LikeFolio Weekly Roundup: A Peptide Win for Hims

Hims & Hers Health (HIMS): The Peptide Door Just Opened Wider

Hims & Hers Health (HIMS) has been handed a bigger menu.

An FDA advisory committee voted this week to add BPC-157 and KPV to the short list of substances pharmacies can legally compound. That is the green light the peptide market has been waiting years for.

BPC-157 is promoted for injury recovery and gut repair. KPV is promoted for calming inflammation. They rank among the most requested peptides in the wellness world, and until this week pharmacies could not legally make them.

Hims & Hers Health (HIMS) has been preparing for this. The company built a California compounding operation for exactly this moment. Every peptide added to the list is a new product line, sold through a platform that already has the customers, the prescribers, and the fulfillment. Shares closed 3% higher on the day of the vote.

Bottom line: The market is finally catching on. 

HIMS has more than doubled off its February low, up 125% from the bottom, and our demand data says the move has fuel: web visits are running 24% above last year on our 90-day view and still climbing.

Infinite Hold Updates

Tesla (TSLA): A Hard Selloff on Earnings

Tesla (TSLA) fell 14% after second-quarter earnings missed on profit.

The quarter was strong on volume: record revenue of $28.2 billion and 480,126 deliveries, roughly 74,000 ahead of the Wall Street consensus. The market punished the cost of that volume. Tesla is discounting to keep factories full, and gross margin slipped to 16.8% from 17.2%.

For a long-term holder, the question is what the discounting buys. Deliveries grew 25% in a quarter when the consensus expected far less, which reads as market share. The bet is that volume now converts into pricing power later, with energy and autonomy carrying margins over time.

The energy business supports that bet.

Storage deployments reached 13.5 GWh in the quarter, up 41% from a year ago. Deployments land in batches, so the quarters swing. The trailing year tells the direction: 49 GWh deployed against 38 the year before.

Robotaxi kept expanding: unsupervised rides opened in Dallas and Houston during the quarter and Miami this month, bringing the service to seven US markets, with miles driven growing more than 10% week over week. Active FSD subscriptions rose 56% in the quarter, to 1.48 million.

Behind that, Cybercab production started at Gigafactory Texas, and the first Optimus production lines are going in, with early units earmarked for training rather than customers. Musk told analysts Optimus could become the company's biggest product ever.

We agree.

Alphabet (GOOGL): Spending Cramps Earnings

Alphabet (GOOGL) grew second-quarter revenue 24% to $119.8 billion, with Google Cloud up 82% to $24.8 billion, and raised this year's capital spending guidance to as much as $205 billion.

Shares fell 7% on massive spending.

Most of the quarter argued for the stock.

Cloud accelerated for a third straight quarter: 48% growth, then 63%, now 82%. The backlog grew more than $50 billion, to $514 billion, and Alphabet expects over half of that to become revenue within 24 months.

Nearly 90% of the Fortune 100 uses Gemini Enterprise, and more than 9 million developers build on Google's models every month.

However, the costs climbed faster than anything else.

Quarterly capital spending doubled from a year ago to $44.9 billion, the full-year guide moved to $195 to $205 billion, and Other Bets lost $1.8 billion on revenue of $382 million, with Waymo's expansion a big piece of that bill.

What we are watching next: whether cloud growth holds as new capacity comes online, and how quickly that backlog turns into reported revenue. A half-trillion-dollar order book is the strongest answer to a capex scare we have seen this earnings season.

We are staying put.

Ahead of Next Week

Amazon (AMZN): AWS Interest Is Climbing Into Thursday's Report

Amazon (AMZN) reports next Thursday, July 30, after the close. The Wall Street consensus calls for revenue near $196.7 billion, up 17%, with earnings of $1.82 per share.

Our early web read splits the company in two.

The retail side is steady: amazon prime traffic is running about even with last year, which supports the consensus revenue number without arguing for a beat.

The signal is in the cloud: traffic to Amazon Web Services is up 17% from last year on our 90-day view and still rising.

The week's selloff already lowered expectations across big tech, and Amazon shares drifted lower with the group. Steady retail plus accelerating cloud interest against a freshly lowered bar: that is a setup we like.

Earnings Season Pass members will get our full trade read before the report.