Weekly Winners | Trade Desk Soars 23%; Intuit Surges 18%; CF Industries, Expedia, AppLovin Jump 16%; CrowdStrike, ServiceNow Gain 15%

This week, which stocks lagged or dragged? Weekly Winners column keeps up with market trends, helping Tigers sort out the week's hottest sectors, stock winners and important news.

Below are the top 10 S&P 500 stock gainers for the week ended Mar. 6:

OpenAI Reportedly Explored Ad Sales with The Trade Desk as Revenue Hit $25B, TTD Stock Rallies

OpenAI has held early talks to partner with The Trade Desk (TTD) to help it sell advertising, as it leans on external partners to ramp up its business, The Information reported on Wednesday.

TTD (TTD) shares rose 23% in Thursday's trading; ad-tech peer AppLovin’s (APP) stock was up marginally. OpenAI is also reportedly in talks with other brands, media agencies, and ad tech firms as part of the early ads pilot.

Online Travel Stocks Rise After Report That OpenAI to Scale Back Direct Checkouts

Shares of online travel agencies surged on Thursday after a report that OpenAI is scaling ​back plans to integrate direct bookings into ‌ChatGPT, easing investor fears that the AI chatbots could eventually cut out travel intermediaries.

Shares of Expedia were up over ​14%, while Booking Holdings and Tripadvisor rose ​8% and 2%, respectively.

AppLovin Sees Bullish Views at Wedbush on AI Ad Tech, E-Commerce Expansion

Wedbush (IVES) said it remains Outperform-rated on AppLovin (APP) as the company is aggressively transforming from a mobile gaming ad network into a broad, AI-driven performance marketing ecosystem.

The firm kept its $640 price target on the stock.

Analysts led by Alicia Reese said they hosted a call with AppLovin to discuss the technology roadmap, the e-commerce expansion, and the competitive landscape.

The analysts noted that with the foundational success of AppLovin's advertising platform AXON 2.0 already established, the immediate catalyst is the aggressive scaling of their e-commerce self-service platform and the rollout of new GenAI-driven advertising tech.

CrowdStrike Earnings Beat Estimates. The Stock Is Up

CrowdStrike Holdings reported better-than-expected earnings after the stock market closed Tuesday.

CrowdStrike posted fourth-quarter adjusted earnings of $1.12 a share, which came in above analyst estimates of $1.10 a share, according to FactSet. Revenue for the quarter of $1.31 billion also beat Wall Street expectations of $1.3 billion.

Annual recurring revenue, or the annualized value of CrowdStrike’s customer subscription contracts, was $5.25 billion, a 24% increase from the prior year.

The cybersecurity company also said it expects first-quarter earnings to be between $1.06 a share to $1.07 a share on revenue of $1.36 billion to $1.364 billion. That’s compared with analyst earnings estimates of $1.06 a share on revenue of $1.36 billion.