"Great Quarter?" Wrong answer, Sandisk

 

The market closed lower Thursday as the U.S.-Iran conflict and a 3.6% jump in crude pushed investors toward energy and away from risk. Oil majors carried the winners’ board, while banks and growth names took the defensive hit.  Earnings delivered the sharper warning: good numbers were not enough when outlooks or margins missed the story investors had already priced. Western Digital, SanDisk, Celsius, and Trade Desk all learned some version of the same lesson, while MARA’s $611.3M loss made the punishment easier to understand.  Stocks traders kept buying weakness anyway, with bullish attention clustering around Trade Desk, Applied Optoelectronics, and Red Cat. The split was clean: blue chips drove the indexes, but retail’s loudest arguments were happening farther down the market.  Today's Briefing: Powered by Stocktwits Community API. After the Bell: MARA’s shrinking Bitcoin treasury and widening loss put its AI infrastructure pivot under pressure.  Stocks: Celsius, Trade Desk, Western Digital, and SanDisk showed how quickly lofty expectations can turn strong growth into a selloff.  Stocktwits finally launched its own post algorithm to make finding great ideas easier!  What's Trending Now on Stocks

AFTER THE BELL MARA’s $611M Bitcoin Hangover  MARA Holdings, the Bitcoin miner expanding into AI infrastructure, reported a massive second-quarter loss Thursday as falling revenue and a digital-asset markdown torched results. And here we thought everyone was shifting over to data center rentals!  The RIP:  $MARA ( ▼ 5.25% )  rose 0.9% after hoursafter falling 5.2% in regular trading. Revenue fell 27% to $174.9M vs. $209.4M expected, while the company lost $1.60 per share vs. a $0.17 profit expected. A $343M digital-asset fair-value loss helped drive the $611.3M net loss.  Bitcoin-miner holders got the ugly contradiction: energized hashrate rose 22%, but revenue fell 27% and BTC holdings shrank 29%. MARA is pushing into AI and high-performance computing as planned capacity expands from 1.9GW toward 4.8GW. Next quarter, watch whether those new workloads produce revenue; more power without better economics is just a larger electric bill.  The Community Read: Retail turned bearish on $MARA earnings, see what holders blame ->   The Open Internet Closes  The Trade Desk, the programmatic advertising platform for brands and agencies, missed second-quarter expectations Thursday and issued a third-quarter forecast far below Wall Street’s estimate. Shares cratered after hours as the slowdown went from worrying to difficult to explain away.  The RIP: $TTD plunged 25% after hours. Adjusted EPS was $0.34 versus $0.40 expected, while revenue rose 3% to $715M versus $751M expected. Adjusted EBITDA fell to $241M from $271M one year earlier.  The third-quarter forecast is the fire alarm: Trade Desk expects at least $650M in revenue versus the $807M analysts anticipated. Management gets one quarter to prove its platform upgrades can stop the deceleration. Revenue growth and adjusted EBITDA margin must stabilize, or the open-internet story starts looking like lost market share with better branding.  The Community Read: The $TTD room is 64% bullish after the miss, see the turnaround fight ->

STOCKS Celsius Loses Its Fizz

Celsius Holdings, the energy-drink maker behind CELSIUS, plunged Thursday after second-quarter revenue and adjusted earnings missed Wall Street expectations while its flagship brand weakened.

The RIP: $CELH fell 18.5% to $23.77 on 4.8x recent volume. Adjusted EPS was $0.36 vs. $0.42 expected, while revenue rose 11% to $817.9M vs. $870.1M expected. CELSIUS retail sales fell 2%, while Alani Nu climbed 56%.

Holders now own a three-brand turnaround, not a one-brand growth story, with Alani Nu carrying declines at CELSIUS and Rockstar. Management is tightening assortments and execution as it tries to return CELSIUS to sustainable growth. Next quarter, watch flagship retail sales and gross margin; another decline would make Alani Nu look less like diversification and more like life support.

The Community Read: The $CELH room is split on the reset, test the turnaround case ->

Remember: Perfect Wasn’t Good Enough

Western Digital and SanDisk, the hard-drive and flash-memory suppliers feeding AI data centers, sold off Thursday after their strong Wednesday reports collided with outlooks that failed to clear towering expectations.

The RIP:  $WDC ( ▼ 13.03% )  tumbled 13%, while $SNDK ( ▼ 6.81% )  fell 6.8%. Western Digital’s revenue rose 44% to $3.75B vs. $3.7B expected, with adjusted EPS of $3.56. SanDisk delivered $39.25 EPS vs. $34.96 expected on $8.96B in revenue, topping the $8.48B estimate.

Western Digital expects roughly $4.1B in first-quarter revenue, 9.4% sequential growth, and a 55.5% adjusted gross margin. SanDisk guided revenue to $10.3B-$10.8B, implying another 17.7% sequential increase at the midpoint, and authorized a $14B buyback. Apparently, “still booming” is bearish when investors paid for “somehow booming faster.”

“$WDC This has to be a huge overreaction. To lose 34 billion in market cap with that earnings report is insanity.” @Berls32

“$SNDK Lynx Equity labeled SanDisk a ‘strong buyer into investor confusion,’ raising its price target to $2,550 from $2,450.” @ChannelGuru

AI-storage bulls should notice the split: Seagate climbed 4%, while Micron finished roughly flat, so this was not a blanket rejection of the theme. Western Digital was the risk leg because its outlook trailed peer expectations, while SanDisk confirmed demand but showed the cost of a sky-high bar. Next quarter, watch whether Western Digital hits its margin target and whether SanDisk’s pricing-led growth holds.

The earnings season is going well for the S&P 500, and believe it or not is soon coming to an end already!

POPS & DROPS TRENDING NOW

$CRSR +16% | Corsair: One refund did not explain all of the beat

24.3K WATCHERS · NEUTRAL · HIGH ACTIVITY

Corsair posted a record 33.2% gross margin and $30.8M in adjusted EBITDA, though a tariff refund supplied $14.3M of that total. Results still cleared guidance without the benefit, leaving the neutral room to decide whether better product mix can keep powering the turnaround after the accounting boost disappears.

$AAOI -7% | Applied Optoelectronics: The selloff made bulls louder

24.2K WATCHERS · EXTREMELY BULLISH · HIGH ACTIVITY

Applied Optoelectronics delivered record Q2 revenue of $191.9M as 800G product volume more than doubled sequentially, then guided Q3 revenue to $255M–$290M. The extremely bullish stream is treating the drop as an expectations reset, but production capacity remains the number separating a monster AI-optics ramp from another delayed promise.

Heatmap the Loooong way for tonight, whatcha think?

WHAT’S ON DECK Tomorrow’s Top Things

Macro: Nonfarm payrolls report (8:30 AM ET), Richmond Fed President Thomas Barkin speaks (10:00 AM ET).  Pre-Market Earnings: $CGC Canopy Growth Corporation, $UAA Under Armour Inc - Ordinary Shares - Class A, $OKLO Oklo Inc. - Ordinary Shares - Class A, $TTWO Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc., $WEN Wendy`s Co - Ordinary Shares - Class A, +9 more.  After-Market Earnings: $PHUN Phunware Inc, $SBET Sharplink Inc., $HE Hawaiian Electric Industries, Inc., $REVB Revelation Biosciences Inc.