Peloton, QuantumScape, APA: Trending tickers

Peloton (PTON) shares jumped on Thursday after announcing a partnership with TikTok. As part of the deal, Peloton content will be featured on a dedicated fitness hub on the platform.

Battery manufacturer QuantumScape's (QS) stock soared after Volkswagen subsidiary PowerCo tested QuantumScape's batteries and found they passed its endurance test.

Shares of energy company APA (APA) fell after it announced it was acquiring Callon Petroleum (CPE) in a $4.5 billion deal.

Yahoo Finance's Julie Hyman and Josh Lipton deep dive into Thursday's trending tickers.

For more expert insight and the latest market action, click here to watch this full episode of Yahoo Finance Live.

Editor's note: This article was written by Eyek Ntekim

Video Transcript

JOSH LIPTON: It's still about 40 minutes till the closing bell. Let's take a look at a few of today's top trending tickers, starting with shares of Peloton rising after the company announced a partnership with TikTok to create a fitness hub on the social media app. So the idea here, Julie, obviously, listen, you can hopefully find a whole bunch of new customers if you're Peloton.

Available apparently US, UK, Canada. The back story here, when we talk about Peloton, we were talking about a pandemic, you were darling. It faced a tougher backdrop as folks are now clearly, they're back at the gym. So it's tried different approaches and strategies.

It launched that tiered membership pricing last year, deals with different brands, like Lululemon, trying to jumpstart revenue as well. But maybe this helps boost subscribers. TikTok is a monster. So if you're bullish on Peloton, I guess that's the hope.

JULIE HYMAN: All right. Is anybody bullish on-- I mean, yes, there is some bullishness out there on Peloton. But man, when you say it's had a tough few years, it has really had a tough few years. It's down for three straight years, right? It peaked back in December of 2020 at $162.72. As you can see, the stock today, even with that big gain, is trading a little over $6.

So it has really had a tough time. And Peloton has really tried a lot of different things to get the numbers back up. It's tried these partnerships. We'll see if it actually starts to bear out in the numbers. I don't know. Do you have a Peloton? I don't have a Peloton.

JOSH LIPTON: No, I never got it.

JULIE HYMAN: I tried the app very briefly and it wasn't my thing.

JOSH LIPTON: Not my thing either.

JULIE HYMAN: So, I just, you know, will this actually cause more people to sign up? Will it cause more growth for the company? I think the next earnings report and the commentary around that is going to be real interesting.

JOSH LIPTON: Yeah, and to your point, the stock is a mess.

JULIE HYMAN: Yes.

JOSH LIPTON: I mean, it's down more than 30% in just the past 12 months. So you want to take that time. A lot of times that, of course, brings people in. You think, well, you know, a lot of bad news. It must be priced in at these levels. But actually, most in the Street are still on the sidelines despite that slide.

JULIE HYMAN: Yeah, definitely. And it's still got a decent amount of short interest as well, which tells you something. Let's talk about shares of battery manufacturer QuantumScape. They are soaring today. That follows a successful endurance test that Volkswagen Group subsidiary PowerCo ran.

QuantumScape significantly exceeded the requirements for the test. That's according to PowerCo. It completed more than 1,000 charging cycles. Now, a little bit of like interesting mechanics here, not when it comes to the actual mechanics of the battery. But this news was actually out yesterday morning.

And the stock fell 3%. And then all of a sudden, everybody noticed the news, I guess. And today, the stock is up 45%. So that's kind of interesting. I mean, this is another name that is pretty heavily shorted here.

It's about 17% afloat. So you definitely have a short squeeze effect here. But there's also the hopes by the part of investors that you're going to have these advances in these batteries.

JOSH LIPTON: Yeah, to your point, and Bloomberg pointed out here just by way of background, it is actually among the 25 most shorted stocks in the Russell 1000 index. Not a lot of love on the Street exactly went by. I mean, there is this-- obviously, it's speaking to this kind of broader trend.

We see EV battery makers trying to bring new tech to market to power the vehicles more efficiently. So that's the theme here. But yeah, heavily shorted name here, for sure.

JULIE HYMAN: And by the way, this isn't just a battery maker. It is trying to develop solid-state batteries. Batteries right now have liquids in them, electrolyte and a separator. This would replace that with a solid separator.

They haven't gotten it to work at scale yet in order to be able to scale up these types of batteries. So that's what's under progress here. Sort of adding to the weirdness of this move, for lack of a better term, QuantumScape actually mentioned this result on its last earnings call, but it didn't say who the partner was.

JOSH LIPTON: Didn't name it. Right.

JULIE HYMAN: But Volkswagen's the biggest shareholder in the company--

JOSH LIPTON: Which I actually did not know. I did not know.

JULIE HYMAN: I don't think I knew it either, but you would think you could extrapolate that maybe. But I don't know. Maybe people are just looking for a reason to get into the name here.

JOSH LIPTON: It could be. All right. Let's check out one last one here. Shares of energy company APA sliding today following news they agreed to buy Callon Petroleum in a deal valued at around $4.5 billion that's expected to close sometime in the second quarter. So that's the news, buying the shale oil driller for $4.5 billion, including debt. That's $38.31 per share.

The CEO saying here Callon has a strong portfolio in the Permian Basin, complementary, he's saying, to their existing assets. And of course, this is a theme now we've talked a lot about, Julie. I mean, these oil producers moving in, buying rivals, looking for new places to drill, drill, drill.

JULIE HYMAN: Yeah. And what's interesting with APA here, formerly known as Apache, by the way, is that it is exploring some other offshore areas of oil, including in Suriname. But those, according to the analysis that I've been seeing, those take a while. And so in the meantime, the stuff in the Permian, it just hits quicker, right? It's profitable more quickly. And so that then would give, in theory, APA some quicker cash flow while it is waiting for the longer term stuff to work.

JOSH LIPTON: Yeah, it's always interesting-- there's also an interesting dynamic, too, because there are a lot of investors in oil names because they want the capital turn. They want the dividend. They want the check in the mail every quarter. So it's interesting to watch these companies try to balance kind of those competing interests out, for sure.