CE 100 Index Gains 5.9% as Coursera, Alphabet and Tesla Weigh In With Earnings

Earnings season’s in full swing, and it’s helping to sway the fortunes of the CE 100 Index, which was up 5.9% through the week.

All pillars in the CE 100 index were higher, led by the work segment, which gathered 8.6%. Coursera shares, up 19.8%, were at the forefront of that segment.  The company reported first quarter results that detailed that revenues were 6% higher year over year, reaching $179 million in the first quarter.  Customer revenues were 5% higher to $102.1 million.  Enterprise revenues were 7% higher to $61.7 million.

In its earnings report, Tesla said it recorded a 71% drop in net income compared to a year ago. Total revenue fell by 9% to $19.34 billion.  Financial results fell far short of expectations. Separating out automotive revenues, Tesla reported a 20% drop to $13.97 billion in the quarter, year over year.

Tesla’s stock rose 18%, as the Street had been expecting the results to be hit hard in the first quarter, but there was relief on the news that Elon Musk will be stepping back, in large part, from DOGE-related activities.

In the Enablers pillar, which was 6.5% higher, Amazon shares jumped 9.5%.  Amazon invested Rs 350 crore (about $41 million) into Amazon Pay India.  Amazon Pay was the eighth-largest Unified Payments Interface (UPI) player by transaction volume in March, and it’s looking to gain share from competitors like PhonePe and Google Pay, who have a combined market share of about 85%.  The company received a payment aggregator license from the Reserve Bank of India in February.

Alphabet shares rose by 6.8%.  In PYMNTS’ coverage of earnings, Google’s parent company reported higher-than-expected earnings and revenue for the first quarter, with its core search business up nearly 10% and Google Cloud racking up a 28% gain in sales.  CEO Sundar Pichai highlighted the company’s artificial intelligence (AI) initiatives, particularly the success of Gemini 2.5, its most powerful large language model.

“This quarter was super exciting as we rolled out Gemini 2.5, our most intelligent AI model, which is achieving breakthroughs in performance and is widely recognized as the best model in the industry,” Pichai said.

AI Overviews in search have reached 1.5 billion monthly users, and the company recently launched AI Mode, an experimental feature that allows for more complex queries and advanced reasoning capabilities.

Google Search revenue rose by 10% to $50.7 billion, led by strength in financial services, particularly insurance, followed by retail. YouTube advertising revenues also grew 10% to $8.9 billion, driven mainly by direct response advertising.

Pay and Be Paid Segment Jumps

The CE 100’s Pay and Be Paid segment was 6.6% higher.

PayPal noted this week that PayPal Holdings will launch a rewards program this summer that will allow users to earn rewards on holdings of the PayPal USD (PYUSD) stablecoin in their PayPal or Venmo wallets.

The company expects to offer a 3.7% annual rewards rate upon the launch of the program, and users will be able to immediately use the rewards to send to other PayPal or Venmo users, fund international transfers, exchange for fiat, convert to other cryptocurrencies or make purchases at merchants with PayPal Checkout.  PayPal shares gathered 7.1%.

Separately, Mastercard CEO Michael Miebach said the payments giant is not seeing consumer spending slow down despite the consumer sentiment surveys indicating that people are worried about the economy. During a fireside chat at the Semafor World Economy Summit, the CEO said, “the consumer today is an empowered consumer that will still stick to what they want to do.” While consumers may be paring down on how much they’re spending, “they still want to make that trip.” Mastercard’s stock advanced by 3.1%

Affirm’s shares soared 16% on the news that the BNPL giant will begin reporting all its pay-over-time loans to TransUnion, beginning with those issued May 1.  The provider’s expanded credit reporting will include its Pay in 4 and longer-term monthly installments.

The transactions will not be visible to lenders and will not be factored into traditional credit scores, according to the release. However, as new credit scoring models are developed, the information may factor into consumers’ credit scores in the future.