Nike is the number one trending ticker on Yahoo Finance this morning, but not for the best of reasons: the stock is down 9% in pre-market trading after the group issued a weaker-than-expected sales outlook.
The sneaker maker said revenue for the current quarter would decline by between 2% and 4%, reflecting an anticipated 20% drop in its key China market over the same period. For the full calendar year, finance chief Matthew Friend said the company expects sales to fall by a low single-digit %, with growth in North America offset by declines in China.
Net income for the three months to 28 February fell to $520m, or 35 cents per share, down 35% from $794m, or 54 cents per share, a year earlier. The decline came as Nike’s gross margin narrowed by 1.3 percentage points to 40.2%, which the company said was “primarily due to higher tariffs in North America”.
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Sales were broadly flat at $11.28bn, compared with $11.27bn a year ago, showcasing an uneven turnaround under chief executive Elliott Hill.
“Parts of it are taking longer than I’d like, but the direction is clear,” Hill said of the turnaround.
Wholesale revenue climbed 5% to $6.5bn. Meanwhile, direct sales slid 4% to $4.5bn.
Shares in the EV maker rose in pre-market trading after new car registrations in March more than tripled in France, just below an all-time high recorded more than two years ago, and doubled in Denmark, according to national data published on Wednesday.
Tesla, the world’s most valuable carmaker by market capitalisation, lost almost half its share of the European market last year amid intensifying competition, particularly from Chinese brands, a limited pipeline of new models and a backlash linked to chief executive Elon Musk’s political stance.
Since rolling out cheaper versions of its Model Y and Model 3 in the US and Europe late last year, the group’s European registrations, a proxy for sales, have reversed earlier declines and returned to growth in February.
March figures from France and Denmark, the first European markets to report monthly data, indicated a further acceleration, outpacing overall market growth in both countries and marking the first monthly increase in France since October.
Tesla registered 9,569 new vehicles in France during the month, according to data from industry body PFA, a 203% increase from the same month in 2025 and just below a record 9,572 vehicles registered in December 2023. In Denmark, registrations rose 144% to 1,447 units.
The company is expected to deliver 364,645 vehicles globally in the first quarter, according to a Bloomberg consensus estimate, up nearly 9% year on year. Full figures are due to be released on Thursday.
Shares in Nvidia rose ahead of the US opening bell after the company said it had invested $2bn in Marvell Technology (MRVL), with the chipmaker set to join Nvidia’s artificial intelligence ecosystem.
The tie-up is intended to make it easier for Marvell to design custom artificial intelligence systems using its own networking gear and processors, the companies said. Shares of Marvell rose nearly 12% following the announcement.
The partnership comes as large cloud providers develop their own application-specific integrated circuits for data centres as an alternative to buying Nvidia’s graphics processing units. Nvidia is trying to make sure that Marvell’s custom chips remain compatible with its data centre hardware.
Marvell is currently working with AWS (AMZN), Google (GOOG), Meta (META) and Microsoft (MSFT) on the development of custom AI XPUs and CPUs.
“Together with Marvell, we are enabling customers to leverage Nvidia’s AI infrastructure ecosystem and scale to build specialised AI compute,” said Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang.
“By connecting Marvell’s leadership in high-performance analogue, optical DSP, silicon photonics and custom silicon to Nvidia’s expanding AI ecosystem through NVLink Fusion, we are enabling customers to build scalable, efficient AI infrastructure,” said Marvell chief executive Matt Murphy.
Shares in Oracle rose 1% in pre-market trading after the technology group laid off thousands of employees in a round of job cuts that could reportedly affect as many as 30,000 staff globally, as it seeks to fund expanded investment in artificial intelligence infrastructure.
Employees in the US, India, Canada and Mexico, among other countries, began receiving termination emails from “Oracle Leadership” at about 6am local time on Tuesday, in what could be the largest round of lay-offs in the company’s history, Business Insider first reported.
About 12,000 employees in India have been affected, according to local media reports.
Oracle’s termination emails cited “broader organisational change”, widely seen as a reference to the company’s push to build more AI data centres.
The job cuts come despite Oracle reporting an “exceptional” previous quarter, with revenues up 22% in US dollar terms and financial results that “exceeded expectations”.
The company raised $50bn in debt and equity in January but said there were no further plans to raise debt in 2026.
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However, the group has recently seen a 25% slide in its share price, as investors have grown increasingly concerned about its debt-fuelled investment in data centres.
Oracle has spent heavily on building such facilities as it seeks to capitalise on rising demand for cloud computing capacity from AI companies including OpenAI and Meta.
The scale of the spending has fuelled concerns that Oracle’s bets on AI may fail to pay off, amid broader worries about overspending by the world’s largest technology companies.
In London, shares in housebuilder Berkeley have plummeted 13% as it said it is pausing buying any new land while conditions in the housing market are challenging and war in the Middle East worsens the outlook.
The company, which specialises in building homes in urban areas, especially London, said it was taking action to protect the business and strengthen its balance sheet.
Berkeley said the risk that recent escalation of conflict in the Middle East and the potential for interest rates to stay higher for longer could slow recovery in the housing market had “now become a reality”.
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Coupled with a steady increase in costs and regulation, it said it no longer believes it can generate enough profit from buying new land, so had decided to pause while conditions “prevail” and focus instead on existing land holdings.
The housebuilder said it still expects to deliver pre-tax profit of £450m and net cash of around £300m for the 2026 financial year, in line with guidance earlier this month.
Richard Hunter, head of markets at Interactive Investor, said: “A modest recovery in sales volume was far from sufficient to offset the derailment of its strategy, and it remains to be seen whether others in the sector consider similar moves.”
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