The Rundown - Figma Flunks First Earnings Test, Apple Plans AI-Powered Search Engine

Episode Date: September 4, 2025

Stock market update for September 4, 2025.This video is for informational purposes only and reflects the views of the host and guest, not Public Holdings or its subsidiaries. Mentions of assets are not recommendations. Investing involves risk, including loss. Past performance does not guarantee future results. For full disclosures, visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Public.com/disclosures⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

Public.com presents the rundown. Your daily market update in under 10 minutes. My name is Zaid Admani, and today is Thursday, September 4th. In today's episode, we'll tell you why the bond market is starting to flash warning sign. We'll also dive into Apple's latest attempt to revamp Siri and Figma's somewhat disappointing earnings report. Then stick around to the end of the show to find out the occupancy rate for movie theaters during the week. It's a lot lower than I thought. I got a great show for you today.

Let's go. Stocks bounced back on Wednesday with the S&P 500 up 0.5%. And the NASDAQ was up 1%, which was held by a big jump in Google and Apple stock. Google stock was up 9% yesterday hitting all-time highs. And Apple was up 4% thanks to a favorable court ruling. We broke that down on yesterday's episode, so go check that out if you missed it. Now, looking beyond the stock market, I think the bigger story this week might be the bond market. It's starting to flash warning signs again.

The U.S. 30-year treasury yield popped back above 5% for the first time since July. That's despite investors widely expecting the Fed to cut rates this month. Usually when rate cuts are on deck, yields fall. But that's not happening this time. And this isn't just a U.S. problem. Bond yields are jumping all over the world. Japan's 30-year bond yield hit a record high this week. the UK's 30-year yield reached levels not seen since 1998, and French bonds are trading at premiums

last seen since 2008. See, when bond yields start jumping, it's a signal from investors saying that they are worried about too much government spending and inflation. And higher yields makes borrowing money for governments more expensive. Essentially, investors want a higher interest rate for lending the government money. And this can also impact consumers like me and you. Higher bond yields means higher mortgage rates, car loans, and credit card rates for everyone. So I'm definitely keeping an eye on the bond market these days.

I know it's not something that we talk about all the time. It's not super exciting. But when the bond market starts acting up, it's definitely worth paying attention to. And this also sets the stage for the jobs report tomorrow. And we've been talking about this report all week. We're going to finally find out tomorrow morning on what the latest jobs data is

and the condition of the labor market. The last report came in surprisingly week. We're going to find out what happens with this report. So we'll break all that down on tomorrow's show. So definitely don't want to miss that one. Make sure you guys are subscribe for the podcast to stay in the loop. Also, if you guys have any questions for us, whether it's me, Mike, or Connor, let us know in the comments. We're going to do another Q&A episode soon.

We haven't done one of those in a while, so we're going to bring that back. So ask your questions in the comments on Spotify or YouTube. Let's run through some headlines, starting with Apple. Apple is planning to take on chat cheap E.T and perplexity with their own AI-powered search engine. This feature is being called World Knowledge Answers internally, and it's going to be baked into Siri. The idea is that Siri will be able to pull answers from across the internet and summarized tags, surface images, and videos, and even point you to local information similar to what you'd see on ChatGTPT and Google's AI overview. It honestly sounds like a great idea

if it works. You know, Siri has been useless for years now, and this is Apple's latest attempt at trying to make Siri better. And while I've mostly given up hope that Siri will ever be good, this overhaul might have a shot of being decent because the new Siri will partly be running on Google's Gemini AI. According to Bloomberg's Mark German, Apple and Google reached an agreement this week to test Gemini models on Siri. And the timing on this deal is interesting because remember, a judge just ruled that the partnership between Google and Apple for Google to be the default search engine on iPhones can stay. And this was a big win for Apple because Google pays Apple more than $20 billion a year. And since the court said that that deal was legal, I think that Google and Apple are going to start expanding their partnership, which might include Google's Gemini powering Siri.

Apple is also thinking about using Anthropics Claude model for some components for Siri as well. So Siri might actually get good because Apple realized that their tech was garbage and they're opening it up to outside tech powered by Google and maybe Anthropic. Now, I'm not trying to get my hopes up too much. I've been burned by this Siri revamp for so long now. And unfortunately, we're going to have to wait a few more months until the new. series is launched. Apple is expected to roll this out in the spring of 2026. But Apple fans do have the iPhone 17 launched next week to look forward to. So at least there's that, but Apple isn't

expected to talk too much about AI during that event. Also, I want to give a shout out to Bloomberg's Mark German. I don't know how, but he's always able to get the best scoop on what's happening at Apple. We reference his work all the time on this show. In fact, Mark German is going to be on this podcast in a couple of weeks. So I'm really excited for that interview. I'm already drafting up a list of questions that I want to ask them. If you guys have any questions that I should ask Mark German, let me know in the comments. Let's shift gears and talk about Figma. The design software company just reported its first earnings since going public this summer and the stock is tanking. Now on the surface, the numbers looked pretty solid. Q2 revenues for Figma jumped 41% year over year

to $249 million, which was just above estimates. And the company even squeaked out a small profit of $846,000. So, you know, basically breaking even. But expectations for Figma were really high, especially after their huge IPO. Remember, the company IPOed at $33 a share, and their stocks shot up to over $100 on its first day of trading, hitting a peak of over $140. The stock has pulled back since, but even with the pullback, Figma is valued at almost 20 times what Adobe is valued at on a forward earnings basis. So you have to have blowout earnings basis. So you have to have blowout earnings. in order to justify that kind of valuation. And for Figma, they just didn't do it.

On top of that, investors are starting to get frustrated that Figma's AI story isn't really paying off just yet. The company launched Figma Make and Figma sites earlier this year. Their AI tools that can spit out full apps or website designs. But Figma isn't charging customers for those features yet, so it's not helping their revenue. And then on top of all of that, starting today, 25% of employee shares can now be sold,

which means more supply hitting the market. So you add all that up and Figma stock is down more than 10% this morning. Now, the company is still growing fast. Management expects revenues to grow by 33% in this current quarter. They expect to cross the $1 billion in annual revenue this year. But it does seem like a lot of the IPO height that Figma had has now faded. And Wall Street is now more focused on their numbers and their AI strategy. Let's talk about some stocks making moves today.

Shares of American Eagle are flying this morning thanks to Sydney Sweeney. The clothing retailers said that their controversial Sydney Sweeney ad from this summer worked really well to boost sales. The company reported better than expected sales and saw new customers in every single county in the U.S. with Sydney's signature jeans selling out. The company also announced a new Travis Kelsey collection right after he got engaged to Taylor Swift. So American Eagles marketing team has been very effective. It's gotten the attention of shoppers and investors.

American Eagle stock is up more than 25% this morning at the time of this recording. Now, on the flip side, Salesforce stock is sliding this morning after the company posted better than expected earnings, but projected weak sales growth moving forward. For Q2, Salesforce revenues jumped 10% year over year to $10.2 billion. But the problem is the company expects growth to stay in the 10% range going forward. But Wall Street wants to see more from Salesforce, especially as they high. up AI. It turns out all that hype really isn't helping Salesforce revenue growth at all, especially when you compare it to big tech cloud companies. They've been stuck in the 10% growth

range since 2024. Salesforce stock has been getting punished all year, down more than 20% heading into the earnings report. And now the stock is down another 5% this morning following these earnings. It seems like Wall Street is tired of hearing about the AI potential and they want to see some actual growth. Let's wrap the show with a fun fact. The U.S. box office had its worst summer since 1981 when adjusting for inflation and excluding the COVID years. Going into the summer, Hollywood thought this was going to be a big comeback, but moviegoers just didn't show up. Weekly ticket sales only crossed $300 million twice all summer. For comparison, that happened nine times in 2019. In fact, some are wondering whether 20 to 25% of movie going

audiences are just gone for good. Honestly, I think that might be the case. There's just so many options for entertainment these days with TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, that people just don't need to go to the movies like we used to do back in the day. Plus, also, I think that people are starting to get really bored with all the franchises and reboots and theaters these days. So all of that is leading to an underwhelming box office. Now, what's funny is that Hollywood isn't changing strategies. Studios have already scheduled 14 franchise films for summer of 2026.

So expect more sequels and reboots and probably more disappointment at the box office. Here's a bonus fun fact that was really shocking to me. I was listening to the town podcast from The Ringer this week, and they interviewed the CEO of AMC Adam Aaron, and I was shocked when he said that movie theaters have a 14% occupancy rate during the week. So that means that Monday through Thursday, movie theaters are pretty much empty.

Well, all right, guys, that's the rundown for today. Hope you guys enjoyed today's episode. If you did and you have like seven extra seconds, consider giving us a five-star rating on Apple, Spotify, wherever you listen to your podcast. And if you are listening on Spotify, Don't forget the vote in today's Spotify poll. Leave us a comment on Spotify.

Ask us questions that you want us to answer in future episodes. All that engagement really does help us out. And it helps other people find the show. Thank you guys so much for listening. Shout out to Mike and Connor for all the help behind the scenes. And we'll see you guys back here tomorrow.