Hot or Not, Stock Market Edition: 02/06/2025

What’s popping and what’s flopping? Here are four of today’s biggest market movers (in both directions).

• Palantir (NASDAQ: PLTR) and Spotify (NYSE: SPOT) are both hot — keep reading to find out why both stocks enjoyed double-digit gains early in the week. 
• Not as hot? Estee Lauder (NYSE: EL), which dropped after announcing job cuts, and PayPal (NASDAQ: PYPL), whose earnings report was a mixed bag. 

📈 Want more ideas like these? Check out the biggest winners and biggest losers on WSZ. 

🔥 HOT: Big data and national security expert Palantir (NASDAQ: PLTR) saw its stock rise by 24.0% on Tuesday after its revenue projections for 2025 came in much higher than Wall Street analysts were expecting. The company’s CEO, Alex Karp, said that he expects the company to generate around $3.75 billion, which is about $200 million more than the experts were predicting. He also said that the new growth is going to be from “untamed organic growth” related to its new AI software products. We give PLTR a B Zen Rating and a Buy recommendation.

🥶 NOT: Shares of Estee Lauder (NYSE: EL) dropped by 16.1% on Tuesday after the company announced that it was cutting around 7,000 jobs to take pressure off the business as it struggles to maintain its margins and drive new growth. EL has lost 8.0% already this year and is down 56.4% over the last year. The company’s restructuring plan isn’t working quite as well as the company hoped, and the improvements that have been made so far have been swamped by new expenses designed to produce growth and declining sales. EL currently has a D Zen Rating and a Sell recommendation, but things could get even worse if its profit recovery plan continues to flounder.

🔥 HOT: Strong fundamentals, solid momentum, and a tremendous capacity for growth make Spotify (NYSE: SPOT) a compelling stock to watch for investors looking to add some upside to their portfolios. The stock gained 13.2% on Tuesday after the company revealed that it logged quarterly records for revenue, gross margin, and operating income to lock in its first profitable year. Spotify’s CEO, Daniel Ek, also said that the company’s new video podcasts were driving more user signups than they anticipated, a sign that Spotify still has a lot of room to grow. We give Spotify a B Zen Rating and see a bright future ahead.

🥶 NOT: PayPal (NASDAQ: PYPL) lost 13.2% on Tuesday despite beating its fourth-quarter earnings projections because the company’s branded checkout growth was only 6%, while analysts expected to see between 7% and 8% growth. Lower-than-expected branded checkout growth could be a sign that PayPal’s overall growth is slowing, but it’s important to point out that the 6% growth PayPal saw was similar to what other companies — most notably Visa — saw last quarter. Still, Tuesday’s loss is a major bump in the road that makes PYPL a slightly less confident play going forward. For that reason, we give PYPL a C Zen Rating and a Hold recommendation.

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