Futures tumble on hot inflation, Lyft falls, Super Micro pops, Barrick Gold lags, QSR up
I was thinking about how I would tell my husband I need 3 days to go to a Beyonce concert. While I contemplated my approach, I received just the opening I needed. He sent me a calendar invite to notify me of a boys golf trip. Never has there been a more supportive wife. And not 5 minutes later did he receive an invite entitled “Beyonce Girls Weekend – Amber Away.”
The latest episode of In the Money with Amber Kanwar is now live on YouTube! We spoke with ETF investor Matt Hougan at Bitwise about the role crypto should play in your portfolio and how you should think about your exposure to minimize the stress (and losses). Tomorrow I speak with Ross Gerber of Gerber Kawasaki about tech stocks.
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The 2000s called: Looking at the best performers on the Canadian markets feels like you just turned off your Backstreet Boys CD because it is Thursday at 8pm and Friends is about to start. The best performing stocks in 2025 mirror those of the early 2000s: BlackBerry, Celestica and gold miners. Gold miners are rallying as gold hits record highs. Celestica is getting swept up in the AI trade. BlackBerry is…still a shell of its former self but clearly just got too cheap with the stock hitting a more than 20-year low in the summer before ripping 150% since then. Futures and bonds are tumbling after we got a read of inflation in the US that came in hotter than expected. Headline inflation rose 3% (vs 2.9% expected) while core inflation came in at 3.3%. This is now 14 months in a row that core inflation has remained above 3%. Yesterday, Fed Chair Jerome Powell reiterated that the Fed is in no rush to cut rates further. Today’s number underlines why that is. He testifies again later this afternoon and will likely be asked to speak directly to today’s inflation print.
Micro super: Shares of Super Micro are popping 11% as the company promised revenue in 2026 would be well above expectations ($40 billion vs $30 billion expected). They also said they will be able to meet exchange requirements to avoid being delisted by February 25th (recall, they missed their deadline to file financial information and were targeted by short sellers). This is where the good news ends. Quarterly results fell short of expectations on every metric: sales, gross margins and earnings per share. The company’s forecast for next quarter’s sales were slightly worse. And they cut their sales forecast for 2025 to below analyst expectations. So why is the stock rallying? It is already down 64% from its March high, the 2026 outlook is well above expectations, and nearly 20% of the shares outstanding are short. So even a little bit of good news can force a squeeze. Also, it is not every day you see a stock growing sales at a +65% clip and profit growing +45% in the AI flywheel trading at 13x earnings.
Need a lift: Shares of Lyft are tanking in the pre-market down nearly 14% after warning that cold weather is hurting demand for ride-hailing. This comes after similar warnings from Uber when it reported last week. It seems like the two are locked in a fierce battle for market share, according to RBC’s Brad Erickson. “…the company is seeing more aggressive pricing from UBER than expected which is weighing on the Q1 bookings outlook,” he wrote. Revenue also missed expectations. Aside from this there were some positives like better than expected profit and the announcement of its first share buyback worth $500 million. Evercore’s Mark Mahaney wouldn’t chase the stock here. “The key question for LYFT remains the company’s ability to sustain top-line growth while ramping profitability,” he wrote in a note to clients, “While we see LYFT’s valuation as reasonable, we would like to see positive fundamental trends sustained over time to become constructive on shares.”
A little rusty: Barrick Gold is slightly higher after earnings beat expectations however the enthusiasm is being reigned in by a lighter than expected gold production forecast for 2025 and less revenue than expected for the fourth quarter. The company also unveiled a new $1 billion share buyback. The lower gold production forecast seems to be weighing on sentiment as the miner deals with the temporary closure of a mine in Mali due to a dispute with the government. This has weighed on the stock and prevented it from keeping up with the momentum in the gold sector (see chart below).
Food wise: The owner of Tim Hortons and Burger King is rallying in the pre-market after global sales bested expectations. Restaurant Brands International saw 2.5% increase in global comparable sales vs the 1.5% expected. That is better than McDonald’s which barely grew in the quarter. “The most notable part of the print to us was the Intl segment (same-store sales) coming in well ahead of expectations (4.7% vs. 2.8% consensus),” wrote RBC’s Logan Reich. Shares recently hit a 52-week low in January as the company is in the middle of a turnaround that has it refreshing stores, increasing advertising and reducing customer complaints.
