Stock futures were struggling for direction Thursday with investors in wait-and-see mode ahead of the release Friday of the personal consumption expenditures price index, the Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation gauge.
These stocks were poised to make moves Thursday:
Salesforce rose 0.7% ahead of the opening bell after the software company topped analysts’ third-quarter earnings estimates but fell a little short on revenue. Guidance for the fourth quarter and the full fiscal year was very strong, and the company also highlighted its artificial-intelligence efforts. Annual recurring revenue from agentic AI products—programs that have the ability to take simple directions and complete multistep tasks—climbed to $540 million, up $100 million from a quarter earlier.
Snowflake dropped 8.7% in premarket trading after the cloud storage company posted a third-quarter earnings beat that was overshadowed by slowing product-revenue growth. The stock may well have been priced for perfection—it was up 72% for the year as of Wednesday’s close, meaning there was a high bar for Snowflake to clear.
UiPath jumped 8.8% after the automation software maker beat Wall Street’s third-quarter earnings and revenue estimates and guided for stronger-than-expected revenue for the current quarter. The “solid execution” is a sign that UiPath is well-positioned for the rise in demand for AI at large organizations, William Blair analyst Jake Roberge said in a research note.
C3.ai fell 1.4% after the AI company reported that revenue for its second quarter fell 20% from a year earlier, which overshadowed a narrower-than-expected loss for the period. The stock has taken a battering this year, tumbling 56% amid concerns about the sharp drop in sales.
Guidewire Software added 3.4% after the software company reported better-than-expected earnings and revenue for its fisca first quarter.
NCino advanced 8.2% after the fintech beat analysts’ estimates for third-quarter earnings and revenue and issued stronger-than-expected guidance for the current fourth quarter.
Alaska Air slid 0.9% after the carrier cut its earnings outlook for the fourth quarter to 10 cents a share from 40 cents, which it blamed partly on a recent internal IT outage.
Distillery owner Brown-Forman, discount-store chain Dollar General, food processing company Hormel Foods, supermarket operator Kroger, and IT company Hewlett Packard Enterprise are scheduled to report earnings on Thursday.