Big Tech’s Big Day

Meta, Microsoft, Apple, and Amazon are all set to report earnings after the close.

July 30, 2025

Silver banana goes to…

Your Daily Dose of Market & Career Clarity

📬 Delivered to 150,000+ ambitious readers


🎯 In this issue:

  • Banana Bits: Finance headlines that actually matter

  • What’s Ripe / Rotten: The tastiest and most disgusting stocks today

  • Technical Trip: Interview Q&A from Evercore

  • Lesson from the Library: Private Equity course sneak peek

  • Mentor/Student Spotlight: Hear from top finance mentors & WSO pod guests

  • Deal Dispatch: M&A, IPOs, and other transactions (Palo Alto, Figma, Union Pacific, Firefly Aerospace)

  • The Daily Poll: See how you stack up

Market Snapshot

📉 Banana Bits

AI-Native Workspace for Financial Professionals

Decisional Knowledge Engines is a new way for financial professionals to conduct due diligence, fundamental research, and portfolio management. Upload thousands of documents (PDFs, Excel, PowerPoint) and collaborate with Dex, your AI assistant that delivers 4x greater accuracy with transparent citations. Built specifically for private equity, wealth management, and investment banking professionals who demand precision in high-stakes decisions. Our agentic RAG implementation grounds every AI response in your sources, providing exact page references with bounding boxes around relevant data. You don’t have to default to AI for consensus thinking - maintain full control while AI handles the grunt work. From financial modeling to investment memos, get enterprise-grade analysis with complete audit trails.

What's Ripe

Cadence Design Systems (CDNS) 9.7% 

  • Software company Cadence crushed earnings despite export controls. They reported $1.2bn in revenue, up 20% YoY, and beat expectations by 2%.

  • Operating profit also beat expectations on stronger-than-expected bookings across software & hardware.

SoFi Technologies (SOFI) 6.6% 

  • SoFi reported Q4 revenue of $854mn, up 43% YoY, while net income of $97mn was over 5x last year’s profit.  

  • The company raised its FY guidance on stronger product and membership growth for its banking and lending services.

What's Rotten

Novo Nordisk (NVO) 21.8%

  • The obesity drug manufacturer got hit with a double dose of bad news. They cut sales growth forecasts for the rest of the year and cut their CEO.

  • It now expects 8% FY sales growth in 2025, down from a target of 13-21% previously, on lower demand and increased competition for weight loss drugs.

Spotify Technology (SPOT) 11.6%

  • Spotify CEO Daniel Ek is “unhappy” with the ads business. Looks like customers are cutting premium services and moving back to free ad-tier plans.

  • SPOT reported revenue of 4.1bn euros versus 4.2bn expected and a loss of 0.42bn euros versus an expected profit of 1.90bn euros.

🧠 Technical Trip

Interview Q&A from Evercore

👉 Want 1-on-1 recruiting help from Evercore bankers & 2,000+ top mentors? Apply to WSO Academy

📚 Lesson from the Library

Private Equity Master Package Sneak Peek 

It only takes a few grueling 100-hour weeks in IB to start dreaming about the promised land of private equity. There’s more prestige than being stuck in the bullpen, you get to learn the ins and outs of all kinds of industries, and…  you make bank.

But competition for the few junior seats that top shops make available each year is fierce. Every 2nd year, analysts on the Street are vying for a spot, and you need something to set you apart.

That’s where WSO’s PE Master Package comes in. Learn to talk the talk with LPs through guided video lessons that teach you how to evaluate investment opportunities, the nuts and bolts of auction-based deals, and other nuances of the field.

We want our loyal Peel readers to gain an edge on the competition, so we’re also giving away free access to our Excel Modeling Course for the first 5 readers to sign up for the PE package in the next 24 hours. Three total courses—that’s some serious value right there.

Analysts up and down the Street are brushing up on their skills as we speak, so there’s no time to waste. Sign up today and put yourself in the best position possible to land a gig in the most prestigious field in finance.

🌟 Student Spotlight

A+ Equity Research Report 📊

Looking for a stellar example of what makes an equity research report stand out?

One of our WSO Academy students, Mitchell Ang, put together an impressive deep dive on Robinhood, covering valuation, catalysts, and key risks with the kind of insight that turns good pitches into great ones.

🌟 Mentor Spotlight

Meet Jon, a former Morgan Stanley Equity Research VP and one of WSO’s most respected mentors.

In this podcast episode, Jon shares how he broke into ER, the toughest modeling tests, and the advice he gives every candidate heading into final rounds.

👉 Want direct access to mentors like Jon?
Apply to WSO Academy

🦈 Deal News

M&A, IPOs, And Other Notable Transactions

📊The Daily Poll

OpenAI’s “study mode” is a

Login or Subscribe to participate in polls.

Previous Poll:

Livestream FOMC meetings —

Yes, transparency: 50.0% // Bad idea: 34.0% // Could work: 16.0%

Student Success Corner

Banana Brain Teaser

Previous

30% of the members of a swim club have passed the lifesaving test. Among the members who have not passed the test, 12 have taken the preparatory course and 30 have not taken the course. How many members are there in the swim club?

Answer: 60

Today

Last year, for every 100 million vehicles that traveled on a certain highway, 96 vehicles were involved in accidents. If 3 billion vehicles traveled on the highway last year, how many of those vehicles were involved in accidents? (1 billion = 1,000,000,000)

❝

One of the most powerful sources of mispricing is the tendency to over-weight or over-emphasize current conditions.

Bill Miller

How Would You Rate Today's Peel?


Happy Investing,
Chris, Vyom, Ankit, Colin, & Patrick