What to Expect in the Week Ahead (GTLB, CRWD, DLTR and NIO Earnings; Labor Report)

GitLab will report on Monday. Investors are waiting to see how the company will perform because some in the enterprise software sector see issues with sales.

Tuesday will bring quarterly results from CrowdStrike. The company's stock has continued to outperform, driven by its lightweight-agent architecture and cloud-native approach. Wall Street is highly optimistic heading into CrowdStrike's Q1 earnings, leaving little room for error, according to Seeking Alpha.

In the first quarter of 2024, NIO delivered 30,053 vehicles, which declined 3.2% year over year. Analysts forecast first-quarter revenues from vehicle sales to be RMB8,826 million, implying a decline of 4.3% on lower year-over-year deliveries. Also, the China-based EV maker has been bearing the brunt of high SG&A expenses for the past several quarters and the trend is expected to have continued amid increasing personnel costs related to sales and marketing activities.

On a somewhat positive note, NIO’s gross margins have been improving from past few quarters. In the last reported quarter, NIO’s gross margin increased to 7.5% from 3.9% reported in the year-ago quarter due to lower material cost per unit.

Friday brings perhaps the most important event of the week, the Labor Department's nonfarm payroll report for the month of May.

Analysts expect job gains to pick up in May to 180K in the month. Government hiring slowed to crawl last month, pushing payroll jobs below consensus. Public sector hiring should pick up again in May but stay below the pace we saw in 2023. Job growth in healthcare should continue at a robust pace and anchor the overall employment picture. The unemployment rate and the participation rate will remain unchanged in the month at 3.9% and 62.7% respectively, and wage growth will accelerate a tick to 0.3% in the month.