C3.ai's 27% Surge Leads CE 100 Rally as Investors Cheer Earnings 

Amid earnings season, artificial intelligence was top of investors' minds.  

And as a result, the CE 100 Index gained 2.5% through the week.

The Enablers group surged 4.5%, as all but one pillar — the Live pillar — gained ground.

AI Enthusiasm

C3.ai shares rallied 27% through the week, on the heels of earnings that showed revenues gained 38% to $72.3 million. 

CEO Tom Siebel told analysts on the conference call to discuss earnings that "we are seeing tailwinds on from improved business optimism and increased interest in applying C3 AI solutions to address an increasing range of applications across a broadening set of industries. This is a dramatic change from what we experienced in mid-2022. There is a genuine optimism in the marketplace for our solutions. And the overall business sentiment appears to be substantially improving."

During the call, he said that the company is currently pursuing 291 enterprise opportunities — and more than 100 of those opportunities are engaged in licensing discussions.

Meta gained 8.7%. The parent company of Facebook saw its shares gather steam in the wake of news late last month that it will begin testing a paid verification service for creators on Facebook and Instagram. Meta Verified is being tested in Australia and New Zealand before the $12 per month service expands into other countries. As reported, Meta Verified offers users a verified badge that confirms the person is real and that their account has been authenticated with a government ID. 

Fastly was up 7%. The company said it had launched a new managed security service to help client firms reduce the risk of web application attacks. In its own earnings report in mid-February, the company said that its revenues were up 22% year on year, to $119.3 million. 

Sezzle Shows Some Sizzle

Elsewhere, Pay and Be Paid names were up 4% overall. 

Sezzle rallied 13%. As noted in our own coverage of earnings, total income was up 16% in the most recent quarter to $38.2 million; other revenue sources the company has identified, per management commentary, target an additional $10 million. The company's Premium offering had 122,000 active subscribers in December and has now topped 132,000, as per the latest data. New growth opportunities should come through its "pay anywhere" card — and feature monetization, such as "affiliate payment models and pay-per-click placement" in the Sezzle app.

Block gathered 3.6% as CFO and COO Amrita Ahuja weighed in on CNBC about the company's late February earnings results. "What's really exciting to me is to see increasing daily utility across each of these ecosystems. Square sellers who took on four or more of our monetized products made up 44% of our gross profit in 2022. It's up 15 points over three years," she told the news channel. 

"For Cash App, we now have five revenue streams that delivered $100 million or more in gross profit in 2022. So our customers are finding great value through our platforms, increasing daily utility, and ultimately that's leading to a more diverse and broad business for us."  

As PYMNTS reported in its coverage of Block's earnings, Cash App's installed base grew to 51 million monthly transacting actives in December, up 16% YoY, and added that Cash App's momentum should continue in the wake of building out its Banking offerings, boosted by its Savings feature. Two out of three of those active users, management said, are transacting on a weekly basis.

Within the Work segment, which was up 2.9%, Salesforce shares jumped nearly 15%. The company's fourth-quarter earnings report as demand for its cloud software helped propel top-line growth of 14% to $8.3 billion and operating margins reached new highs as the company continued to restructure. 

The Live pillar lost 1.4%, the lone declining group in our pantheon. Porch lost 24.6%. And though there were no announcements by the company, news came this past week through various financial sites such as MarketBeat that Point72 Asset Management had reduced its stake in Porch by 63%, selling more than 560,000 shares, leaving a stake of 322,600 shares.