Victoria’s Secret breach, Bumble downgrade: Trending Tickers

00:00 Speaker A

Now time for some of today’s trending tickers. We are watching Victoria’s Secret and Bumble. Joining me now, we’ve got Yahoo Finance senior reporter, Ali Kanal. Ali, let’s set the scene for first Victoria’s Secret here. Postponing its first quarter earnings release and this is in light of a recent security incident. The company says the incident was detected on May 24th, and as a precaution, the website was shut down on May 26th for three days. Functions have been mostly restored, but the restoration process has prevented employees from accessing certain systems needed for the release of results. However, the company did provide a preliminary outlook at the numbers here and taking a look at shares. They are reacting positively, at least for right now, on these preliminary results up by about 3%.

00:58 Speaker B

Yeah, and the preliminary results called for adjusted earnings of nine cents a share on sales of 1.35 billion. This was ahead of company guidance. It’s also ahead of analyst estimates. So that’s boosting the share price today. Now, the company had previous previously said that the security incident wouldn’t impact the first quarter financial results, but that the second quarter could see higher expenses related to the breach. But it is interesting, Brad, because we’ve seen similar security breaches at other fashion and retail companies recently. Cartier, for example, on Monday disclosed a data breach, which exposed names, email addresses, and countries of residences. So something that’s certainly worth continuing to watch, and I’m curious what more Victoria’s Secrets has to say about this breach once they do officially release those results. But we’re seeing shares get a boost today year to date, though still a long way to go. We’re down about 50%.

02:12 Speaker A

Yeah, just the reaction to some of the preliminary results coming in above that prior guidance that we were mentioning a moment ago here. Also, we’re tracking Bumble on the day, Bumble falling after a downgrade to under rate from neutral at JP Morgan. The analyst writing that shares have rallied 50% since Trump’s liberation day tariff announcements and that the firm can’t justify raising its price target given their expectations that revenue and payer declines will accelerate regardless of the macro environment shares are down on this by about 5% right now.

02:57 Speaker B

Yeah. So it’s now trading above JPM’s price target, so they don’t really see further room to run here. They also say that revenue and user growth is expected to decline, especially among Gen Z customers, which I thought was interesting. They cut their price target to five bucks and based on Monday’s close, that implies about a 13% drop. And if you take a look at shares year to date, we’re down over 30%. And we’ll have to wait to see if there’s any other catalyst. JPM says the next possible catalyst could be Bumble’s annual meeting on June 5th. But even taking a look at some of the competitors, Match Group, which owns Hinge, Tinder, their shares are also down on the year down about 8% year to date. So still underperforming the S&P 500, but compared to where we are with Bumble significantly better here. And I am curious how the AI story is going to continue to impact companies like Bumble, apps like Tinder, Hinge, uh, because right now it’s it’s it’s rough out there if you’re on these apps. I have friends on them. Yeah. I dabble a little bit, and I don’t really find them that that great all the time. You have to pay in order to really get a lot out of it, which I don’t It’s the gamification of it all. Gamification of finding love.

04:54 Speaker A

To get good quality.

05:00 Speaker B

And I also feel like, now I’m just slinging my my takes here.

05:08 Speaker A

Please, look. I’ve got coffee. I’ll sit back and listen.

05:16 Speaker B

But I also feel like that we’ve sort of hit peak app, and right now people are really craving genuine in-person connections. And I think that’s also why we’re not seeing some of these apps and websites and therefore the stock prices not perform that well. But that’s just my anecdotal research. I’ll continue to explore this. But those are my hot takes.

05:55 Speaker A

Yeah.

05:57 Speaker B

Hard data, Bumble down 92% over the past five years. Ali, thanks so much. Appreciate it. You can scan the QR code below to track the best and worst performing stocks of the session here today with Yahoo Finance’s Trending Tickers page.

06:11 Speaker A

Thank you.