It was a busy week for earnings, but the real action isn't last quarter's results—it's where companies are headed next. From language lessons to data centers to digital payments, three companies are rewriting their playbooks.

Block: Doubling down on AI

The payments company met fourth-quarter expectations, with gross profit rising 24% year over year. But the bigger headline was a sweeping workforce reduction: Block plans to eliminate roughly 40% of its staff as it leans more heavily into AI to drive efficiency and scale. The restructuring is expected to result in $450 million to $500 million in charges, primarily related to severance, employee benefits, and stock-based compensation.

“Within the next year, I believe the majority of the companies will reach the same conclusion and make similar structural changes,” CEO Jack Dorsey said on the earnings call. “I don’t think we’re early to this realization. I think most companies are late.”

Dorsey admitted to overhiring during the pandemic era and creating more complexity at the company than was needed. Investors welcomed the cost-focused and AI-driven strategy, pushing shares up 16.75% on the news.

Duolingo: Resetting the growth engine

The education platform topped fourth-quarter revenue and earnings expectations, with sales rising 35% year over year. However, it fell short on forward revenue guidance as management signaled a strategic reset, shifting away from aggressive monetization to refocus on accelerating user growth. The company is aiming for 100 million daily active users by 2028 after surpassing 50 million last year, though growth slowed in 2025.

“Management believes that a portion of the deceleration in user growth over the course of 2025 could be attributed to the push to monetize, which in turn led to disgruntled users and a meaningful negative impact to ‘word-of-mouth’ marketing,” D.A. Davidson analyst Wyatt Swanson wrote in a note.

For now, investors are skeptical. Shares fell 14.01% following the update.

MARA Holdings: From bitcoin to big data

The bitcoin miner reported a wider-than-expected fourth-quarter loss as crypto prices weighed on results, with revenue declining 6% year over year. But the headline numbers weren’t the main story—instead, investors focused on the company’s push into AI infrastructure.

MARA announced a joint venture with Starwood Digital Ventures to develop over one gigawatt of high-performance data center capacity, with a longer-term path toward 2.5 gigawatts. The company can invest up to 50% in the joint projects and has also taken a majority stake in data center operator Exaion, deepening its push beyond bitcoin mining.

Even so, analysts are urging caution, noting that visibility remains limited around customer agreements and construction timelines. Still, the strategic pivot has been well received in the short term, sending shares up 5.8% today.

With these companies’ pivots now underway, the next few quarters will reveal whether the strategy shifts translate into lasting results, and whether each business can stick the landing.—SY

🟢 What’s up

• Dell rose 21.93% after posting strong fourth-quarter results, raising guidance, and projecting its AI server revenue will double by 2027 despite industry memory shortages.
• Netflix declined to raise its bid for Warner Bros. Discovery to match Paramount Skydance’s new offer. Netflix rose 13.77%, while Paramount jumped 20.84% on the news. Warner Bros. Discovery, however, sank 2.19% now that the takeover drama is done.
• AES rallied 6.34% following reports it is in advanced takeover talks with Global Infrastructure Partners and EQT.
• The world’s largest dental product maker Dentsply Sirona climbed 15.5% after fourth-quarter revenue beat analyst expectations.

What’s down

• CoreWeave fell 18.51% after issuing first-quarter revenue guidance below Wall Street estimates.
• Sunrun dropped 35.1% despite beating earnings, as a weak 2026 outlook and a downgrade from Jefferies weighed on shares.
• Rocket Lab slid 4.89% after delaying the first launch of its Neutron rocket to Q4 2026 due to a testing failure, overshadowing better-than-expected quarterly results.
• Barclays fell 3.99%, Apollo Global Management dropped 8.57%, Jefferies Financial Group declined 9.31%, and Wells Fargo slipped 5.64% amid concerns over potential exposure to the collapse of UK mortgage provider Market Financial Solutions.
• Zscaler fell 12.17% despite beating earnings and revenue estimates, as investors remain uncertain how to value software stocks.
• Quantum computing company IonQ dropped 6.14%, reversing part of yesterday’s 22% surge.
• Airline stocks sank as geopolitical tensions and rising oil prices rattled the industry. United Airlines fell 8.7%, American Airlines dropped 6.24%, Delta Air Lines slid 6.82%, and Southwest Airlines declined 3.28%.

Flutter Entertainment just can’t win. Last January, the parent company of popular sports betting site FanDuel sank after revealing that too many odds-on favorites won their NFL games, forcing the company to pay out big bucks to its users in Q4 2024. It makes sense: A lot of “customer-friendly” sports results means more money out the door, which shareholders didn’t like.

Today, the company announced that it won too many bets in Q4 2025. That sounds like good news—so why did shares plunge 13.75% today?

Turns out, customers don’t enjoy losing money. While Flutter raked in the winnings, users drained of their cash decided to close their wallets, and refused to budge despite the company’s attempts to woo them back with promotions and deals. “As a result we saw higher churn within our customer base and a resultant loss of market share,” the company said in its earnings report.

It’s the latest blow to Flutter, which has watched users stream out the door and head straight to new prediction market competitors. Kalshi, one of those newcomers, began offering sports betting in January 2025, sparking a surge in user growth (Kalshi’s monthly active users rose from 600,000 in early 2025 to 5.1 million this year, according to the Financial Times) along with a stunning increase in trading volume. Flutter has responded by building its own prediction market, FanDuel Predicts, but analysts are worried that by doing so, the company is cannibalizing from its sportsbook.

That leaves Flutter, and rival DraftKings, stuck: if they lose too much in a quarter, shares sink—and if they win too much, shares sink. Neither company’s management has figured out a way to reverse the rising popularity of prediction markets without hurting their own bottom lines, so now investors are heading towards the exits just like users. DraftKings is down 30.82% year to date, while Flutter has plummeted 50.61% in 2026.—MR

The only thing more exciting than watching the winter Olympics? Tracking fixed income yield curves.

Though at first it may not seem like a big deal (or remotely interesting), something strange is happening in the bond market right now: The 10-year Treasury yield just fell below 4% for the first time since November.

Searching for a safe haven

Demand for Treasuries has been surging since the start of the year as investors flee to safety amid a turbulent geopolitical environment and fears that AI is going to hit the economy like a wrecking ball (keep in mind, bond prices and yields move inversely).

But the immediate impetus for today’s bond rally was the latest Producer Price Index reading, which showed January core prices accelerated 0.8% in the month, far above the 0.3% economists were predicting. That stoked fears of the dreaded S-word: stagflation, in which high inflation and an economic slowdown hit the economy at the same time.

“Regardless of whether we see better-than-expected earnings, more tame inflation or a resilient labor market, people have been selling first and asking questions later,” explained Chief Investment Officer for Northlight Asset Management Chris Zaccarelli in a note. “This morning’s higher inflation data is one more thing to worry about within the ‘traditional’ economic analysis of price stability and full employment, even before investors factor in the disruptive potential of AI’s impact on the economy.”

The silver lining: Sure, stagflation, a stalling economy, and spooked investors doesn’t exactly create great vibes. But the fact that investors are buying long-term US government debt in times of uncertainty means that they still have faith in the US, which is reassuring to those who feared the decline of the greenback could force investors to look outside the US for safe haven assets.

What does this mean for you?

The 10-year Treasury yield isn’t just an important number to bond investors, it’s also a benchmark for borrowing costs across the economy, influencing mortgage rates, corporate loan rates, and by extension, stock prices. Just look at mortgage rates, which fell below 6% for the first time since 2022 alongside the drop in Treasury yields.

The bottom line: It makes sense that markets are easily spooked right now, but that doesn’t mean you have to freak out, too. “For investors, this is a volatility moment, not a turning point,” explained President of Bolvin Wealth Management Group Gina Bolvin in a note today. “Focus on pricing power, earnings strength, and selective opportunities as the Fed stays patient.”—LB

• Uh-oh: UBS just downgraded…the entire US stock market.
• Trump Media said it plans to spin-off Truth Social into its own independent stock.
• Target is removing cereals made with artificial dyes from its shelves.
• OpenAI raised $110 billion in its latest funding round, which included investments from Amazon, Nvidia, and SoftBank.
• Anthropic has until 5:01pm today to comply with the Defense Department’s demands—demands Anthropic says include using its tech to spy on Americans and make autonomous weapons.
• Related: OpenAI is reportedly working on a deal with the Pentagon.

The market’s closed. The money decisions aren’t. Money Unplugged explores how people actually think about money—risk, discipline, and life beyond the portfolio.

Monday: March begins on a low note, with just the S&P final US manufacturing PMI to kick the week off. It’s also a relatively quiet day of earnings to start the week, with announcements from the likes of Venture Global, Norwegian Cruise Line, Plug Power, AST SpaceMobile, and Archer Aviation.

Tuesday: Earnings pick up speed, with reports from Target, Best Buy, AutoZone, British American Tobacco, Thor Industries, CrowdStrike, Box Inc, Ross Stores, and Webtoon Entertainment. No economic reports worth mentioning, though we’ve got some Fedspeak with New York Fed President John Williams and Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari both taking the mic.

Wednesday: A few big names drop their earnings, including Broadcom, Abercrombie & Fitch, Foot Locker, Bath & Body Works, Rigetti Computing, American Eagle Outfitters, Okta, and StubHub. We’ve also got a couple of reports well worth watching, including the S&P final US services PMI, the release of the Fed Beige Book, and a look at private payrolls with the ADP employment report.

Thursday: Earnings hit their stride today as reports file in from Costco, Gap, Marvell Technology, Kroger, JD.com, Bilibili, Ciena, and Burlington Stores. Labor market readings continue with the weekly initial jobless claims, plus we’ve got both the Q4 US productivity report and the import price index.

Friday: Nothing of note on the earnings front, but the big news of the day is sure to be the monthly US jobs report.