CE 100 Index Up 0.5% as Tesla and Tencent Declines Blunt Olo, Goldman Surges

Earnings season has just started — and for the companies forging new paths to commerce and payments, the quarterly report card gives a glimpse into progress and challenges.

To that end, the CE 100 Index gained 0.5% through the week, as a few names chimed in with their results, though not all headlines revolved around earnings — and now stands 30% higher year to date.

The Eat pillar gained 3.8%, followed by the banking pillar, which rose 3.6%. Within the Eat segment, Olo shares were up 15%, while the financial services realm, Goldman Sachs surged more than 7% on the week.

Olo, as we reported here, has begun offering card-present processing through its Olo Pay service. In an announcement, Olo said its card-present payment processing offering is available when diners order in-store via a kiosk, in partnership with Bite, a provider of self-service kiosks.

Goldman Continues Pivot Away From Main Street

As we noted in our own coverage on Goldman’s earnings, as the pivot from consumer-focused banking continues, the consumer platforms business logged revenues of $577 million, gaining 18% over the first quarter of this year and surging 129% from last year. But the provision for credit losses in the segment stood at $544 million, up more than 100% over the first quarter of 2023 and gaining 75% from the same period last year.

Installment loans fell to $5 billion in the quarter, down from $6 billion in Q1, and roughly flat with a year ago. Credit card loans were $17 billion in the second quarter, up from $15 billion in the first quarter and surging from $12 billion last year.

Net charge-offs of $444 million made for an annualized net charge-off rate of 1%, where the NCOs were 0.4% for wholesale loans, 5.8% for consumer loans (in the latter case, the NCO had been 4.6% in the first quarter).

The company continues to explore a potential sale of the GreenSky business.

Uber also was a standout in terms of individual performers, gathering more than 5%, as Uber Eats has partnered with Vroom Delivery. The pact enables retailers using Vroom Delivery’s back office, inventory and loyalty solutions to integrate their digital storefronts with Uber Eats’ marketplace, allowing them to reach new customers.

The Enablers vertical gave up 1.3%. Meta lost 4.7%, in a week where the company said it is releasing  a commercial version of its open-source artificial intelligence (AI) model Llama 2 in partnership with Microsoft.

Elsewhere, Tesla shares gave up 7.6%, having posted earnings that showed declining margins even as sales from its automotive efforts were up nearly 50%, topping $21 billion. Management also pointed to slowing production, according to reports. And as noted here, the company plans to invest more than $1 billion by the end of 2024 into building an in-house supercomputer named “Dojo.”

Tencent’s stock lost 11.2%, capping a week that saw Pony Ma Huateng, chairman and CEO of Tencent Holdings, praising China’s government-led plan to improve the private economy, as reported in the South China Morning Post.

Elsewhere for the name, as reported by PYMNTS earlier this month, Flywire and Tencent Financial Technology have teamed up to enable Chinese students to make international tuition payments.

This partnership will use the digital wallet Weixin Pay (WeChat Pay) to facilitate those cross-border payments.