P&G Sends $150 Million Warning: 8 Key Items Shaping the Stock Market Friday

These are the early headlines and other items poised to influence the market at the start of the trading day. As we share this collection of market drivers, U.S. equity futures point to a mixed market open.

1. Oil prices hovered around $100 a barrel early Friday after President Donald Trump said he wouldn’t be rushed to end the Iran war and that Americans should expect higher gas prices for “a little while.” (Barron’s)

A clear majority of Americans blame President Donald Trump for surging gasoline prices, which is weighing on his Republican Party ahead of November's congressional midterm elections, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll. Some 77% of registered voters in the poll, which concluded early this week, ‌said Trump bears at least a fair amount of responsibility for the recent rise in gas prices, which was sparked by his decision to launch a war on Iran along with U.S. ally Israel. (Reuters)

With President Trump announcing a three-week ceasefire extension between the U.S. and Iran, the timeline has once again been extended but uncertainty remains as both countries have seized commercial ships. This makes it more of a challenge for the forward-looking market to look past the conflict, while higher-for-longer energy and related prices take their toll on consumers and companies. The longer those prices are higher compared to levels earlier this year, the more likely we will see incremental price increases as companies look to protect margins.

2. Procter & Gamble warned of a $150 million hit to its annual profit from higher input cost due to the ‌Middle East conflict, even as demand for its pricier hair and skin care products helped the consumer goods bellwether top quarterly expectations… The higher costs account for the surge in oil prices from $60 a barrel before the conflict to around $100 today and its impact on plastics ⁠and paper for packaging, as well as transportation charges, a company spokesperson told Reuters. The impact would be more substantial beginning the first quarter of fiscal 2027 if the conflict stretches out, the spokesperson said. P&G did not provide its fiscal 2027 forecast. (Reuters)

After reading that, be sure to go back and re-read the sentence in today’s first item above.

3. Intel shares surged 28 percent in pre-market trading on Friday, set for an all-time high, after the US chipmaker’s quarterly forecasts smashed Wall Street’s expectations… Big Tech groups are pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into AI data centres, for which Intel supplies CPUs that work alongside the advanced processor chips designed by the likes of Nvidia and mainly manufactured by rival TSMC… Data centre and AI products brought in $5.1bn in revenue in the first quarter, far surpassing expectations. Intel said the shift from AI model training to the “inference” computing needed to run the models meant more CPUs were needed for each GPU. (FT)

Another big confirmation point for AI and data center related demand that is lifting the Portfolio’s AI and data center related positions even further on Friday morning. While this is a positive for the Portfolio, with the overbought condition several of them are in, like Marvell (MRVL) and Broadcom (AVGO) we would advise against committing fresh capital at current levels.

4. Shares in SAP were rallying on Friday after the German tech company reported better-than-expected first-quarter profit and reiterated its 2026 cloud revenue outlook, with a caveat… SAP’s all-important cloud unit, which has benefited in recent years from the artificial-intelligence boom, logged revenue of €5.96 billion, up 19% from a year ago and coming in just above the €5.89 billion Wall Street was expecting. The tech company added that it ended the first quarter with a cloud backlog of €21.9 billion, up 20% compared with a year ago. The company continues to expect 2026 cloud revenue of between €25.8 billion and €26.2 billion. (Barron’s)

SAP’s (SAP) results are another factor lifting tech stocks on Friday morning, but its cloud results set the stage for quarterly results next week from Microsoft (MSFT) , Google (GOOGL) and Amazon (AMZN) . Tucked inside SAP’s guidance it gave a similar warning made by ServiceNow (NOW) when it reported this week — its guidance assumes that the conflict in the Middle East de-escalates over the near-term.

5. Meta Platforms Inc. and Microsoft Corp. are planning cuts or announcing buyouts that could affect as many as 23,000 jobs, part of an effort to streamline operations and offset heavy spending on artificial intelligence. Meta told personnel in an internal memo on Thursday that it planned to cut 10% of workers, or roughly 8,000 employees, starting on May 20. The social-media company also said it wouldn’t fill 6,000 open roles. Earlier in the day, Microsoft issued its own memo offering voluntary buyouts to thousands of its U.S. employees. About 7% of the U.S. workforce will be eligible for the buyouts, according to a person familiar with the planning. (Bloomberg)

On the one hand, the fact these announcements come ahead of both companies reporting their quarterly results next week indicates both Meta (META) and Microsoft will be talking about cost reduction efforts and expense controls. It also raises the likelihood they will also lift their capex spending plans. While that would be another positive for our AI and digital infrastructure plays, it has the potential to re-awaken questions about AI monetization and margins.

6. Caocao Inc, the ride-hailing arm of Chinese automaker Geely Holding Group, plans to deploy thousands of robotaxis ‌globally next year, its CEO said on Friday, setting up a potential rivalry with Tesla's Cybercab. (Reuters)

Tesla Inc. has started manufacturing its Cybercab robotaxi, Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk said Friday in a post on his social media site X… Tesla’s ride-hailing business is on track to expand to Phoenix, Miami, Orlando, Tampa and Las Vegas in the first half of this year, it told investors on an earnings call Wednesday. The company began those Robotaxi operations in Austin last year and has slowly expanded since then, including the debut of service earlier this month in Dallas and Houston… Musk said it likely will not see material revenue until at least 2027. (Bloomberg)

We’re sharing this to plant autonomous driving more firmly on our radar screens. We’re doing this for a few reasons, including what it could mean for the autonomous efforts inside of Alphabet, Amazon, and Nvidia (NVDA) but also because the tailwind potential for data creation and consumption and our data center related plays.

Today the market’s focus is on AI but compared to a regular car than consumes anywhere from 25 megabytes to a few gigabytes pr hour, autonomous vehicles are data hungry machines. Depending on the sensor suite, estimates for data consumed and generated by an autonomous vehicle range from 1.4 terabytes to 19 terabytes per hour. Let that sink in and think about cloud and data center demands.

7. Economic data today per TipRanks: University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment Survey (Final, April)

8. Companies reporting today per TipRanks: AM Charter Communications (CHTR) , HCA (HCA) , Norfolk Southern (NSC) , Procter & Gamble (PG) , Sensient (SXT) .

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At the time of publication, TheStreet Pro Portfolio was long AMZN, AVGO, META, GOOGL, MRVL, MSFT and NVDA.