Check out the companies making headlines before the bell. Pfizer — The pharmaceutical stock added 1.8% on better-than-expected fourth-quarter results . Pfizer reported adjusted earnings of 63 cents per share on $17.76 billion in revenue. Analysts polled by LSEG estimated earnings of 47 cents per share on revenue of $17.36 billion. PepsiCo — Shares of the food and beverage company fell 2% after Pepsi’s fourth-quarter revenue missed expectations . Revenue came in at $27.78 billion, while analysts had forecast $27.89 billion, per LSEG. Demand for its snacks and drinks fell for the fifth straight quarter in North America. Merck — Shares were down 8% in the premarket after the pharmaceutical giant issued full-year guidance that fell short of analyst expectations. The company sees 2025 earnings per share coming in a range of $8.88 and $9.03. Analysts polled by FactSet expected a forecast around $9.13 per share. Merck’s revenue expectations of $64.1 billion to $65.6 billion was also below what analysts anticipated. General Motors , Ford Motor — Shares rose 1% each after President Donald Trump paused tariffs on Canada imports for 30 days following a similar move for Mexico. The two automakers were among the names biggest hit Monday as they each have significant manufacturing operations across North America, especially in Mexico. PayPal — The digital payments stock fell 7.3% despite PayPal reporting an earnings and revenue beat in the fourth quarter, as well as better-than-expected forward guidance. For the first quarter, PayPal expects adjusted earnings of $1.15 to $1.17 per share, while analysts estimated $1.13, per LSEG. The company also announced a new $15 billion share buyback program. Ferrari — U.S.-listed shares were up 4% after the luxury automaker reported strong earnings growth for 2024. The company earned 1.53 billion euros for the full year, marking a 21% year-on-year increase from 2023. Shipments for 2024 totaled 3,325, an uptick from 3,245 in the prior year. Estee Lauder — The beauty products company tumbled 7% after posting a disappointing fiscal third-quarter outlook. Estee Lauder sees year-over-year revenue contracting between 10% and 12%, while analysts polled by FactSet were expecting guidance pointing to a 6.9% decline. However, Estee Lauder reported a fiscal second-quarter earnings and revenue beat. Palantir Technologies — Shares of the defense company soared 23% after Palantir exceeded estimates on the top and bottom lines for the fourth quarter and issued stronger-than-expected guidance for the full year. The company posted adjusted earnings of 14 cents per share for the prior quarter, while analysts surveyed by LSEG estimated 11 cents a share. Revenue came out at $828 million, while analysts forecast $776 million. Spotify — The music streaming giant jumped 8% after reporting faster-than-expected user growth in the fourth quarter. Spotify reported 675 million monthly active users, up 12% year over year and above the 664.3 million expected by analysts polled by FactSet. Spotify also beat estimates for revenue and operating income. Clorox — The cleaning products company fell more than 3% on the back of its fiscal second quarter results. Although the company posted a top- and bottom-line beat in the prior quarter, it guided for a 1% to 2% fall in revenue in the full year. Analysts had expected just a 0.6% decline, according to LSEG. Management also noted its 2025 fiscal year outlook does not include potential headwinds from tariffs. Diageo — Shares dipped slightly after the distributor of Scotch whisky and other spirits reported weaker-than-expected first half earnings, and removed its medium-term guidance because of macroeconomic and geopolitical uncertainty. Diageo reported adjusted earnings of $c97.7 per share, lower than the consensus estimate of $c99.1, according to FactSet. On the other hand, net sales of $10.9 billion in the first half topped the expected $10.72 billion. Apollo Global Management – Shares of the asset management company shed 1.6% on mixed fourth-quarter results. While Apollo’s earnings of $2.22 per share beat the consensus call for $1.89 per share, inflows dropped to $33 billion from $42 billion in the prior quarter, according to FactSet. — CNBC’s Sarah Min, Lisa Kailai Han and Jesse Pound contributed reporting
In a year that hasn’t been kind to many big-name stocks, Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway is standing near the top. Berkshire shares have posted a 17% return year-to-date, while the S&P 500 index is down 6%.
That performance places Berkshire among the top 10% of the U.S. market’s large-cap leaders, and the run has been getting Buffett more attention ahead of next weekend’s annual Berkshire Hathaway shareholder meeting in Omaha, Nebraska. It’s also good timing for the recently launched VistaShares Target 15 Berkshire Select Income ETF(OMAH), which holds the top 20 most heavily weighted stocks in Berkshire Hathaway, as well as shares of Berkshire Hathaway.
“It’s a really well-balanced portfolio chosen by the most successful investor the world has ever seen,” Adam Patti, CEO of VistaShares, said in an appearance this week on CNBC’s “ETF Edge.”
Berkshire’s outperformance of the S&P 500 isn’t limited to 2025. Buffett’s stock has tripled the performance of the market over the past year, and its 185% return over the past five years is more than double the performance of the S&P 500.
Berkshire Hathaway is one of 2025’s top performing stocks.
In addition to this long-term track record of success in the market, Berkshire Hathaway is getting a lot of attention right now for the record amount of cash Buffett is holding as he trimmed stakes in big stocks including Apple, which has proven to be a great strategy. The S&P 500 has experienced extreme short-term volatility since President Donald Trump’s inauguration on January 20. Even after a recent recovery, the S&P is still down 8% since the start of Trump’s second term.
“The market has been momentum driven for many years, the switch has flipped and we’re looking at quality in terms of exposure, and Berkshire Hathaway has performed incredibly well this year, handily outperforming the S&P 500,” said Patti.
Berkshire Hathaway famously doesn’t pay a dividend, with Buffett holding firm over many decades in the belief that he can re-invest cash to create more value for shareholders. In a letter to shareholders in February, Buffett wrote that Berkshire shareholders “can rest assured that we will forever deploy a substantial majority of their money in equities — mostly American equities.”
The lack of a dividend payment has been an issue over the years for some shareholders at Berkshire who do want income from the market, according to Patti, who added that his firm conducted research among investors in designing the ETF. “Who doesn’t want to invest like Buffett, but with income?” he said.
So, in addition to being tied to the performance of Berkshire and the stock picks of Buffett, the VistaShares Target 15 Berkshire Select Income ETF is designed to produce income of 15% annually through a strategy of selling call options and distributing monthly payments of 1.25% to shareholders. This income strategy has become more popular in the ETF space, with more asset managers launching funds to capture income opportunities and more investors adopting the approach amid market volatility.
People shop for produce at a Walmart in Rosemead, California, on April 11, 2025.
Frederic J. Brown | Afp | Getty Images
A growing number of Americans are using buy now, pay later loans to buy groceries, and more people are paying those bills late, according to new Lending Tree data released Friday.
The figures are the latest indicator that some consumers are cracking under the pressure of an uncertain economy and are having trouble affording essentials such as groceries as they contend with persistent inflation, high interest rates and concerns around tariffs.
In a survey conducted April 2-3 of 2,000 U.S. consumers ages 18 to 79, around half reported having used buy now, pay later services. Of those consumers, 25% of respondents said they were using BNPL loans to buy groceries, up from 14% in 2024 and 21% in 2023, the firm said.
Meanwhile, 41% of respondents said they made a late payment on a BNPL loan in the past year, up from 34% in the year prior, the survey found.
Lending Tree’s chief consumer finance analyst, Matt Schulz, said that of those respondents who said they paid a BNPL bill late, most said it was by no more than a week or so.
“A lot of people are struggling and looking for ways to extend their budget,” Schulz said. “Inflation is still a problem. Interest rates are still really high. There’s a lot of uncertainty around tariffs and other economic issues, and it’s all going to add up to a lot of people looking for ways to extend their budget however they can.”
“For an awful lot of people, that’s going to mean leaning on buy now, pay later loans, for better or for worse,” he said.
He stopped short of calling the results a recession indicator but said conditions are expected to decline further before they get better.
“I do think it’s going to get worse, at least in the short term,” said Schulz. “I don’t know that there’s a whole lot of reason to expect these numbers to get better in the near term.”
The loans, which allow consumers to split up purchases into several smaller payments, are a popular alternative to credit cards because they often don’t charge interest. But consumers can see high fees if they pay late, and they can run into problems if they stack up multiple loans. In Lending Tree’s survey, 60% of BNPL users said they’ve had multiple loans at once, with nearly a fourth saying they have held three or more at once.
“It’s just really important for people to be cautious when they use these things, because even though they can be a really good interest-free tool to help you kind of make it from one paycheck to the next, there’s also a lot of risk in mismanaging it,” said Schulz. “So people should tread lightly.”
Lending Tree’s findings come after Billboard revealed that about 60% of general admission Coachella attendees funded their concert tickets with buy now, pay later loans, sparking a debate on the state of the economy and how consumers are using debt to keep up their lifestyles. A recent announcement from DoorDash that it would begin accepting BNPL financing from Klarna for food deliveries led to widespread mockery and jokes that Americans were struggling so much that they were now being forced to finance cheeseburgers and burritos.
Over the last few years, consumers have held up relatively well, even in the face of persistent inflation and high interest rates, because the job market was strong and wage growth had kept up with inflation — at least for some workers.
Earlier this year, however, large companies including Walmart and Delta Airlines began warning that the dynamic had begun to shift and they were seeing cracks in demand, which was leading to worse-than-expected sales forecasts.
Check out the companies making headlines in midday trading: T-Mobile — Shares pulled back 11% after the company’s wireless subscribers for the first quarter missed Wall Street estimates. T-Mobile reported 495,000 postpaid phone additions in the first-quarter, while analysts polled by StreetAccount were looking for 504,000. Alphabet — The Google parent company gained about 2% on the heels of better-than-expected first-quarter results . Alphabet reported $2.81 per share on revenue of $90.23 billion, while analysts polled by LSEG forecast $2.01 in earnings per share and $89.12 billion in revenue. Skechers — Shares fell 4.8% after the footwear maker posted weaker-than-expected revenue for the first quarter and withdrew its 2025 guidance due to ” macroeconomic uncertainty stemming from global trade policies .” The company’s earnings for the quarter came in above analysts’ estimates, however. Gilead Sciences — The biopharmaceutical stock fell 2.5% after first-quarter revenue came in at $6.67 billion, missing the consensus forecast of $6.81 billion from analysts polled by LSEG. However, the company earned $1.81 per share, excluding items, in the quarter, beating Wall Street’s estimate of $1.79 a share. Saia — Shares of the shipping company fell 31% after first-quarter results missed estimates and showed a slowdown in March. Saia reported $1.86 in earnings per share on $787.6 million in revenue. Analysts surveyed by FactSet were expecting $2.76 in earnings per share on $812.8 million in revenue. BMO Capital Markets downgraded the stock to market perform from outperform and said the issues were “company specific.” Intel — The chipmaker declined 7% after Intel’s current quarter missed investors’ expectations. Intel forecast revenue in the June quarter of $11.8 billion at the midpoint, while consensus forecasts called for $12.82 billion, per LSEG. Management anticipates earnings will break even. Intel also announced plans to reduce both its operational and capital expenses. Boston Beer — Shares of the Samuel Adams brewer were more than 1% higher after better-than-expected first-quarter results. Boston Beer notched earnings per share of $2.16 on revenue of $453.9 million, while analysts polled by FactSet were looking for 56 cents per share on revenue of $435.6 million. Boston Beer cautioned that tariffs could hurt full-year earnings. Tesla — The Elon Musk-helmed electric vehicle company surged 10%. Shares have advanced more than 17% this week as the broader market tries to recover from a steep sell-off for much of April. — CNBC’s Jesse Pound, Alex Harring and Sean Conlon contributed reporting. Get Your Ticket to Pro LIVE Join us at the New York Stock Exchange! Uncertain markets? Gain an edge with CNBC Pro LIVE , an exclusive, inaugural event at the historic New York Stock Exchange. In today’s dynamic financial landscape, access to expert insights is paramount. As a CNBC Pro subscriber, we invite you to join us for our first exclusive, in-person CNBC Pro LIVE event at the iconic NYSE on Thursday, June 12. Join interactive Pro clinics led by our Pros Carter Worth, Dan Niles and Dan Ives, with a special edition of Pro Talks with Tom Lee. You’ll also get the opportunity to network with CNBC experts, talent and other Pro subscribers during an exciting cocktail hour on the legendary trading floor. Tickets are limited!