Paralysis

"What decision do you make? Do you want to go left or right?"

Summary: Confidence may not be quite as strong as hoped, in part because the markets are struggling to digest rapid changes in policy made by the Trump administration.

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Macro

There's a lot of uncertainty
"Everybody’s paralyzed...What decision do you make? Do you want to go left or right? Are we going to grow the business? Well, I don’t know. Are there tariffs or not?" – ON Semiconductor (ON 0.00%↑) CEO Hassane El-Khoury

"To step back for a moment, I think there's just a lot of uncertainty right there now in the economy” - DiamondRock Hospitality (DRH 0.00%↑) CEO Jeffrey Donnelly

Consumer confidence is not as strong as hoped
"Confidence report came out yesterday, not favorable. So we're monitoring that to see how much of that has impacted some of the volatility in the quarter as well going forward." – Advance Auto Parts (AAP 0.00%↑) CFO Ryan Grimsland

“As we look ahead to Q1 2025, although the year began with optimism, many companies are now focusing on how potential tariffs, inflation and higher interest rates may impact their businesses, introducing an element of uncertainty. An indication of that uncertainty, as I'm sure you've seen, is the conference board measure of consumer confidence, which reported that February saw the largest single monthly decline in consumer confidence since August 2021” - IHeartMedia (IHRT 0.00%↑) CFO Richard J. Bressler

Low-income consumers continue to be under pressure
"We also think the consumer is still a little pressured as well. And so the consumer is pressured right now, especially the consumer at our cohort. We feel like there's a lot of pressures around that from inflation and other things that are still impacting their ability to purchase discretionary items, make trade-offs." – Advance Auto Parts (AAP 0.00%↑) CFO Ryan Grimsland

"There are lots of income levels in this country — if you’re at the lower end of that scale, you are feeling more frustration and pain because of higher food prices. They’ve persisted for years now, and you’re just tired of it. And you want it to get better." – Walmart (WMT 0.00%↑) CEO Douglas McMillon

“Unemployment remains low and real wages grew, although lower income consumers continue to face affordability pressures” - TransUnion (TRU 0.00%↑) CEO Christopher Cartwright

Consumer spending remains stable
"If you look at the way the money moves… year to date, about 7% more money got moved by Bank of America consumers over last year, so it’s pretty healthy….the healthy consumer spends money, and that's good, but they use all the devices." – Bank of America (BAC 0.00%↑) CEO Brian Moynihan

"I think that consumers are still spending. They’re being careful on how much they spend on each product. Where they can trade down a price, they do so. Where they can find deals, they continue to do so." – Amazon (AMZN 0.00%↑) CEO Andy Jassy

Small businesses too remain stable
"I would just say it remains very stable in terms of just the macro environment for businesses. If I give you a click down, the smaller businesses, up to about 10 employees, sort of $2.5 million, $3 million in revenue, on our platform, their profits and cash flows are up year-over-year. Of course, as you know, we're not overly concentrated in any particular industry, it differs a little bit by industry. But overall, that should be your takeaway for the smaller businesses. The larger businesses sort of $3 million and above $10 million into $50 million, $100 million-plus, the mid-market customers that we serve, they're actually very much looking towards digitization, looking towards being able to save time, finding ways to drive both the revenue growth and profitability." – Intuit (INTU 0.00%↑) CEO Sasan Goodarzi

It’s been a tense week in geopolitics
"We signed with him, me, like, you, president, in 2019, I signed with him the deal. I signed with him, (French President Emmanuel) Macron and (former German Chancellor Angela) Merkel. We signed a ceasefire. Ceasefire. All of them told me that he will never go … But after that, he broke the ceasefire, he killed our people, and he didn’t exchange prisoners. We signed the exchange of prisoners. But he didn’t do it. What kind of diplomacy, JD, you are speaking about? What do you mean?” - Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy

International