Q1 2026 earnings season highlights: Korea Zinc (+175%), Disney streaming profitability, DoorDash GOV beat, Datadog (+31% surge on AI demand) vs. tariff casualties Toyota (-49% profit) and Cloudflare (-16% on layoffs). Rocket Lab tops $200M Q1 revenue for a 34% stock surge.
Korea Zinc (010130.KS) reported Q1 2026 revenue of ₩6.072 trillion (+58.4% YoY) and operating profit of ₩746.1 billion (+175.2% YoY) — the highest single-quarter operating profit in company history. Operating margin improved to 12.3% (+5.2pp YoY). Safe-haven-driven gold and silver price gains, antimony demand expansion, and new business profitability combined to drive the record. The board declared a Q1 dividend of ₩5,000 per share (₩102 billion total).
The Walt Disney Company ($DIS) reported Q2 2026 EPS of $1.57, topping the $1.51 analyst consensus by approximately 4%. The standout result was a sharp expansion in streaming segment profitability, with Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN+ collectively posting surging profits after years of subscriber-growth investment. Shares rose 6% in premarket trading.
DoorDash shares rose 12% after posting Q1 2026 EPS of $0.42 vs $0.36 expected and revenue of $4.04 billion (+33% YoY). Q2 gross order value guidance of $32.4-$33.4 billion topped analyst estimates.
Cloudflare ($NET) shares dropped 16% after Q1 2026 earnings missed expectations and the company announced 1,100 layoffs -- 20% of its workforce -- citing agentic AI as fundamentally reshaping its operations. The cuts contrast sharply with Datadog's 31% surge the same week, illustrating the divide between AI-enabled and AI-disrupted cloud companies.
Datadog ($DDOG) reported blockbuster Q1 2026 earnings that sent shares up 31%, confirming the company as a primary AI workload beneficiary. The results lifted cloud infrastructure peers Snowflake and MongoDB, signaling that AI-driven data volumes are broadly expanding the cloud observability market.
Toyota Motor (7203.T) posted a 49% drop in fourth-quarter profit for the fiscal year ended March 2026, as U.S. tariffs inflicted severe damage on earnings despite a 1.89% year-on-year revenue increase. The result underscores the structural exposure of Japan's automakers to U.S. trade policy, with the broader sector expecting earnings downgrades as Honda and Nissan report in coming weeks.
Rocket Lab's stock rose 34% on May 8 — its best day on record — after Q1 revenue of $200.4 million beat FactSet estimates across both segments and the company unveiled its largest launch contract ever. Backlog more than doubled year-over-year to $2.2 billion, and Q2 guidance of $225M–$240M surpassed the LSEG consensus by roughly 14%. SpaceX IPO anticipation and defense tailwinds are repricing the entire space sector.