Pepsi's Rebound Gains Momentum + Ferrari Shares Slide | The Rundown October 9, 2025

Public.com presents The Rundown, your daily market update in under 10 minutes. My name is Zaid Admani, and today is Thursday, October 9th. In today's episode, we'll tell you why air traffic controllers might put an end to the government shutdown. We'll also recap earnings from PepsiCo and Delta. Then stick around to the end of the show to find out why Ferrari stock is headed for its worst day ever. We got a great show for you today. Let's go. The stock market came roaring back on Wednesday. The S&P 500 jumped 0.6% and the NASDAQ was up more than 1%, both hitting all-time highs again. Now, stop me if you've heard this before, but AI stocks continued to power this rally. CoreWeave was up 9% on Wednesday and AMD continues to make double-digit moves. It jumped more than 11%. AMD stock is now up more than 40% this week after their big partnership announcement with OpenAI on Monday. Now, as all of this is happening, remember the government is still shut down. We're currently in the ninth day of the shutdown with no progress or end in sight. Now, there hasn't really been a sense of urgency from lawmakers because generally most people haven't felt the impact of the shutdown, but that might be changing, especially at the airports. See, during the government shutdown, thousands of federal workers are furloughed, meaning they're sent home without pay until the shutdown ends. But there are some essential workers like TSA agents and air traffic controllers that have to continue working, but without getting paid. And because of that, some air traffic controllers have started calling some seek to pick up side gigs like driving an Uber to, you know, pay their bills. That's leading to staff shortages at airports. And now we're seeing more flight delays and cancellations as a result. So if that gets worse, it could finally put more pressure on Congress to get a deal done and reopen the government. By the way, fun fact, lawmakers in Congress still get paid during a government shutdown. Their paychecks are not impacted. But I mean, look, the shutdown hasn't impacted markets so far. Wall Street continues to shrug things off. If the shutdown does drag into next week, then we won't be getting the September CPI inflation data from the government, which maybe investors would prefer that at this point. Nobody wants negative economic data to ruin this rally. But yeah, we're going to continue to keep an eye on the government shutdown and also start preparing for earnings season, which kicks into gear next week. So make sure you guys are subscribed to the podcast and tuning in every day to stay in the loop. Let's run through some headlines, starting with PepsiCo. PepsiCo is starting to get some fizz back after the food giant beat Wall Street estimates in their latest earnings reports, thanks to a rebound in their beverage business u.s beverage sales rose two percent making the strongest growth in nearly two years it's kind of sad honestly sales of their flagship pepsi product their zero sugar offerings and their new two billion dollar acquisition of the health soda poppy help drive that growth i'm not gonna lie though i don't get the poppy hype all right i don't think it's that good but it's helping pepsico sales right now now the not so good news for pepsico is that their overall growth is still sluggish if you look at volumes the north american beverage division fell three percent and snack volumes dropped by four percent so pepsi might be selling more expensive drinks right now but they're selling fewer bags of chips and if you look at their overall year-to-date sales those are up less than one percent and pepsico expects only low single-digit growth for 2025 and what's worse is that their earnings per share are down 29 so far this year so the company continues to struggle. Now, they're trying different ways to win back customers. PepsiCo is leaning into healthier snacks, hoping it'll get people to buy their stuff. In fact, they're releasing new Doritos and Cheetos products without artificial colorings and flavors. The company also plans to cut a bunch of products to simplify their supply chain and slash more jobs in the process before the end of the year to save money. PepsiCo has been facing pressures from activist investors like Elliott Management, which took a $4 billion stake in the company earlier this year to boost profitability. My take here is that it's really hard for these food giant conglomerate companies to compete with smaller brands that are launching on a weekly basis using social media. PepsiCo is showing some signs of a turnaround, but not nearly enough. I mean, their stock moved less than 1% this morning following the earnings report and is down nearly 20% over the last year. So we'll see if they can ever turn things around let's stick with earnings and talk about Delta Delta just dropped strong earnings this morning beating on both revenue and profits thanks to higher airfare and a boost in luxury travel Delta's revenues in q3 were up four percent year over year to 15.2 billion dollars and their q3 profits climbed 11 to 1.4 billion dollars the premium cabins continue to be Delta's cash cow sales from first class and comfort plus seats jumped nine percent while the main cabin actually saw a drop of four percent so Delta continues to cater to the high income crowd and it's working for their business in fact premium seating will continue to get more expensive because Delta CEO says there's no sign of a pullback from travelers willing to pay up for comfort seats now beyond just a high income crowd corporate travel is also back in full swing Delta saw an eight percent increase last quarter and Delta expects that momentum to carry into 2026 so yeah Delta seems to be crushing it right now and it's a pretty big reversal from earlier this year if you guys remember back in April Delta pulled their guidance after the tariff shock on top of that airlines were struggling with oversupply which was putting a downward pressure on airfare but since then airlines have cut unprofitable routes and that seems to be working for Delta Delta stock is up more than five percent today in response to the earnings report, and it's up more than 69% from its lows back in April. Let's talk about some stocks making moves today. Shares of the pharma company Akero Therapeutics are soaring this morning after the Danish pharma giant Novo Nordisk agreed to buy Akero for up to $5.2 billion. Novo will pay $54 a share in cash, which is a 16% premium to where Akero was trading at yesterday. And Novo will pay an additional $6 a share if Akero's experimental liver drug gets full FDA approval. Akero is working on a drug that treats fatty liver disease known as MASH. So yeah, big move in Pharma land. Shares of Akero are up 19% this morning in pre-market trading and sitting around $54 a share. I guess that means the market is pricing that Akero's new drug won't get FDA approval. So if you think that Akero's liver drug will get FDA approval, there's an easy way to make $6 a share. Now, on the flip side, shares of Ferrari are crashing this morning after the luxury car maker reported disappointing updates to its full year and 2030 guidance. Ferrari says they expect operating income to reach 2.75 billion euros by 2030, which is short of the 3.2 billion euros that analysts were expecting. On top of that, Ferrari expects their revenues to come in at 9 billion euros by 2030, while analysts were expecting 10 billion. The company also cut its EV sales target in half. Ferrari now expects just 20% of its cars to be fully electric by 2030, down from the 40%. I'll be honest with you guys, I didn't even know that Ferrari was planning to make an EV. So yeah, Ferrari stock has taken a hit this morning. It's down more than 12% this morning, and it's headed for its worst trading day since going public in 2015. let's wrap the show with the fun fact Ferrari has their own theme park in Abu Dhabi called Ferrari World the theme park opened up back in 2010 and because it's in the UAE where it gets insanely hot in the summer the entire park is indoor in fact it's the largest indoor park in the world I actually went to Ferrari World back in 2022 and yeah it's legit you know they have the fastest roller coaster in the world called Formula Rossa. I rode it multiple times and it lives up to the hype. Honestly, I still think about that roller coaster to this day. You can also ride in a Ferrari at the park. They have high tech F1 simulators there, which unfortunately I didn't get a chance to try, but hopefully I'll get a chance next time. Now, speaking of F1, the US Grand Prix is happening in Austin, Texas in less than a couple of weeks. And public.com is actually sponsoring the Aston Martin F1 team. So as an extension, the rundown, I guess, has to be an Aston Martin podcast now. I might even try to go to the race in Austin because it's only like a two and a half hour drive from where I live. So if anyone listening to this show is going to be in Austin for the F1 race and you see a dude wearing an Aston Martin hat from public.com, it's probably me. And if you're just going to be watching the race at home, keep an eye out for the public logo on the Aston Martin cars. And who knows, maybe we can get one of the drivers that come on the podcast soon. I would love to hear Fernando Alonso's thoughts in the stock market. Well, all right, guys, that's the rundown for today. Hope you guys enjoyed today's episode. If you did and you have like nine extra seconds, consider giving us a five-star rating on Apple, Spotify, wherever you listen to your podcasts. And if you are listening on Spotify, don't forget to vote in today's Spotify poll. Leave us a comment on Spotify. All that engagement really does help us out and it helps other people find the show. I got word from Mike that we're getting pretty close to launching the merch. So we'll have more details on the merch giveaway by next week. Thank you to everyone's patience for that. I know people have been asking about it. So hopefully we'll have more information to you very soon. Thank you guys again for listening, watching, and commenting. Shout out to Mike and Connor for all the work behind the scenes. And we'll see you guys back here tomorrow.