(Reuters) – U.S. stock index futures slipped on Thursday, with those of the Nasdaq taking the biggest hit, after Tesla failed to meet estimates for quarterly revenue and warned of missing its vehicle delivery target.
Shares of the electric-vehicle maker dropped 6.1% in premarket trading as the company flagged persistent logistics challenges, with fourth-quarter deliveries growing by less than the aimed 50%.
Other megacap growth stocks like Alphabet Inc, Meta Platforms Inc, Netflix Inc, Mirosoft Corp and Amazon.com also fell between 0.7% and 1.3%.
Analysts have raised expectations for third-quarter profit growth at S&P 500 companies to 3% from 2.8%, according to Refinitiv data. But the number is still sharply lower than their forecast of an 11.1% increase at the start of July.
At 4:41 a.m. ET, Dow e-minis were down 39 points, or 0.13%, S&P 500 e-minis were down 18.25 points, or 0.49%, and Nasdaq 100 e-minis were down 91.75 points, or 0.82%.
The main U.S. indexes fell after two days of gains on Wednesday as weakness in shares of Abbott Laboratories and a rise in Treasury yields sapped momentum from the current earnings season and outweighed a surge in Netflix’s shares. [.N]
Fears of aggressive rate hikes by the Federal Reserve continue to weigh on investor sentiment, with expectations of yet another 75 basis point hike in the November meeting.
IBM Corp said it was expecting to exceed full-year revenue growth target on strong demand for its digital services. Its shares rose 3.1% in light trading.
(Reporting by Ankika Biswas; Editing by Anil D’Silva)
