Today's Highlights
📌 Top story -- scroll down for more updatesDatadog Just Crossed $1 Billion in a Quarter — and It’s Accelerating
4:28 pm — DDOG +31.33% today (-1.03% after hours)
By Sanmeet Deo
Team Rule Breakers
The monitoring software company didn’t just hit a milestone this quarter, it announced that its best days might still be ahead. Datadog (DDOG +31.29%) posted Q1 2026 revenue of $1.006 billion, up 32% year-over-year and a full acceleration from last quarter’s 29% growth. Non-GAAP earnings of $0.60 per share blew past the $0.52 consensus estimate, and the company raised full-year revenue guidance to $4.30–$4.34 billion. The market responded with a 24% single-day stock surge, one of the bigger post-earnings pops you’ll see from a company already this large.
The AI story is no longer theoretical. Some 6,500 Datadog customers are now running AI integrations through the platform, representing roughly 80% of the company’s annual recurring revenue. Enterprise deal velocity exploded: 11 contracts worth more than $10 million in total contract value closed this quarter, versus just one in the same period a year ago. Remaining performance obligations grew 51% year-over-year to $3.48 billion, meaning future contracted revenue is piling up fast. CEO Olivier Pomel framed it simply: more AI means more complexity, and more complexity means more Datadog.
The bull case practically writes itself: re-accelerating growth, deepening enterprise relationships, and a platform expanding into security, developer tools, and agentic AI (its new Bits AI SRE Agent charges per investigation, opening a fresh monetization layer).
The bear case is mostly the stock itself. After a 24% pop, Datadog is priced for continued perfection. A growth hiccup, or optimization from the handful of massive AI labs now driving a growing slice of new business, and that premium unwinds quickly.
Closing Bell
4:05 pm
Markets are retreating from yesterday’s record highs as oil hovers near $100 and traders watch for signs the Middle East war may be nearing an end. U.S.-Iran talks could resume as early as next week, with the fate of the Strait of Hormuz hanging in the balance. Tech held up: Nvidia (NVDA +1.80%), Microsoft (MSFT +1.69%), and Tesla (TSLA +3.14%) each gained more than 1%, keeping the Nasdaq near record territory. Most other sectors fell, pulling the Dow and S&P 500 lower. The 10-year Treasury yield climbed to 4.393%.
- Earnings after the bell: Airbnb (ABNB +0.41%) and Coinbase (COIN 2.53%) report today after the bell. About 85% of S&P 500 companies have beaten estimates so far, a resilient showing given the war backdrop.
- Notable stumble: Whirlpool (WHR 11.91%) warned the war is crushing its profit, sending shares tumbling — Shares of WHR closed down 12% today — a reminder that not every company is weathering the conflict well.
SiTime Crushes Earnings (Again)...
3:15 pm — +26.07%
By Yasser El-Shimy
Team Rule Breakers
SiTime (SITM +27.91%) has done it again! The market is celebrating the precision timing semiconductor specialist’s earnings results with a 31% spike this morning. SiTime has been guiding for a 5-Year revenue CAGR of 35% (something I had never seen in other stocks I follow), and they are actually delivering. Q1 results showed saled soared by by an astounding 88%, with gross profits jumping even higher by 120% YoY to a gross marging of 59%.
SiTime has been securing design wins for its durable and precisie timing MEMS solutions against legacy rivals. Data centers have added a new tailwind for the company, and their recent acquisition of Renesas’ (RNECY +4.77%) timing business has catapulted that data center exposure, and rounded up their timing solutions to effectively become a one-stop shop.
SiTime is in a league of its own from a products and execution perspective. They have effectively carved out a niche, and they have been the top dog and leader in it. Of course, semis can be notoriously cyclical, so I would only add cautiously at these levels.
NASDAQ: SITM
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PLNT Crashes. Did It Forget Its Customers?
2:51 pm — PLNT -31.43%
Planet Fitness (PLNT 31.19%) is having a rough Thursday — shares cratered 33%, on pace for the stock’s worst single-day drop ever, after the gym chain slashed its 2026 outlook and scrapped a planned price hike. New Year’s signups — typically the chain’s most important growth period — came in light, and CEO Colleen Keating didn’t sugarcoat it: "We may have pivoted too far." Translation: in trying to court fitter, wealthier gym-goers, Planet Fitness may have spooked the budget-conscious beginners who made it famous.
- The numbers behind the nosedive: Full-year sales growth guidance dropped from 9% to 7%, and adjusted earnings are now expected to fall 2% — versus prior guidance of a 4%–5% increase.
- The silver lining (yes, there is one): Q1 revenue surged 22% to $337.2 million, crushing estimates, and adjusted EPS of $0.74 beat the $0.63 consensus. The business isn’t broken — but the strategy needs a reset.
NYSE: PLNT
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McDonald’s Profits While Rivals Suffer
2:21 pm — MCD +0.079%; SHAK -28.78%
McDonald’s (MCD 0.14%) posted Q1 revenue and profit above estimates, with U.S. same-store sales up 3.9% — and the secret sauce is no secret at all: cheap food. The burger giant has spent two years hammering its value menu, and with consumers feeling the pinch from rising gas prices and general economic gloom, that bet is paying off. CEO Chris Kempczinski put it plainly: "You need in this environment value and affordability to be a strength." Hard to argue with that.
- The other side of the golden arches: Shake Shack (SHAK 28.26%) had a rough Thursday — missing on revenue and earnings, blaming weak traffic, rising beef costs, and declining tourism. Its stock dropped 28%. Ouch.
- Beef: everybody’s headache: Surging beef costs are squeezing franchisee profits at McDonald’s too, but management says its global supply chain and deal-driven traffic are the best medicine — and for now, the formula is holding.
NYSE: MCD
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Today's Lunchtime News
1:10 pm -- AMZN -0.8%
Amazon (AMZN 1.40%) said its pharmacy will stock Novo Nordisk's (NVO +0.09%) new Ozempic pill for type 2 diabetes at its kiosks and offer same-day delivery, expanding the e-commerce giant's footprint in fast-growing GLP-1 medications.
- Pricing and reach: Customers can order the pill for $149 per month with cash or through insurance, with the lowest insured price at $25. Amazon offers same-day delivery to roughly 3,000 locales and plans to expand access to 4,500 by year-end. Half of U.S. customers already have same-day access, with all others receiving medications within four days.
- Broader GLP-1 push: Amazon began delivering GLP-1 medications in 2021 and has stocked Novo's Wegovy weight-loss drug since January. In April, it added Eli Lilly's (LLY 1.23%) Foundayo weight-loss pill to its lineup. The kiosk strategy aims to cut shipping costs and expand access, particularly to small towns and rural areas where Amazon invested over $4 billion last year to triple delivery options.
NASDAQ: AMZN
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Atlassian Is Quietly Building an AI Empire
12:20 pm -- TEAM +5.5%
By Yasser El-Shimy
Team Rule Breakers
The Australian company behind your company's favorite (and occasionally cursed) productivity tools is transforming into something far more interesting: an AI-powered enterprise juggernaut that's quietly becoming indispensable to the modern workplace.
Atlassian's (TEAM +4.02%) quarter in a nutshell? Exceptional.
Cloud revenue hit $1.13 billion, up 29% year-over-year, while remaining performance obligations -- essentially future contracted revenue -- surged 37% to $4.0 billion. That's not just growth; that's enterprises locking themselves into Atlassian for years to come. Free cash flow clocked in at $561 million, good for a 31% margin. For a company still investing aggressively in AI, that's a remarkably healthy engine running under the hood.
But the real story is Rovo.
Atlassian's AI product is becoming a genuine expansion catalyst.
Sezzle Delivers the Quarter Its Rally Deserved
12:05 pm -- SEZL +19.8%
By Matt Frankel, CFP®
Team Hidden Gems
Sezzle (SEZL +15.96%) delivered the kind of quarter that justifies the run-up its stock had been on heading into the print, with both growth and profitability accelerating at the same time. Revenue climbed 29% to $135.5 million and beat consensus by about 5%, while adjusted EPS of $1.43 jumped nearly 46% year over year and topped estimates by roughly 16%. The combination matters because it shows the buy-now-pay-later platform, which lets shoppers split purchases into interest-free installments, is scaling without sacrificing margins.
The engine behind the quarter was a 48% surge in active subscribers, driven by a marketing pivot toward paid memberships like Sezzle Premium and Sezzle Anywhere that lock in higher-value users.
Arista's Best Demand Ever Isn't Enough
11:10 am -- ANET -2.3%
By Seth Jayson
Team Rule Breakers
Arista Networks' (ANET 3.62%) numbers were genuinely good with 35% revenue growth, beats on both earnings and revenue yet the stock dropped roughly 15% anyway, because investors wanted a bigger guidance bump. ("Why did the stock drop on such great news?" "Because it's a stock...") The CEO said this is the best demand environment she has ever seen in her tenure at the company, but Arista can't source enough chips, optics, and memory to fill all its orders. That's a maddening constraint, but it's also a fairly unusual problem to have, rather it used to be. Arista has always been a favorite of mine for its ability to actually produce free cash flow (while many peer companies grow 'n' burn). They spend some (but not even most) of this FCF buying back shares, which has kept the share count static (rewarding whom exactly?) but again, unlike many peers, who plow all their FCF into share buybacks, outside shareholders can see the FCF actually helping them, rather than being laundered back into employee comp.
Whirlpool's Red Flags Keep Piling Up
10:05 am -- WHR -11.9%
By Matt Argersinger
Team Rule Breakers
For Whirlpool (WHR 11.91%) it has been a parade of red flags the last couple of years:
- Consistently disappoint earnings results
- Eroding operating margins
- Loss of market share to lower-priced products from Asia
- Management's myopic focus on ever-elusive tariff benefits
- And most devastatingly for dividend investors, a severe cut to a dividend that had gone without one for nearly 70 years!
Unfortunately, the kitchen and bathroom appliance maker's first-quarter results only deepened the misery for investors. Lower sales volumes and a near complete collapse in profitability in the company's major domestic appliance business contributed to a major earnings miss, a slashed full-year outlook, and, gulp, a dividend suspension. As I write, shares are down more than 20% in pre-market trading.
At this point even a long-overdue recovery in the U.S. housing market -- my top (and really only) reason for continuing to assign any hope for the company looks like it won't be a panacea for Whirlpool's many ills. The balance sheet is still loaded with debt; savings from the dividend and planned price increases should boost cash flows in the short term, but improvement to margins and profits might be short-lived if sales volumes continue to struggle. At the same time, any benefits from new tariff policies designed to insulate domestic manufacturers aren't likely to help the company overcome a decidedly weak long-term competitive position vis-a-vis its low-cost Asian competitors.
Top of the Morning
10:00 am -- AMD -1.9%
By Tim Beyers
Team Rule Breakers
Large-scale spending on chips and systems supporting AI is unlikely to slow soon. That's how I read the inventory data reported by Advanced Micro Devices (AMD 3.05%) last night.
As a percentage of its $8.045 billion worth of inventory on hand at the end of Q1, 31.6% was finished goods. Only 9.3% was raw materials.
At the same point last year, 8.7% of AMD's inventory was registered as raw materials while 21.1% was finished goods.
AMD is working feverishly to bring more chips to market, faster. CEO Lisa Siu would only commit to bigger chunks of finished goods inventory if demand for her company's products was spiking rather than moderating.
It's unclear whether institutional investors are paying attention to the underlying inventory data. I'm not sure it matters. Revenue (up 38%) and per-share profit (up 91%) showed more than enough growth to light up AMD's first-quarter report.
In response, the stock is up over 18% in today's pre-market trading. The surge may also be due to predictions for accelerating growth. Q2 revenue is expected to up 46% year-over-year.
More inventory to meet more demand, in other words.
Nvidia (NVDA +1.80%) still dominates the AI compute market, but AMD is a strong competitor growing stronger with each passing quarter.
Opening Bell
9:35 am -- DASH +3.7%, FTNT +20.8%
The S&P 500 and Nasdaq edged higher Thursday, extending a record-shattering run fueled by easing geopolitical friction and blockbuster earnings. DoorDash (DASH +2.04%) surged 8% on a rosy second-quarter order outlook, while cybersecurity stalwart Fortinet (FTNT +20.19%) skyrocketed 19% after lifting its full-year billings guidance. Sentiment remains high as West Texas Intermediatefutures continue to slide on reports that the White House is finalizing a 14-point memorandum of understanding to end the conflict with Iran. This potential de-escalation, combined with a "secular bull market" in tech, has kept investors focused on bottom-line growth over geopolitical noise.
Market indexes
Fortinet's Hardware Revival Is Real
9:25 am — FTNT +14.0% in pre-market trading
By Seth Jayson
Team Rule Breakers
Yesterday was a good day to own Fortinet (FTNT +20.19%), and maybe even profitable depending on where you bought it. (My track record there hasn't been awesome.) The company reported Q1 results that were so far ahead of what analysts expected that the stock jumped around 17% in after-hours trading. That kind of gap between what people expected and what actually happened is worth paying attention to, not because it makes you feel clever for noticing, but because it suggests the business is doing something real. OT security billings up over 70%, free cash flow over a billion dollars in one quarter ... this is not a company limping along. Now the question is whether it can keep delivering against the very high bar it just set for itself.
PRODUCT (HARDWARE)
Product revenue came in at $645 million in Q1 2026, up 41% from $459 million in Q1 2025. That's the faster-growing half of the business right now, driven by demand for higher-performance FortiGate appliances, AI infrastructure build-outs, and OT security deployments. Pricing changes had a low single-digit impact on product revenue growth meaning the volume underneath the headline number was even stronger than it looks. On the billings side, secure networking billings grew 32% and OT billings grew over 70%, both of which flow through as product-adjacent demand.
Product was 35% of total revenue this quarter, up from about 30% in Q1 2025, so the mix is shifting noticeably toward hardware.
SERVICE
Service revenue came in at $1,205 million, up 11% from $1,081 million a year earlier. That's the slower-growing piece right now, but the leading indicators are pointing the right direction: service billings growth reaccelerated to 27%, and deferred revenue increased 15%, driven in part by SecOps growth. AI-driven security operations billings specifically grew 23%.
Service was 65% of total revenue this quarter, down from ~70% a year ago — hence the mix shift. The CFO flagged this directly on the call, noting the conversion from service billings into recognized revenue just takes time because contracts are recognized ratably.
NASDAQ: FTNT
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Morgan Stanley Undercuts Rivals With Crypto Push
8:30 am -- MS -0.13% in pre-market trading
Morgan Stanley (MS 1.58%) is aggressively expanding its digital asset footprint by launching spot cryptocurrency trading on its E*Trade platform. By opening the service to 8 million customers at a competitive fee of half a cent per dollar traded, the bank is directly undercutting rivals like Charles Schwab (SCHW 2.88%). While many major institutions have remained on the sidelines due to regulatory ambiguity, Morgan Stanley is leaning into a friendlier domestic political climate and the potential passage of the Clarity Act. The move follows the April launch of the bank's own Bitcoin fund, which has already attracted $231 million, signaling a major institutional push into crypto despite a recent market downturn that has pressured tokens like Bitcoin and Ether.
- Mainstreaming the Asset Class: This rollout marks a rare instance of a top-tier U.S. bank offering direct "spot" trading rather than just ETFs, effectively blurring the lines between traditional brokerage and crypto exchanges.
- Pricing as a Moat: The aggressive fee structure leverages E*Trade's massive scale to capture market share from specialized crypto platforms, potentially forcing a broader fee compression across the industry.
DoorDash's Revenue Miss Doesn't Tell the Story
8:15 am -- DASH +9.86% in pre-market trading
By Matt Frankel, CFP®
Team Hidden Gems
DoorDash (DASH +2.04%) delivered a quarter that leaned heavily on scale and acquisitions to keep its growth story intact, even as the costs of that strategy pressed on margins and cash flow. Revenue climbed 33% to $4.04 billion, lifted in large part by the late-2025 acquisition of British delivery firm Deliveroo, and total orders rose 27% to 933 million. Marketplace gross order value, the total dollar value of food and goods sold across the platform, jumped 37% to $31.6 billion, suggesting the company is not just adding orders but capturing larger ones, particularly in faster-growing grocery and retail categories.
The trade-off shows up below the top line. Diluted EPS slipped to $0.42 from $0.44 a year earlier because integration costs from Deliveroo, a $50 million driver gas-relief program, and continued spending on autonomous delivery and AI weighed on profits. Free cash flow fell 15% to $420 million for the same reason, and net revenue margin compressed to 12.8%. Management held its full-year outlook for modest margin gains but made it clear that heavy investment will continue, which puts the burden on the company to prove these bets eventually translate into operating leverage.
This Morning's Breakfast News
7:30 am -- ARM -6.91% in pre-market trading
Arm Holdings (ARM 10.04%) fell over 6% in pre-market trading as results warned of slower growth in the smartphone market due to a memory chip shortage, even as the outlook for AI data center growth was upgraded, providing an insight for the major tech companies that rely on Arm's services.
- CEO sees unit growth for phones "flip to negative": The shortage of memory chips was a key factor as Rene Haas flagged the slowdown in the smartphone division, an area it still relies on significantly for revenue. Arm provides the computing architecture that powers the iPhone for Apple (AAPL 0.04%).
- New Arm CPU has over $2 billion of customer demand across the next two financial years: The move to start to sell homegrown chips has been well received, with it being able to build on its existing scale in the cloud. The company has a 50% market share of the CPU compute market among top hyperscalers, including Amazon (AMZN 1.40%) and Alphabet (GOOG +0.05%).
Energy Drink Wars: Celsius Hits Record High
7:25 am -- CELH +4.60% in pre-market trading
Celsius Holdings (CELH +4.18%) shares charged higher in premarket trading following a blockbuster first quarter that saw revenue skyrocket 137.7% to a record $782.6 million. The performance was largely fueled by a 144% surge in North American sales, as the company's strategic alignment with PepsiCo (PEP +0.21%) continues to pay massive dividends. While the core Celsius brand saw a steady 6% uptick, the real story was the explosive growth of Alani Nu, which delivered $368.1 million in quarterly sales. This jump reflects the massive scale unlocked as Alani Nu transitioned into the expansive Pepsi distribution network, further solidifying the partnership's dominance in the functional energy category.
- Distribution Powerhouse Synergy: Moving Alani Nu into the PepsiCo system has front-loaded orders and widened retail availability, proving the immense value of Pepsi's logistics moat for smaller brands.
- Portfolio Diversification: With Rockstar Energy contributing over $66 million, the broadening stable of energy brands under the Pepsi umbrella is successfully capturing diverse consumer segments beyond traditional caffeine seekers.
NASDAQ: CELH
Key Data Points
Today's Take: PayPal Earnings: Win or Lose?
6:45 am -- PYPL -0.43% in pre-market trading
Here's a sneak preview, but head to the article to share whether you think PayPal beats the market over the next five years, or to submit questions to any of the featured analysts today!
By Meilin Quinn
Team Hidden Gems
My takeaway from PayPal's (PYPL 0.13%) Q1 is that the parts of the business growing fastest earn the least per dollar of volume. Branded checkout, where PayPal makes the most on every transaction, grew just 2%. On the other hand, Venmo grew 14% and enterprise Braintree grew mid-teens, but both run at much lower take rates (albeit Venmo's monetization is slightly improving).
So even though total payment volume grew 11%, the blended take rate slipped and transaction margin dollars only grew 3%. That imbalance is why I'd stop watching for branded checkouts to reaccelerate against Apple (AAPL 0.04%) Pay and Stripe. What I care about is whether Enrique Lores can monetize Venmo harder and sell more high-margin add-ons to Braintree merchants to offset this gap.
NASDAQ: PYPL
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Memory Stocks Fly as Scarcity Continues
6:00 am -- MU -1.10% in pre-market trading
Micron Technology (MU 3.01%) closed over 4% higher yesterday, with Western Digital (WDC 3.98%) not far behind, as memory sector stocks continue to rally amid chip shortages and continued AI demand.
- Mag 7 earnings detail higher capex spending: The jump over recent days can be partly attributed to big tech companies actions, with Microsoft (MSFT +1.69%) raising its capex forecast for the year by $25 billion, with Meta (META +0.58%) adding $10 billion. Both spoke of higher component costs as the justification.
- Micron due to generate 80 cents of gross profit for each dollar of revenue in 2026: Companies in the sector are able to have strong pricing power due to the current market backdrop, although some are cautious about the future prospects given historical volatility in related stocks.
NASDAQ: MU
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ICYMI: Wednesday's Scoreboard
5:15 am -- DOCS -0.23% in pre-market trading
Doximity (DOCS +1.32%) was the subject of the latest Scoreboard video.
Before the Opening Bell
5:00 am
U.S. stock futures extended their record-shattering climb Thursday as Wall Street braced for a potential geopolitical breakthrough. Iran is expected to deliver its 14-point response to a U.S.-led peace proposal today, a move that could permanently end a 10-week conflict and has already dragged crude oil prices back toward $94. While diplomacy buoys sentiment, fresh labor data from Challenger, Gray & Christmas revealed that artificial intelligence is no longer a peripheral threat to the workforce, having led all reasons for job cuts in April. As investors digest weekly jobless claims--forecasted at 205,000--the focus remains on whether AI's productivity gains can offset a cooling labor market ahead of Friday's monthly payrolls report.
- Tech Giants Lead the Charge: Buoyant sentiment in the chip sector continues to lift Advanced Micro Devices (AMD 3.05%) and Nvidia (NVDA +1.80%), with investors betting that a de-escalation in the Middle East will secure vital semiconductor supply chains.
- The AI Displacement Reality: April's layoff data confirms a strategic pivot by major employers like Meta (META +0.58%) and Alphabet (GOOG +0.05%), which are reallocating headcount budgets toward AI infrastructure and automated agents.
