U.S. stock index futures rose on Thursday as a strong sales forecast from Nvidia boosted chipmakers, helping outweigh worries about the Federal Reserve continuing to raise interest rates in the face of sticky inflation and economic strength.
Market Snapshot
At 07:50 a.m. ET, Dow e-minis were up 80 points, or 0.24%, S&P 500 e-minis were up 18 points, or 0.45%, and Nasdaq 100 e-minis were up 108.75 points, or 0.90%.
Pre-Market Movers
Nvidia (NVDA) - Nvidia was rising 10.3% in premarket trading after the chip maker reported better-than-expected adjusted fourth-quarter earnings and issued a revenue forecast for the current first quarter that topped analysts’ expectations.
Alibaba (BABA) - American depositary receipts of Alibaba rose 5.8% after fiscal third-quarter earnings at the Chinese tech giant topped analysts’ forecasts.
Lucid (LCID) - Electric-vehicle maker Lucid tumbled 14.8% after saying it expects to deliver between 10,000 and 14,000 vehicles in 2023, below Wall Street expectations of roughly 20,000 to 22,000.
Unity Software (U) - Unity Software dropped 6.1% in premarket trading after forecasting revenue for the first quarter below expectations. The company said it wasn’t expecting a recovery in the in-game ads market in 2023.
eBay(EBAY) - Shares of eBay fell 5.3%. The e-commerce marketplace company reported fourth-quarter earnings and sales that came in roughly in line with estimates but gross merchandise volume that declined 12% from a year earlier.
Etsy (ETSY) - The online marketplace for crafts and other goods, gained 3.1% after fourth-quarter revenue beat estimates and its forecast for first-quarter revenue of $600 million to $640 million was in line with analysts’ expectations of $621.6 million.
Teladoc (TDOC) - The virtual healthcare company, declined 4% after recording a large fourth-quarter loss on impairment charges and issuing first-quarter revenue and Ebitda forecasts below Wall Street estimates.
Moderna (MRNA) - The drug maker on Thursday reaffirmed annual sales forecast of $5 billion for its COVID-19 vaccines. Moderna's forecast was lower than Refinitiv estimates of $6.98 billion even though its COVID vaccine sales of $4.86 billion in the fourth quarter were slightly higher than estimates of $4.84 billion. Moderna shares fell 3% in premarket trading.
Sunrun (RUN) - Solar company Sunrun rose 1.5% in premarket trading after beating fourth-quarter earnings and sales estimates and telling Barron’s that the Inflation Reduction Act likely would benefit the company considerably in 2023.
Dollar General (DG) - Shares fell about 5% after Dollar General reported preliminary results for its fourth-quarter and fiscal year 2022 that were lower than prior guidance and weaker than consensus expectations from FactSet.
Bumble (BMBL) - The online dating site rose 5% after it reported better-than-expected fourth quarter earnings and revenue. Bumble posted revenue of $191 million, above the $186 million estimate from analysts polled by FactSet. Revenue also exceeded analysts' expectations, at $242 million versus estimates of $236 million.
Market News
Fed Inclined Toward More Hikes to Curb Inflation, Minutes Show
Federal Reserve officials continued to anticipate further increases in borrowing costs would be necessary to bring inflation down to their 2% target when they met earlier this month, though almost all supported a step down in the pace of hikes.
“Participants observed that a restrictive policy stance would need to be maintained until the incoming data provided confidence that inflation was on a sustained downward path to 2%, which was likely to take some time,” according to the minutes of the Jan. 31-Feb. 1 gathering released in Washington on Wednesday.
The minutes also said “almost all” officials agreed it was appropriate to raise interest rates by 25 basis points at the meeting, while “a few” favored or could have supported a bigger 50 basis-point hike.
As Chatbots Boom, Nvidia Sales Outlook Beats Wall Street Expectations
Chip designer Nvidia Corp forecast first-quarter revenue above Wall Street estimates on Wednesday as its CEO said use of its chips to power artificial intelligence (AI) services like chatbots had "gone through the roof in the last 60 days."
The world's largest supplier of chips used in data centers for training AI has become a key hardware supplier for large tech companies such as Microsoft Corp that are building services like chat-powered search engines.
Alibaba Beats Quarterly Revenue Estimates As COVID Curbs Ease
Alibaba Group Holding Ltd reported better-than-expected quarterly revenue on Thursday, as the Chinese e-commerce giant benefited from the country easing COVID-19 curbs.
Revenue rose 2% to 247.76 billion yuan ($35.92 billion) for the three months ended Dec. 31, compared with a Refinitiv consensus estimate of 245.18 billion yuan drawn from 23 analysts.
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