Monday’s First Moves: VZ Earnings, ROST Upgrade, FICO Downgrade

you on Schwab Network. So a busy week ahead, f Time for first moves. And the opening bells have rung. Diane King Hall is with me taking a look. Let's start off with Verizon which is report reported its numbers today. Your thoughts. Yeah a mixed bag. Investors have been trying to figure out how they want to interpret this one. Because they did do better than expected on their bottom line. They did miss on revenue for Verizon. And this one in its peer group has been the outperformer. But it's been under pressure. Part of that obviously has to do with competitive threat that could potentially comem Elon Musk and his over at SpaceX. In terms of the telecom space. So adjusted earnings did increase 8.3% to a buck 31 per share. That wter than expected. Street was looking for a buck 27. Revenue topped 34.3 billion, but Wall Street was looking for more than that 34.7 for. It was an increase of 1.5%. You did see wireless and broadband growth that helped offset weaker equipment sales. In terms of the standout phone ers were the standout.rizon addo 406,000 postpaid phone customers. Those are the customers who pay their monthly bill.hat is about, what, double double what Wall S was expecting. So that is why you initially saw shares higher in the premarket. Now again they've turned lower. Now of that again has to do with pressure and the competitive threat that exists from potentially from Elon Musk's plans in this space. Broadband was softer. They did they did increase customers a314,000. Buw expectations. So they had strong phone growth. And that is encouraging. But the improvement just uniform across their verticals. Their full year outlook. They're now c2 million phon additions. That is up from the upper half of their previous range adjustednings. They're projecting that between 504 to 506 per share. Free cash flo growth. They expect that to approach 12%, which would be up from 9 to 10% in terms of mobility a broadband service revenue that did increase. Nicole increased about nearly 3%. Yeah. Look, these telecom numbers, as you said, as we get into quarterly numbers. But I think about the stock, how they've been under pressure with the talk of SpaceX now maybe getting into the same sort of businesses. Also Verizon and Amazon Web Services signed thatllion AI infrastructure deal. So a lot going on in the group. Let's talk aoss stores getting an upgrade. Yeah. Getting more love from Wall Street. This one's been big outperformer. Whether we're talking about year to date or on a year over year basss stores came in to today up more than 25%. So they're adding to those gains right now on a year overr basis. Even better, up more than 40%. UBS upgrading Ross stores to a b from neutral. e lifting their price target up to 315. That's up 30% increase. Thest saysthan the sales momentum it sees over there at this value retailer continue beyond this year. There's room they seeo catching up with TJX. They see they believe the wider than realized gap in store produc between Ross and TJX. TJX, the parent company of TJ Maxx Marshall's home goods. So UBS basically believes that Ross has more room to run, more room to gain more sales from its existing stores. They are crediting their CEO strategies with helping Ros just narrow the gap between them and TJX. So again, they're build a strong year coming into today. We'll see if that thesis holds up. All right. Last but not downgrade. Yeah. Wells Fargo hitting Fico with a downgrade fair. Isaac Corp. they're downgrading it to equal weight from overweight. So they're moving to the sidelines here. They're cutting their pricetargn from 800. So a big leg down for Fico today. Those shares down more t 6%. Right now the concern is Fico's decision to hold mortgage score pricing steady. They think that will put a cap on earni growth that Wells had anticipated from an increase to pricing. So what'sood for the consumer. Not so great for the shareholder here. So basically Fico has decided to maintain r $s that are enrolled in its preferred program. It comes as just the you know, they're trying to keep up with the competition. In other words, here, which this bundle includes, like the classic Fico score, the one we all check annually for ourselves and the newer Fico scoring system, is about predicting borrowers ability to repay their mortgage here. So the trade off is straightforward here. Nicole. All right.t's dropping as you're talking ab