CE 100 Index Gains 0.4% as Coursera Jumps on Earnings

Excitement over artificial intelligence (AI) helped drive Coursera shares (and results) significantly higher this past week, while earnings began to trickle in for the CE 100 Index — and the deluge of quarterly reports begins in earnest.

Coursera shares leaped 49%, leading the Work segment 2.7% higher.

The earnings results showed the company surpassed more than 2 million enrollments in its generative AI catalog. Total revenue was $170.3 million, up 11% from $153.7 million a year ago. Consumer revenue was $97.3 million, up 12% year over year, driven in part by generative AI credentials.

Enterprise revenue was $58.7 million, up 8% from a year ago. The company said that the total number of paid enterprise customers increased to 1,511, up 17% from a year ago.

Ocado Gains

Ocado shares rose by 17.6%. During the company’s most recent earnings report, Ocado CEO Tim Steiner said his company is benefiting from a resumption in online grocery buying. The company’s half-year report released earlier in the month noted that group revenues were up 13% to £1.5 billion, while technology solutions revenues gained 22%, and Ocado retail sales gathered 11%.

Elsewhere, and as reported by Reuters, U.S. partner Kroger has placed an order for Ocado’s On-Grid Robotic Pick (OGRP) and Automated Frameload (AFL), to be used in multiple warehouses.

Visa Spotlights Contactless Payments

Visa shares gathered 4.5% in the Pay and Be Paid segment, which lost 2.2% overall. As reported this past week, contactless payments were a key highlight in the company’s earnings call last week.

CEO Ryan McInerney said on the conference call with analysts that tap to pay grew 4 percentage points from last year to 80% of face-to-face transactions globally, excluding the U.S. More than 55 countries have seen more than 90% contactless penetration, he said, in response to analysts’ questions. In the U.S., tap to pay has been tied to more than 50% of in-person commerce transactions, and 30 cities have seen more than 60% penetration.

The company passed the 10 billion token mark this quarter, according to the CEO’s commentary, and the tokens helped generate an estimated $40 billion in incremental eCommerce revenue and prevented an estimated $600 million in fraud.

Revenues from new payment flows, he said, grew by 18% year over year. Visa Direct transactions grew by 41% over the same time.

In the U.S., payments volumes were 4% higher, with debit up 4% and credit up 3% year over year.

CrowdStrike Continues Slide

CrowdStrike continued to decline, down about 17%. In a report released by the company, CrowdStrike says a glitch in test software led to last week’s massive IT outage.

The report also outlines what CrowdStrike aims to do to prevent the problem from recurring, such as implementing “a staggered deployment strategy for Rapid Response Content in which updates are gradually deployed to larger portions of the sensor base,” while also giving customers more control over the delivery of these updates, letting them choose when and where they are deployed.

Block shares lost 11.6%. The company said this week in a posting that it will shutter Cash App UK in mid-September.

“In recent months, we have outlined our strategic approach for Cash App, which prioritizes our focus on the United States, and deprioritizes global expansion. All of our operations remain unaffected by this decision,” as noted in the posting.