00:00 Speaker A
Now time for some of today’s trending tickers. We are watching US Bancorp, Ethereum and Roblox. Yahoo! Finances’ Josh Schafer is joining me now to discuss and first off we’ve got US Bancorp. Profits are passing expectations in the second quarter adjusted earnings per share of a dollar eleven, that’s a 14% increase from the prior year. But net interest income did miss some estimates clocking in at four uh just over $4 billion. Analysts were looking for $4.11 billion.
00:26 Speaker A
This is the first earnings report for the bank under new chief executive Gunjan Kedia. Uh the shares are down about 2% here, Josh.
00:33 Speaker B
Yeah, Julie. I mean it really seems like that net interest income story is kind of what’s driving the stock right, so there’s an analyst over at KBW, his name is John McDonald. He pointed out it’s a quote tough optic is what he called it, when you look across the banking sector, that interest income has not really been a problem industry wide right, and so there are multiple variables that could impact a metric like that, but it’s not like this is some sort of interest rate story that’s weighing on the sector as a whole. So it becomes a little bit more of a US Bancorp story and that weighs on your stock a little bit and the stock going into the report hadn’t, you can see there over the last three months up 17%, but if you zoom out over the year to date or the last year it hadn’t really been acting that well either, not like some of the other larger banks, like JP Morgan.
01:28 Speaker A
Yeah, some right. Some of the big banks have really been outperforming here. Um let’s talk about Ethereum because it is at a 5-month high, soared past $3,400 as a number of crypto related bills have been making their way through the House of Representatives.
01:45 Speaker A
Uh the house voting on three bills that if passed would constitute a major win for the crypto industry. I mean there’s been some back and forth on those bills but um and you know we talked to somebody from CoinDesk earlier in the week and pointed out it’s not just Bitcoin that’s been rallying, it has been a broader crypto rally.
02:06 Speaker B
Yeah, this is something we were talking about earlier this morning too on Market Summarized. Just sort of zooming into the fact that it’s interesting, we talked earlier this week Bitcoin hits $122,000, right? Another record, here we go, Bitcoin, Bitcoin. But if you zoom out and look at the rally in Ethereum, even the rally in Solana, those coins have actually been rallying more than Bitcoin as of late. So you’re starting to see that trade maybe broaden out and then of course you have famed investor Peter Thiel investing in Bitmain which is a firm that’s is a uh related to Ethereum in some ways right, an Ethereum centered treasury sort of strategy.
02:54 Speaker B
And I don’t know I just wonder are people now with Bitcoin back at a record high is it getting into the crypto sort of trade that we’ve seen before where it’s like okay where should I go next? You know we’ve had this stable coin conversation. There’s been the circle trade and it’s just outside of Bitcoin where is there still more opportunity maybe potential growth trying to maybe chase the trade.
03:19 Speaker A
Yeah, and it’s interesting that that company has an Ethereum treasury strategy because we keep talking about companies putting Bitcoin on their balance sheet.
03:27 Speaker A
So why not the other stuff too I guess in some situations? And finally let’s talk about Roblox, it’s rolling out new safety features including a tool that can measure age based on video selfies. This is intended to protect protect its kid heavy user base.
03:46 Speaker A
The platform is introducing a new tier called trusted connections that allows people to talk via text and voice calls without the filter that censors certain words, but you have to be 13 to use the feature. This has been um an ongoing issue for Roblox, right, because the their selling point is that they are a safer platform but there are ways of getting around some of their protections.
04:10 Speaker B
Yeah and in for it seems like an important step for Roblox, right, and again thinking about just what this stock has been up to. Stocks up over 100% this year, which I did not realize until I started doing some research on this so analysts continue to come out and be overall bullish on this name to yesterday. JP Morgan analyst moved up their year-end price target to uh $125 from $120, citing more platform engagement inflicting higher hopefully those are people that are of age to use the platform, right? uh
04:43 Speaker A
Well anybody can use it. It’s about who you can, I know this from personal experience. Anyone can use Roblox. And Roblox of course is just a platform or there are bunch of games on Roblox.
05:03 Speaker A
It is who you can communicate with and how you can use the platform that is supposed to be age restricted.
05:12 Speaker B
It’s interesting and I mean we really buried the lead here. There’s AI now that can tell that can guess how old we are if it looks at our face. We got to try this just in general.
05:22 Speaker A
Yeah, is is that surprising?
05:25 Speaker B
No, but I’ve I think this is like a this is an experiment I’m curious to see.
05:29 Speaker A
and we’ll and for people who are, you know, not teenagers, like will it flatter you?
05:35 Speaker B
Yeah. We’re going to test this. We’re going to test this out offline, Julie, and we’ll see if we get older or younger.
05:42 Speaker A
All right, let’s do it. Thanks Josh.
05:47 Speaker A
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