Markets
markets

Trump Media, which has never turned a profit, will buy back shares

The parent company of President Trump’s social media outlet, Truth Social, announced a plan to opportunistically repurchase and retire some $400 million in stock and warrants, sending the shares up early Monday.

While share repurchases have become a popular way for profitable companies to return excess cash to shareholders in recent decades, Trump Media & Technology Group is not a profitable company.

It produced a mind-bending loss of $400 million last year, despite only booking revenue of $3.6 million. (It cited legal fees, as well as $107 million in stock-based compensation, among other reasons.)

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the stock has been an absolute dog, dropping more than 70% from its March 2024 public debut via a somewhat hairy SPAC merger.

The president is, essentially, the largest single individual holder of DJT, with the company's annual report saying he was the beneficial owner of roughly 58% of the common stock outstanding at the end of 2024.

It produced a mind-bending loss of $400 million last year, despite only booking revenue of $3.6 million. (It cited legal fees, as well as $107 million in stock-based compensation, among other reasons.)

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the stock has been an absolute dog, dropping more than 70% from its March 2024 public debut via a somewhat hairy SPAC merger.

The president is, essentially, the largest single individual holder of DJT, with the company's annual report saying he was the beneficial owner of roughly 58% of the common stock outstanding at the end of 2024.

More Markets

See all Markets
markets

TSMC surges as Taiwan eases single-stock investment limits for funds

TSMC’s ADRs jumped 3% in premarket trading on Friday after the island’s financial regulator announced plans to ease limits on funds’ allocations to single funds.

Previously, active fund managers were limited to allocating up to a maximum of 10% of their net assets into any one company. Under the revised framework, local equity funds and active exchange traded funds that solely invest in Taiwanese stocks can allocate up to 25% of their assets in any listed company if it has a weighting above 10% in the Taiwan Stock Exchange.

The new rule, announced Thursday, will come into effect after the regulator issues an order on Friday. Relaxing the long-standing rule will mean fewer restrictions on local money managers to take full advantage of TSMC’s skyrocketing share price in recent years. TSMC, now Asia’s largest company by market cap, has seen its share price surge 150% in the past year — adding more to its gains in the last few days after crushing estimates in its first-quarter results.

TSMC is currently the only company that meets that 10% criterion, holding some 44% weight in Taiwan’s benchmark index, though the latest change also moved other large-cap Taiwanese stocks higher on Friday.

markets

Intel’s earnings send fellow CPU sellers Arm and AMD higher

A strong set of Q1 results and Q2 guidance from Intel is sending shares of fellow CPU sellers Arm Holdings and Advanced Micro Devices about 6% and 4% higher in postmarket trading, respectively.

Intel’s robust report is seemingly a rising tide that lifts all boats in the industry, not just a company-specific dynamic.

Arm recently pivoted to designing and selling CPUs for data center customers (like Meta!) in addition to its long-standing business of licensing out the design architecture.

And AMD, of course, has been a well-established giant in the space before it ever started offering GPUs.

It’s the latest reminder that the AI boom isn’t just juicing demand for the most advanced chips, but also memory, older-school units, and a wide array of hardware.

markets

Intel crushes Q1 earnings expectations, forecasts strong Q2 revenue, shares soar

Intel shares surged in after-hours trading Thursday after the semiconductor giant reported much better-than-expected Q1 earnings and sales numbers, as well as robust guidance for Q2.

Intel reported:

  • Q1 revenue of $13.6 billion vs. a consensus expectation for $12.42 billion.

  • Adjusted earnings per share of $0.29 vs. the $0.02 consensus estimate from FactSet.

  • A forecast for Q2 sales of between $13.8 billion and $14.8 billion vs. analysts’ $13.11 billion expectation.

  • A forecast for adjusted Q2 EPS of $0.20 vs. Wall Street expectations for $0.10.

“The next wave of AI will bring intelligence closer to the end user, moving from foundational models to inference to agentic. This shift is significantly increasing the need for Intel’s CPUs and wafer and advanced packaging offerings,” Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan said in the company’s earnings release.

The quarterly result was clearly a surprise to both analysts and investors. Shares were up 15% shortly after the report in after-hours trading — despite having risen roughly 50% already in the month of April before the results were released.

Intel’s results could not be more different from the previous quarter. In its Q4 report, Intel issued lackluster guidance for Q1, which it blamed on a dearth of available silicon wafers it could use to make finished chips. The stock plunged 17% the next day.

“Intel was explicit on the Q4 call that they were living hand-to-mouth on wafers,” Cody Acree, a senior semiconductor analyst at brokerage firm Benchmark/StoneX, said in a brief phone interview with Sherwood News Thursday. “If this kind of upside was possible, than why the ultraconservative guidance?”

The Q1 results are a significant coda to what has been one of the best periods of share price performance for the company in decades. The stock has more than tripled over the last 12 months.

That run-up, however, had seemed to far outpace Intel’s actual business results, resulting in a nosebleed-inducing forward price-to-earnings valuation nearly 100x expected earnings over the next 12 months, dwarfing even the valuations the company was receiving during the peak of the dot-com boom of the 1990s. But the Q1 numbers suggest the market was picking up good vibrations that seem to have been borne out.

markets
Saleah Blancaflor

The national average of US gas prices drops to $4.03

Drivers can breathe a small sigh of relief... for now. The national average gas price has gone down $0.06 since last week to $4.03 per gallon, according to the American Automobile Association.

The national average was at $4.09 per gallon a week ago.

Meanwhile, US crude oil prices have gone under $100 per barrel, which has played a part in helping drive down the cost of gas for customers. But how long the downward trend will continue remains uncertain due to instability along the Strait of Hormuz.

Loading...
 

(Event contracts are offered through Robinhood Derivatives, LLC — probabilities referenced or sourced from KalshiEx LLC or ForecastEx LLC.)

Gas prices are currently the highest theyve ever been this time of the year going back to 2022, when the national average was $4.11 on April 23.

As we head into the end of April, prediction markets currently show traders pricing in an 81% chance the price of gas could still rise above $4.10 by the end of the month.

Meanwhile, US crude oil prices have gone under $100 per barrel, which has played a part in helping drive down the cost of gas for customers. But how long the downward trend will continue remains uncertain due to instability along the Strait of Hormuz.

Loading...
 

(Event contracts are offered through Robinhood Derivatives, LLC — probabilities referenced or sourced from KalshiEx LLC or ForecastEx LLC.)

Gas prices are currently the highest theyve ever been this time of the year going back to 2022, when the national average was $4.11 on April 23.

As we head into the end of April, prediction markets currently show traders pricing in an 81% chance the price of gas could still rise above $4.10 by the end of the month.

Latest Stories

Sherwood Media, LLC produces fresh and unique perspectives on topical financial news and is a fully owned subsidiary of Robinhood Markets, Inc., and any views expressed here do not necessarily reflect the views of any other Robinhood affiliate, including Robinhood Markets, Inc., Robinhood Financial LLC, Robinhood Securities, LLC, Robinhood Crypto, LLC, Robinhood Derivatives, LLC, or Robinhood Money, LLC. Futures and event contracts are offered through Robinhood Derivatives, LLC.