Wall Street Breakfast Podcast: Airbnb Earnings On Deck

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Airbnb (ABNB) Q3 earnings on deck: Focus on bookings amid slow U.S. demand. (00:23) Election buzz: Tesla (TSLA) soars on expectations of green lights for autonomous driving approvals. (02:02) Costco’s (COST) October net sales climb 7.2%. (03:10)

This is an abridged transcript of the podcast.

Airbnb (NASDAQ:ABNB) is set to announce third quarter earnings today after market close. Investors will keep an eye on bookings amid the company’s warning of a slowing demand in the United States.

Wall Street expects San Francisco-based Airbnb to post quarterly EPS of $2.15, while revenue is expected to rise nearly 10% to $3.72B.

Airbnb has been seeing soft demand for domestic travel in the U.S. since the start of the year, as people are cautious about spending money on vacations in a soft economic environment.

The company, in August, issued a weak outlook for Q3 and said it is seeing some signs of slowing demand from U.S. guests and shorter booking lead times globally.

Booking lead time is the number of days between when a guest makes a reservation and the date they check in.

It will be interesting to note what the company sees for the upcoming holiday season. Airbnb recently highlighted the top searched destinations in the U.S. for family travel over the week of Thanksgiving. Tennessee and Florida were the top two destinations.

Seeking Alpha analyst Luca Socci called Airbnb’s Q3 earnings “a bit dangerous”, adding that a “small downtick in its main – and healthy – financials and KPIs could send the stock back to $110 or lower.”

Meanwhile, Airbnb is positive about the strength of its business in Latin America and Asia Pacific. The company, in September, disclosed that it has reached 2 billion guests.

Wall Street, Seeking Alpha analyst and Seeking Alpha’s Quant Ratings are cautious and rated the company as a Hold.

Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) closed the Wednesday session with a gain of 14.7% on volume of over 148 million shares. The EV stock carved out a new 52-week high of $289.59 earlier in the session and is threatening to jump onto the one-trillion dollar market cap list that only includes nine stocks in the U.S.

Deepwater Asset Management analyst Gene Munster said the rally was tied in part to emotion and investor confidence that Elon Musk’s big bet on autonomous driving could pay off after he was called a “super genius” by Donald Trump in his victory speech early on Wednesday.

Munster said the bullish view on the impact of a Trump Presidency is that the federal government may move more quickly to approve Tesla’s autonomous driving plans. “This is important given the regulator side of autonomy is more difficult to move forward than the tech side,” he noted. Crunching the numbers on an accelerated robotaxi launch, Munster said if Tesla (TSLA) gains 50% share of the ride hailing market in the U.S. by 2030, that it could add 20% to Tesla’s (TSLA) operating income in 2030 or about $5 billion.

Costco (NASDAQ:COST) on Wednesday reported a 7.2% rise in monthly net sales, which came in at $20.03B for October. This compared to $18.68B in the same month last year.

Total company comparable sales for October were 5.1%. U.S. comparable sales were 4.1%.

Comparable sales excluding gasoline prices and forex impact for October were 6.5%. U.S. comparable sales excluding items were 5.8%.

“October results were negatively affected by a pull forward in sales from the abnormal consumer activity associated with the hurricanes and port strikes in September. The estimated impact on October’s total and comparable sales was a little more than one percent in the U.S. and slightly less than one percent worldwide,” the company said in a statement.

For the first nine weeks of fiscal 2025, net sales came in at $44.65B, up 8% from $41.33B last year.

More articles on Seeking Alpha:

MSCI to add 22 stocks, remove 57 stocks from ACWI Index in latest rebalance

Fed’s confidence in flagging rate cuts ‘might wane’ as Trump’s economic impact unfolds

Trump win brings ‘breath of fresh air’ to oil and gas industry, Energy Transfer CEO says

Catalyst watch:

• Notable investor events include CSX Corporation’s Investor Day event and Veeva Systems’ (VEEV) Virtual Investor Day.

• Lucid Group (LCID) will open up customer orders for the Lucid Gravity. Orders will initially be taken for the Grand Touring trim, priced from $94,900. Current Lucid owners will be given priority for deliveries.

• Tapestry (TPR) will hold its earnings conference call at 8am. The management update will have added significance following the recent decision from a judge to block the merger with Capri (CPRI).

• NXP Semiconductors N.V. (NXPI) will host an in-person Investor Day event for buy-side institutional investors and sell-side equity analysts. The event will include presentations and Q&A sessions with the company’s senior leadership team.

Now let’s take a look at the markets as of 6 am. Ahead of the opening bell today, Dow, S&P and Nasdaq futures are in the green. Crude oil is down 0.9% at $71/barrel. Bitcoin is up 1.4% at $74,000.

In the world markets, the FTSE 100 is flat and the DAX is up 1.1%.

The biggest movers for the day premarket: Qualcomm’s (QCOM) is up 8% after beating the Q3 consensus with an 18% increase in revenue Y/Y.

On today’s economic calendar:

• 10:30 am EIA Natural Gas Report

• 2:00 pm FOMC Announcement

• 2:30 pm Chairman Press Conference

Due to the FOMC announcement and chairman press conference, Wall Street Lunch with Kim Khan will be published a little later to accommodate news from the press conference.