To The Moon

U.S. stock index futures were mixed on Friday, a day after the benchmark S&P 500 marked a 20% rally from lows, while inflation data and U.S. monetary policy decision due next week kept investors on their toes.

Market Snapshot

At 7:50 a.m. ET, Dow e-minis were down 56 points, or 0.17%, S&P 500 e-minis were plat, and Nasdaq 100 e-minis were up 20.5 points, or 0.14%.

Pre-Market Movers

Tesla (TSLA), General Motors (GM) - Tesla Inc shares rose 6.2% after General Motors said it would adopt Tesla's North American charging plug standard and give GM's electric vehicle buyers access to the Tesla Supercharger network. GM shares climbed 4.2%.

On Friday, Wedbush raised its price target on Tesla to $300 from $215 and maintained its Outperform rating on the shares.

NIO (NIO) - The Chinese electric-vehicle maker, reported a wider first-quarter loss and revenue that was lower than analysts’ expectations. The company’s outlook for the second quarter also disappointed. American depositary receipts of NIO declined 1.7%.

DocuSign (DOCU) - The electronic-signature company, was rising 5.7% in premarket trading after fiscal first-quarter revenue and billings beat the company’s own guidance, and it raised its outlook for the fiscal year ending in January. Billings in the quarter were especially noteworthy, jumping 10% from a year earlier to $674.8 million, higher than DocuSign ‘s original target of 1% to 2%.

Target (TGT) - Target was downgraded to Neutral from Buy at Citi, and the price target was reduced to $130 from $177. Shares of the retailer fell 1.3% in premarket trading to $129.53.

Corning (GLW) - Shares of Corning, the specialty glass producer, rose 2.8% to $32.55 after analysts at Morgan Stanley upgraded the stock to Overweight from Equal Weight and boosted their price target to $38 from $35.

Braze (BRZE) - Cloud-based software company Braze rose 14% after revenue in its fiscal first quarter jumped more than 31% to $101.8 million, and the loss in the period was narrower than analysts’ expectations.

Planet Labs (PL) - The satellite imaging company, sank 16.5% after guiding for fiscal-year revenue of about $225 million to $235 million, below analysts’ forecasts of about $257 million.

Market News

GM Will Join Tesla's EV Charging Network in Step Closer to US Industry Standard

General Motors Co. will adapt its electric vehicles to Tesla Inc.’s Superchargers, following Ford Motor Co.’s lead and all but ensuring it will become an industry standard in the US.

GM Chief Executive Officer Mary Barra broke her seven-month silence on Twitter to announce the news with Tesla CEO Elon Musk on Twitter Spaces Thursday, saying GM EVs will gain access to 12,000 Superchargers.

The move by GM effectively ends any indecision among automakers and their charging network partners over which standard to use. With the three largest US-based companies joining forces, it will put pressure on other companies to ditch the industry’s previous standard, called CCS, and build out their networks using Tesla’s system.

NIO Q1 Earnings Miss Expectations, Gross Margin Drops to 1.5%

NIO reported weaker-than-expected first-quarter results, with gross margin falling to just 1.5 percent due to promotional activities.

The electric vehicle (EV) maker reported revenue of RMB 10.68 billion ($1.55 billion) in the first quarter, below Wall Street analysts' expectations of RMB 12.275 billion and below the lower end of its previous guidance range of RMB 10.93 billion to RMB 11.54 billion.

NIO guided that second-quarter vehicle deliveries would be in the range of 23,000 to 25,000 units, down about 8.2 percent to 0.2 percent from the same quarter in 2022.

The company expects total revenue for the second quarter to be between RMB 8.742 billion and RMB 9.37 billion, a decrease of about 15.1 percent to 9.0 percent from the same quarter of 2022.

Considering that it delivered 6,658 vehicles in April and 6,155 vehicles in May, the guidance implies that NIO expects June deliveries to be in the range of 10,187-12,187 vehicles.