Hot or Not, Stock Market Edition: 02/18/2025

Happy Tuesday! Here’s what’s hot and what’s not in the market RN: 

• HOT: Udemy (NASDAQ: UDMY) gains nearly 30% following a better-than-expected earnings report; Oportun Financial (NASDAQ: OPRT) experiences explosive growth (and it may not be over).
• NOT: Former “$3 wonder AI stock” SoundHound (NASDAQ: SOUN) loses big following a negative NVDA catalyst; Informatica (NYSE: INFA) falls following earnings. 

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

🔥 HOT: Two days after beating its earnings projections by over 300%, Oportun Financial (NASDAQ: OPRT) continued to ride the good news wave, gaining 18.1% to close out the week. OPRT has seen explosive growth over the last year, returning 119.8% since mid-February of last year. The company raised its full-year earnings outlook for 2025 to between $1.10 and $1.30 per share, prompting B. Riley to raise its price target for OPRT from $8 per share to $11. Our internal analysis is similarly bullish on Oprtun, and we give the stock an A Zen Rating and a Strong Buy recommendation.

🥶 NOT: Informatica (NYSE: INFA) fell by 21.5% on Friday after the company’s fourth-quarter revenue came in lower than expected. More concerning, however, was the fact that the company also issued weak guidance for 2025 due to declining subscription numbers and falling revenue. Informatica’s revenue fell by 3.8% year-over-year, although the company says this is largely due to growing pains related to transitioning its business model to be more focused on cloud services. INFA’s recent performance is cause for concern, but we don’t see this is an abandon-ship-level problem. We give INFA a C Zen Rating and a Hold recommendation for the time being.

🔥 HOT: Shares of online learning platform Udemy (NASDAQ: UDMY) were up 28.0% on Friday after the company reported unexpectedly good earnings for the fourth quarter of 2024. Udemy’s EPS was $0.10, about 50% higher than the $0.066 per share Wall Street predicted for the quarter. The company’s revenue was also slightly better than anticipated, coming in $5.3 million above the consensus estimate. Udemy maintained its outlook for 2025, which many see as a sign that the company has a plan to continue to grow despite the ever-increasing prevalence of AI-based learning tools. We give UDMY a B Zen Rating and a Buy recommendation and see the stock’s current price as a good value.

🥶 NOT: AI tech company SoundHound (NASDAQ: SOUN) lost 28.1% on Friday after Nvidia’s most recent 13-F filing showed that it no longer had a position in SOUN. Shares of SoundHound have gained more than 500% since last year, mostly due to its close partnership and affiliation with Nvidia. While SoundHound attempted to calm investors by saying that the company still has a close relationship with Nvidia, it’s unclear how closely the two companies will be going forward now that Nvidia has pulled out its investment in SOUN. This news, along with our concern about whether SOUN can continue at its blistering growth rate, has prompted us to give SOUN a D Zen Rating and a Sell recommendation.

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