Check out the companies making headlines before the bell: Lululemon Athletica — Shares tumbled more than 11% after the athleisure retailer’s 2025 guidance came in weaker than expected . Lululemon forecasts first-quarter earnings in a range of $2.53 to $2.58 per share, compared to the $2.72 expected by analysts polled by LSEG. First-quarter projected revenue of $2.335 billion to $2.355 billion was also lower than the $2.39 billion consensus forecast. However, fourth-quarter results beat on both sales and profit. U.S. Steel — The stock jumped nearly 5% after Semafor reported that Japan-based Nippon Steel is willing to invest as much as $7 billion in the American steelmaker to obtain President Donald Trump’s approval for their merger. Bausch + Lomb — The eye health company pulled back more than 4% a day after it announced a “voluntary recall” of certain implantable eye lenses following reports of complications. Wells Fargo downgraded shares to equal weight from overweight in a Thursday note, citing the recall. Braze — Shares surged about 9% in light trading after the customer engagement platform posted a top- and bottom-line beat in the fourth quarter. Braze reported adjusted earnings of 12 cents per share, beating the FactSet consensus estimate of 5 cents. Revenue of $160.4 million also beat the $155.7 million expected by analysts. Tanger — The shopping center operator ticked 0.6% higher on the back of Goldman Sachs’ upgrade to buy. Goldman expects shares to rally more than 21% after sliding to start 2025. Oxford Industries — The clothing retailer’s shares declined 12% after its full-year guidance fell below consensus estimates. Oxford Industries expects revenue between $1.49 and $1.53 billion during the period, while analysts surveyed by FactSet were calling for $1.54 billion. Management cited rising consumer uncertainty as a headwind. Rocket Lab — Shares surged 8.7% after the U.S. Space Force named the company as one of the firms entered in its launch provider pool. AppLovin — The stock rebounded 9% Friday following its sell-off on Thursday. Shares dropped more than 20% Thursday after short seller Muddy Waters alleged AppLovin’s ad tactics went against app stores’ terms of service. — CNBC’s Alex Harring and Jesse Pound contributed reporting.
SoFi CEO Anthony Noto said the fintech bank will bring back cryptocurrency investing this year after a “fundamental shift” in the regulatory landscape under the Trump administration.
SoFi was forced to drop crypto investing in late 2023 as a condition of receiving a bank charter in a time of heightened federal scrutiny of digital assets. Customers, who had access to more than 20 crypto coins at the time, were either shunted to Blockchain.com or liquidated their holdings.
But after new guidance from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the technology company is planning an aggressive push back into crypto, Noto told CNBC late Monday in an interview.
“We’re going to re-enter the crypto business, which we had to exit,” Noto said. “We’ll re-enter the business of allowing our members to invest in cryptocurrency. We want to actually make a bigger, more comprehensive push into cryptocurrency [this time], to include really providing crypto or blockchain capabilities in each product area that we have.”
The SoFi announcement is early proof that banks are looking to push further into crypto in the Trump era. In January, the CEOs of Bank of America and Morgan Stanley said that their institutions were ready to get involved in crypto. At the same time, crypto firms including Circle and BitGo are planning to apply for bank charters or licenses, further blurring the lines between traditional and digital finance.
SoFi should be able to offer crypto investing by year-end, barring unforeseen circumstances, Noto said.
He specifically cited a recent letter “that basically said that OCC-regulated banks can operate in crypto businesses, and that is a fundamental shift in the regulatory landscape.”
The CEO said that expected the current regulatory environment, in which Trump appointees rolled back restrictions around crypto and a regulatory framework for stablecoins is making its way through Congress, to allow the company to expand beyond investing.
Over the next six to 24 months, SoFi will look to adopt crypto or its underlying technology in all of the company’s major product lines, Noto said. That timeline could be accelerated with acquisitions, he added.
“Our aspirations are as broad as they are for any other product that we have, and we believe we can leverage the technology across lending and savings and spending and investing and protecting,” Noto said.
Future products could include borrowing cash based on the value of crypto held with SoFi, as well as using crypto in payments, Noto said.
A sign for Deutsche Bank AG at a bank branch in the financial district of Frankfurt, Germany, on Thursday, Feb. 2, 2023.
Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Germany’s largest lender Deutsche Bank on Tuesday posted higher-than-expected first-quarter profit as lenders in Europe’s largest economy navigate broader market turbulence instigated by U.S. tariff policies.
Net profit attributable to shareholders reached 1.775 billion euros ($2.019 billion) in the first quarter, up 39% year-on-year and above analyst expectations of around 1.64 billion euros, according to a Reuters poll. The bank reported profit of 106 million euros for the December quarter.
Revenues reached 8.524 billion euros over the period, up 10% year-on-year and above a $7.224-billion-euro result in the fourth quarter.
In a statement accompanying the results, Deutsche Bank CEO Christian Sewing said the print “put us on track for delivery on all our 2025 targets” and marked “our best quarterly profit for fourteen years.”
Other fourth-quarter highlights included:
Profit before tax of 2.837 billion euros, up 39% year-on-year.
CET 1 capital ratio, a measure of bank solvency, was 13.8%, unchanged from the fourth quarter.
Post-tax return on tangible equity (ROTE) rate of 11.9%, against a 10% target for 2025.
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