The Rundown - Spotify Shares Slip on Profit Miss, Hims Partners with Novo Nordisk for Wegovy

Episode Date: April 29, 2025

Stock market update for April 29, 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 five minutes. My name is Zad Admani, and today is Tuesday, April 29th. In today's episode, we recap earnings from Spotify, GM, and more. We'll also tell you why Hymn's stock is moonshotting today. Then stick around to the end of the show to find out why the White House is upset with Amazon about tariffs. It's starting to get pretty messy. We've got a great show for you today. Let's go.

We had another volatile start to the week for the stock market. Stock spent most of Monday in the red, but rallied to close out the day. In fact, the S&P 500 squeezed out a 0.1% gain, while the NASDAQ quite couldn't get there closing down 0.1%. There are two trading days left in April, and the S&P 500 is down 1.5% for the month. So if we get a decent rally over the next couple days, there's a chance the S&P 500 ends the month in the green. And if that happens, it would be pretty historic because it would be the first time since 1950 that the S&P 500 closed a month in the green after having a 10% intra-month drop. So it would be a pretty incredible turnaround. We'll have to see how the next couple trading days go.

It's been a pretty quiet start to the week, though. No crazy tariff news on Monday or comments from the president. But things are about to ramp up. We got a ton of earnings reports this morning. We're going to talk about some of them in a bit. And then later this week, we're getting earnings from the big tech giants, meta, Microsoft, Amazon, Apple. So everyone is looking forward to those.

And that might set the tone for the stock market for the next couple of weeks. We're going to be breaking down those earnings and more. So you definitely don't want to miss an episode this week of the rundown. All right, let's talk some earnings. Let's start with Spotify. They reported earnings this morning. and it was kind of a mixed bag. The music streaming giant reported strong gains in subscribers,

but that's being overshadowed by a miss on profits. Spotify's monthly active users grew 10% to 678 million that was in line with the company's guidance. Their premium subscribers jumped 12% to 268 million. So pretty solid subscriber growth, but what investors are sowering on is operating income, which fell short of expectations. Spotify is blaming soul.

charges, which it defined as payroll taxes associated with employees, salaries, and benefits. And those were higher because of share appreciation during the quarter. Now, despite that, Spotify's gross margins were 31.6%. That's pretty healthy. And overall profits of $256 million was up 14% from a year ago. 2024 was the first every year for profitability for Spotify. And profitability has improved for Spotify as they've pulled back on heavy spending on areas like podcasts. Although the company is showing signs of opening up the checkbook again in an effort to attract creators. Spotify said they paid out $100 million to podcasters in the first quarter.

It's a pretty big number. I got to figure out what I'm doing wrong. Now CEO Daniel Eck acknowledged there will be some short-term noise related to the macroeconomic environment, but the company is confident in its long-term story, which is increasingly focused on content creators. You know, whether that's musicians, podcasters, or authors. Spotify is making a big push into audiobooks. So overall, not a bad quarter from Spotify. Investors weren't so thrilled, though. Spotify's stock is down more than 6% this morning

in reaction to the earnings report. Let's shift gears and talk about GM. They also reported earnings this morning, and the automaker topped Wall Street estimates, but the company said they're reassessing their full-year guidance because of the auto tariffs. GM set their 20-25-year. guidance back in January, and a lot has changed since then. They haven't yet adjusted their guidance

to reflect the 25% tariff on imported vehicles that went into effect earlier this month. And there's still a lot more uncertainty left. There's a 25% tariff on steel and aluminum. There's possible duties on auto parts. That's still being worked out with the White House. So a lot of uncertainty for GM, which is making investors a little nervous. GM stock is down 2% this morning in reaction to these earnings. Now, there were reports on Monday that hinted that President Trump is considering a plan to soften tariffs on the auto industry. But again, the situation is fluid. And that makes it nearly impossible for executives at these automakers

to accurately forecast what their business is going to look like moving forward. Now, GM hasn't fully withdrawn their guidance, but they also haven't given any insight yet into how tariffs have impacted their sales so far. According to the later support, it looks like Trump will sign an executive order about auto tariffs today. That could be a pretty significant update. We will find out more information about that today

and we'll let you know of any major developments on tomorrow's episode. Gotta be pretty tough being an auto executive right now with all these moving parts. Let's talk about some stocks making moves today. Shares of him and hers are absolutely ripping this morning thanks to a partnership with Novo Nortis, the maker of the popular weight loss drug, WeGovie.

Novo Nortis will make WeGovie available on him and hers and other telehealth platforms. Now, Hymns used to offer their own compound version of a weight loss drug when there was a shortage. But these days, the shortage has been cleared up. There's plenty of supply. And the FDA is no longer allowing compound versions to be sold. So now Hymns is doing the smart thing by partnering with Novanortis directly to offer the real deal. I think it's a pretty smart move.

Hymns essentially acts as the go-to distribution platform for the weight loss drug. And they're also going to be offering ongoing support. Investors really like this news. It was a big spike for Hymn stock this morning. It's up more than 20%. At one point this morning, it was up more than 40%, which is kind of wild. I mean, honestly, Hymns kind of trades like a meme stock at times. Now, on the flip side, PayPal stock, not doing so hot this morning.

The stock is sliding after the company reported earnings. PayPal's business isn't growing very much. The revenue was up only 1% to $7.7 billion. But they were some bright spots. Like PayPal continues to grow their profits. PayPal's transaction margin dollars, which is basically how much money they make off of payments, that grew by 7% and came ahead of expectations. Venmo, which is owned by PayPal, also continues to grow.

Its volumes were up 20% in the first quarter. Personally, though, I've kind of become a full-on Zell guy. I don't know about you guys. I used to be big on Venmo. Zell was just kind of easier. But hey, Venmo's still growing. So the earnings weren't that bad, but investors aren't showing much enthusiasm for the stock. Their stock is down around 3% this morning.

reaction to these earnings. Let's wrap the show with a fun fact. Amazon is thinking about displaying tariff costs for each product. This is according to reporting from Punch Bull News. And Amazon's not the only one thinking about doing this. Timu is already starting to show import charges of up to 150% on customer's orders in response to the tariffs. Now, everyone knows that all the products on Timu are from China, but a lot of products on Amazon also come from China. So Trump's 145% tariffs are going to impact the cost of those. And it looks like Amazon and Tim Moore are just thinking about passing on the cost of the tariffs as a fee to the consumer. It'll be interesting to see how consumers react to this. Now, as I was recording this segment, there's already new breaking

news about this and things are already getting messy. The White House came out and blasted this move as a hostile and political act. So it's getting a little heated. And shortly after Amazon came out with a statement saying that they have no plans to list import fees on Amazon's main site, they're thinking about doing it for their Amazon Hall store, which is like their T-Mu competitor. I think all the products on Amazon Hall come directly from China. Amazon reports earnings on Thursday after the market close, so we'll see if they give more comments about this. I do wonder if more companies are going to start doing this, just adding an import fee at their

checkout page. Well, all right, guys, that's the rundown for today. Hope you guys enjoyed today's episode. Slow start to the week, but things are about to pick up. I highly recommend you guys tune in every single day this week. So if you guys want to support the show and have like 12 extra seconds, consider giving us a five-star rating on Apple and Spotify. If you're listening on Spotify, don't forget to vote in today's Spotify poll.

And leave us a comment on Spotify. We read every single one of the comments and we take your feedback into consideration. Like, we've heard you guys don't like the AI voice at the end. She's gone. So keep sending in that feedback that really helps us out, it helps us improve the show. And all that engagement also 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