10 Firms Buck Market Slump on Impressive Earnings, New Deals

The stock market ended the trading week in the red territory following President Donald Trump’s announcement that he would begin slapping tariffs against major US trading partners.

The Dow Jones shed 0.75 percent, the S&P 500 lost 0.50 percent, while the Nasdaq Composite dropped by 0.28 percent.

Ten companies bucked a wider market decline amid a flurry of positive catalysts that sparked buying appetite. In this article, we will take a look at which companies posted notable gains and explore the reasons behind their performance.

To come up with Friday’s gainers, we only considered those with $2 billion in market capitalization and $5 million in daily trading volume.

A man in long sleeves looking at stock market data. Photo by Tima Miroshnichenko on Pexels

10. Flagstar Financial Inc. (NYSE:FLG)

Shares of Flagstar Financial rose for a second day on Friday, adding 6.96 percent to its valuation to close at $11.83 as investor sentiment was boosted by an improvement in its earnings performance for the past quarter and full year of 2024.

While still operating at a loss, Flagstar was able to narrow its net losses by 97 percent during the fourth quarter to only a $0.34 loss per share versus the $11.27 recorded in the same period last year.

The figure was also 57 percent lower than the $0.79 booked in the third quarter of 2024.

Meanwhile, Flagstar was able to reach $625 million in revenues during the period, beating analysts’ projected revenues of $558.6 million.

By next year, Flagstar said it targets to finally swing to profitability, supported by a $600 million expense reduction plan and the sale of its non-core mortgage business to move to higher-margin businesses.

9. Rigetti Computing Inc. (NASDAQ:RGTI)

Rigetti Computing saw its share prices on Friday grow by 7.07 percent to end at $13.17 per share as investor sentiment was boosted by reports that President Donald Trump sat down with Nvidia Corp. chief executive officer Jensen Huang to discuss measures for the further development of artificial intelligence in the US.

Rigetti Computing, a quantum computing company, stands to benefit from any move to bolster AI, especially with Huang’s earlier pronouncements that Nvidia would play a significant role in the development of quantum computers and push it toward getting there as fast as possible.

Earlier this month, Trump announced a $500-billion partnership among three companies—OpenAI, SoftBank, and Oracle, to further develop AI in the US.

The companies were said to initially pour in $100 billion to start the project called Stargate, with plans to expand it to $500 billion in the coming years. The project is expected to create 100,000 US jobs, Trump said.