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Philip Morris sinks on signs of cracks in Zyn biz, despite cheery earnings report

Investors are worried Zyn sales may have hit their peak.

10/21/25 6:54AM

Philip Morris International hit the skids on Tuesday after management reported signs of cracks in its Zyn business, despite an otherwise cheery earnings report for its latest quarter.

At first glance, the results didn’t appear to show a decline in the Zyn business that investors have been fearing. But on a call with analysts, Chief Financial Officer Emmanuel Babeau said the company leaned heavily on promotions during the quarter and expects Zyn shipments to slow in the current quarter. In its previous quarterly update, PMI had reported its first sequential decline in nicotine pouch shipments ever.

Philip Morris International shares fell about 7% on Tuesday morning. They’re still up about 20% for the year.

For the quarter, the company reported adjusted earnings per share of $2.24, compared to the $2.09 analysts polled by FactSet were expecting. It also reported revenue of $10.8 billion, higher than the $10.6 billion the Street was penciling in. The company shipped 224.6 million cans of nicotine pouches in its most recent quarter, up 36% from the same period last year.

PMI also boosted the low end of its annual guidance, saying it now expects to report an adjusted annual profit of $7.46 to $7.56 per share, compared with its prior forecast of $7.43 to $7.56.

Luke Kawa41m

Retail traders are pressing bets on potential short squeeze targets, sending 1-800-Flowers and Krispy Kreme soaring

Spurred by the parabolic surge in shares of Beyond Meat in recent sessions, traders are aggressively looking for potential short-squeeze targets with a number of buyer’s binges in the works.

1-800-Flowers.com spiked double digits late in Tuesday’s session, with the gains coming on heavy volumes the heels of a since-deleted tweet from a prominent social media account calling attention to a company with high short interest, high insider ownership, and low near-term debt — without even mentioning its name or ticker! Shares are continuing to build on that advance in the premarket on Wednesday, up 20% as of 7:37 a.m. ET. The company is the most heavily shorted member of the Russell 3000, per exchange data, with about three-quarters of its float sold short.

He didn't even list the ticker and this tweet sent the stock up 25% in 30 minutes. It's suicidal to be shorting stuff with high short interest. https://t.co/Xwh4rhW6Nb
— Farmer (@SowingAlphaSeed) October 21, 2025

Krispy Kreme, which enjoyed a run as a meme stock in late July, is also up about 20% in premarket trading, is also among the 25 most heavily shorted companies in the Russell 3000. The stock soared on Tuesday as call volumes spiked, and hasn’t had any major fundamental news to speak of — unless you count the announcement of its seasonal “Frankendough Dozen” deal (I don’t).

GE Vernova rises as backlog expands, despite earnings miss

Revenue topped estimates, while profit fell short.

Matt Phillips1h

Claire Yubin Oh & Luke Kawa1h

AST SpaceMobile drops after announcing new share issuance and plans to raise more debt

AST SpaceMobile is down in premarket trading on Wednesday after the space-based cellular broadband network company announced that it’s refinancing by issuing more shares and raising more debt.

Most notably for shareholders is that these plans include dilution to the tune of 2 million shares at $78.61 per share, with the proceeds being used to buy out $50 million out of $100 million in senior convertible notes due in 2032, which have a coupon of 4.25%, from their holders.

Separately, the company also announced an offering of convertible senior notes that was quickly upsized to $1 billion, which will have a coupon of 2% and are due in 2036. These notes have an initial conversion price of about $96.30 per share, more than 20% above where shares closed on Tuesday. There’s the potential for an additional $150 million of these notes to be issued.

If the full initial $1 billion of notes were converted to shares, this would notionally add around 10.4 million shares to the company’s shares outstanding (274.6 million as of the latest count, per Bloomberg).

AST SpaceMobile said it would be able to settle conversions of the notes through cash or stock, or a combination thereof, and plans to use the proceeds for general corporate purposes and “funding the deployment of AST SpaceMobile’s worldwide constellation of satellites.”

So, in sum: more shares, more overall debt, the potential for additional shareholder dilution going forward in light of this addition of convertible notes, and less debt in 2032 that had a higher coupon than these new notes.

Tom Jones3h

Texas Instruments slumps on disappointing Q4 revenue and profit outlook

Texas Instruments is down a little over 8% in premarket trading, as investors react to the weaker-than-expected fourth quarter guidance the company gave in its Q3 earnings yesterday.

The world’s biggest analog chipmaker said that Q4 revenue would come in between $4.22 billion and $4.58 billion, where analysts had expected $4.5 billion on average, per Bloomberg. TI’s profit forecast for the period also disappointed, after the company said that earnings would be in the region of $1.13 to $1.39 per share, compared to reported Wall Street estimates of $1.41.

While its actual third quarter numbers were broadly solid all told, with adjusted EPS at $1.59 meeting expectations, the Q4 outlook is a clear signal to some that recovery will likely be a little more sluggish than they expected. As the company’s CEO, Haviv Ilan, put it on an analyst call:

The overall semiconductor market recovery is continuing, though at a slower pace than prior upturns, likely related to the broader macroeconomic dynamics and overall uncertainty.

Texas Instruments counts more customers than anyone else in the semiconductor business and has a broader range of products, too, making it something of a bellwether for the industry more broadly, with its softer outlook weighing modestly on stocks such as Analog Devices, AMD, and Intel.

Matt Phillips16h

DraftKings moves to counter prediction market threat

DraftKings is holding onto its gains from after the bell yesterday, trading 6% higher in the pre-market, following news that it is buying Railbird in an effort to address the competitive threat from prediction markets that has weighed on its share price — and that of FanDuel parent Flutter Entertainment — for weeks.

The deal is then latest example of the increasing linkages and overlap between worlds of financial markets, gambling, and prediction markets.

Earlier this month, ICE — the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange and the ICE futures markets, among others — announced it would invest up to $2 billion in prediction markets company Polymarket.

And Robinhood shares have recently gotten a lift from its ongoing partnership with prediction market platform Kalshi, which has seen growing uptake of its events contracts that allow buyers to take positions on football games.

(Robinhood Markets Inc. is the parent company of Sherwood Media, an independently operated media company subject to certain legal and regulatory restrictions.)

By and large investor excitement over prediction markets — which has picked up since the start of football season — has seemed to come at the expense of Flutter and DraftKings, the two companies that dominate US sports betting.

Over the last three months through the end of regular trading on Wednesday, DraftKings and Flutter were down 23% and 18%, respectively, while the S&P 500 is up about 7%.

DraftKings acquires predictions platform Railbird