If you’ve ever listened to an earnings call, you may know about Q4. The company, not the uniquely stressful quarter.

Darrell Heaps, founder and chief strategy officer of Q4, started the investor relations operations software company nearly twenty years ago, when its buzziest IR tech offering was…managing investor relations websites. “Before we founded the company, they were doing all this, back in the day, with fax machines and handwritten notes,” he said of early investor relations communication.

In the decades since the Paleolithic era, or, umm, the early 2000s, Q4 has expanded “to help IR teams manage the entire IR function,” he explained.

Its trademark tool, a tech stack that unifies essential IR data and workflows into a single dashboard, has helped the company gain over 2,500 customers, including “about half of the S&P 500,” according to Heaps, who added that in the last four earnings periods, Q4’s tech aided 5,000 calls.

Keep reading.—NP

Think big government layoffs went out with Elon?

Not so fast. 2025 is back, at least in the Treasury Department.

Employees at the agency’s Office of Financial Research, a division created by Congress to analyze economic data in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, were told to expect a reduction in force, according to the Federal News Network.

The OFR was created by the Dodd-Frank Act in 2010. Its mission, as stated on its website, is to “promote financial stability by delivering high-quality financial data, standards, and analysis” that the Financial Stability Oversight Council and its member agencies can use. It monitors financial stress in global markets, bank systemic risk, US money market funds, the repo market, and hedge fund activity, among other financial phenomena.

Keep reading.—CV

Teslas are selling like lukewarm cakes. The carmaker said yesterday that it shipped 6% more EVs last quarter than a year ago, which is considered a letdown, because Q1 2025 was when it partially paused production and faced backlash for Elon Musk’s politics.

Wall Street was hoping for more. Last quarter was Tesla’s second-worst quarter since 2022:

• The 358k cars it delivered significantly undershot analysts’ projections, as well as the 408k vehicles it produced, leaving thousands of cars looking for homes.
• Its budget 3 and Y models accounted for 95% of deliveries, while the Cybertruck remained an offbeat purchase.

Analysts blamed the disappointing sales on Tesla’s aging lineup, rising competition, and a broader industry downturn following the Trump administration’s nixing of a $7,500 EV tax credit last year.

Keep reading on Morning Brew.—SK