Friday's Pre-Market: Apple, Expedia, Coinbase, Novo Nordisk, and ArcelorMittal

Apple suffers 10% drop in quarterly iPhone sales to start the year, biggest drop since pandemic

• Apple on Thursday revealed its steepest quarterly decline in iPhone sales since the pandemic’s outset, deepening a slump that’s increasing the pressure on the trendsetting company to spruce up its products with more artificial intelligence.

• The 10% drop in year-over-year iPhone sales for the January-March period is latest sign of weakness in a product that generates most of Apple’s revenue. It marked the biggest drop in iPhone sales since July-September period in 2020, when production bottlenecks caused by factory closures during the pandemic resulted in a delayed release of that year's model.

• The current iPhone downturn was the main reason Apple’s revenue for the latest quarter decreased 4% from last year's to $90.8 billion. It marked the fifth consecutive quarter that Apple’s revenue dipped from the previous year. Apple’s profit in the past quarter totaled $23.64 billion, or $1.53 per share, a 2% dip from last year.

Expedia lowers full-year revenue forecast on slow B2C growth

• Online travel agency Expedia cut its 2024 revenue growth forecast on Thursday, as gross bookings were hit by poor performance in its business-to-consumer segment.

• "Given the Vrbo drag and the rate of acceleration in B2C thus far, we are lowering our full-year guidance to a range of mid- to high-single-digit top line growth with margins relatively in line versus last year," said CEO Peter Kern.

• The Seattle-based company reported a quarterly adjusted profit of 21 cents per share, compared with a loss of 20 cents per share last year.

Coinbase first-quarter profits surged above $1 billion on ETF frenzy

• Coinbase Global (COIN) posted its second consecutive quarterly profit as crypto trading surged during the first three months of 2024.

• Yet the stock of the largest US cryptocurrency exchange fell by as much as 4% in after-hours trading Thursday.

• The stock is up more than 31% since the beginning of the year but 38% below its peak in November 2021.

Novo Nordisk sales up 26% driven by GLP-1s, misses 11% on Wegovy

• Novo Nordisk (NVO) stock was trading down Thursday despite strong first quarter results, beating Wall Street consensus, led by the blockbuster GLP-1s Ozempic for diabetes and Wegovy for weight loss.

• Novo posted total sales up 25%, totaling $9.5 billion in revenue from all of its drugs and beating estimates of $9.2 billion. Wegovy brought in $1.3 billion and Ozempic sales totaled $3.9 billion for the quarter.

• CEO Lars Jørgensen told Yahoo Finance the company is now filling 27,000 new prescriptions per week of Wegovy — more than five times the 5,000 per week being filled at the end of the last quarter of 2023.

ArcelorMittal Positive on Steel Outlook After Earnings Beat

• ArcelorMittal SA, the world’s biggest steelmaker outside of China, remains positive on the medium to long-term outlook for demand after first-quarter earnings beat estimates.

• The company kept its forecast for apparent consumption of steel outside of China — a key barometer of the world economy — unchanged from three months ago.

• “Although overall economic sentiment remains subdued, we expect apparent steel demand ex-China to grow between +3% and +4% this year and are well positioned to benefit from this improvement,” Chief Executive Officer Aditya Mittal said in a statement on Thursday.