SPY Market Update: TMUS, SBUX and FLSR Soaring Today

By Joel South Published Jan 29, 12:01PM EST

Key Points

T-mobile beat earnings this morning, reporting industry-best customer additions.
First Solar didn’t beat anything, but announced an earnings date for next month. Analysts are optimistic about First Solar’s numbers.

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SPY Market Update: TMUS, SBUX and FLSR Soaring Today — © ImagePixel / iStock via Getty Images

It’s only a so-so day on the S&P Wednesday, as markets continue to digest the implications of Monday’s “Sputnik moment” AI news from China. Investors still seem a little shell-shocked, and markets aren’t moving definitively either up or down. As of 11:15 a.m. ET, the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (NYSE: SPY) | SPY Price Prediction is down about 0.3%.

Three stocks in particular are making more significant moves, however.

T-Mobile with an earnings beat

T-Mobile (Nasdaq: TMUS) is moving the most of these three, up 8.9%, after “beating earnings” with a stick this morning. Analysts were expecting T-Mobile to report $2.28 per share on $21.4 billion in sales for its fiscal Q4 2024.

T-Mobile reported $2.57 per share and sales of $21.9 billion instead. T-Mobile says it added 263,000 postpaid customer accounts (i.e. customers on a contract) in Q4, and 1.1 million in all of fiscal 2024. Total postpaid customers (some of those accounts have multiple phone lines, and so multiple “customers” per “account”) grew 1.9 million in the quarter and 6.1 million in the year. All of these numbers, T-Mobile pointed out, are bigger than any other US telecom has reported so far. And T-Mobile expects to add another 5.5 million to 6 million customers in 2025.

Is Starbucks turning the corner?

Starbucks (Nasdaq: SBUX) shares are rising, up 6.8%, after the coffeehouse chain announced better-than-expected earnings last night. Starbucks reported $0.69 per share in profit where analysts expected only $0.67, and the company’s Q1 2025 revenue was $9.4 billion, also ahead of consensus estimates.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that Starbucks revenues declined slightly year over year, down about 0.3%, with declines driven by same store sales falling 4% in the U.S., 4% in the international business generally, and 6% in China. Per-share earnings declined more than 23% year over year.

Starbucks is continuing to reinvent itself, however, and said it will cut its menu offerings by as much as 30% to streamline the business going forward. At the same time, the company thinks it still has room to expand its locations, and could eventually double its store count from here, which could be important as store growth helped offset declining same store sales in Q1. Looking ahead throughout the balance of 2025, management expects earnings to decline again in Q2, but then pick up in the second half, growing both sequentially and year over year.

First Solar

Not to be left out of the good news, First Solar’s (Nasdaq: FSLR) stock is up 3.5% this morning. Investors may be under the impression that this is because First Solar announced good earnings news last night, but that would be a mistake. In fact, what First Solar announced last night is that it will report earnings a month from now.

The company set an earnings report date of Tuesday, February 25, for its Q4 numbers, and said it will report earnings after the close of trading that day.

Looking ahead to that news, analysts are forecasting that First Solar will report $4.74 per share in profit, or about 46% year over year growth. Sales for the quarter should be $1.5 billion, which would work out to 28% year over year growth.

High bars to clear to be sure, but investors today seem confident First Solar will clear them.

About the Author Joel South →

Joel South covers large-cap stocks, dividend investing, and major market trends, with a focus on earnings analysis, valuation, and turning complex data into actionable insights for investors.

He brings more than 15 years of experience as an investor and financial journalist, including 12 years at The Motley Fool, where he served as an investment analyst, Bureau Chief, and later led the Fool.com investing news desk. He has also co-hosted an investing podcast and appeared across TV and radio discussing market trends.