Stock futures were rising Friday, a day after a rally in tech shares helped lift the
S&P 500
and
Nasdaq Composite
into positive territory for the year.
These stocks were poised to make moves Friday:
Shares of
iRobot
plunged 34% after The Wall Street Journal reported the European Commission intends to block
Amazon.com’s
acquisition of the Roomba maker. The Journal, citing people familiar with the matter, said Amazon was told Thursday in a meeting with competition officials from the European Commission that the deal likely would be rejected. Amazon agreed to buy iRobot for $1.7 billion in August 2022. Amazon shares rose 0.7%.
Spirit Airlines
was rising 18% after the beleaguered budget carrier said it expects fourth-quarter revenue at the high end of its initial guidance and that bookings over the holiday period were strong. The stock had closed down 7.5% on Thursday following a Journal report that said Spirit was planning to explore restructuring options with advisors following the collapse of its merger with
JetBlue Airways.
In a statement sent to Barron’s after markets closed Thursday, a Spirit spokesperson said that the company “is not pursuing nor involved in a statutory restructuring.” Spirit shares fell 47% on Tuesday and 22% on Wednesday.
Super Micro Computer
was up 12% after the server and computer products maker said it expects fiscal second-quarter adjusted earnings of $5.40 to $5.55 a share, higher than analysts’ estimates of $4.51 and better than the company’s previous forecast of $4.40 to $4.88. It expects sales of $3.6 billion to $3.65 billion, also above Wall Street estimates. Super Micro cited “a strong market and end customer demand for our rack-scale, AI and Total IT Solutions.”
Advanced Micro Devices
rose 1.6% to $165.19 in premarket trading and
Nvidia
was up 1.7% to $580.75 after shares of both chip makers closed at all-time highs on Thursday. AMD has risen 10% this year while
Nvidia
has jumped 15%. The stocks have received a boost from investors’ appetite for everything related to artificial intelligence. On Thursday, AMD and Nvidia got a lift from
Taiwan Semiconductor’s
better-than-expected forecast.
Texas Instruments
was up 2% to $170.19.
UBS
upgraded the stock to Buy from Neutral and raised the price target on shares of the chip maker to $195 from $170.
Travelers
rose 6% after the property casualty insurer reported fourth-quarter core profit of $7.01 a share, easily topping analysts’ estimates of $5.10. The company said the quarter saw higher underwriting gains and lower catastrophe losses.
Schlumberger
was up 1.3% after the oil services provider’s fourth-quarter revenue topped estimates on strong international growth. SLB also raised its quarterly dividend.
Chegg
was downgraded to Sell from Neutral at
Goldman Sachs
and the price target was cut to $8 a share from $10. Shares of the education technology company fell 7.5% to $9.31.
Trucking company
J.B. Hunt Transport Services
said fourth-quarter revenue declined 9% to $3.3 billion, attributing the drop to lower volumes in its truckload and integrated capacity solutions units and a fall in revenue per load in its truckload unit. Analysts were expecting revenue of $3.29 billion. Earnings fell to $1.47 from $1.92 a year earlier and missed analysts’ forecasts of $1.74. The stock was up 3.6%.
PPG Industries
reported fourth-quarter adjusted earnings of $1.53 a share, beating estimates by 4 cents. Sales rose 4% to $4.35 billion in the period. However, the paint and coatings company’s first-quarter outlook missed forecasts, with PPG saying it anticipated that economic conditions in the U.S. would “remain subdued during the first half of 2024” but that demand in China would continue to improve. Shares fell 0.7%. Shares declined 3.1%.
Write to Joe Woelfel at [email protected]
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