside it: the credit book grew 75% to $16.4 billion, and — the part that matters in emerging-market lending — bad debts stayed near historic lows even at that growth rate.
The bill is margin. Operating profit was only 7% of revenue, and after $2.1 billion went into expanding credit and $441 million into infrastructure, free cash flow was just $214 million. The newsletter frames it as a conscious choice: trading today's margin for tomorrow's scale, "a la Amazon." The author owns it; analysis, not a recommendation.
Block runs Square (card readers and software for shops and restaurants) and Cash App (a consumer payments and banking app). Revenue rose only 9%, but the number that matters — gross profit, which is what Block keeps after paying card networks — rose 25% to $3.2 billion, with a record 27% operating margin.
The specific fix investors had been waiting for arrived. For several quarters, the value of payments flowing through Square grew faster than the money Square earned from them — meaning Block was processing more but monetising it worse. This quarter Square's gross profit grew 13%, exactly in line with payment volume. The gap closed. US payment volume also grew 10%, its fastest since mid-2023.
Cash App keeps compounding: gross profit up 31%, people using it as their main bank account up 17%, and consumer lending up 59% to $18.9 billion of originations. A newer feature called Neighborhoods, which points Cash App users toward nearby Square merchants, passed $1 billion of annualised seller volume — the first real evidence the two halves of the company feed each other rather than just co-existing.
There is also an internal AI datapoint worth noting: code changes per engineer are up 150% since January, and Block shipped roughly three times as many features in the first half as a year ago. Guidance was raised across the board. The author owns it; analysis, not a recommendation.
The Trade Desk is the system advertisers use to buy targeted digital ads across the open internet. Revenue grew just 3%, the slowest since 2020, and missed. Profit fell 11%. The shares dropped more than 20%.
Two things went wrong at once. Consumer-goods and car advertisers — about a quarter of the business — are cutting back under tariffs and weaker consumer demand. More worryingly, some brands are moving money to cheaper fixed-price advertising instead of paying for precise targeting. That is a challenge to the product's core value proposition, not just a soft quarter. The CEO said plainly that the company "underperformed our own expectations."
There are real bright spots: 217 direct agreements with large advertisers, up 38%, and revenue from those relationships growing about six times faster than the company overall; Europe and Asia up nearly 30% this year.
But the forecast is the problem. The Trade Desk guided next quarter to at least $650 million when analysts expected roughly $805 million — and at that floor, revenue would actually shrink about 12% from a year earlier. Meanwhile it is replacing its CFO, marketing chief and commercial chief after a string of departures, and simplifying its main product into a new version called Zuma. As the article puts it, the company now has a lot to prove with very little to point at in the meantime. The author owns it; analysis, not a recommendation.
Flutter owns FanDuel, the largest US sports betting brand. Revenue grew just 3%, and core profit fell 45% to $508 million.
Several things hit at once. Sports results went the customers' way — in betting, an unlucky run of favourites winning costs the bookmaker directly. UK gaming taxes rose. Flutter is spending on prediction markets, a newer product where people trade on outcomes rather than place fixed bets. And it marketed heavily around the World Cup.
The deeper issue is FanDuel itself, where revenue fell 6% and sportsbook revenue fell 15%. Customers have been churning since last year's unfavourable NFL season, and rather than cut promotions to protect profit, Flutter is doing the opposite: spending more on customer offers and product to win them back. That is defensible strategically and expensive immediately — full-year revenue guidance was cut by about $400 million and profit guidance by $210 million.
The leadership response has escalated to the top. FanDuel's CEO left last quarter; now group CEO Peter Jackson departs on 30 September, with Dan Taylor — who was put in charge of fixing FanDuel back in May — taking over the whole company. The article's verdict: the reset will take longer and cost more than Q1 suggested. The author owns it; analysis, not a recommendation.
DraftKings is FanDuel's main US rival, and its quarter illustrates a counterintuitive point: more betting did not mean more revenue. The total amount wagered rose 15% to $13.1 billion and the number of paying customers rose 9% — yet revenue fell 5% and profit collapsed from $301 million to $115 million.
Why? Because a bookmaker's revenue is what it keeps from the money wagered, and two things reduced that. Sports results favoured bettors — a matter of luck that evens out over time. And DraftKings handed out far more promotional credit, which is a choice. Together they cut revenue per customer by 13%.
Most of the promotional spending is aimed at prediction markets, where customers trade on the probability of events rather than betting at fixed odds. DraftKings' combined "Super App" is now live nationwide, and management says prediction customers behave much like sportsbook customers — meaning its existing base gives it an advantage in a category that is scaling faster than expected.
Despite missing badly, the company kept its full-year targets, arguing the core business still produces around $1 billion of profit before prediction-market spending — the budget it is deliberately using to buy position ahead of football season. That combination of a bad print and a maintained plan is why the read is neutral rather than negative.
Peloton reached a genuine milestone: its first full year of actual (GAAP) profitability, $378 million of cash generated, and net debt cut from roughly $500 million to $123 million. The turnaround of the balance sheet is done.
The business underneath is still shrinking. Subscribers to its connected bikes and treadmills fell 9% to 2.55 million, app subscribers also fell 9%, and — the worrying one — the rate at which subscribers cancel each month jumped to 2.2% from 1.2% three months earlier. Subscription revenue still rose 7%, but only because earlier price increases mean each remaining member pays more. Hardware sales fell 14%.
Peloton is using its stronger finances to widen the product: gyms and hotels (its commercial arm) grew double digits, Spotify carries its content beyond Peloton hardware, and it bought Skōp to add connected Pilates.
Next year's guidance is where the read turns negative. Peloton expects revenue to fall about 4%, while profit rises to roughly $500 million and margins improve again. In plain terms, management is planning to keep making a shrinking business more profitable. That works for a while; it isn't growth. As the article puts it, higher margins are being asked to outrun a shrinking subscriber base. The author owns it; analysis, not a recommendation.
Celsius sells energy drinks. Revenue grew 11% to $818 million — but missed expectations by $52 million, earnings missed too, and profit fell 12%.
The headline growth is entirely borrowed from acquisitions. Alani Nu, the brand Celsius bought, grew 21% with retail sales up 56%, and Rockstar added another $66 million. Meanwhile the original Celsius brand shrank 12%, having grown 6% just one quarter earlier.
Management admitted why, which is unusually candid. It had cut a lot of weaker flavours from the range to simplify the business, and slowed down new launches at the same time. The result was gaps on shop shelves and disrupted inventory precisely when competitors were pushing hardest. It also lost ground in warehouse clubs, where Costco's own-brand energy drink is taking sales.
Margins are healing more slowly than promised too — 48 cents of gross profit per dollar of sales, down from 52 a year ago, squeezed by aluminium, freight and heavy discounting, and now expected to stay there through the next quarter rather than recovering in the second half as previously indicated.
The conclusion is that the group of brands is fine, but the flagship has a self-inflicted execution problem that management doesn't expect to fix until it exits 2026. The author owns it; analysis, not a recommendation.
Take-Two publishes NBA 2K and, most importantly, Grand Theft Auto. The quarter itself was unremarkable — revenue up 2%, bookings down 3% but ahead of the company's own guidance.
Everything here is about GTA VI. Preorders were open for only five days within the quarter, and CEO Strauss Zelnick described the demand as "unprecedented and astonishing," saying the company has never seen anything comparable. The game launches on 19 November at $79.99, with a $99.99 deluxe edition.
The interesting behaviour is what management did next: nothing. Despite that demand, Take-Two left its full-year bookings forecast unchanged at $8.0–$8.2 billion, refusing to project preorder enthusiasm into launch sales. Companies that expect to disappoint usually raise guidance on early signals; companies that expect to overdeliver often keep the bar low. The newsletter raises exactly that possibility — that Take-Two is deliberately setting conservative assumptions ahead of what could be the biggest entertainment launch ever. For scale, the previous instalment sold 29 million copies in six weeks.
The read is positive because the demand evidence is real and unpriced in guidance; the risk is that a single title now carries an enormous share of the company's value. Analysis, not a recommendation.
Key points & figures extracted from the App Economy Insights PRO newsletter (article text in transcript.txt) for personal study. Not investment advice. © App Economy Insights for source material.