Warner Bros. Discovery adds 2 million subscribers in first earnings report

Yahoo Finance's Ines Ferre joins the Live show to break down how stocks are moving in midday trading.

Video transcript

AKIKO FUJITA: Some companies already reporting, though, and we've seen some moves on the back of that. Let's bring in Yahoo Finance's Ines Ferre, who's watching our top trending tickers. And Ines, let's start with PepsiCo. They did beat on the top and bottom lines. Some bit of a pullback initially, though.

INES FERRE: Yeah, that's right. We did see a little bit of a pullback, the company cutting its full year EPS forecasts by about $0.04, but still beating on the top and the bottom line, as you said, Akiko. Also, its organic sales is expected to go up this year as well. So a solid quarter Bernstein is saying, but that cut to that, that slight cut to that EPS forecast kind of dampened that.

Now, keep in mind that PepsiCo is at $174 a share. The high is $177. So not that far off from its high. Also, the company has been able to increase prices. But it did talk about higher input costs inflation. So, again, something similar to what we also heard with Coca-Cola yesterday, which is, they have price elasticity. They are able to increase prices, but until when as inflation keeps going higher.

Also, another company that has been able to increase its prices-- well, this is UPS. It's down now more than 4%. The company beat on the top and the bottom line. Something interesting with this first quarter, though, it's that its volumes was lower. And this is interesting because it kind of show you that the pandemic boom that we saw during the thick of the pandemic where people were ordering a lot of packages, UPS was busy with those huge volumes, that softening a bit.

And that kind of jives also with a report from Freight Waves recently that talked about softer volumes when it comes to logistics and trucking. So, again, UPS able to raise those prices, also able to focus more on the small companies, which they are able to charge a little-- have higher prices for the small companies, and also talking about its share buyback program, Akiko.

AKIKO FUJITA: Ines, another company being very closely watched-- Warner Brothers Discovery. This is, of course, the first earnings call since we saw this stock trading under this name under CEO David Zaslav. And then, of course, a lot of questions about what happened with CNN+, too.

INES FERRE: Yeah, that's right. And that was also mentioned in the earnings call. So just to reiterate what happened with the quarter, its earnings per share coming in above expectations. Its revenue coming in line with expectations. The company adding 2 million subscribers in the first quarter. This is interesting, at an interesting time when Netflix had lost subscribers.

But as you mentioned, Akiko, definitely during the conference call, a lot was talked about this going to be a little bit of a messy year because of the merger and cost savings. And exhibit A was CNN+, which they pulled the plug on after only a couple of weeks of having launched that. So, again, they're talking about cost saving and that they are going to find other areas where there is some heavy spending. And they just don't find the financial fundamentals for that or ROI for it.

AKIKO FUJITA: Yeah, you have to wonder how significant the cost savings will be from all those cuts that we saw at CNN+.