BING-JHEN HONG
U.S. stock index futures were little changed on Wednesday as traders remain cautious ahead of Nvidia's (NVDA) highly anticipated quarterly report. Here are some stocks to watch on Wednesday:
- Abercrombie & Fitch (ANF) shares fell by 9% in pre-market trade, despite clothing retailer delivering second-quarter comparable sales growth of 18% and raising its full-year net sales growth guidance to 12% to 13% from 10% previously. “By brand, Abercrombie brands achieved 26% growth on top of last year’s 26% growth, and Hollister continued its sequential acceleration to 17% growth on better-than-expected summer and back-to-school sales,” Abercrombie & Fitch (ANF) said Chief Executive Officer Fran Horowitz. The retailer also expects its Abercrombie brands to continue to outperform Hollister brands.
- All eyes are on Nvidia (NVDA) ahead of its fiscal second-quarter 2025 earnings report after the market closes. It may seem unusual for so much attention to be paid to a single stock, but that’s a testament to the chipmaker’s importance in investors’ minds. Nvidia (NVDA) has become the barometer of demand for artificial intelligence chips, and its dominance in that area has made it a primary driver of Wall Street’s current bull run. Options markets are already showing outsized activity ahead of earnings, with the stock moving an average of about 8% after previous reports over the past 12 quarters.
- Salesforce (CRM) stock will be a focus as the enterprise software giant is scheduled to report fiscal second-quarter 2025 numbers after the market closes. Wall Street expects the San Francisco, California-based firm to earn $2.36 per share on revenue of $9.23 billion. Investors are hoping for a better performance this time around from the Dow 30 component, which in May reported fiscal first-quarter results and guidance that missed expectations and sent its stock tumbling to its worst intraday performance in nearly two decades.
- CrowdStrike (CRWD) stock will also be attracting attention as the cybersecurity firm is set to reveal fiscal second quarter 2025 results in extended trading. This will be CrowdStrike’s (CRWD) first financial report since a faulty update it issued in July caused a historic IT outage around the world affecting millions of Microsoft (MSFT) Windows devices. Investors will be keeping a close eye on the impact of the outage on CrowdStrike’s (CRWD) financials as the company is expected to earn 97 cents per share on revenue of $958.32 million. Seeking Alpha contributor Dair Sansyzbayev believes the outage is unlikely to materially impact CrowdStrike’s (CRWD) growth prospects.
