Daily's Pre-Market: Weak earnings by McDonalds & Starbucks, higher mortgage rates, Novo Nordisk, Palantir, and Snap

McDonald’s and Starbucks blame the Israel-Hamas war for slower sales — and the recovery might take a while

McDonald’s and Starbucks both said the Israel-Hamas war and related boycotts hurt their sales in the latest quarter.
Starbucks saw traffic to its U.S. stores fall as occasional customers stopped visiting.
McDonald’s said the war hurt its Middle Eastern sales, as well as demand in majority Muslim countries and France.

The average rate on the 30-year fixed mortgage hit 7.04% on Monday, according to Mortgage News Daily.
Mortgage rates have been on a wild ride since the summer, briefly crossing to a 20-year high of 8% in October.
With the all-important spring housing market closing in, rates are more important than ever, given high and still-rising home prices.

Novo Nordisk’s parent company said it will acquire drug manufacturer Catalent in a $16.5 billion deal that could help boost the supply of the highly popular weight loss injection Wegovy and diabetes shot Ozempic.
Catalent is the main supplier of fill-finish work, which involves filling and packaging syringes and injection pens, for Wegovy.
Novo Nordisk will then buy three of Catalent’s manufacturing sites from its parent company for $11 billion.

Palantir reported fourth-quarter earnings after the bell Monday.
The company’s revenue for the quarter increased 20% year over year to $608.4 million.
In a letter to shareholders, Palantir CEO Alex Karp said demand for large language models in the U.S. “continues to be unrelenting.”

Snap said it will lay off 10% of its workforce worldwide, around 500 employees, to “promote in-person collaboration.”
The Snapchat-maker’s last major round of cuts was in 2022, when it laid off 20% of staff.
Snap CEO Evan Spiegel testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee last week.