Asian Equities Traded in the US as American Depositary Receipts Rise in Thursday Trading

Thursday, February 20, 2025

We have an informative and far-reaching morning of investment data ahead of today’s opening bell, with Weekly Jobless Claims and Philly Fed manufacturing joining some key quarterly earnings reports. Pre-market indexes are once again starting off lower than the previous-day’s close, but the S&P 500 is working on a two-day record-closing-high streak.

The Dow is currently -150 points at this hour, with the S&P 500 -17. The Nasdaq has dropped -50 points currently, and the small-cap Russell 2000 is -4 points. Bond yields remain steady but with a slight downward bias: the 10-year is currently at +4.511% and the 2-year is +4.257%.

Weekly Jobless Claims Keeping Steady

Initial Jobless Claims for last week came in slightly above estimates — 219K from 215K expected — and up from the slightly upwardly revised 214K from the prior week. Still, it’s the third week of the last four sub-220K; this is not a terribly meaningful threshold, more just a round number. We had a one-week outlier at +260K new claims the first week in October of last year.

Continuing Claims also stayed range-bound: 1.869 million, while notably ahead of where longer-term claims were a year ago (sub-1.8 million), is the fourth-straight week below 1.9 million. Again, this is not a key threshold — that would be 2 million longer-term jobless claims per month. We haven’t been there since the first week of November 2021, and multitudes lower than the Covid-era layoff nightmare.

Philly Fed Notches 2nd-Best Level of the Year

The latest manufacturing survey for the sixth-largest city in the U.S. — the Philly Fed index — came in at +18.1 for the month of February this morning, above expectations for +13.2. This follows the strongest monthly headline in this metric, +44.3, which was the highest level we’ve seen since April of 2021. This index demonstrated the highest prices paid in two years. As we’ve seen elsewhere, this is bad news for the Fed lowering interest rates, but good for the economy at large.

Quarterly Earnings Roundup: WMT, BABA & More

Walmart WMT posted Q4 earnings ahead of today’s open, outpacing estimates on the bottom line by a penny — 66 cents per share versus 65 expected — on a truly breathtaking $180.55 billion in sales over the three-month period. However, guidance was for trimming sales expectations, as the company does not believe it will be immune from new tariff policy on imported goods from China. Shares were down -6% on the news. For more on WMT’s earnings. click here.

Check out the updated Zacks Earnings Calendar here.

Alibaba BABA shares, on the other hand, are up +12% this morning following fiscal Q3 earnings hitting the tape: earnings of $2.93 per ADS was shy of the $3.08 in the Zacks consensus, but revenues of $38.6 billion were ahead of the $38.2 billion projected. The bigger news here may be the shift in policy from China’s leaders, signaling an end to the crackdown on major companies in Chinese tech, like BABA.

TripAdvisor TRIP saw another good quarter this morning, with Q4 earnings coming in at 30 cents per share as opposed to the expected 21 cents (though off the year-ago level of 38 cents per share a year ago). Revenues of $411 million outpaced estimates by +2.6%. TRIP shares have gained almost +20% year to date, but market participants are selling the news -2.5%. Will American travel keep up its lofty levels? That’s the question. For more on TRIP’s earnings, click here.

Wayfair W, however, saw a big -1350% earnings miss for its Q4 bottom line this morning, posting -$0.02 per share versus projections for +$0.25. Revenues beat estimates by +1.73% to $3.12 billion in the quarter, and this turnaround in sales growth is generating interest in the stock, which is now up +8.5% in pre-market trading. For more on W’s earnings, click here.

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Zacks Investment Research

iQIYI said Thursday it has priced an upsized offering of $350 million of 4.625% convertible senior notes due 2030.

The net proceeds of the offering amounted to about $344.8 million, which will be used to repay and/or repurchase debt and for general corporate purposes, the China-based provider of online video services said.

The offering is expected to close on or about Feb. 24, iQIYI said.

The company also said that right after it priced the notes, it entered into agreements for the repurchase of about $300 million of its existing convertible senior notes.

Shares were down over 9% in recent Thursday trading.