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https://www.cnbc.com/id/28753139

PLD

Prologis

Lightning Round OT: USG, ProLogis and More

Cincinnati Financial : If you want a property-casualty insurer, Cramer said, buy Travelers. USG : Cramer thinks housing will take another hit before bottoming, so avoid USG for now. ProLogis : The money’s been made in PLD, Cramer said, so take profits. This stock’s a sell. Questions for Cramer? madmoney@cnbc.com Questions, comments, suggestions for the Mad Money website? madcap@cnbc.com

https://www.cnbc.com/id/100125509

PLD

Prologis

BRIEF-ProLogis signs lease agreements in Japan development

Oct 2 (Reuters) - Prologis Inc : * Signs two lease agreements in Japan development totaling 228,000 square feet * Says the leases were signed with two repeat customers: askul and a major third-party logistics provider ((Bangalore Equities Newsroom; +91 80 4135 5800; within U.S. +1 646 223 8780)) ((For more news, please click here ))

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/02/21/opportune-time-to-invest-in-real-estate-pros-name-5-reits-to-buy-right-now.html

PLD

Prologis

'Opportune time to invest in real estate': Pros name 5 REITs to buy right now

Mounting inflation and interest rates have put significant pressure on several sectors — especially real estate. But some market watchers think things could be about to turn around. "I think it would be an opportune time to invest in real estate especially given that we are forecasting interest rates to decline over the next 12 months," according to Kevin Brown, senior equities analyst at financial services firm Morningstar. He suggests that investors look to have 10% of their portfolio exposed to "real estate in some form, as a good rule of thumb." "That exposure can come from REITs [real estate investment trusts] or direct ownership, or other real estate investments if you are a large investor. But REITs present a great and easy opportunity to the asset class which is otherwise difficult to invest in. With rate cuts anticipated, I expect REITs to outperform the broader U.S. market this year," Brown told CNBC Pro on Feb. 14. Rick Romano, Head of Global Real Estate Securities at PGIM Real Estate, agrees, saying that REITs offer investors "a unique and fantastic" opportunity to invest across geographies and segments right now. Commercial property pick One segment Brown likes is commercial properties occupied by tenants such as drugstores, retailers, food outlets and gas stations. The diversity — and the fact that tenants are selling necessities — mean they are not overly sensitive to economic conditions and can post gains even if a recession hits, Brown said, naming Realty Income as a REIT to consider. Realty Incomes says its portfolio includes over 13,000 commercial properties with a 98.8% occupancy rate. "Realty Income has a triple net lease structure, which means their tenants are responsible for everything, [namely] all expenses that can be generated by the property. They are also a conservative tenant with low rents relative to the revenues generated by tenants so there's a very low risk of it not receiving rent," Brown said. He also flagged that the company is part of the S & P 500 Dividend Aristocrat index and has raised its dividend payout for 25 consecutive years. The REIT has a 5-year average dividend yield of 4.5% and is trading at around a 10% discount to net asset value — a key measure of a REIT's value — according to FactSet data. Boom in data centers Aside from commercial spaces, PGIM's Romano sees opportunities in data centers. He expects a shortage of supply in 2023-2024, "in conjunction with this very severe demand spike due to AI right now." "It's an area that we see some of the best growth rates within the real estate space," he added. Among the REITs with an exposure to data centers that Romano's PGIM Global Real Estate Fund is invested in are Prologis (8.1% of the fund as of Dec. 2023) and Equinix (5.3% of the fund). Prologis — which owns almost 800 properties globally, including a number of data centers — is trading at a premium of around 4% to net asset value. Equinix, with 250 data centers, is trading at a premium of around 17% according to FactSet data. Senior housing buys? Morningstar's Brown highlighted the senior housing market as a segment to watch, particularly in the U.S. as the baby boomer generation ages. "We're going to have very high demand growth," he said, highlighting that the Covid pandemic reduced building activity and, as such, supply is not keeping up with occupancy levels. REITs he likes include Ventas — which has over 1,400 properties including senior housing facilities and outpatient medical buildings across the U.S., U.K and Canada — as well as Welltower , which has exposure to senior housing, outpatient care facilities and care spaces. "Ventas, in particular, is trading at a very big discount," Brown noted. "Both names are buys into the bigger senior housing theme." Ventas is trading at discount of around 3% to its net asset value, according to FactSet, while Welltower is trading at premium of around 55%.

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/03/18/mondays-stocks-to-buy-like-nvidia.html

PLD

Prologis

Here are Monday's biggest analyst calls: Nvidia, Apple, Tesla, Netflix, PepsiCo, Micron, Meta, Starbucks and more

Here are Monday's biggest calls on Wall Street: KeyBanc reiterates Apple as sector weight KeyBanc said its carrier survey checks look "moderately negative" for Apple shares. "Our February carrier survey indicates iPhone 15 sell-through was largely in line with store expectations with pockets of softness." Morgan Stanley reiterates Starbucks as overweight Morgan Stanley said it's standing by its overweight rating on Starbucks shares. "Our OW view acknowledges the tougher trends and weak sentiment at play currently which have limited participation in the stock, but we continue to see limited downside risk at current levels and believe there are catalysts over the medium to long term for what remains an attractive business for the long run." Telsey downgrades Hibbett Sports to market perform from outperform Telsey said it sees too many negative catalysts ahead for the sporting goods company. "We are downgrading our rating on HIBB to Market Perform from Outperform given that 2024 is projected to be a more difficult year than we anticipated with the comp flat to down LSD and operating margin contraction, while we had been expecting comp growth and operating margin stabilization." JPMorgan upgrades ESAB to overweight from neutral JPMorgan said the welding company is a "growth compounder." "ESAB: How to think about 1Q vs. the rest of the year? ESAB expects 2024 sales cadence of ~24.0% in 1Q, ~25.5% in 2Q, ~24.5% in 3Q and ~26.0% in 4Q." Mizuho reiterates Meta as buy Mizuho said it sees "upside to consensus" for Meta. "Our deep dive into META's key products indicates upside to consensus FY24 revenue forecast, and meaningful optionality in strategic assets." Goldman Sachs reiterates Tesla as neutral Goldman Sachs lowered its price target on the stock to $190 per share from $220. "We are lowering our Tesla estimates to better reflect what we believe are both production (e.g. Model 3 ramp pace, and downtime in Berlin tied to the Red Sea conflict/power loss) and market headwinds." HSBC reiterates Nvidia as buy HSBC raised its price target on the stock to $1,050 per share from $880. "We are encouraged by Nvidia's AI product roadmap which focuses on moving beyond GPUs [graphic processing unit] and towards owning the entire value chain." JPMorgan reiterates Netflix as overweight JPMorgan said it's "positive on Netflix's ability to accelerate revenue growth in 2024, expand margins, & drive multi-year FCF ramp." "NFLX shares have significantly outperformed since 4Q earnings, up +23% vs. SPX +5%, & are 12% below the all-time highs of November 2021." RBC initiates Howmet Aerospace as outperform RBC said the aerospace company has "successfully positioned itself as a high-quality aerospace supplier providing primarily exposure to the original equipment (OE) commercial aerospace cycle." "We are initiating coverage of Howmet Aerospace (HWM) with an Outperform rating and a $75 price target." Evercore ISI upgrades 1stdibs.com to outperform from in line Evercore ISI said the e-commerce company is a "self-help" story. "We are upgrading shares of DIBS to Outperform from In Line. Our PT goes to $8 from $6 based on a 2X EV/Sales multiple on our '25 Revenue." Raymond James downgrades New York Community Bank to underperform from market perform Raymond James said in its downgrade of the stock that "credit is likely to impair earnings." "We downgrade NYCB shares to Underperform from Market Perform and establish a fair value estimate of $3 to reflect our view that credit costs are likely to impair earnings for the next several years, as incremental disclosures in the bank's 10-K suggest that several years of earnings will be needed to support the balance sheet remix." Morgan Stanley upgrades Pepsi to overweight from equal weight Morgan Stanley said the beverage giant is undervalued. "We are upgrading Pepsi to OW from EW as our Top Pick, both in beverages and overall." Morgan Stanley initiates Ball Corporation as equal weight Morgan Stanley initiated the beverage can company and says the stock is fairly valued right now. "We are launching coverage of beverage can producers BALL, CCK, and AMBP with an In-Line view of the Paper & Packaging industry." Citi upgrades Regionals Financial to buy from neutral Citi said the regional bank is poised to "deliver strong returns." "We are upgrading RF to Buy and raising target price to $23. RF is a different theme than our other Buy rated names, which are more plays on the market not properly valuing normalized returns." Morgan Stanley names LifeStance a top pick Morgan Stanley named the mental health company a top pick on Monday. "Stay selective amidst mixed fundamentals; Moving LFST to Top Pick." Morgan Stanley reiterates Micron as underweight Morgan Stanley raised its price target on the stock to $78 per share from $74.75 and said it's sticking with its underweight rating heading into earnings later this week. "We expect Micron to report upside around the quarter - but weakening trends in the core business put the onus on AI to carry the stock from here." Wolfe initiates Dynatrace as outperform Wolfe said it's bullish on shares of the software company. "After doing our diligence on Dynatrace we came away bulled up on the company's market opportunity , product cycle, and differentiation from offering full stack observability." Bernstein upgrades Charter to outperform from market perform Bernstein said in its upgrade of the cable giant that the risks are more than priced in. "While we acknowledge that Charter has a clear set of challenges to navigate near-term, we believe that the market has more than priced in these risks given the potential persistence of the risks." Truist upgrades PagerDuty to buy from hold Truist said it sees limited downside for the IT company. "Upgrading PD to Buy; Downside Limited, Potential Upside to $30+." Bank of America reiterates Taiwan Semiconductor as buy Bank of America said Taiwan Semiconductor is a "key enabler of AI with long-lasting leadership." "We raise PO to NT$880 (US$155) as we expect the structural advanced node demand to be stronger, supported by AI strength, computing power, power and saving requirement." Bank of America upgrades Pinnacle West to buy from neutral Bank of America said it sees an improving regulatory backdrop for the utility company. "We upgrade shares of Arizona based regulated utility Pinnacle West Capital Corp. (PNW) to Buy to reflect an improving regulatory environment." Evercore ISI downgrades Prologis to in line from outperform Evercore ISI said it's waiting for a better entry point for the logistics facilities company. "On the flip side, we are downgrading Prologis (PLD) and Invitation Homes (INVH) from Outperform to In Line while SL Green (SLG) moves from In Line to Underperform." UBS reiterates Five Below as buy UBS said it's sticking with its buy rating on shares of Five Below. "In our view, for a retailer with such a good long-term outlook, the market pays a lot of attention to the short-run gyrations. In this case, there shouldn't be a lot of mystery." Wells Fargo reiterates Carnival as overweight Wells Fargo said it's bullish heading into the cruise company's earnings report later this month. "Heading into CCL's 1Q24 EPS on 3/27, we up our 1Q EBITDA to $866m (+3% vs Street), and see a nice setup for CCL to raise and drive a catchup trade vs. cruise peers. F2Q seems de-risked as Red Sea impact was already quantified."

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/02/06/these-are-jpmorgans-top-stocks-for-february.html

PLD

Prologis

These are JPMorgan's top stocks for February

With February's trading month kicking into high gear, JPMorgan has some investment ideas to maximize returns heading into the month. Stocks are coming off a winning month, with the three major indexes finishing January up by more than 1%. 2024's first month brought the start of a new corporate earnings season and a Federal Reserve policy meeting where interest rates were left untouched. Investors are now watching to see if the market can continue grinding higher. Against this backdrop, JPMorgan unveiled the firm's top stock picks from here. Those names make up the bank's Analyst Focus list, which is updated monthly. CNBC Pro compiled 10 of the stocks on his list, including four new names: Cars.com , Insulet , Intuitive Surgical and Prologis . Those additions replaced CarGurus , Cytokinetics , Dexcom , Stryker and Vertex Pharmaceuticals . Cars.com has a favorable cycle and the potential to see upside reversion risk on a relative basis, JPMorgan said. The automotive retailer's stock is also trading at a relative discount, the bank added. Shares have slipped more than 3% so far this year. That marks a retreat from 2023, when the stock finished more than 37% up. More than seven out of every 10 analysts rate the stock a buy, according to FactSet. The average price target implies the stock can rally more than 27% in the next 12 months. Insulet, another new addition, is dominating new patient share in the insulin pump market, JPMorgan noted. The bank added that the company should see "significant" upside to both lines in 2024 and beyond. More than four out of every five analysts rate the stock a buy, with an average price target reflecting an upside of nearly 21%. That would mark a turn for the stock, as it has fallen more than 10% this year, extending losses after closing 2023 more than 26% in the red. PODD 1Y mountain Insulet, 1-year Intuitive Surgical's da Vinci 5 robot launch can create a multiyear new product cycle, according to the note. The bank leader noted that can provide positive momentum on forecasts starting in 2025. Shares of the health care stock have recently rallied. The stock is up more than 13% in 2024, extending its more than 27% surge from the prior year. The average analyst anticipates more steam ahead, with a price target reflecting another 7.4% in upside, per FactSet. But just three out of every five analysts polled by FactSet rate the stock a buy. Prologis, meanwhile, has "outsized" growth potential both internally and externally within the real estate trust sector. More than four out of every five analysts rate the stock a buy, with an average price target showing upside of more than 13%. Shares have slipped more than 4% thus far in the new year, continuing to underperform the broader market after adding just over 18% last year while the S & P 500 rose more than 24%. JPMorgan upgraded the stock to overweight from neutral in December, citing those growth prospects. But Mizuho downgraded the stock to neutral from buy earlier that month.

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/07/16/australia-moves-to-dial-down-financial-stability-risks-in-home-loans.html

PRU

Prudential Financial

Australia moves to dial down financial stability risks in home loans

The Australian government is seeking to broaden the powers of the country's prudential regulator to include non-bank lenders as concerns about financial stability take center stage amid bubble risks in the nation's sizzling property market. A draft legislation released by the government on Monday, if passed, will help the Australian Prudential Regulatory Authority (APRA) dial down some of the risky lending in the A$1.7 trillion ($1.33 trillion) mortgage market, the size of the country's economic output. Home prices in Sydney have fallen about 7% since the start of 2022 and as interest rates rose. Brendon Thorne | Bloomberg | Getty Images Australia's four biggest banks have already cut back on home loans in recent months and pulled away from institutional lending to real estate developers, as regulators force them to keep aside more capital and slow lending to speculative property investors. Non-bank lenders have been quick to pick up the slack, with their loan-books expanding at a much faster clip than the banking sector's 6.5 percent overall credit growth. This development is stoking concerns for authorities as a combination of record-high property prices and stratospheric household debt sit uncomfortably with slow wages growth. "APRA does not have powers over the lending activities of non-bank lenders, even where they materially contribute to financial stability risks," Treasurer Scott Morrison and financial services minister Kelly O'Dwyer said in a joint statement. "Today, the government is releasing draft legislation for public consultation that will provide APRA with new powers. These new powers will allow APRA to manage the financial stability risks posed by the activities of non-bank lenders, complementing APRA's current powers." The consultation of the draft bill will close on August 14. watch now

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/07/27/you-may-be-overlooking-an-important-point-about-target-date-funds.html

PRU

Prudential Financial

You may be overlooking an important point about target-date funds

Lourdes Balduque | Moment | Getty Images Target-date funds are meant as a one-stop shop for your retirement savings. But a key difference between fund brands means that target-date funds, or TDFs, may not be well-suited to all 401(k) investors — especially those close to retirement, financial experts said. Asset managers tweak the share of stocks, bonds, cash and other target-date fund holdings according to an investor's envisioned retirement year. The funds — which have become the most popular funds in 401(k) plans and are generally available in five-year increments — grow more conservative over time. They dial back on stocks and increase bond and cash holdings as an investor approaches retirement. More from Personal Finance: Americans have big number goals for retirement Is raising taxes the answer to Social Security reform? Aretha Franklin estate battle shows importance of wills However, fund managers differ in how they allocate money between those asset classes. That means funds — even those with the same target year — may have stock and bond holdings that aren't well aligned with an investor's financial plan. In other words, they might be too risky or too conservative. "It could be way off," said David Blanchett, managing director and head of retirement research at PGIM, the investment management arm of Prudential Financial. "The idea that everyone in a five-year age cohort should have the same asset allocation, it's just not correct." TDF holdings generally vary more near retirement age As an illustration, consider a Morningstar analysis of "prominent or distinctive" TDF series with a 2055 retirement year: Last year, the BlackRock LifePath Index and Dimensional Target Date Retirement Income 2055 funds had 98% and 94% allocated to stocks, respectively, on average. Meanwhile, the John Hancock Preservation Blend and American Funds Target Date Retirement 2055 funds had lower average allocations — 80% and 84%, respectively, Morningstar said. The dynamic is more pronounced for investors closer to retirement. watch now Take these examples of 2025 funds: The T. Rowe Price Retirement and Vanguard Target Retirement funds had 56% and 54% in stocks, respectively; the John Hancock and Dimensional series had lower respective stock allocations, of 20% and 31%, according to Morningstar. "When you're getting closer to retirement, that's where [TDFs] can kind of deviate a little bit more," Megan Pacholok, senior manager research analyst at Morningstar, said of asset allocations. About 82% of 401(k) plans offered TDFs in 2021, according to the most recent data from the Plan Sponsor Council of America, a trade group that represents employers. An average 28% of the 401(k) savings in these plans was held in TDFs — a greater share than any other type of investment fund available, according to PSCA data. The idea that everyone in a five-year age cohort should have the same asset allocation, it's just not correct. David Blanchett managing director and head of retirement research at PGIM Of course, TDFs can vary in many ways aside from asset allocation. For example, some are known as "through" funds, which continue to get more conservative throughout retirement; others are "to" funds, whose stock-bond proportions stay steady in retirement. Further, TDFs may differ in the types of stocks (such as U.S. versus international) and bonds ("junk" versus Treasurys, for example) that they hold, experts said. "Even though funds with identical target dates may look the same, they may have very different investment strategies and asset allocations that can affect how risky they are and what they are worth at any given point in time, including when and after you retire," according to the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, which regulates brokerage firms. Why asset allocation is more important for retirees Paying attention to asset allocation is particularly important for investors in or near retirement, Pacholok said. That's because they generally have larger accounts than young investors and may not have much, if any, time to recover from investment losses, she said.

https://www.cnbc.com/id/100595575

PRU

Prudential Financial

UK's Prudential Fined $45 Million for Hiding AIA Bid Plans

Prudential , Britain's largest insurer, has been fined 30 million pounds ($45.5 million) for failing to tell the UK financial regulator about its ill-fated takeover attempt of Asian rival AIA around three years ago. The Financial Services Authority (FSA) said on Wednesday the size and scale of the deal would have transformed the company's financial position, strategy and risk profile and that a planned 14.5 billion pound cash call would have been the biggest ever in the UK. "Prudential failed to deal with the FSA in an open and cooperative manner when it was seeking to acquire AIA in early 2010, because it did not inform the FSA of the proposed acquisition until after it had been leaked to the media on 27 February 2010," the FSA said. The deal collapsed after Prudential's investors baulked at the price and AIA's parent, U.S. insurer AIG , rejected a lower offer. Prudential shareholders were left shouldering 377 million pounds in costs, prompting calls for the heads of Chief Executive Tidjane Thiam and former chairman Harvey McGrath. (Read More: Prudential CEO: We Can Withstand Two 1930s Depressions) The FSA said Thiam played "a significant role" in the decision not to contact the FSA about the company's Asian expansion plans and that he was "knowingly concerned in this breach". But the regulator stopped short of declaring him unfit. Prudential said it regretted, with hindsight, not informing the FSA earlier about its Asian plans. But it emphasised that the investigation was into past events, did not concern current conduct and that the FSA did not consider its breaches "reckless or intentional". "We wish to draw a line under the matter, and to ensure our constructive relationship with our regulators remains good," Prudential Chairman Paul Manduca said in a statement. "Tidjane acted at all times in the interests of the company and with the full knowledge and authority of the board. The board wishes to express its satisfaction that all parties have agreed to this settlement."

https://www.cnbc.com/2016/03/29/prudential-forget-dovish-fed-this-is-what-stocks-need.html

PRU

Prudential Financial

Prudential: Forget dovish Fed, this is what stocks need

watch now watch now watch now U.S. equities will need strong earnings results to continue their remarkable comeback since hitting their 2016 lows last month, Prudential Financial's Quincy Krosby said Tuesday. "Whether or not you think Janet Yellen is going to be accommodative, … the fact is we're moving closer to where we need growth. We need fundamentals, we need revenue growth to pick up," the firm's market strategist told CNBC's "Squawk Box." The Dow Jones industrial average is slightly positive for the quarter, on track for its biggest quarterly comeback since fourth quarter 1933. At its 2016 lows, the blue chips index was down 11.79 percent. Earnings growth concerns have remained prevalent throughout the first quarter amid a massive drop in oil prices, as well as a steep decline in stock buybacks, one of the main drivers for the seven-year bull market. In fact, stock repurchases are currently tracking at a 21-month low for March. "Basically, [companies] may be wanting to hold on to just a little bit more cash, watching the market themselves," Krosby said. In another "Squawk Box" interview, Federated Investors chief equities strategist Phil Orlando said he has low expectations for the earnings season. "Our sense is that earnings are going to be down somewhere in the neighborhood of 5-to-10 percent year over year. Oil and the dollar are going to be the biggest problems, so those numbers would be on the lower end of that," he said. Orlando said he also expects first-quarter GDP data to be weak. "From our perspective, there is no way the Fed can tighten in the April or June time frame, if these are the numbers they're looking at." Yellen, the Federal Reserve's chair, is scheduled to deliver a speech on monetary policy later on Tuesday.

https://www.cnbc.com/2014/03/12/prudential-expands-into-asia-with-new-stanchart-deal.html

PRU

Prudential Financial

Prudential expands into Asia with new StanChart deal

Prudential has struck a deal with financial services group Standard Chartered to sell its insurance products in more Asian markets. The new 15-year agreement, which starts in July, means a wide range of Prudential's life insurance products will be exclusively distributed through Standard Chartered branches in nine markets. Prudential's shares were up 3.5 percent at £14.39, an all-time high, following the announcement. Prudential and Standard Chartered have also agreed to explore additional opportunities to collaborate in Asia and in Africa., Prudential chief executive Tidjane Thiam said the existing partnership had already delivered substantial benefits to both companies and shareholders over the last 15 years. "Agreements like this don't happen overnight. I have spent a big proportion of my time with Peter Sands (CEO of Standard Chartered). We have a very good existing relationship. The game in Asia is distribution," said Thiam. "The opportunity is as obvious as the sun in the sky, you can only capture if you have the distribution. It is a game and battle for distribution," he said.

https://www.cnbc.com/2016/04/19/betting-financials-is-a-value-play-investors.html

PRU

Prudential Financial

Betting financials is a value play: Investors

watch now The financial sector is one of the worst performing sectors in the S&P 500 for the last year, yet these investors see value in it. "Oil prices appeared to have found some kind of a bottom; have rallied. The data out of China has been encouraging, and expectations for a Fed rate hike have been pushed back a little bit," Joe Tanious, a strategist at Bessemer Trust Investment told "Power Lunch" on Tuesday. He said during the CNBC interview that the market bears value "opportunities, but it really comes down to being selective and finding the right securities to invest in." Tanious said that he would hunt for value in the sectors that stand to benefit from an improved consumer balance sheet. "You think about consumer discretionary stocks, you think about technology stocks; those that have a bet towards a healthy consumer," he said. "And of course we can't forget financials ... to the extent that the Fed Reserve raises interest rates this year ... I suspect you're going to find value out of those stocks." Energy and materials traded more than 1.5 percent higher as the top S&P sectors in Tuesday's afternoon trade, followed by financials. Still, the financials sector closed Monday's session as one of the two negative sectors in the S&P year-to-date, down nearly 2 percent.

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/07/16/china-central-bank-told-by-xi-to-play-bigger-role-in-managing-financial-risk.html

PRU

Prudential Financial

China central bank told by Xi to play bigger role in managing financial risk

Financial security is a vital part of national security, Xi said at the fifth National Financial Work Conference, adding that China will strengthen the Communist Party's leadership in the financial sector. China's central bank will take on a bigger role in macro-prudential management and in averting systemic risk in the financial system, President Xi Jinping said at a once-in-five-years government work conference that ended on Saturday. A woman walks past the headquarters of the People's Bank of China in Beijing, China. A Financial Stability and Development Committee will also be set up under the State Council, or cabinet, state media cited Xi as saying. No details were given on the committee and on how the role of the People's Bank of China (PBOC) will be strengthened. Regulators oversee different parts of China's complex financial sector, and no singular regulator has a complete picture of capital movements in the system. That complicates the job of authorities to catch market manipulators who secretly divert funds to risky financial products as they chase higher returns. Authorities also worry about "giant crocodiles", a term regulators have started using to describe law-breaking tycoons who circumvent regulations to grab control of other companies. Earlier this year, the China Insurance Regulatory Commission (CIRC) banned the chairman of Foresea Life from the insurance business for 10 years, citing violations of rules in the firm's use of insurance funds. CIRC separately also restricted Evergrande Life's (3333.HK) stock trading activities for one year, after accusing the insurance firm of engaging in irregular investment activities. Xi also said China will push forward with deleveraging in its economy, and that lowering debt ratios among state-owned enterprises is the most pressing issue. Beijing will also strictly control new local government debt and strengthen oversight of internet financing, he said.

https://www.cnbc.com/2016/07/25/power-play-hedge-the-fed-with-financials.html

PRU

Prudential Financial

Power Play: Hedge the Fed with financials

Stocks are sliding on Monday as investors await central bank meetings this week. Quincy Krosby, market strategist at Prudential Financial, tells CNBC's "Power Lunch" central banks are still the main market drivers right now. "Central bank liquidity [is] still the primary catalyst for these levels. Does the Bank of Japan move this week and does the Fed continue to suggest a rate hike this year need to be justified by even stronger [economic] data," Krosby said. Read More Dow falls 100 points; oil hits 3-month low In this environment, Krosby likes small and mid-cap financials if rates rise and also if rates don't rise. Michael Cuggino, president and portfolio manager of Permanent Portfolio Funds, believes the likelihood of any action at the Fed meeting this week is remote. "Pay attention to the words, as they talk a lot without saying anything lately," Cuggino said. He also likes financials and one of Cuggino's top picks is First Republic . Financials are down 1 percent year-to-date, but First Republic is up nearly 9 percent.

https://www.cnbc.com/2014/03/18/what-do-women-want-financial-advisors-that-get-it.html

PRU

Prudential Financial

What do women want? Financial advisors who get it

When it comes to women and money, there is good news and there is bad. In the plus column, women are heading more households and making small inroads in the C-suite. Women have also increased their presence on the Forbes list of billionaires. (Read more: Women at the top) In addition, research by Boston College's Center on Wealth and Philanthropy found that because women tend to outlive their spouses, overall they will be managing the majority of the $41 trillion in wealth that will pass to the next generation by 2052. But when it comes to financial advice, women are not getting the service they want or need. A study by Fidelity Investments found that when couples interact with a financial advisor, men are 58 percent more likely than women to be the primary contact. And while most women say they do not intend to leave their financial advisor if their husband dies, within a year of being widowed as many as 70 percent actually do, according to one study. "We just continue to have a lot of work do to around this whole front," said Caroline Feeney, president of agency distribution at Prudential. Feeney recalled a presentation for Prudential financial advisors—both men and women—where they were told about the data on widows. "From the women there were some smiles, some comments, [but] not largely surprise," she said. "The women cited examples of many times they had been sitting next to their husbands and a salesperson directed the entire conversation at their spouse. They tried to put some humor in it, but they were less surprised. The men were much more surprised." Not all women want the same thing from a financial advisor, of course. Research by Prudential found differences among women of different ages, income levels and ethnicity. But financial advisors describe several things women tend to seek from an advisor. "Men are more about fixing things and getting to the bottom line. A woman doesn't necessarily want to get to the bottom line right away," said Kathleen Rehl, a financial planner and the author of "Moving Forward on Your Own: A Financial Guidebook for Widows." Sometimes, she said, a recently widowed woman needs to process her grief and dig through paperwork that has been let go before she can make a plan for the future, and an advisor can help build the relationship by assisting with both. Rehl said she and other financial advisors she knows sometimes arrange themed events for groups of women so they can enjoy an activity together and then participate in a discussion or have a lesson on a financial topic. Rather than selling a product or completing a transaction, the events are more about building relationships, she said, since that is especially important to women. "We like to learn things. We like to think them through. Like investments," she said. Kerry Hannon, a retirement and personal finance expert based in Washington, says men and women tend to have different approaches to investing. "Generally speaking, women don't want it to be a numbers game. We care about the returns and so forth. But this is not a competition. Men typically slide into that mindset a bit more," she said. "Most women aren't generally willing to bet the farm. We don't need the highest return, or the next hot investment. We want a steady, solid return over time. It's an organic, big picture scenario that we're interested in pursuing. We are afraid of losing it all, so we want to keep control and safety at a gut level." (Read more: Why am I rich? Wealthy women cite frugality, good advice)

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/10/us-markets-political-concerns-keep-investors-on-edge.html

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Prudential Financial

Dow drops about 200 points as financial crisis in Turkey spooks global markets

Stocks fell on Friday as geopolitical concerns pushed the Turkish lira to a record low against the dollar and rattled investors. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 196.09 points to 25,313.14 as Intel declined. The Dow also erased its gains for the month of August and posted a three-day losing streak. The fell 0.7 percent to close at 2,833.28 as financials and materials lagged. The Nasdaq Composite also pulled back 0.7 percent to 7,839.11 and snapped an eight-day winning streak. Bank shares led the way lower in the U.S. as Bank of America, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley all dropped at least 1 percent. Tech shares also fell as Facebook, Alphabet and Amazon all declined. "This is a classic, instinctive reaction in the market," said Quincy Krosby, chief market strategist at Prudential Financial. "Stocks are down while ... Treasurys are getting a bid." "The currency issue in emerging markets, in Turkey, is nothing new. This is just exacerbated," Krosby added. She also noted that global central banks could take action to prevent the situation from getting worse. "Historically, you've seen central banks act to ease these types of situations. The goal for them is to minimize collateral damage." The lira briefly fell 20 percent to a record low after President Donald Trump authorized the doubling of metals tariffs on Turkey. The currency later traded down 15 percent against the dollar. Trump's comment came after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan asked citizens to "change the euros, the dollars and the gold that you are keeping beneath your pillows into lira," noting this is "a domestic and national struggle." Turkish stocks also fell on Friday as the iShares MSCI Turkey ETF dropped 14.5 percent. The ETF was already down 42.3 percent this year prior to Friday's losses. The drop came after a Turkish delegation returned from Washington with no apparent progress being made on the detention of Andrew Brunson, an American pastor detained in Turkey in 2016. Turkish authorities accuse Brunson of supporting a failed coup attempt earlier that year.

https://www.cnbc.com/advertorial/2017/12/05/huawei-customers-win-prestigious-awards-at-smart-city-expo-world-congress-2017.html

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Public Service Enterprise Group

Huawei customers win prestigious awards at Smart City Expo World Congress 2017

Shenzhen wins Safe City Award, Yanbu wins Data and Technology Award Four Huawei customers were recognized for their outstanding Smart City achievements at the prestigious Smart City Expo World Congress 2017 (SCEWC). Shenzhen in China won the Safe City Award with its Smart Transportation project, and Yanbu in Saudi Arabia won the Data and Technology Award with its Smart City project. In addition, Weifang in China was one of the finalists for the City Award with its Smart City 3.0 project, while Cameroon was nominated for the Innovation Idea Award with its solar energy project. These cities have all leveraged Huawei's Smart City solutions customized to meet city management needs across different regions and different levels of development. The solutions drive digital transformation to improve city administration, create sustainable economies and enable efficient public services. With 309 entries from 58 countries for this year's World Smart City Awards, the competition iwas greater than ever, reflecting the diversity and innovativeness of Smart City development across the world. Yan Lida, President of Huawei Enterprise Business Group, said: "The ultimate goal of a Smart City is to enable good governance, promote industry development and deliver benefits for the people. Together with our customers and partners, we are moving towards achieving these outcomes by improving city governance and service capabilities, developing the local economy and stimulating innovation, as well as making cities more livable. Drawing from the world's best Smart City practices, we have found that a successful Smart City Development is driven by strong governmental support backed by a strong and capable Smart City project team, with long-term and stable investment. Working with a leading digital partner that designs top-level plans to address governmental needs and has an open and robust ecosystem is also crucial. We are honored that Huawei has gained the trust of our customers and become their preferred partner for Smart City development. Leveraging leading new ICT such as cloud computing, the Internet of Things (IoT) and Artificial Intelligence to build a unified IoT platform, communications platform, cloud data center and smart command center, Huawei creates a nervous system for a Smart City. This enables the Smart City to become a living organism that constantly evolves and grows sustainably. We would like to congratulate Shenzhen and Saudi Arabia on receiving World Smart City Awards 2017, and we look forward to working with more cities to help them realize their Smart City dreams."

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/27/new-jersey-utility-proposes-4-billion-clean-energy-plan.html

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Public Service Enterprise Group

New Jersey utility PSE&G proposes $4 billion plan to advance state's clean energy goals

Ralph Izzo, CEO, PSE&G Scott Mlyn | CNBC New Jersey's largest regulated utility has a $4 billion plan to make the Garden State greener and advance the state's bid to become a clean energy leader. PSE&G on Thursday revealed a six-year plan called Clean Energy Future that aims to reduce the state's energy consumption and carbon emissions, while driving down electric power costs. The proposal calls for spending $2.8 billion on energy efficiency programs and hundreds of millions on electric vehicle infrastructure, energy storage and state-of-the-art electricity meters. PSE&G, which operates New Jersey's transmission and distribution lines, believes the plan will save customers $7.4 billion, though some rate payers could see their bills tick higher. It is also forecast to cut carbon emissions by 40 million tons, roughly equal to taking 380,000 cars off the road by 2025. The company is casting its proposal as a response to Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy's ambitious clean energy and climate goals. In May, Murphy signed legislation that set ambitious targets for offshore wind power and energy storage, required utilities to cut electric power bills and sought to expand solar power. The legislation also made New Jersey one of a handful of states that has vowed to generate 50 percent of its energy from renewable sources by 2030. watch now The proposal is "a great opportunity for us to be aligned with our government and do well by the environment and our employees and our customers, while giving our investors another growth opportunity," said Ralph Izzo, chairman and CEO of PSE&G parent company Public Service Enterprise Group. Most of the investment would go to energy efficiency programs because it's the most efficient way to reduce customer costs while cutting energy use and greenhouse gas emissions, Izzo told CNBC. The funds would underwrite rebates and incentives for energy-efficient appliances and equipment, as well as funding to adopt energy-saving techniques. PSE&G would also offer free or low-cost consulting, tools and installations to residences, businesses and local governments. Those programs alone would save ratepayers $5.7 billion, according to PSE&G, though the savings would mostly accrue to residents and companies that take advantage of the program. Those who don't could see their electric power bill increase by $6 a year, the company estimates. PSE&G plans to advise policymakers to focus on pushing the programs to low-income households, apartments and municipal buildings. The plan also commits $364 million for electric vehicle chargers in up to 37,000 homes and 2,200 mixed-use buildings and for additional units in 150 fast-charging stations on public roadways. PSE&G also plans to award grants to school districts to purchase 50 to 100 electric school buses, primarily in low-income areas. Izzo says the company's experience managing the flow of electricity on New Jersey's power lines makes PSE&G a prime candidate to jump start the buildout of New Jersey's EV charging infrastructure. "It's no different than why we took the lead years ago in solar and oftentimes why a regulated utility takes the lead: to get the market going," he said. "Once the market is functioning, it's not a monopoly, and we can and should back away." watch now

https://www.cnbc.com/2015/08/26/5-big-stocks-thrive-in-corrections.html

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Public Service Enterprise Group

5 big stocks thrive in corrections

Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. Brendan McDermid | Reuters Investors are hopeful the market can pull out of its latest correction, which this week violently yanked the S&P 500 down nearly 12% from its high on May 21, 2015. But given all the risks - a slowing economy in China and decent odds of a hike in short-term interest rates sometime this year in the U.S. - investors know the market could have some trouble shaking off the malaise. And that's why investors are wise to know what kinds of stocks tend to hold up best—even during corrections. Utilities certainly deserve the reputation they get for being a bastion of strength during corrections. Four of the five stocks that have thrived and posted average gains in the previous five corrections during the past are all utilities. That truth goes even further. Nearly half of the 37 stocks in the S&P 500 that have beaten the the market in each of past six corrections—including the current one—are utilities stocks. Read More 10 oversold stocks ready to pop Public Service Enterprise is the classic example of a correction-resistant stock. Shares have gained 3.2% on average over the past five corrections - while the market itself has dropped 16.3% on average during the same time periods. The stock's market-beating dividend yield of 2.8% provides investors with some cover, too. The stock hasn't fared quite as well in the current correction—falling 8.8% from the high in May. But that's still much better than the 12.4% decline by the S&P 500 during the same period. If there's been a stock that delivers big-time during corrections, it's Stericycle. The company that provides a variety of hazardous waste removal services has risen 1.3% on average during the previous five correctionsmaking it a solid performer in the S&P 500 by this measure. Stericycle, too, has been pulled into the market's recent selloff. Shares are down 1.9% from the market's May high. But it's living up to its reputation again this time - as the stock has held up the best among the five stocks from the highs among these five stocks. Read More What it takes to survive the selloff

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/15/microsoft-and-github-unveil-pair-programming-tools.html

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Public Service Enterprise Group

Microsoft and GitHub bet that software programmers will want to work with a buddy

Microsoft and privately held GitHub on Wednesday are separately unveiling tools that will make it easier for programmers to pair up and get work done together. Pair programming, a concept that goes back decades, is a controversial subject in the world of software development because not all developers are comfortable with having others see them do their work. But pair programming can help organizations keep projects ticking along if one person leaves the company or takes breaks, since the other person on the team will be familiar with the current state of the project. Pairs may also find mistakes more efficiently by switching between coding and checking their partner's work. Other benefits include on-the-job training (by pairing experienced programmers with newbies), team-building and brainstorming. The new technologies from Microsoft and GitHub call to mind the real-time collaboration features of Microsoft's Office 365 and Google's G Suite — but here Microsoft and GitHub are making sure developers will be able to use the new tools in the coding environments they're used to rather than forcing them to use unfamiliar applications. With Microsoft's Visual Studio Live Share tool, developers will be able to use their own text editors or integrated development environments while collaborating. Developers will be able to install GitHub's new Teletype package for use with the start-up's open-source Atom text editor, but GitHub is also releasing software libraries that will let people build systems to enable collaboration in other programs. Scott Guthrie, executive vice president of Microsoft's Cloud and Enterprise group, is demonstrating Visual Studio Live Share on Wednesday at the company's online Connect conference. "When we show it, it's going to set the developer world on fire with excitement," Guthrie said in a media briefing earlier this month. The introductions come about a year and a half after public cloud market leader Amazon Web Services acquired Cloud9, a start-up with a cloud-based development environment where people can collaborate. And earlier this year, Red Hat acquired start-up Codenvy, whose tool can be run as a cloud service or in companies' on-premises data centers. Nathan Sobo teamed up with other developers in person every day during his time at Pivotal Labs — one of a few companies known to use pair programming — before joining GitHub, where he works on Atom. "I just absorbed so much knowledge and got so much out of those few years that I worked in that style, that synchronous collaboration, working together at same time with someone, where you're actually discussing what you should name that method, rather than getting feedback ... three days later," he said. Sobo said that even he has his moments when he doesn't want a very social coding experience — but he said he contributed to the Teletype feature with an eye toward making something he would want to use on a daily basis.

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/23/us-stock-futures-dow-data-earnings-and-politics-on-the-agenda.html

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Public Service Enterprise Group

Dow rallies 347 points as stocks close higher for the week

Stocks rallied on Friday as interest rates slipped further from a four-year high, pushing the major indexes higher for the week. The Dow Jones industrial average closed 347.51 points higher at 25,309.99, with Intel as the best-performing stock. The gained 1.6 percent to end at 2,747.30, with utilities and energy as the best-performing sectors. The broad index also broke above its 50-day moving average — a key technical level — in afternoon trade. Entering Friday's session, the Dow and S&P 500 were on track to close down by 1 percent for the week. They finished the week with gains of 0.4 percent and 0.6 percent, respectively. The Nasdaq composite advanced 1.8 percent to 7,337.39 as shares of Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and Alphabet all rose. For the week, the index rose 1.4 percent. It was a volatile week for stocks, with the major averages posting strong gains in early trading before closing off those highs in the previous three sessions. On Friday, the Dow, S&P 500 and Nasdaq bucked that trend. "We have a champagne problem," said Nick Raich, CEO of The Earnings Scout. "The economy is running too hot and that brings fear of higher rates. But that's better than having to jump-start an economy that's running cold." "Earnings expectations are also rising for the first time in seven years," Raich said. "That's a big positive." The benchmark 10-year U.S. note yield hit a four-year high earlier this week after minutes from the Fed's January meeting showed the central bank sees increased economic growth and an uptick in inflation as justification to continue to raise interest rates gradually. On Friday, the yield traded below that four-year high, near 2.875 percent.

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/11/22/in-openai-fallout-open-source-ai-could-be-among-the-big-tech-winners.html

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Public Service Enterprise Group

After closed door OpenAI drama, open source AI backed by Nvidia, Eric Schmidt, could emerge winner

The Hugging Face website on a laptop arranged in New York, US, on Thursday, Aug. 17, 2023. Nvidia announced a partnership with Hugging Face, a popular developer of AI models and data sets, that will add a training service to its website that uses Nvidia DGX Cloud, allowing users to tap the chipmaker's servers to handle their workloads. Photographer: Gabby Jones/Bloomberg via Getty Images Tech giants Salesforce , Qualcomm , Nvidia and high-profile investor Eric Schmidt are pouring investment into open source AI startups that could be winners as the recent OpenAI saga — although now resolved with Sam Altman reinstated as CEO and a new board being composed with the approval of major OpenAI backer Microsoft — has shaken up the market and caused a reassessment of relying on a single, proprietary service for generative AI and concerns about concentration of AI development of a handful of big tech players. As public market tech giants jockey for leading positions in advanced AI, well-funded open source startups are eyeing expansion as competition intensifies and more enterprises consider adding open models and providers to their generative AI push. "The drama over OpenAI reinforces the need for open source or community models outside a single company," said Mike Gualtieri, vice president and principal analyst at market research firm Forrester. OpenAI staff threats to quit, and worries about the startup's ability to continue to function and support the hundreds of startups that had rushed into its ecosystem, highlighted how quickly a competitive landscape can shift, and in unexpected ways. In addition to an offer from Microsoft to join at current compensation, Salesforce CEO and co-founder Marc Benioff offered jobs to any OpenAI talent thinking of departing the company. "What we want to avoid is only one game in town, a large monopoly operating behind closed doors. This OpenAI saga demonstrates that the ecosystem is too fragile to rely on a single company for its AI needs," said Delip Rao, an AI research scientist and academic who has worked at Twitter and Google. "We should encourage all companies to build on disruption-proof AI technology that only open source can offer." To be clear, big bets made on open source AI pre-date last Friday when news first broke of Sam Altman's removal as OpenAI CEO, and those bets include an open source AI model controlled by one dominant tech company, Meta Platforms ' Llama. Salesforce-invested Hugging Face, named after the popular smiley emoji with a matching logo, is gearing up after a $235 million venture deal at a $4.5 billion valuation in August. The French-American open source AI company has raised a total $400 million from a broad array of 30 tech investors including Qualcomm, IBM , Google , Nvidia, Intel and Sequoia Capital. "We are not following the Silicon Valley playbook," said Thomas Wolf, co-founder and CEO of Hugging Face, a central hub connecting developers and researchers to share code and build AI tools together, in an interview that was conducted before the recent OpenAI shakeup. "AI builders are growing superfast, raising and burning money. We are not in that mindset. We've been around for seven years, and didn't need to raise money. We can make plans for the long run without a problem." Wolf stressed his firm's contrast to enterprise-controlled and owned software models. "We are unlocking the community to develop AI, to share and build together," he said. And in a subsequent interview after the OpenAI power struggle began, he referenced the Linux open operating system, a widely used rival to Microsoft's Windows, which he said was never at risk of disappearing because Linus Torvalds (its creator) changed jobs. Hugging Face has 160 employees and turned cash flow positive early last year, he said, and may make an acquisition after buying machine learning startup Gradio in 2021. "I don't see the market consolidating. Instead, it will fan out." This past June, Salesforce Ventures, the company's investment arm, doubled its generative AI fund to $500 million. "We are excited about innovations in generative AI in an open way, so researchers and developers can collaborate," said Paul Drews, managing partner at Salesforce Ventures. Competitive leverage is top of mind. "Salesforce could partner with Hugging Face in the future and is in the early days of exploring collaboration," he said.

https://www.cnbc.com/2016/02/19/us-stocks-poised-for-positive-week.html

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Public Service Enterprise Group

US stocks poised for positive week

Donald Trump praised Pope Francis at a South Carolina town hall event, taking a more conciliatory tone following a row with the pontiff sparked on Thursday when the Catholic leader said Trump is "not Christian" due to his views on immigration. (BBC/CNBC) Sen. Bernie Sanders is closing in on Hillary Clinton in the national race, according to a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll. The survey shows Clinton with a 53 percent lead among Democratic primary voters to 42 percent for Sanders. (CNBC) Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg would get just 16 percent of the vote in a hypothetical three-way battle with Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump, according to a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll. The poll suggests Bloomberg would take more votes from Sanders than from Trump. (WSJ) U.S. warplanes carried out air strikes early on Friday in the western Libyan city of Sabratha, where Islamic State militants operate, killing as many as 40 people. The attacks targeted a senior militant linked to attacks in Tunisia last year, a U.S. military spokesman said. (Reuters) Apple (AAPL) has been given more time to respond to a Department of Justice order to assist the FBI in unlocking an iPhone used by a shooter in last year's San Bernardino terror attack. Apple's response in court will now be due February 26. (CNBC) Law firm Hagens Berman has filed a class-action lawsuit against Daimler in the United States on the part of a Mercedes BlueTEC diesel car owner. The suit illegal nitrogen oxide levels. (Reuters) Volkswagen internal memos and emails suggest the company delayed regulators after being confronted in early 2014 with evidence its vehicles were emitting more pollutants than allowed. (NYT)

https://www.cnbc.com/2015/12/03/watch-out-for-the-crosscurrents.html

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Public Service Enterprise Group

Watch out for the crosscurrents!

A lot of crosscurrents today. 1) The dollar weakness, euro strength on Mario Draghi's failure to increase the size of the ECB's monthly bond buying program was a modest help to some commodities like oil and copper, but no help to commodity stocks. Most oil stocks were down 3 to 5 percent. Steel stocks were down one to two percent, as were other metal stocks like Alcoa down 4 percent. The equity markets seem to believe that the rise in commodity prices was a head fake and would not last. 2) The aggressive move up in bond yields put pressure on interest-rate sensitive stocks. Home builders like Hovananian were down 3 to 6 percent. A number of utilities, like Duke , Exelon , and Public Service Enterprise , hit 52-week lows, though they came off their intraday lows as the day wore on. 3) Retailers with recent disappointing earnings were hit hard: Pacific Sunwear , Aeropostale , American Eagle , Ascena , PVH and Express were down big, as was Zumiez , which reports tonight. 4) The impact of any terrorism concerns over the shooting in San Bernardino, California, if any, is hard to quantify, but traders noted that oil had a sharp spike up midday when it was announced that the person responsible for the shootings had traveled to Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. The bigger questions are, first, is this finally a turn for the dollar, and is this the start of a sustained move up in interest rates? I noted earlier in the day that Draghi may have inadvertently send an early Valentine's Day present to Janet Yellen, in the sense that the dollar weakness, euro strength may make it easier for the Fed to raise rates. Treasury yields were up across the board. Here's something strange: Banks, which should be a winner today on the higher rates, are down across the board, roughly 1 to 2 percent. Huh? This may finally be the expected market reaction to the Fed raising rates, as well as to the fact that the "long dollar, short euro" trade was one of the few trades that was working for traders. There have been some notable failures: 1) Efforts to buy oil stocks at their lows failed throughout the year, 2) and biotech, a huge winner through the middle of the year, has now only modest gains. The dollar falling apart was the final straw: it "finishes off everyone for the year," one trader said to me. We are certainly seeing a "degrossing" or reduction in stock holdings across the board today. That's the likely answer. What's still working? A small group of technology names. Facebook , Apple , Netflix . Google : FANG! And a few others: Microsoft and Juniper , but there's not a lot else.

https://www.cnbc.com/2014/11/12/us-stocks.html

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Public Service Enterprise Group

Stocks end little moved near records; utilities hit

watch now U.S. stocks wavered on Wednesday, largely erasing a retreat from records, as investors mulled the slowdown in Europe's economy and earnings from Macy's and other retailers. "A time out is probably well needed, a straight line up is not the healthiest thing," said Peter Boockvar, chief market analyst at the Lindsey Group. Read More Boring is good! Why small gains benefit stocks Utilities were hardest hit among the S&P 500's 10 major sectors after the United States and China reached an accord on carbon reductions to curb climate change, with Public Service Enterprise Group and Exelon among the top decliners. Macy's gained after the department-store chain posted third-quarter earnings that beat estimates, while its revenue missed. The company also cut is full-year guidance. Read MoreMidday movers: Dow Chemical, Google, Macy's & more Wednesday data had wholesale inventories in September, versus expectations for a 0.2 percent gain. Major U.S. Indexes Benchmark indexes moderated losses to turn little changed, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average initially shedding 78 points, and ending down 2.70 points at 17,612.20, with JPMorgan Chase and Exxon Mobil leading blue-chip losses and Visa and Nike fronting gains. The shed 1.43 point, or nearly 0.1 percent, at 2,038.25, with utilities and energy leading sector losses and telecommunications and consumer discretionary the best performing of its 10 major sectors. The Nasdaq added 14.58 points, or 0.3 percent, at 4,675.13. For every seven shares falling, just over eight gained on the New York Stock Exchange, where 718 million shares traded. Composite volume approached 3.3 billion. Scott Mlyn | CNBC U.S. stocks started the session in the red, echoing action in Europe, where shares closed sharply lower. "We're probably playing off Europe; the European economic weakness is a focus, and we're seeing weakness in the European banks and stock markets," said Boockvar. The dollar turned up against the currencies of major U.S. trading partners, and the yield on the 10-year Treasury note used to figure mortgage rates and other consumer loans held steady at 2.3643 percent. European Central Bank President Mario Draghi "is helping the dollar and dollar-denominated securities by pledging to keep pushing their rates down to a level that stimulates the economies of the euro zone. This should also help feed interest into the Treasury auctions as the yield 'separation' between U.S. debt and euro-zone debt can't be ignored by global investors," Kevin Giddis, head of fixed income capital markets at Raymond James, wrote in an emailed note. Gold futures for December shed $3.90 to $1,159.10 an ounce and December crude futures fell 74 cents, or 1 percent, to $77.18 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. On Tuesday, U.S. stocks were little changed as investors found little impetus to move decisively in one direction or the other. Read More Stocks near peaks; S&P at record on Veterans Day watch now

https://www.cnbc.com/2015/01/12/dividend-stocks-that-could-yield-big-returns-in-2015.html

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Public Service Enterprise Group

Dividend stocks that could yield big returns in 2015

watch now Are you looking for solid returns with low risk in your portfolio this year? Of course you are. And investment pros have just the thing for you: dividend-paying stocks. Dividend growth, estimated by FactSet at 10.5 percent for the S&P 500 for 2014, is expected to be slightly less robust in the coming year, at 8 percent, according to John Butters, senior earnings analyst. Still, there are sectors and stocks that fund managers expect to shine, generating double-digit total returns thanks in large part to their dividends. "Companies in the U.S. still have very good balance sheets and good cash generation, and dividend payouts are still below the average of the past 50 years," said Brian Hennessey, portfolio manager of Alpine's Dynamic Dividend Fund, who is among those anticipating dividend growth in the high single digits. Read MoreHere's a trend that will be a surprise this year Whither interest rates? One big question facing dividend fund managers is what to do about REITs and utilities, since they performed so well in 2014 and could be vulnerable to an interest rate hike. But Hennessey takes a different view. He believes that 10-year bond yields below one percent in several relatively robust European countries, such as Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, France and the Netherlands, will keep upward pressure off of U.S. rates. Read MoreAre bond yields flashing a panic signal? That makes him more comfortable with REITs than some other portfolio managers. For example, Hennessey likes The GEO Group , one of two publicly traded prison REITs. He believes the private prison business is a good one, and that GEO is undervalued relative to comparable health care-related REITs. He also likes GEO's 6 percent yield. Hennessey also likes Two Harbors Investment , a mortgage REIT, pointing to a conservative balance sheet and a valuation below book value. He thinks Two Harbors should trade at book value and, even without any appreciation, it offers a 10 percent dividend yield. Bullish on big companies In contrast, Josh Peters, director of equity income strategy at Morningstar, is wary of REITs and utilities, for the most part. He does, however, like Public Service Enterprise Group , the New Jersey utility, and the company's shift toward the steady, regulated part of the business, as opposed to wholesale generation. "My only qualm is valuation, and it's certainly not unique to them" among utilities, Peters said. Nonetheless, he plans to hang on to the stock. Peters also likes and holds some big multinationals, such as General Electric , which has faced headwinds because of its exposure to the energy sector. Chief Executive Jeffrey Immelt's strategy of slimming down the company's financial services operation and building up its industrial and infrastructure businesses is well known, but Peters believes investors have yet to wake up to it. He thinks the stock is currently worth $30 on the basis of Morningstar's long-term forecast, a sizable premium to the current price, and the yield at about 3.8 percent is also attractive. Coca-Cola is another global player Peters is somewhat bullish on. "Far and away the biggest headwind to earnings is currencies," he said. "I don't know when it's going to turn around, but eventually it's going to." In the meantime, Coke has its global distribution channels, usable even as consumers' tastes shift. Peters does not expect a big dividend increase this year, and he currently views the stock as "a little expensive," but over the long run he expects 7 to 8 percent dividend and earnings growth. Read MoreTiffany weakness mean problems in luxury retail? Altria is another Peters holding. Currency exposure is less of a concern for the company, he said, and cash flow is steady. The tobacco names, he said, "have functioned and acted like the utility stocks." But when the interest rate environment shifts, he warned that "at some point the capital appreciation potential disappears." Entry point for energy

https://www.cnbc.com/2015/09/17/lightning-round-the-great-white-of-energy-stocks.html

PTC

PTC

Lightning Round: The great white of energy stocks

It's that time again! Jim Cramer rang the lightning round bell, which means he gave his take on caller favorite stocks at rapid speed: Suncoke Energy : "If you want to be in that patch, you need to be in Energy Transfer Partners. It yields 9 percent and it's down on its luck, but it's not down on its business." Eaton Corp : "Too late to buy? The stock has taken out of its own vortex. But you know what? 4 percent yield and good business, Sandy Cutler [CEO] has got that buyback going, I say it's a buy, buy, buy!" U.S. Silica Holdings : "You're going down the food chain, you're buying a minnow, you're buying a guppy. Let me give you the great white! I want you to buy Schlumberger." PTC Therapeutics : "You've got one of the most speculative names in the business. Why don't you settle in with Celgene, a few points away from its 52-week high." Read more from Mad Money with Jim Cramer Cramer Remix: Know this about beer takeovers Cramer: Stocks to buy in a Fed induced selloff Cramer: Billion dollar unicorn start-ups—beware! Pepco Holdings: "That one is a disaster, I have to admit. But I think it's okay. But I'm a Dominion guy." Geron Corporation : "Let's add an R-E-G and make it Regeneron, then you've got me as a buyer!"

https://www.cnbc.com/2015/10/15/after-hours-buzz-mattel-yum-brands-schlumberger-more.html

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After-hours buzz: Mattel, Yum Brands, Schlumberger & more

Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. Check out the companies making headlines after the bell Thursday: Mattel shares fell about 2 percent after the toymaker missed on the top and bottom lines. The results were "broadly in line with our expectations at this stage of our turnaround," the company said in its earnings release. Yum Brands rose about 3 percent after the fast-food restaurant operator added activist investor Keith Meister to its board and reduced its outlook for earnings and China sales this year. Advanced Micro Devices reported a wider-than-expected quarterly loss, but revenue topped estimates. The chipmaker also announced a joint venture with Nantong Fujitsu Microelectronics, a Chinese semiconductor manufacturer. The stock rose more than 2 percent after the bell. Oilfield services provider Schlumberger saw its stock tick lower after it beat earnings estimates by a penny but missed on revenue. The company blamed pricing pressure for the disappointing results. PTC Therapeutics slid as much as 17 percent after reporting mixed trial results for its experimental muscle disorder drug. Wynn Resorts reported profit that was in line with estimates of 86 cents a share, but revenue came in at $996 million, falling short of Street projections of $1.03 billion. Shares tumbled 9 percent after hours.

https://www.cnbc.com/2015/10/16/early-movers-ge-hon-tmus-sti-pwr-lulu-t-yum-mat-more.html

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Early movers: GE, HON, TMUS, STI, PWR, LULU, T, YUM, MAT & more

Trader on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. Check out which companies are making headlines before the bell: General Electric — GE earned 29 cents per share for the third quarter, 3 cents above estimates. However, revenue came in below forecasts on a drop in oil and gas orders, as well as a decline in aircraft engine and locomotive orders. CEO Jeff Immelt did say that GE performed well in a volatile environment. Honeywell — Honeywell reported profit of $1.60 per share, 5 cents above estimates, with revenue falling short of analyst forecasts. Honeywell's revenue was impacted by the strong US dollar. T-Mobile US — The wireless carrier said it would transfer its stock listing to the Nasdaq from the NYSE as of October 27. SunTrust Banks — The bank earned $1.00 per share for its latest quarter, 16 cents above estimates, thanks in part to growth in lending and deposits. Quanta Services — The contracting services company said current quarter profit will be below its prior forecast, as it continues to experience profit margin pressure. Lululemon — The yoga wear retailer's shares were upgraded to "outperform" from "neutral", citing improving demand and rebounding profit margins. AT&T — Nomura began coverage on the stock with a "buy" rating, based in part on the benefits of the recent DirecTV acquisition. Yum Brands — Yum cut its 2015 profit forecast and adding activist investor Keith Meister to its board of directors. Meister has urged Yum in the past to spin out its China unit, which contributes the majority of the restaurant operator's revenue and has been a drag in recent quarters. The profit forecast cut comes amid volatility in the China market as well as the strong U.S. dollar. Wynn Resorts — Wynn reported adjusted quarterly profit of 86 cents per share, matching estimates, but the casino operator's forecast was below Street forecast. The company said revenue from its Macau operations was down 38 percent and CEO Steve Wynn called the short term environment there is "bewildering" because of "arbitrary" moves by the Chinese government. Mattel — Mattel missed estimates by 9 cents with adjusted quarterly profit of 71 cents, with the toy maker's revenue missing as well. Mattel's results were impacted by weaker than expected sales of its Barbie doll line. Schlumberger — Schlumberger earned 78 cents per share for its latest quarter, 1 cent above estimates, but the oilfield services company's revenue was below forecasts. Its bottom line was helped by expense reductions and greater efficiency amid slumping crude prices. Advanced Micro Devices — AMD lost 17 cents per share for its latest quarter, 5 cents wider than anticipated, but revenue was above estimates. The chip maker also announced a joint venture with China's Nantong which will focus on assembly and testing operations. PTC Therapeutics — PTC shares are under pressure after the drug maker's muscle disorder drug did not meet its main goal in a late stage study. United Parcel Service — UPS announced a 4.9 percent rate increase for its UPS Ground service and 5.2 percent for UPS Air Freight, effective October 26. AstraZeneca — AstraZeneca saw a setback for its diabetes drug combination after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration declined to approve it. The FDA said more clinical data was needed before the treatment could be approved. Occidental Petroleum — Occidental is selling its assets in North Dakota's Bakken region for about $500 million, according to Reuters, far less than the roughly $3 billion analysts had expected those assets to fetch last year. Jarden — Jarden announced the pricing of a secondary offering at $49 per share, compared to Thursday's closing price of $49.85. The maker of consumer brands such as First Alert and Mr. Coffee will receive gross proceeds of $490 million from the sale. Alibaba — The online retailer is offering $26.60 per share in cash to acquire the portion of digital entertainment provider Youku Tudou that it does not already own. Alibaba currently holds 18.3 percent of Youku stock.

https://www.cnbc.com/2015/01/16/cramer-remix.html

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These oil stocks have bottomed

watch now Excited that earnings season is back in full swing, Jim Cramer is already gearing up for next week. However, given the volatility in Europe this week, he still subscribes to his "America First" theory. Forget about foreign stocks; he is sticking to the land of money-making opportunity. And that is the U.S.A. until further notice, inclusive of oil stocks that may have bottomed this week. "You need to see oil stabilize, and you need to see the consumer finally recognize that gasoline's not going to back up to $4 a gallon any time soon, to encourage buyers to start taking advantage of some of the incredible bargains this week's selloff has created," the "Mad Money" host said. However, Cramer maintains that we are in a trader's market. It is only as good as the country, company or person who last spoke. That is why earnings are crucial next week—they will determine the direction of the market. A few companies he will be watching next week include Verizon , Halliburton , Netflix and General Electric . Read More Cramer's game plan: It all depends on this Cultura Science | Rafe Swan | Getty Images This week Cramer has been highlighting the hottest biotech stocks for 2015 as a part of his series, "Biotech, the Next Generation." One of the best performing biotechs for 2014 was the orphan- drug company PTC Therapeutics , which rallied 205 percent last year. PTC focuses on rare genetic disorders, especially those caused by nonsense mutations in DNA. Its main drug is Translarna, approved in the EU for Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) and could launch in the U.S. next year. To find out if this company can keep pulling in profits for 2015, Cramer sat down with PTC Therapeutics Chief Financial Officer Shane Kovacs. "Last year was a monumental year for us, because the European authorities approved our drug. This is the first approval ever in this disease for the underlying cause," Kovacs said. Read More Cramer: The biotech that doubled in value last year Another hot biotech on Cramer's radar this year is Relypsa . This company is focused on developing treatments for kidney, cardiovascular and metabolic disorders. One of its main developments is Partiromer that treats hyperkalemia, which refers to high potassium levels. Though Cramer does consider Relypsa to have some major upside potential, it is also a speculative stock with plenty of risk attached to it. To find out where the stock could be headed, Cramer spoke with Relypsa CEO John Orwin. "We conducted very rigorous clinical trials in hundreds of patients to demonstrate both that the product is effective in removing potassium, but also that what we saw was a tolerability profile suggesting that it can be used on a chronic daily basis," Orwin said. "So all of those things I think are important, and I think the FDA's decision not to hold a panel is encouraging." Getty Images

https://www.cnbc.com/2015/04/17/battle-of-biotech-conferences-neurology-and-cancer.html

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Battle of biotech conferences: Neurology and Cancer

watch now Biotech investors are going to be busy this weekend and into early next week. Two medical conferences kick off Saturday, bringing data on drugs for Alzheimer's, cancer and rare genetic disorders. Here's what analysts are watching. American Academy of Neurology – April 18-25, Washington, D.C. Biogen: The biotech giant captured investor attention in December with its early data on experimental Alzheimer's drug BIIB037, or aducanumab, and expectations were high into a March release of further results. Biogen didn't disappoint, showing benefits both on clearing the amyloid plaques associated with Alzheimer's, and on cognition, the memory loss that is a hallmark of the disease. Read MoreBiogen Alzheimer's drug shows promise While some initial data were released Friday, Biogen is expected to report further incremental details from that study at AAN, providing a glimpse into which patients benefited and how that affected the study results. "Given the enormous ($20 billion-plus) market potential of aducanumab in Alzheimer's, investors are eagerly awaiting any details of the drug's development," analysts at Cowen wrote in an April 16 research note. They said the data investors are most anticipating—on a middle dose of 6 milligrams, hoped to provide the right balance of efficacy and safety—are likely to come later in the year. Citi anticipates those results could come at the Alzheimer's Association International Conference in July. "Overall, we think as much as plus or minus $50 per share could be riding on the long-term results from the 6 mg cohort," Cowen wrote. Lester Lefkowitz | Getty Images PTC Therapeutics: Bigger stock movements often come from smaller companies, and PTC is among those that analysts are watching. The company is expected to report early data on its drug for spinal muscular atrophy, a rare, debilitating genetic disease that can be fatal by age 2 in its severest forms. Read MoreBig pharma M&A may keep booming, CEOs say PTC's drug, RG7800, is partnered with Roche, and Cowen says it could potentially present competition to a more advanced compound being developed by Isis Pharmaceuticals and partner Biogen. One main difference: PTC's medicine is taken orally, while Isis' is injected into the spinal fluid. Friday saw some initial details released, confirming the drug's safety and efficacy so far. RBC's Simos Simeonidis wrote in a research note, "the true therapeutic potential of the drug will become clearer, first, once the full dataset is presented at AAN." Alnylam and Isis: Both biotechs are working on medicines for a rare genetic condition known as TTR amyloidosis, with updates expected at AAN. Leerink's Michael Schmidt said he expects Alnylam's data as more meaningful, while Isis', he wrote in an April 16 research note, could be more incremental. American Association for Cancer Research – April 18-22, Philadelphia Merck and Bristol-Myers: Though AACR typically features earlier-stage data, the conference this year is setting up to be a preview to the big cancer research show, ASCO (the American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting, held at the end of May in Chicago). Immuno-oncology, the field of medicine that harnesses the immune system to fight cancer, will be front and center, with analysts watching key data on drugs from both Merck and Bristol-Myers in the space. Read MoreCNBC Explains: Immuno-what? Bristol-Myers' stock rose Friday on separate news that a study in lung cancer of its approved immunotherapy drug Opdivo was stopped early after showing an improvement in survival compared with an older therapy. At AACR, analysts are closely watching data from a combination study of Bristol drugs Yervoy and Opdivo, as well as a comparison study of Merck's Keytruda and Bristol's Yervoy in melanoma. Merck said that study was stopped early at the end of March as Keytruda pulled ahead, and further data are expected to be presented at AACR.

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/18/bank-of-america-picks-its-favorite-robotic-ai-and-automation-stocks.html

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Rise of the robots: Bank of America names its favorite stocks for our post-Covid future

Strategists at Bank of America have picked out a slew of stocks that they believe will benefit from the drastic technological changes brought about by the coronavirus pandemic. BofA equity strategist Felix Tran, lead author of a research note on the future of work published last week , said the pandemic had accelerated the digitization of the economy, and technologies like automation and artificial intelligence had been rapidly adopted. Further to this, the strategists believe that machines now will be taking on a more equal share of workloads going forward. In fact, WEF data cited in the report, found that humans and machines could be spending an equal amount of time on work tasks by 2025. And with this mind, there are some global stocks primed to take advantage of these changes. Here are BOA's picks: Digitization With a trend toward AI and chatbots, Tran flagged French firm Teleperformance and U.S. business Concentrix as global leaders in customer experience. He also mentioned U.S. company TTEC , Canada's Telus and Indian firm Infosys , which all work in digital solutions and customer support. AI, chatbots and robot process automation could displace 2 billion jobs by 2030, BofA said, referring to a statistic from futurist Thomas Frey. However, in the case of RPA, which is the use of software to perform routine, high-volume tasks, BofA estimated that the IT services implementation market for this software could be worth $10 billion by 2022. Tran highlighted U.K. software firm Blue Prism as a pioneer in this space, in addition to Israel-based NICE Systems , which also operates in crime and compliance, AI and machine learning. Industrial robots and automation Tran highlighted U.S. firm Rockwell , British company Aveva , German multinational KION and Japanese robotics business Fanuc , as some beneficiaries of this trend. In addition, he mentioned American industrial internet of things firm PTC , Pennsylvania-based software company Ansys , "cobot" maker Teradyne and robot fiber laser manufacturer IPG Photonics . The strategists said in the note that while the faster adoption of industrial robots could result in major blue-collar job losses, they didn't see it as a "zero-sum game" but actually foresaw a greater collaboration with humans. For instance, they said a new type of smaller, more nimble robot that can be moved easily round a factory to assist a human had emerged, nicknamed a "cobot." This had emerged from the fact that traditional larger industrial robots typically needed programming from advanced software engineers, driving up ownership costs. Ultimately, the strategists said this rise in the use of robots isn't necessarily something to fear, as another piece of WEF data referenced in the note showed automation will add 12 million jobs by 2025. WEF data found that humans and machines could be spending an equal amount of time on work tasks by 2025. Sarote Pruksachat | Moment | Getty Images

https://www.cnbc.com/2014/01/24/midday-movers.html

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Midday movers: Kansas City Southern, Dow Jones Transportation Average & More

Kansas City Southern fell after the rail operator posted weaker-than-expected fourth-quarter earnings amid weakness in its energy business, including lower coal shipments. Take a look at some of Friday's midday movers: A successful debut for Care.com . It moved higher after pricing 5.35 million shares at $17 a share. The company is an online marketplace for finding and managing family care with more than 9.5 million members. Kimberly-Clark gained ground after reporting better-than-expected fourth-quarter earnings on organic sales growth and wider margins. W.W. Grainger fell after reporting weaker-than-expected fourth-quarter earnings and lowered its fiscal 2014 guidance, amid weakness in its Canadian business. BioDelivery Sciences International surged after the company disclosed positive results for a phase 3 study of a treatment for severe chronic pain. The company has a market cap of $325 million. PTC Therapeutics lost ground after a committee of the European Medicines Agency recommended against a conditional approval of its muscular disorder drug. Bristol-Myers Squibb slid despite reporting better-than-expected fourth-quarter earnings. State Street moved lower as higher expenses pressured its fourth-quarter earnings. Citigroup lost ground. Atlantic Equities downgraded the stock to neutral from overweight with a price target of $55 (from $59). Arctic Cat slid after Raymond James downgraded the stock to market perform from strong buy and removed its $60 a share price target. FireEye fell after Barclays downgraded the stock to equal weight from overweight. Chipotle Mexican Grill moved lower after Wedbush downgraded the stock to neutral from outperform, based on valuation. (Read More: ) —By CNBC's Rich Fisherman. Questions? Comments? Email us at marketinsider@cnbc.com

https://www.cnbc.com/2014/06/09/lightning-round-qualcomm-gencorp-more.html

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Lightning Round: Qualcomm, GenCorp & more

Are you ready skeedaddy???!!! It's time for the Lightning Round. Cramer makes the call on viewer favorites. Qualcomm (QCOM): It's a buy, said Cramer. Wall Street is addicted to this stock. I'd buy half a position now and the other half on negative news. PTC Therapeutics (PTCT): I think biotechs deserve a long hard look after Merck acquired hepatitis C maker Idenix for $24.50 per share, more than three times Idenix's Friday closing price of $7.23, Cramer said.

https://www.cnbc.com/2014/11/26/cctv-script-261114.html

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CCTV Script 26/11/14

— This is the script of CNBC's news report for China's CCTV on November 26, Wednesday. Welcome to the CNBC Business Daily. Canada is home to the world's third largest oil sands reserves... But how exactly is it extracted? Jackie DeAngelis has more. Calgary, the capital of Alberta Canada and home to the country's oil sands industry. But just how is this energy resource extracted? [SOT/Greg Stringham] Technology was the key that unlocked the oil sands in the very beginning. It was Clarke and his process and his wife's washing machine that put it together to see that it would separate and to see the oil flow to the top and the sand to the bottom and basically that separation technique has stayed the same all the way through. But the technology didn't get stuck in the wash. Now a whole host of new innovations mean the black-stuff trapped underground are now available. Technology such as the steam-assisted gravity drainage system being used by Cenovus at Christina Lake. [PTC/Jackie D] At this part of the facility the steam is actually being pumped into the ground to heat the oil and bring it to the surface. About 20,000 barrels a day are coming out of this pad alone and what's really significant is the footprint of this pad is just less than 10% of the whole area that it is reaching. [SOT/Cenovus] You're going to see our footprint continue to probably get smaller, you're going to see the efficiency of how we use this technology get enhanced, we're going to continually evolve to drive down our steam-to-oil ratio. In its natural state oil sands is too thick to flow like conventional oil so to get it moving, technology is used to upgrade it to a lighter crude through vacuums, heating or blending it with diluents. WALK & TALK MAN: You can see where it changes, you can see it coming out ... it's still water, still water, MAN: There that's oil JD: So this is it...this is the final product? MAN: Almost yes JD: With some methane in it. MAN: Yeah, we still try and separate more of the gas, but at this point it's pretty light, if you shake it it goes down to pretty much JD: Oh wow MAN: Down to nothing [PTC/Jackie D] In order to understand the power and scope of this technology, consider it this way. When this facility in 2010 began it was pumping 18,000 barrels of oil per day, now that capacity - 138,000 barrels and in the future when this technology becomes more streamlined we could see over 350,000 barrels of oil per day from this site. It's estimated that there are currently 174 billion barrels of recoverable oil in Alberta's oil sands, but with extracting processes improving all the time, experts believe we could soon see billions more. Jackie D'Angelis at Christina Lake for CNBC. I'm Chen Qian, reporting from CNBC's Asian headquarters.

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/16/netflix-deletes-suicide-scene-from-popular-youth-show-13-reasons-why.html

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Netflix deletes suicide scene from popular youth show, '13 Reasons Why'

Netflix is removing a controversial graphic scene depicting a youth suicide from its popular young adult drama "13 Reasons Why," following advice from medical experts, the company said on its Twitter account early on Tuesday. The show, based on a book of the same name, depicts the suicide of the protagonist in the last episode of season 1, with a scene of the youth Hannah slitting her wrists in a bathtub. The company said on Twitter that on the advice of medical experts it had "decided with the creator Brian Yorkey and the producers of 13 Reasons Why to edit the scene in which Hannah takes her own life." In an emailed statement early on Tuesday, a Netflix spokesperson said, "We've heard from many young people that 13 Reasons Why encouraged them to start conversations about difficult issues like depression and suicide." A scene from "13 Reasons Why" Source: Netflix While critically acclaimed, the show has drawn criticism from groups including the Parents Television Council (PTC), which claims the show glorifies teen suicide. The move to edit the scene drew praise from a number of agencies including the PTC, which has also lobbied Netflix to drop the show entirely. "Netflix has finally acknowledged the harmful impact that explicit content, such as the graphic suicide scene in 13 Reasons Why, is capable of inflicting on children." The American Association of Suicidology and the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention were among others welcoming the move. Suicides by young Americans rose by almost a third in the month following the 2017 streaming debut of the popular Netflix television series, a U.S. study found. watch now

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/23/dropbox-ipo-form-s-1-prospectus-filing-full-text.html

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Public Storage

Dropbox files to go public with over $1.1 billion in annual revenue

Cloud storage company Dropbox filed to raise $500 million in a public offering on Friday, giving investors a first look at the books of a coveted unicorn start-up that was previously valued at $10 billion. Here's what the filing said: Revenue: $1.11 billion in 2017, up 31 percent from the prior year Net loss: $111.7 million in 2017, narrower than 2016's loss of $210.2 million Average revenue per paid user: $111.91, up from 2016 but down from 2015 500 million registered users, 100 million signed up since the beginning of 2017 More than 11 million paying users Gross margin: 67 percent Dropbox will list on the Nasdaq under the ticker "DBX." Dropbox's plans to go public were unsealed by the SEC on Friday, after previously filing the documents confidentially. The documents showed that CEO and co-founder Drew Houston has 24.4 percent of voting power in the company, and Sequoia Capital has 24.8 percent. Dropbox's expenses have been driven by a swelling R&D budget, but the company became free-cash-flow positive in 2016. Unlike many cloud companies that rely on enterprise sales teams, over 90 percent of Dropbox's revenue comes from users purchasing their own subscription, the company said. Still, the loss-making company has about $1.7 billion in contractual obligations, like leases, outstanding. Dropbox also has a multi-million dollar relationship with Hewlett Packard Enterprise. It has some stiff competition, as well: Aspects of Dropbox's business compete with giants like Amazon, Apple, Google and Microsoft. Proceeds from the IPO will be used to fund an expansion plan of upgrading more users to subscriptions and expanding integration with third-party software. Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, Deutsche Bank and Allen and Company are among the top underwriters for the IPO. Shares of Box, a rival company, rose 2.8 percent after the release of Dropbox's prospectus. Dropbox is a 5-time CNBC Disruptor 50 company. The full Dropbox IPO document is here.

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/04/19/stocks-making-the-biggest-moves-midday-ulta-nflx-axp-ibta-and-more.html

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Public Storage

Stocks making the biggest moves midday: Ulta Beauty, Netflix, American Express, Ibotta and more

Check out the companies making headlines in midday trading. Ulta Beauty — Ulta Beauty shares fell 3% after Jefferies downgraded the beauty retailer to a hold from a buy rating, citing rising competition. Netflix — The streaming giant sank more than 9% after saying it will stop reporting subscriber growth in its quarterly earnings starting next year. Shares were headed for their worst day since July. Shopify — Shares advanced 0.27% after Morgan Stanley upgraded the Canada-based e-commerce company to overweight, citing confidence in the company's growth potential, particularly that it will expand its international traction, as well as its operating leverage upside. SLB — The energy stock fell 2.18% despite a first-quarter report that largely met expectations. SLB reported $8.71 billion in revenue, just above the $8.69 billion projected by analysts, according to LSEG. Adjusted earnings of 75 cents per share matched expectations. However, SLB did report revenue in North America was down year over year. American Express — Shares popped 6.2% after the financial services company reported diluted earnings per share of $3.33 for its first quarter, topping the $2.95 expected from analysts polled by FactSet. Revenue was $15.8 billion versus the consensus estimate of $15.79 billion. American Express said U.S. consumer spending increased 8% from a year earlier. Super Micro Computer — The server and data storage company slipped more than 23%. Earlier in the day, Super Micro Computer said fiscal third-quarter results will be out April 30, but offered no guidance ahead of the report. Ibotta — Shares of the technology company fell 6.17% a day after Ibotta's initial public offering. The stock is still roughly 11% above where it priced its initial public offering. Paramount — Shares climbed more than 13% following reports from The New York Times and Bloomberg that said Sony Pictures Entertainment and Apollo Global Management have been in talks to jointly acquire the media company. PPG Industries — The materials stock slumped 3% after the company missed Wall Street's revenue estimates in the first quarter due to falling sales volume. Intuitive Surgical — Shares ticked down nearly 2% despite the company beating on the top and bottom lines in the first quarter. The company also said it expects a higher full-year procedural growth clip of 14% to 17% compared to a previous forecast of 13% to 16%. — CNBC's Samantha Subin, Michelle Fox, Pia Singh and Jesse Pound contributed reporting.

https://www.cnbc.com/2016/09/15/tesla-tackles-california-energy-woes-with-massive-energy-storage-deal.html

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Public Storage

Tesla tackles California energy woes with massive energy-storage deal

A guests takes photographs of the Powerpack system after Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla unveiled suit of batteries for homes, businesses, and utilities at Tesla Design Studio April 30, 2015 in Hawthorne, California. Tesla just struck a deal to build one of the largest battery storage facilities in the world. It will provide a 20-megawatt Powerpack system at a substation in Mira Loma, California. The lithium-ion battery system will store 80-megawatt hours of energy, enough to power more than 2,500 households for a day, according to a Tesla blog post. Tesla expects the grid to be completed by 2016. Southern California Edison owns the substation. The contract is part of a state-mandated plan to improve grid reliability. It was originally ordered in 2013 and got expedited after a massive leak at a natural gas well in Aliso Canyon threatened power supplies. Tesla shares rose by as much as 3 percent on Thursday.

https://www.cnbc.com/2015/12/17/tech-players-emerge-as-public-vs-private-boils-over-into-2016.html

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Public Storage

Tech players emerge as public vs private boils over into 2016

watch now watch now watch now After a hit-or-miss year of initial public offerings in the technology sector, the most likely candidates to go public in 2016 probably aren't who you'd think, according to a new report. The not-so-sexy fields of analytics, data centers, security and application integration top a list of 531 companies most likely to enter the public markets next year, according to a new report by data and predictive analytics company CB Insights. Still, the report does highlight some well-known unicorns that could go public. Topping the list of public market contenders are copy data virtualization company Actifio, integration platform MuleSoft, enterprise virtualization and storage company Nutanix, secure cloud company Okta, and subscription billing company Zuora. But household names like Buzzfeed, Airbnb, Uber and Snapchat also made the cut. CB Insights ranked the companies based on scores from a technology called Mosaic, which uses "nontraditional public signals" such as customer signings, hiring activity, media sentiment, web traffic and mobile app data. The report also highlights which industries and venture capital firms are likely to shine when it comes to getting funding, and which venture capital firms are most likely to back them. Internet companies comprise 64 percent of CB Insights' IPO pipeline companies, followed distantly by mobile, hardware, software and electronics companies. Among Internet companies, business intelligence, advertising, apparel, customer relationship management and security were dominant categories. But the capital-intensive electronics sector is the most cash-rich field of companies on the list, with a roundtable of top investors in pipeline companies including SV Angel, Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Fidelity Investments and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. Despite an unprecedented number of private technology companies reaching valuations over $1 billion, the 2016 forecast comes after a year of less-than-stellar starts for technology company IPOs. Financial technology company Square , for instance, priced its IPO at 30 percent less than in a private fundraising round a year ago, and flash storage company PureStorage debuted for trading below its IPO price. In the third quarter of 2015, average IPO returns were negative for the first time since 2011, according to a report by Renaissance Capital. "Twenty-fifteen was a surprise to the downside," Byron Deeter of Bessemer Venture Partners told CNBC Wednesday. "Fewest IPOs since 2008 — in the cloud industry in particular ... but we see more ahead for 2016. The pipeline is fantastic in terms of late-stage companies that are pre-IPO. There's a lot of discussion around companies like Dropbox, Stripe, DocuSign, Twilio, et cetera. We expect companies like that will make their debut in the coming quarters." To be sure, there have been some bright spots to round out 2015. Square has since seen its stock price rise, and Australian business software maker Atlassian saw shares soar on its trading debut. watch now "Given the maturity of many of the companies in the pipeline, the uncertainty about private markets and the increasing calls by investors for companies to go public, we expect 2016 will see public market activity pick up," CB Insights' CEO and co-founder Anand Sanwal wrote in the report. "Given how bad 2015 was, the reality is it couldn't get worse." There's certainly an appetite for technology sector stocks. Indeed, some already-public technology companies are flying high into the new year, technology analyst Mark Mahaney of RBC Capital Markets told CNBC. Expedia, Alphabet and Amazon all saw their stock prices rise over 40 percent in 2015 to date, and Mahaney has them as top picks for 2016, as well.

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/08/01/some-us-government-agencies-are-testing-out-ai-to-help-fulfill-public-records-requests.html

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Public Storage

Some U.S. government agencies are testing out A.I. to help fulfill public records requests

A few federal agencies have started to use sophisticated artificial intelligence tools to help deal with immense caseloads of Freedom of Information Act requests, but some transparency advocates warn that the government needs additional safeguards before more widely deploying the technology. At least three agencies — the State Department, the Justice Department and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — have tried out or are now testing machine-learning models and algorithms to help search for information in repositories holding billions of government records, federal officials confirmed to NBC News in recent interviews. Officials from multiple agencies also have separately tested an AI prototype called "FOIA Assistant" that's being developed by a federally funded research group as a possible model for dealing with record-high numbers of new requests and growing backlogs of existing ones. "There is no way for FOIA to work in the future unless you can automate searching of the millions, hundreds of millions, billions of records that these government agencies hold," said Jason R. Baron, a University of Maryland information studies professor and leading expert on the use of artificial intelligence in government access. "The problem is simply unsolvable without AI." Unlike the American legal system, which for years has used court-approved "eDiscovery" technologies to help find and extract sensitive information from documents exchanged during litigation, the use of artificial intelligence for FOIA purposes is in its infancy, he said. Still, some open government and civil rights advocates are already raising concerns that the government's move toward using AI to help address FOIA problems may create new ones. Adam Marshall, a senior staff attorney for the nonprofit government watchdog Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, said he has high hopes that AI and other technology will help make more information available to the public faster. But first, he said, it's necessary to understand how the technology "is being trained and used by humans." So far, government agencies haven't widely disclosed to the public what kinds of AI tools are being used, and in what fashion, Marshall said. He added he worries that overburdened FOIA officers introduced to AI may become too reliant on or complacent with machines to make decisions that typically require thoughtful legal analysis. "There need to be clear standards for the use of this technology and assurances that they're being followed," Marshall said. "There also need to be procedures in place for challenging decisions where machine algorithms are used, including when they could be unnecessarily or illegally withholding information." Signed into law in 1967, the Freedom of Information Act is meant to ensure government transparency and access to information by requiring agencies to provide records to citizens who make requests. But experts widely agree the FOIA process must be modernized and fixed, as requests can sometimes take months, even years, to fulfill. An increasing number of requesters have turned to the courts for help in prying records loose in a timely manner. Last year, the 120 federal agencies subject to the federal disclosure law collectively received more than 928,000 FOIA requests — an all-time high and 90,000 more than in 2021, according to the Justice Department's Office of Information Policy. Meanwhile, the number of backlogged requests in 2022 — nearly 207,000 — also reached record territory, up nearly 50,000 from the previous year. The backlogs are ballooning at a time when agencies are anticipating a boom in storage and disclosure of electronic records, several officials said. In turn, a group of FOIA officers have been spreading the word on "the awareness and availability of these types of tools" as part of a push to improve the FOIA process, said Michael Sarich, who oversees FOIA issues for the Department of Veterans Affairs and co-chairs the Chief FOIA Officers Council's technology subcommittee tasked with exploring the use of AI. "The volume of information and records and data that's now available was unimaginable 56 years ago when the FOIA was created," added Eric F. Stein, another subcommittee co-chair and deputy assistant secretary for the State Department who oversaw FOIA initiatives, declassification strategies and other record management planning for the agency. The state department is now testing two AI models to help process FOIA requests, Stein said. One model employs machine-learning algorithms to find records in the agency's centralized databases and archives, which hold more than 3 billion records, he said. The other pilot sends prompts to people submitting FOIA requests via the agency's web portal based on the words they input, suggesting where they might be able to find information that's already publicly available or that they narrow the scope of their requests to help facilitate quicker responses, he said. A Justice Department spokesperson said the use of AI with FOIA processing is "a purely exploratory" endeavor at this point and not a policy at the agency. The CDC also recently "explored using an AI software tool to analyze documents uploaded into the FOIA system," a spokesperson told NBC News. "Ultimately, this software did not meet the needs of the office in an efficient and timely manner and it was determined the tool was not the right fit (for the) intended use." Some federal agencies have started testing another prototype, called "FOIA Assistant," that helps locate records within vast government datasets and suggests redactions of information under at least three of the law's nine categories of exemptions. "There's really no tool like this that helps FOIA analysts out there commercially that we're aware of," said Bradford Brown, the project's outcome lead for the Mitre Corp., a nonprofit manager of federally funded government research and development projects that built the prototype. To help train and test the model, Brown said Mitre developers partnered with FOIA analysts to curate datasets by identifying and annotating portions of records exempt from disclosure because they contain "deliberative language" intended to help officials make decisions. Baron, former litigation director at the National Archives and Records Administration, said he helped test the prototype by annotating hundreds of Clinton administration policy documents, and found an early version of the technology to be about 70 percent accurate. "It's not perfect," Baron said. "But using this type of AI actually could be of enormous help in the future when agencies routinely are finding tens or hundreds of thousands of potentially responsive records that they otherwise would have to review manually, a process that almost assuredly will take many years." Brett Max Kaufman, a senior staff attorney for the ACLU who specializes in surveillance and national security issues, agreed that artificial intelligence models may ultimately hasten the release of government information, but he cautioned that benefit could come at a cost. "Agencies regularly over-redact and over-withhold information under FOIA," he said. "There's a culture of keeping things as secret as possible for as long as possible, in part because all of the incentives run in that direction. And if you're just teaching a machine how to do the same thing that you've always done, it has the potential to make things even worse." Brown, who noted the Mitre prototype is still a work in progress, declined to say which of "multiple agencies" have so far tested it. He added that the tool is merely meant to be a "cognitive assistant to help analysts." "In the end, humans are still going to have to make the decisions," he said.

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/11/01/biden-to-travel-to-maine-days-after-mass-shooting.html

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Biden to travel to Maine days after mass shooting

U.S. President Joe Biden holds an event about American retirement economics in the State Dining Room at the White House in Washington, October 31, 2023. President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden will travel to Maine on Friday to honor the victims of an October mass shooting that killed 18 people. In a statement Wednesday, the White House said the Bidens "will pay respects to the victims of this horrific attack and grieve with families and community members, as well as meet with first responders, nurses, and others on the front lines of the response." On Oct. 25, a gunman opened fire at the Just-In-Time bowling alley and Schemengees Bar and Grille in Lewiston, Maine. He was found dead two days later from "an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound," according to Maine Public Safety Commissioner Mike Sauschuck. The deputy director of the White House's Office of Gun Violence Prevention, Greg Jackson, is in Maine, White House spokesperson Emilie Simons said Wednesday. In a statement after the shooting, Biden called on Republicans in Congress to "fulfill their duty to protect the American people." "Work with us to pass a bill banning assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, to enact universal background checks, to require safe storage of guns, and end immunity from liability for gun manufacturers," Biden said. "This is the very least we owe every American who will now bear the scars — physical and mental — of this latest attack."

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/08/23/fukushima-nuclear-plant-japan-to-release-treated-water-into-the-ocean.html

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Public Storage

China is furious with Japan's plan to release treated Fukushima water into the ocean

Fisherman Haruo Ono's fishing boats are pictured at Tsurushihama Fishing Port, Shinchi-machi of Fukushima Prefecture, some 60 kms north of the wrecked Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant on August 21, 2023. Philip Fong | Afp | Getty Images Japan is expected to start releasing a huge amount of treated radioactive water from the tsunami-hit Fukushima nuclear power plant into the Pacific Ocean, a highly controversial move that has drawn sharp criticism from neighboring countries. The imminent water release comes more than a decade after Japan was rocked by the second-worst nuclear disaster in history. A massive earthquake and tsunami in March 2011 destroyed the Fukushima nuclear power plant, which is situated on Japan's east coast, about 250 kilometers (155 miles) northeast of the capital Tokyo. Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said earlier this week that the country plans to discharge roughly 1.3 million metric tons of treated wastewater — enough to fill about 500 Olympic-sized swimming pools — from the wrecked Fukushima power plant into the sea from Thursday, depending on weather conditions. Japan's government has repeatedly said the discharge of the treated water is safe and the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog has endorsed the move. The International Atomic Energy Agency said in early July that Tokyo's plans were consistent with international standards and will have a "negligible" impact on people and the environment. The process will take decades to complete. Neighboring countries are far from happy, however. Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida (C) speaks during a meeting with representatives of the Inter-Ministerial Council for Contaminated Water, Treated Water and Decommissioning Issues and the Inter-Ministerial Council Concerning the Continuous Implementation of the Basic Policy on Handling of ALPS Treated Water, at Prime Minister's Office, on August 22, 2023, in Tokyo, Japan. (Photo by Rodrigo Reyes Marin/Zuma Press/Pool/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images) Rodrigo Reyes Marin | Zuma Press | Pool | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images Local fishing groups and U.N. human rights experts have voiced their concerns about the potential threat to the marine environment and public health, while campaigners say that not all possible impacts have been studied. Japan says the process of releasing the filtered and diluted water is a necessary step of decommissioning the plant and that a relatively swift solution is needed because the storage tanks holding the treated water will soon reach their capacity. Regionally, China has emerged as one of the fiercest opponents to Japan's plans. 'Extremely selfish and irresponsible' Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Wang Wenbin on Tuesday accused Tokyo of being "extremely selfish and irresponsible" by pressing ahead with the disposal of the water, adding that the ocean should be treated as a common good for humanity "not a sewer for Japan's nuclear-contaminated water." "China strongly urges Japan to stop its wrongdoing, cancel the ocean discharge plan, communicate with neighboring countries with sincerity and good will, dispose of the nuclear-contaminated water in a responsible manner and accept rigorous international oversight," Wang said at a news conference. A spokesperson for Japan's Embassy in London told CNBC via email that they were not in a position to respond to individual comments from third parties. They added that the Japanese government "continued to communicate transparently and scientifically" the safety of the water release through a filtration system called ALPS (Advanced Liquid Processing System) at conferences and bilateral meetings "with all concerned parties." "The Government of Japan will never discharge 'contaminated water' that exceeds regulatory standards into the sea," the spokesperson said. Hong Kong's Chief Executive John Lee, meanwhile, "strongly opposes" the discharge of wastewater from the Fukushima power plant. Responding to Japan's announcement, Hong Kong announced import curbs on some Japanese food products. South Korean protesters participate in a rally against Japanese government's decision to release treated radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean, on August 22, 2023 in Seoul, South Korea. Chung Sung-jun | Getty Images News | Getty Images South Korea, at times a lone voice of regional support to Japan, said it sees no scientific problem with the plan to release the treated water. It made clear in a statement issued on Tuesday, however, that the government "does not necessarily agree with or support the plan." Hundreds of activists in South Korea had gathered in the capital of Seoul earlier this month to rally against Japan's plan to dispose of the treated water into the ocean. Both China and South Korea have banned fish imports from around Fukushima. What have researchers said? Nigel Marks, an associate professor at Curtin University in Perth, Australia, said the Fukushima water problem boils down to tritium — a radioactive isotope of hydrogen that occurs naturally in the environment and is released as part of the routine operation of nuclear power plants. "Tritium releases far higher than that planned at Fukushima have been happening for around sixty years with a perfect safety record," Marks told CNBC via email. It "poses the question as to how the Fukushima water became such a PR nightmare, given that from a radiation safety perspective the tritium is essentially harmless," he continued. "The underlying problem is that the release sounds bad. The typical person isn't aware that their own body is radioactive, nor do they have a sense of scale of how much radiation is a lot, nor how much is little." "At this point science needs to step in and have a say — after all, tritium is produced in the upper atmosphere every day; in fact, one year of Fukushima water has the same amount of tritium as four hours of rainfall across the Earth," Marks said. "Fundamentally this is why the Fukushima water is a total non-issue — there is already a small amount of tritium around us (harmlessly doing nothing) and the tiny extra bit won't matter one jot." Fisherman Haruo Ono stands on one of his fishing boats at Tsurushihama Fishing Port, Shinchi-machi of Fukushima Prefecture, some 60 kms north of the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant on August 21, 2023, ahead of a government's plan to begin releasing treated water from the plant into the Pacific Ocean. Philip Fong | Afp | Getty Images Tony Hooker, director of the Centre for Radiation Research, Education and Innovation at the University of Adelaide in Australia, welcomed the news about Japan's impending release of the treated water. He added that the likely comprehensive environmental monitoring around the Fukushima release site should help to alleviate some of the public fear. "I would like to reiterate that the release of tritium from nuclear facilities into waterways has and is undertaken world-wide with no evidence of environmental or human health implications," Hooker told CNBC via email. "Whilst the plan is scientifically sound and robust, there should be importance placed on the independent testing and regulatory oversight, including environmental monitoring, to ensure no accidental release of other radionuclides is present," he added. "This will also hopefully satisfy the public confidence in the release."

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/10/25/cramers-lightning-round-rivian-is-losing-too-much-money.html

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Public Storage

Cramer's Lightning Round: Rivian is 'losing so much money'

Stock Chart Icon Stock chart icon Rivian's year-to-date stock performance. Rivian : "I like Rivian, but it is losing so much money that I think they have to do even more financing then they've done. We're going to wait for the second financing before we pull the trigger on Rivian." Stock Chart Icon Stock chart icon Schlumberger's year-to-date stock performance. Schlumberger: "SLB reported a remarkable quarter. I would buy some here and buy some a little bit lower." Stock Chart Icon Stock chart icon Aehr Test Systems' year-to-date stock performance. Aehr Test Systems : "It's an expensive stock, and in this market, we have to be very, very careful because stocks are being divorce from fundamentals." Stock Chart Icon Stock chart icon Public Storage's year-to-date stock performance. Public Storage : "...I want you to wait until 200. That means your next buy will be more meaningful and not until then." Stock Chart Icon Stock chart icon Hawaiian Electric Industries' year-to-date stock performance. Hawaiian Electric Industries : "It's an interesting spec...It is a spec, but as long as you that it is nothing but a spec, then I think you'll be fine. But if you think it's some sort of investment, great piece of paper, I got bad news for you: it ain't. Stock Chart Icon Stock chart icon Trade Desk's year-to-date stock performance. Trade Desk : "That's Jeff Green, we think the world of Jeff Green...It is a terrific company, the stock is rich, this market doesn't have a tolerance for that. I would buy some and then wait until it goes lower." watch now

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/10/24/tuesdays-top-stocks-to-watch-on-wall-street.html

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Public Storage

Here are Tuesday's biggest analyst calls: Apple, Nvidia, Amazon, Tesla, DraftKings, Meta, Monster & more

Here are the biggest calls on Wall Street on Tuesday: Bank of America reiterates Apple as neutral Bank of America said China remains a risk for Apple . "China has been a 20%+ contributor to Apple's revenues and while competitive risks are increasing, we also note the sale of wearables (Watch and AirPods) has created a stickier ecosystem in China, which is helping to overcome some of the challenges associated with a traditionally less sticky ecosystem." Bernstein reiterates Tesla as underperform Bernstein said shares of the automaker are still overvalued. "We continue to believe that Tesla is a car company, and that the competitive nature of the auto industry (which is becoming increasingly competitive and global) will make it difficult for any player to have a sustained cost or profitability advantage." Goldman Sachs reiterates Nvidia as buy Goldman said reports on Monday that Nvidia would partner with Arm to make chips would prove a positive for Nvidia shares. "On 10/23, during market hours, Reuters reported that Nvidia and AMD could begin shipping Arm-based PC CPUs as soon as 2025." Goldman Sachs reiterates Microsoft as buy Goldman said it's bullish on the stock heading into earnings after the bell on Tuesday. "Going into the print, we reiterate our Buy rating and $400 PT as we expect Microsoft to report solid results vs our estimates of +9% revenue growth, 25%/26% Azure growth (in USD/CC), and EPS of $2.58." UBS downgrades Regions to neutral from buy UBS said the Birmingham, Alabama-based regional bank is going into the "penalty box." "It is always difficult to downgrade a stock that has already been hammered ~13% over the past few days since reporting. But in a market where investors have razor thin patience for bank stocks and macro trends aren't in favor of multiple expansion, we think it is difficult for the market to re-rate any stock with company-specific disappointments - like we saw at RF." Stifel upgrades Ingersoll Rand to buy from hold Stifel said shares are very "compelling" right now. "We view the recent pullback in IR shares, the expected improvement in U.S. and global short-cycle industrial demand, and Stifel's Chief Equity Strategist expectation for cyclical value to outperform, as creating an attractive entry point for investors in this high quality industrial name and so are raising our rating to Buy." DA Davidson upgrades Braze to buy from neutral DA said shares of the cloud-based software company will benefit from "resilient growth." "We view BRZE's resilient growth, in a tough spend environment, upcoming crossover into profitability and relative valuation as key reasons to own BRZE ahead of a similarly challenging CY24." Needham initiates Lattice Semiconductor as buy Needham said in its initiation of the semiconductor company that it's bullish on the stock. "While Lattice is not immune to macroeconomic challenges, we believe the company has managed distributor inventory well and expect the company to keep the channel clear into CY24." MoffettNathanson upgrades DraftKings to outperform from market perform Moffett said in its upgrade of the gaming company that it has robust conviction in the stock. "Our conviction in the DraftKings story is stronger than ever. As such, we upgrade DraftKings from Neutral to Buy with an increased price target of $37 (+$6 higher), which is 31% above the current share price." Piper Sandler upgrades American Express to neutral from underweight Piper said in its upgrade of the credit card issuer that the bottom is likely in. "We are upgrading AXP to Neutral from Underweight and adjust our price target to $151 from $150 following 3Q23 earnings." Piper Sandler downgrades Monster to neutral from overweight Piper said in its downgrade of Monster that it had previously been just "wrong." "When we upgraded to Overweight in August, MNST had modest U.S. measured retail sales growth acceleration and Bang looked like an attractive acquisition, but we were wrong about both." Redburn Atlantic Equities initiates On Holding as buy Redburn said in its initiation of the shoe company that On is a "rare asset." "From a standing start in 2010 to approaching $2bn of sales, it has become a discernible brand competing effectively with the best. This speaks to the ability to execute alongside retention of the entrepreneurial spirit and relentless innovation focus." Loop initiates Trade Desk as buy Loop said the ad tech company is one of the top growth stories. "We view The Trade Desk as one of the best long-term growth opportunities available to technology and media investors today." Morgan Stanley reiterates Amazon as overweight Morgan Stanley said Amazon is a top pick heading into earnings later this week. "Near-term, we think the set-up into AMZN's 3Q23 print is positive, with expected upward revisions to forward EBIT estimates driven by durable strength in topline retail sales as AMZN gains share of retail at its highest pace since pre-Covid..." Wells Fargo initiates Public Storage as overweight Wells initiated the storage company and says it's a favorite name in the sector. " PSA is our top pick in the sector, as we believe (a) 2023 guidance appears achievable, (b) its balance sheet/liquidity stacks up favorably vs. peers; and (c) its large pool of lease-up properties provides outsized growth." Seaport initiates Amazon, Meta and Alphabet as buy Seaport initiated Amazon , Meta and Alphabet on Tuesday, saying it sees further upside for all three. "We are constructive on the long-term growth of the sector though revenue growth is generally mixed across the sector with some companies still recovering from the pandemic while others are facing tougher comps. Additionally, macro concerns remain over a weakening consumer (e.g. higher interest rates) and geopolitical concerns." Baird names Planet Fitness a fresh pick Baird said it sees compelling upside for Planet Fitness shares. "We separately have added a Bullish Fresh Pick to PLNT based on our view that sentiment already reflects uncertainty tied to recent developments supporting potential for compelling upside if the current leadership can make necessary changes to improve unit economics to position for a re-acceleration in growth beginning 2025E." KeyBanc initiates Criteo as buy KeyBanc said it sees multiple expansion for the ad tech company. "We believe Criteo's model transition and AdTech sector volatility has masked the Company's progress in Retail Media. Barclays upgrades Rio Tinto to overweight from equal weight Barclays said in its upgrade of the metals and mining company that shares are very attractive. "Upgrade Rio Tinto to Overweight – seasonality, consensus and valuation all supportive." Morgan Stanley downgrades FMC Corp. to equal weight from overweight Morgan Stanley said in its downgrade of the chemical manufacturer that it sees slowing sales growth for FMC. "Downgrade to Equal-weight as severity of sales/EBITDA rebase resets risk/reward balance and no longer provides suitable base case upside for an Overweight rating." JPMorgan upgrades PVH to overweight from equal weight JPMorgan said in its upgrade of the owner of brands like Tommy Hilfiger that it sees margin expansion ahead for PVH. "Supporting a multi-year brand unlock in which CEO Larsson (appointed in Feb 21) is focused on driving increased desirability of the Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger brands." Daiwa downgrades Enphase Energy to neutral from buy Daiwa downgraded the solar company due to slowing growth. "We downgrade ENPH to a 3/neutral as inventory destocking continues longer than expected and growth drivers slow into 2024."

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/09/14/oracle-founder-larry-ellison-makes-first-trip-to-microsoft-campus.html

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Oracle founder Larry Ellison makes first-ever trip to Microsoft headquarters for cloud announcement

Oracle Co-founder Larry Ellison, left, and Microsoft Co-founder Bill Gates watch a match between Gael Monfils of France and Alexander Zverev of Germany during the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells, Calif., on Oct. 13, 2021. Larry Ellison, the co-founder, chairman and chief technology officer of Oracle , has been going up against Microsoft in database software for more than 30 years. He has also had to deal with clients looking to connect their Oracle and Microsoft products. But until this week, he had never made the journey to Microsoft's headquarters outside Seattle. He was in town to appear alongside Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella to announce an expansion of the collaboration between the two companies. Oracle is placing its Exadata hardware, which contains servers for databases and storage, inside the data centers that Microsoft uses to run its Azure public-cloud service for hosting applications. Organizations will be able to store data with Oracle's database software by using Azure, rather than having to install Oracle hardware in their own data centers or use Oracle's public cloud. Putting the Oracle equipment in Azure data centers means that applications will be able to quickly access data from the databases. "It was lovely to come up here, said Ellison in a virtual presentation on the announcement, which he teased on Oracle's earnings call with analysts on Monday. "It's actually my first time in Redmond. It's hard to believe. I waited till very late in my career to make this trip." Nadella conveyed the significance of Microsoft and Oracle working together by bringing up a memory from his early years, before he managed teams building Azure, the Bing search engine and Dynamics sales software. He joined Microsoft from Sun Microsystems in 1992, taking a position as a program manager in the Windows developer relations group. "When I first came to Microsoft, the first week, they asked me to sort of get ISVs onto Windows NT at that time," Nadella said. "I said, 'There's no way we can get ISVs onto Windows NT first without getting Oracle onto Windows NT.'" Nadella said the new collaboration might help companies more quickly move their workloads from their existing data centers to the public cloud. The two companies haven't completely given up their rivalry, though. Oracle and Microsoft will still compete to sell cloud-based infrastructure, but Azure is larger and more mature, and Oracle wants to have customers keep using its products even as they adopt other clouds. And there's nothing stopping longtime Oracle customers from considering Microsoft's databases in Azure. The tension between the two companies reached a high point in 2000, as Microsoft was in the middle of its hallmark antitrust case against the U.S. Justice Department. Oracle told media outlets that it had hired a detective firm that tried to buy trash from a Microsoft-backed trade group by offering money to janitors working at the group's office in Washington. Ellison co-founded Oracle in 1977 and is the world's fifth richest person in the world, while Bill Gates, who co-founded Microsoft with Paul Allen in 1975, ranks fourth, according to Bloomberg. But Ellison controls 42% of Oracle's outstanding shares, while Gates owns just over 1% of Microsoft stock, according to FactSet. WATCH: Microsoft stands to profit a lot from the AI regulatory meeting, says Elevation Partners' McNamee

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/10/25/will-americans-ever-be-able-to-afford-to-buy-a-home-again.html

PHM

PulteGroup

What it will take to make homes affordable again for millions of Americans

Nurphoto | Nurphoto | Getty Images As mortgage rates reached a 23-year high last week, the cry went off across markets and social media: Is housing affordability dead? Has a version of the American dream — home ownership, kids, backyard barbecues — died with it? The question is sharp because housing affordability has dropped by nearly half since the ultra-low interest rate days of 2021, according to the National Association of Realtors. The median family was already $9,000 short in August of the income needed to buy the median existing home, the association says, and the recent surge in rates since has moved another five million U.S. families below the qualification standard for a $400,000 loan, according to John Burns Real Estate Consulting. At 3% mortgage rates, 50 million households could get a loan that size. Now it's 22 million. While an easing in treasury bond yields this week has brought the 30-year fixed mortgage back a shade below 8%, there is no quick fix. The qualifying yearly income for a median-priced house in 2020 was $49,680. Now it's more than $107,000, according to the NAR. Redfin puts the figure at $114,627. "[These are] stunning numbers that render house affordability even more challenging for too many American families, especially those looking to buy their first home," bond-market maven Mohamed El-Erian, an advisor to Allianz among many other roles, posted on X. "It's a very worrisome development for America," NAR chief economist Lawrence Yun said. Affordability depends on three big numbers, according to Yun — family income, the price of the house, and the mortgage rate. With incomes rising since 2019, the bigger issue is interest rates. When they were low, they papered over a surge in housing prices that began in late 2020, helped by people relocating to areas like Florida, Austin, Texas, and Boise, Idaho, to work in their old cities from their new homes. Now, the surge in rates is crushing affordability even as incomes rise sharply and housing prices mostly hang on to the big gains they generated during Covid. "At the current 8% mortgage rate, mortgage payment[s] are 38% of median income," Moody's Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi said. "The mortgage rate has to fall to 5.5%, or the median priced home has to fall by 22%, or the median income has to increase by 28%, or some combination of all three variables." At the same time, demand for adjustable-rate mortgages has spiked to its highest level in a year amid the broader slowdown in mortgage applications. What needs to change to make housing affordable again All three indicators face a tough road back to "normal," and normal is a long way from here. A few numbers illustrate why. The National Association of Realtors measures affordability through its 34-year old Housing Affordability Index, or HAI. It calculates how much income the median family has to have to afford the median existing home, which, right now, costs about $413,000, according to NAR. If the index equals 100, it means the median family has enough income to buy that house with a 20% down payment. The index assumes the family wants to pay 25% of its income toward principal and interest. The long-term average of the HAI is 138.1, meaning that, normally, the median family has a 38% cushion. Its all-time high was 213 in 2013, after the housing bust and 2008 financial crisis. Right now, that index stands at 88.7. A few scenarios using NAR data help illustrate how far affordability is from the average between 1989 and 2019, and what would be required to push it back into a more typical range as the national average for the 30-year ticked lower to 7.98% on Tuesday. If home prices are stable, rates need to fall to 3.55% in order to be back to historical average. If prices grow 5%, rates need to fall to 3.16%. If prices stay the same but incomes increase 5%, rates need to fall to 3.95% A mortgage rate that stays around 8% means median home prices need to fall by 35%, to $265,000. If rates stay at 8% and prices at current levels, income needs to increase by 63%. But these numbers understate the challenge of getting affordability back to where Americans are used to seeing it. Getting back to the affordability people enjoyed during the hyper-low interest rates of the pandemic would take even more: The HAI reached a yearly average of 169.9 that year, a level few think will come back any time soon. Affordability became stretched partly because home prices rose 38% since 2020, according to the NAR, but more important was the jump in average interest rates from 3% in 2021 to as high as 8% last week. That's a 167% jump, driving a $1,199 increase in monthly payments on a newly bought house, per NAR. Higher wages are a plus, but not enough Rising incomes will help, and median family incomes have climbed 16% to more than $98,000 since 2020. But that isn't nearly enough to cover the affordability gap without devoting a higher share of the household paychecks to the mortgage, said Zandi. Aside from the raw numbers, the direction of monetary policy will keep incomes from fixing the housing problem, said Doug Duncan, chief economist at Fannie Mae. The Federal Reserve has been raising interest rates precisely because it thinks wages have been growing fast enough to reinforce post-Covid inflation, Duncan said. Year-over-year wage gains slipped to 3.4% in the most recent job-market data, he said, and the Fed would like wage growth to be lower. Downward pressure on home prices would help, but it does not look like they will decline by much. And even if home prices do the decline, that trend won't be sustainable unless America builds millions of more homes. After prices surged from 2019 through early 2022, it was easy to assume a big price correction coming, but it hasn't happened. In most markets, prices have even begun to turn up a little bit. According to the realtors' association, the median price of an existing home dropped by more than $35,000 in late 2022 but has risen by $45,000 since its low in January. Not enough new housing in America The biggest reason is that so few homes are up for sale that the laws of supply and demand aren't working normally. Even with demand hit by affordability woes, buyers who are out there have to compete for so few homes that prices have stayed close to balanced. "Boomers are doing what they said they were going to do. They are aging in place," Duncan said. "And Gen X is locked into 3% mortgages already. So it's up to the builders." watch now The builders are kind of a problem, said Redfin chief economist Daryl Fairweather. They've been boosting profits this year, and BlackRock's exchange traded fund tracking the industry is up 41%, but Fairweather said they've barely begun to address a long-term housing shortage Freddie Mac estimated at 3.8 million homes before the pandemic, a number that has likely grown since. Builders have begun work on only 692,000 new single-family homes this year, and 1.1 million including condominiums and apartments, she said. So it will take nearly four years to build enough houses to rebuild supply, and that leaves out new household formation, she added. Meanwhile, apartment construction has already begun to slow, and some builders, though not all, are pulling back on mortgage buydowns and other tactics they have used to prop up demand. PulteGroup's CEO told CNBC this week it has been buying down mortgages to an effective rate of 5.75%. New homes sales for September announced on Wednesday came in much higher than expected, up 12.3%, though that covers contracts signed in September when mortgages rates were lower than now. There are reasons to believe more buyers could materialize. Duncan said the millennial generation is just moving into peak home buying years now, promising to add millions of potential buyers to the market, with the biggest annual birth cohorts reaching the average first-time purchase age of 36 years around 2026. If rates do begin to decline, Fairweather predicts that will bring more buyers back into the market, but inevitably push prices back up toward previous peaks, which there had been signs of earlier this year when mortgage rates dipped to 6% in early March. "We need a couple of years more building at this pace, and we can't sustain the demand because of high interest rates,'' Fairweather said. The Fed and the bond market are big problems There are two problems with mortgage rates right now, economists say. One is a Fed that is determined to not declare victory over inflation prematurely, and the other is a hypersensitive bond market that sees inflation everywhere it looks, even as the rate of price increases throughout the economy has dropped markedly. Mortgage rates are 2 percentage points higher than in early March – even though trailing 12-month inflation, which higher interest rates theoretically hedge against, has dropped to as low as 3.1% from 6% in February. That's still above the Fed's 2% target for core inflation, but a measure of inflation excluding shelter costs — which the government says are up 7% in the last year despite declines or much smaller gains in housing prices reported by private sources — has been 2.1% or lower since May. The Fed has only raised the federal funds rate by three-fourths of a point since then, as part of its "higher for longer" strategy — maintaining higher interest rates rather than aggressively adding more rate hikes from here. The biggest reason mortgages have surged of late is the bond market, which pushed 10-year Treasury yields up by as much as 47%, for a full 1.6 percentage points. On top of that, the traditional spread between 10-year treasuries and mortgages has widened to more than 3 percentage points — 1.5 to 2 points is the traditional range. "It's hard to justify the runup in rates, so it might just be volatility," Fairweather said. Even so, few economists or traders expect the Fed to push rates lower to help housing. The CME FedWatch tool, which is based on futures prices, predicts even if the central bank is done, or at least near done with its rate hikes, it won't begin to cut rates until next March or May, and only modestly then. And spreads will likely remain extra-wide until short-term interest rates drop below the rates on longer-term treasuries, Duncan said. It could take until 2026 to see a 'normal' real estate market To get affordability back to a comfortable range will take a combination of higher wages, lower interest rates and stable prices, economists say, and that combination may take until 2026 or later to coalesce. "The market is in a deep, deep freeze," Zandi said. "The only way to thaw it out is a combination of lower prices, higher incomes and lower rates." In some parts of the country, it will be even harder, according to NAR. Affordability is even more broken in markets like New York and California than it is nationally, and moderate-income markets like Phoenix and Tampa are as unaffordable now as parts of California were earlier this year. Until conditions normalize, the market will be the domain of small groups of people. Cash buyers will have an even bigger edge than normally. And, Yun says, if a buyer is willing to move to the Midwest, the best deals in the country can be found in places like Louisville, Indianapolis and Chicago, where relatively small rate cuts would push affordability near long-term national norms. Meanwhile, it's going to be a slog across the nation. "Mortgage rates will not go back to 3% – we'll be lucky if we get back to 5," Yun said.

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/10/25/here-are-the-10-stocks-jim-cramer-is-watching-including-apple-exxon.html

PHM

PulteGroup

Here are the 10 stocks Jim Cramer is watching, including Apple and Exxon Mobil

Apple CEO Tim Cook greets customers purchasing Apple’s new iPhone 15 during a launch event at the Fifth Avenue Apple Store in New York City on Sept. 22, 2023. Here are some of the tickers on my radar for Wednesday, Oct. 25, taken directly from my reporter's notebook: If you like this story, sign up for Jim Cramer's Top 10 Morning Thoughts on the Market email newsletter for free.

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/10/29/dont-blame-the-consumer-for-the-market-entering-correction-territory.html

PHM

PulteGroup

As the market enters correction territory, don't blame the American consumer

An Amazon.com Inc worker prepares an order in which the buyer asked for an item to be gift wrapped at a fulfillment center in Shakopee, Minnesota, U.S., November 12, 2020. Amazon.com Inc | Reuters The initial third-quarter report on gross domestic product showed consumer spending zooming higher by 4% percent a year, after inflation, the best in almost two years. September's retail sales report showed spending climbing almost twice as fast as the average for the last year. And yet, bears like hedge-fund trader Bill Ackman argue that a recession is coming as soon as this quarter and the market has entered correction territory. For an economy that rises or falls on the state of the consumer, third-quarter earnings data supports a view of spending that remains mostly good. S&P 500 consumer-discretionary companies that have reported through Oct. 25 saw an average profit gain of 15%, according to CFRA — the biggest revenue gain of the stock market's 11 sectors. "People are kind of scratching their heads and saying, 'The consumer is holding up better than expected,'" said CFRA Research strategist Sam Stovall said. "Consumers are employed. They continue to buy goods as well as pursue experiences. And they don't seem worried about debt levels." How is this possible with interest rates on everything from credit cards to cars and homes soaring? It's the anecdotes from bellwether companies across key industries that tell the real story: Delta Air Lines and United Airlines sharing how their most expensive seats are selling fastest. Homeowners using high-interest-rate-fighting mortgage buydowns. Amazon saying it's hiring 250,000 seasonal workers. A Thursday report from Deckers Outdoor blew some minds — in what has been a tepid clothing sales environment — by disclosing that embedded in a 79% profit gain that sent shares up 19% was sales of Uggs, a mature line anchored by fuzzy boots, rising 28%. The picture they paint largely matches the economic data — generally positive, but with some warts. Here is some of the key evidence from from the biggest company earnings reports across the market that help explain how companies and the American consumer are making the best of a tough rate environment. How homebuilders are solving for mortgages rates No industry is more central to the market's notion that the consumer is falling from the sky than housing, because the number of existing home sales have dropped almost 40% from Covid-era peaks. But while Coldwell Banker owner Anywhere Real Estate saw profit fall by half, news from builders of new homes has been pretty good. Most consumers have mortgages below 5%, but for new homebuyers, one reason that rates are not biting quite as sharply as they should is that builders have figured out ways around the 8% interest rates that are bedeviling existing home sellers. That helps explains why new home sales are up this year. Homebuilders are dipping into money that previously paid for other incentives to pay for offering mortgages at 5.75% rather than the 8% level other mortgages have hit. At PulteGroup , the nation's third-biggest builder, that helped drive an 8% third-quarter profit jump and 43% climb in new home orders for delivery later, much better than the government-reported 4.5% gain in new home sales year-to-date. "What we've done is simply redistribute incentives we've historically offered toward cabinets and countertops, and redirected those to interest rate incentives," PulteGroup CEO Ryan Marshall said. "And that has been the most powerful thing.'' watch now The mechanics are complex, but work out to this: Pulte sets aside about $35,000 for incentives to get each home to sell, or about 6% of its price, the company said on its earnings conference call. Part of that is paying for a mortgage buydown. About 80% to 85% of buyers are taking advantage of the buydown offer. But many are splitting the funds, mixing a smaller rate buydown and keeping some goodies for the house, the company said. Wells Fargo economist Jackie Benson said in a report that builders may struggle to keep this strategy going if mortgage rates stay near 8%, but new-home prices have dropped 12% in the last year. In her view, incentives plus bigger price cuts than most existing homes' owners will offer is giving builders an edge. At auto companies, price cuts are in, and more are coming Car sales picked up notably in September, rising 24% year-over-year, more than twice the year-to-date gain in unit sales. But they were below expectations at electric-vehicle leader Tesla , which blamed high interest rates, and at Ford . "I just can't emphasize this enough, that for the vast majority of people buying a car it's about the monthly payment," Tesla CEO Elon Musk said on its earnings call. "And as interest rates rise, the proportion of that monthly payment that is interest increases." Maybe, but that's not what's happening at General Motors , even if investor reaction to good numbers at GM was muted because of the strike by the United Auto Workers union. watch now GM beat earnings expectations by 40 cents a share, but shares fell 3% because of investor worries about the strike, which forced GM to withdraw its fourth-quarter earnings forecast on Oct. 24. Ford, which settled with the UAW on Oct. 25, said the next day it had a "mixed" quarter, as profit missed Wall Street targets due to the strike. Consumers came through, as unit sales rose 7.7% for the quarter, with truck and EV sales both up 15%. GM CEO Mary Barra said on GM's analyst call that the company gained market share, posting a 21% gain in unit sales despite offering incentives below the industry average. "While we hear reports out there in the macro that consumer sentiment might be weakening, etc., we haven't seen that in demand for our vehicles," GM CFO Paul Jacobson told analysts. But Ford CFO John Lawler said car prices need to decline by about $1,800 to be as affordable as they were before Covid. "We think it's going to happen over 12 to 18 months," he said. Tesla's turnaround plan turns on continuing to lower its cost of producing cars, which came down by about $2,000 per vehicle in last year, the company said. Along with federal tax credits for electric vehicles, a Model Y crossover can be had for about $36,490, or as little as $31,500 in states with local tax incentives for EVs. That's way below the average for all cars, which Cox Automotive puts at more than $50,000. But Musk says some consumers still aren't convincible. . "When you look at the price reductions we've made in, say, the Model Y, and you compare that to how much people's monthly payment has risen due to interest rates, the price of the Model Y is almost unchanged," Musk said. "They can't afford it." Most banks say the consumer still has cash, but not Discover To know how consumers are doing, ask the banks, which disclose consumer balances quarterly. To know if they're confident, ask the credit card companies (often the same companies) how much they are spending. In most cases, financial services firms say consumers are doing well. At Bank of America , consumer balances are still about one-third higher than before Covid, CEO Brian Moynihan said on the company's conference call. At JPMorgan Chase , balances have eroded 3% in the last year, but consumer loan delinquencies declined during the quarter, the company said. "Where am I seeing softness in [consumer] credit?" said chief financial officer Jeremy Barnum, repeating an analyst's question on the earnings call. "I think the answer to that is actually nowhere." Among credit card companies, the "resilient" is still the main story. MasterCard , in fact, used that word or "resilience" eight times to describe U.S. consumers in its Oct. 26 call. "I mean, the reality is, unemployment levels are [near] all-time record lows," MasterCard chief financial officer Sachin Mehra said. At American Express , which saw U.S. consumer spending rise 9%, the mild surprise was the company's disclosure that young consumers are adding Amex cards faster than any other group. Millennials and Gen Zers saw their U.S. spending via Amex rise 18%, the company said. "Guess they're not bothered by the resumption of student loan payments," Stovall said. watch now The major fly in the ointment came from Discover Financial Services , one of the few banks to make big additions to its loan loss reserves for consumer debt, driving a 33% drop in profit as Discover's loan chargeoffs doubled. Despite the fact that U.S. household debt burdens are almost exactly the same as in late 2019, and declined during the quarter, according to government data, Discover chief financial officer John Greene said on its call, "Our macro assumptions reflect a relatively strong labor market but also consumer headwinds from a declining savings rate and increasing debt burdens." At airlines, still no sign of a travel recession It's good to be Delta Air Lines right now, sitting on a 59% third-quarter profit gain driven by the most expensive products on their virtual shelves: First-class seats and international vacations. Also good to be United, where higher-margin international travel rose almost 25% and the company is planning to add seven first-class seats per departure by 2027. Not so good to be discounter Spirit , which saw shares fall after reporting a $157 million loss. "With the market continuing to seemingly will a travel recession into existence despite evidence to the contrary from daily [government] data and our consumer surveys, Delta's third-quarter beat and solid fourth-quarter guide and commentary should finally put the group at ease about a consumer "cliff," allow them to unfasten their seatbelts and walk about the cabin," Morgan Stanley analyst Ravi Shanker said in a note to clients. One tangible impact: United is adding 20 planes this quarter, though it is pushing 12 more deliveries into 2024, while Spirit said it's delaying plane deliveries, and focusing on its proposed merger with JetBlue and cost-cutting to regain competitiveness as soft demand for its product persists into the holiday season. As has been the case throughout much of 2023, richer consumers — who contribute the greater share of spending — are doing better than moderate-income families, Sundaram said. The goods recession is for real Whirlpool , Ethan Allen and mattress maker Sleep Number all saw their stocks tumble after reporting bad earnings, all of them experiencing sales struggles consistent with the macro data. This follows a trend now well-entrenched in the economy: people stocked up on hard goods, especially for the house, during the pandemic, when they were stuck at home more. All three companies saw shares surge during Covid, and growth has slacked off since as they found their markets at least partly saturated and consumers moved spending to travel and other services. "All of the stimulus money went to the furniture industry," Sundaram said, exaggerating for effect. "Now they've been falling apart for the last year." Ethan Allen sales dropped 24%, as the company said a flood in a Vermont factory and softer demand were among the causes. At Whirlpool, which said in second-quarter earnings that it was moving to make up slowing sales to consumers by selling more appliances to home builders, "discretionary purchases have been even softer than anticipated, as a result of increased mortgage rates and low consumer confidence," CEO Marc Bitzer said during Thursday's earnings call. Its shares fell more than 20%. Amazon's $1.3 billion holiday hiring spree Amazon is making its biggest-ever commitment to holiday hiring, spending $1.3 billion to add the workers, mostly in fulfillment centers. That's possible because Amazon has reorganized its warehouse network to speed up deliveries and lower costs, sparking 11% sales gains the last two quarters as consumers turn to the online giant for more everyday repeat purchases. Amazon also tends to serve a more affluent consumer who is proving more resilient in the face of interest rate hikes and inflation than audiences for Target or dollar stores, according to CFRA retailing analyst Arun Sundaram said. "Their retail sales are performing really well," Sundaram said. "There's still headwinds affecting discretionary sales, but everyday essentials are doing really well. All of this sets the stage for a high-stakes holiday season. PNC still thinks there will be a recession in early 2024, thanks partly to the Federal Reserve' rate hikes, and thinks investors will focus on sales of goods looking for more signs of weakness. "There's a lot of strength for the late innings" of an expansion, said PNC Asset Management chief investment officer Amanda Agati. Sundaram, whose firm has predicted that interest rates will soon drop as inflation wanes, thinks retailers are in better shape, with stronger supply chains that will allow strategic discounting more than last year to pump sales. The Uggs sales outperformance was attributed to improved supply chains and shorter shipping times as the lingering effects of the pandemic recede. "Though there are headwinds for the consumer, there's a chance for a decent holiday season," he said, albeit one hampered still by the inflation of the last two years. "The 2022 holiday season may have been the low point.'' watch now

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/10/21/3-things-to-watch-in-the-market-next-week-as-bond-yields-hover-at-2007-highs.html

PHM

PulteGroup

3 things to watch in the stock market next week as bond yields hover at 2007 highs

Wall Street had its best session in weeks Monday but closed lower for the week. The usual suspects were to blame — rising bond yields, geopolitical tensions, and oil prices — and will hold the keys to the market this coming week. The Dow Jones Industrial Average , the S & P 500 and the Nasdaq saw weekly declines of 1.6%, roughly 2.4% and about 3.2%, respectively. The S & P 500 remained up 10% year to date. .SPX YTD mountain S & P 500 year-to-date performance Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell on Thursday reiterated his view on monetary policy, saying inflation remains elevated despite some signs of cooling. He said that lower economic growth is likely needed to bring price pressures down, fueling the higher-interest-rates-for-longer trade as recent economic data has been more durable than expected. Following Powell's speech to the Economic Club of New York, the 10-year Treasury yield topped 5% for the first time since July 2007. Yields pulled back a bit Friday. West Texas Intermediate crude, the U.S. benchmark, topped $90 per barrel on Friday before settling a bit before that level. Jim Cramer has been saying recently that stocks should not be taking their cues blindly from bonds and that the old paradigm of an inverted yield curve signaling a future recession is disconnected from what companies are saying about their businesses. Jim does not see an economic recession ahead. Of the 17% of the S & P 500 companies that have reported, earnings are up 7% and revenue is up 6.2% over the year-ago third quarter. The blended numbers, which include the companies that have reported and estimates for those that haven't yet, show more modest growth. The Club put its money where its mouth is, buying more shares of Morgan Stanley (MS) on Wednesday's steep decline. In fact, on Friday we said we would be looking to buy more if investors dump the stock again. The company's better-than-expected earnings and revenue in the third quarter on Wednesday were overshadowed by softer wealth management activity and the continued investment banking deep freeze. We lowered our price target . The stock fell Thursday and bounced a bit Friday. On the flip side, Procter & Gamble (PG) on Wednesday issued a great quarter , flexing its pricing power. The stock jumped 2.5% that day. It was modestly slower Thursday and Friday. Earnings are one of the three major themes on the marquee next week, with 10 Club companies reporting. Data on U.S. economic growth and the Fed's favorite inflation index as well as the glide path for bond yields and oil prices are also front and center for investors. 1. Nearly 28% of our portfolio , representing six out of the 11 S & P 500 sectors , is set to report quarterly results in the coming week. Here are the companies: Danaher (DHR), Microsoft (MSFT), Alphabet (GOOGL), Meta Platforms (META), Veralto (VLTO), Honeywell (HON), Linde (LIN), Amazon (AMZN), Ford (F) and Stanley Black & Decker (SWK). Danaher transformed itself into a pure-play life sciences company after spinning off its water and packaging business Veralto into a separate company earlier this month. We kept Veralto, which operates in the Industrials sector. Shares of Danaher are down more than 20% year to date compared to the S & P 500 Health Care sector 5.5% drop in 2023. Veralto shares, which were greeted with selling, are so new to the market that it's a tough comparison to the Industrials sector, which just about flat year to date. The Club is holding our Veralto shares. Microsoft's year-to-date gain of more than 35% pretty much matches the performance of the overall Information Technology sector. The artificial intelligence trade has been driving Microsoft and many of its peers higher. Not only is the company the backer of OpenAI, the startup behind ChatGPT, but it's also infusing AI into its Bing search engine and Office 365 productivity software. Alphabet and Meta Platforms — up more than 50% and 150%, respectively — are both outpacing the Communications Services sector's over 40% advance in 2023. The power of leveraging AI for advertising is helping both companies. Alphabet has also souped up Google Search with its Bard AI. Shares of Meta, in particular, have really soared over the past 10 months as Wall Street rewards CEO Mark Zuckerberg for his year of efficiency. Honeywell shares have been struggling this year, dropping about 15% and underperforming the Industrials sector's flat 2023. We're willing to give new CEO Vimal Kapur time to make his mark on the firm. He started by realigning its businesses just about a week ago. Honeywell also reaffirmed forward guidance. Stanley Black & Decker, also an industrial company, gained more than 3.5% year to date. We're in this one as a turnaround, which has been progressing. Industrials gas powerhouse Linde has been a steady performer this year, gaining more than 12.5% compared the Materials sector's over 2.5% drop in 2023. Linde has pricing power and exposure to high-quality end markets such as health care, semiconductors and clean energy initiatives. Amazon and Ford are both are part of the Consumer Discretionary sector, which has gained 19% year to date. Amazon is of course the world leader in online retail. But it also derives a significant portion of its revenue from its cloud unit. Like Meta, Amazon has embarked on cost-savings. Jim has expressed confidence in Ford CEO Jim Farley but recognizes that the United Auto Workers' strike is taking a toll. Ford has been trying to ramp up its electric vehicle business. 2. The big question is whether the Fed will increase rates one more time this year. The market doesn't think it will happen, but some Fed members have said one more may be necessary. Two data points coming next week could help us with that answer. The government this coming Thursday releases its first look at third-quarter gross domestic product (GDP), the broadest look at economic growth in America. The Atlanta Fed's GDPNow tracker moved higher from last week after September retail sales came in stronger than expected this past Tuesday. The Q3 consensus estimate of Wall Street economists by FactSet is calling for 3.6% month-over-month growth and a 2.4% gain year over year. Friday brings the Fed's gold-standard inflation gauge: the core personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index. September's core PCE, which excludes energy and food prices, is seen rising 3.7% year over year. Powell last Thursday said the Fed is committed to getting inflation down to its 2% target. 3. The Fed is not the only factor driving bonds. US10Y 1M mountain 10-year Treasury yield 1-month performance Historically, geopolitical unrest, such as the Israeli-Hamas war, would spark a flight-to-safety trade —bond buying which would cause yields to drop. Remember, bond prices move in opposite directions to yields. However, uncertainty about the Fed and reports of massive Chinese selling of bonds have been keeping yields firm. The longer end of the yield curve has recently been moving higher at a faster clip than the shorter end, narrowing the 2-year/10-year inversion. Normally, shorter-duration bond yields are lower than longer-dated ones. @CL.1 1M mountain WTI 1-month performance Concerns about a wider Mideast conflict have led to worries about crude output disruption coming out of that oil-rich part of the world, which has sent WTI and the international benchmark, Brent crude, higher. A temporary lifting of U.S. sanctions on OPEC member Venezuela is not expected to bring that much supply to the oil market to make much of a difference. Likewise, the U.S. government's plan to buy 6 million barrels of oil in next month and in January to refill the nation's Strategic Petroleum Reserve won't move the needle much either. Here's the full rundown of all the important domestic data in the week ahead as we consider our next moves for the portfolio. Monday, Oct. 23 After the bell earnings: Cleveland-Cliffs (CLF), Logitech (LOGI) Tuesday, Oct. 24 Before the bell earnings: Danaher (DHR), Coca-Cola (KO), Verizon (VZ), General Electric (GE), RTX Corporation (RTX), 3M (MMM), Halliburton (HAL), PulteGroup (PHM), General Motors (GM), Dow Chemical (DOW), Nucor (NUE), Xerox (XRX) After the bell: Microsoft (MSFT), Alphabet (GOOGL), Snap (SNAP), Visa (V), Texas Instruments (TXN), F5 Networks (FFIV), WM (WM) Wednesday, Oct. 25 10 a.m. ET: New home sales (September) Before the bell: Boeing (BA), Thermo Fisher Scientific (TMO), T-Mobile US (TMUS), Hilton (HLT), General Dynamics (GD), Fortive (FTV), Norfolk Southern (NSC), Imax (IMAX), Otis Worldwide (OTIS) After the bell: Meta Platforms (META), Veralto (VLTO), IBM (IBM), ServiceNow (NOW), KLA (KLAC), O'Reilly Automotive (ORLY), Baker Hughes (BKR), Edwards Lifesciences (EW), Mattel (MAT), Whirlpool (WHR) Thursday, Oct. 26 8:30 a.m. ET: Jobless Claims (week ended Oct. 21) 8:30 a.m. ET: Gross domestic product (Q3 first estimate) 8:30 a.m. ET: Durable goods orders (September) 8:30 a.m. ET: Wholesale inventories (September) 10 a.m. ET: Pending home sales (September) Before the bell: Honeywell (HON), Linde (LIN), Royal Caribbean Cruises (RCL), Hershey Company (HSY), United Parcel Service (UPS), Southwest Airlines (LUV), Altria Group (MO), Northrop Grumman (NOC), Valero Energy Corp. (VLO), Mastercard (MA), Merck & Co. (MRK), Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMY), Newmont Mining (NEM), Tractor Supply Company (TSCO), Comcast (CMCSA), Mobileye (MBLY), Seagate Technology (STX), Boston Scientific (BSX), Hertz (HTZ), Carrier (CARR), Hasbro (HAS), Harley-Davidson (HOG), Keurig Dr Pepper (KDP), Overstock.com (OSTK), PG & E (PCG), Brunswick (BC), Kenvue (KVUE), Oshkosh (OSK), International Paper (IP) After the bell: Amazon (AMZN), Ford (F), Intel (INTC), Chipotle Mexican Grill (CMG), Skechers (SKX), United States Steel (X), Capital One (COF), L3Harris (LHX), Deckers Brands (DECK), Boston Beer Company (SAM), Texas Roadhouse (TXRH) Friday, Oct. 27 8:30 a.m. ET: Personal income & spending (September) 8:30 a.m. ET: Core PCE price Index (September) 10 a.m. ET: University of Michigan consumer sentiment (October final) Before the bell: Stanley Black & Decker (SWK), Exxon Mobil (XOM), AbbVie (ABBV), Chevron (CVX), Charter Communications (CHTR), Phillips 66 (PSX), AutoNation (AN), Colgate-Palmolive (CL), Newell Brands (NWL), Sanofi (SNY), LyondellBasell (LYB) All day: Monthly auto sales (See here for a full list of the stocks in Jim Cramer's Charitable Trust.) As a subscriber to the CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer, you will receive a trade alert before Jim makes a trade. Jim waits 45 minutes after sending a trade alert before buying or selling a stock in his charitable trust's portfolio. If Jim has talked about a stock on CNBC TV, he waits 72 hours after issuing the trade alert before executing the trade. THE ABOVE INVESTING CLUB INFORMATION IS SUBJECT TO OUR TERMS AND CONDITIONS AND PRIVACY POLICY , TOGETHER WITH OUR DISCLAIMER . NO FIDUCIARY OBLIGATION OR DUTY EXISTS, OR IS CREATED, BY VIRTUE OF YOUR RECEIPT OF ANY INFORMATION PROVIDED IN CONNECTION WITH THE INVESTING CLUB. NO SPECIFIC OUTCOME OR PROFIT IS GUARANTEED. Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange during afternoon trading in New York City on Sept. 26, 2023. Michael M. Santiago | Getty Images News | Getty Images

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/21/us-housing-starts-soar-best-stocks-to-buy.html

PHM

PulteGroup

Four stocks traders are picking to capitalize on the US homebuilding boom

It's good time to be a homebuilder. The iShares U.S. Home Construction ETF (ITB), which tracks the homebuilding stocks, surged Friday to highs not seen since 2006 following blockbuster data for U.S. housing starts, which jumped 16.9% to 13-year highs in December. The ETF touched a high of $47.55 in the day's trading session before closing up less than half of 1% at $47.20. The building boom — also the highest percentage gain for construction starts since late 2016 — has refocused Wall Street's attention on the group, as has the ITB's outperformance. The ITB has trounced the S&P 500 's gains for this month, climbing over 6% while the S&P is up about 3%. Over the past 12 months, the ITB is up 45% while the S&P is up roughly 26%. But the ITB isn't overbought just yet, even at these elevated levels, said Craig Johnson, senior technical research analyst at Piper Sandler (formerly Piper Jaffray). "We're not at historical overbought extremes as of yet, and if history does at all rhyme, you'd be about another 5-10% higher before you kind of reach those ... extremes," he told CNBC's "Trading Nation" on Friday. "So, from our perspective, this is a pretty interesting and a pretty constructive-looking breakout." Drilling down into the ETF's holdings — which include giants D.R. Horton and Lennar — Johnson liked one of its biggest, PulteGroup . "This is a stock that is also constructive. It's making a bullish consolidation. It's just starting to break out," Johnson said. "Based upon the size of that consolidation range, we think this is a stock that could have a measured objective, based upon the charts, that could be at $51." The $51 level is about 22% above PulteGroup's Friday closing price of $41.79. The stock is up nearly 8% already this year. PulteGroup was also a top pick for Danielle Shay, director of options at SimplerTrading. "I actually love the housing sector" as a whole, she said in the same "Trading Nation" interview. "We have a couple different things working for us right now." Among them are low interest rates, strong consumer sentiment and spending trends, and the rise in pop-culture representations of home renovating, Shay said. "We ... have [all] this huge home renovation media going on right now, and it's amazing," she said, pointing to HGTV, Discovery's home design cable channel. "Millennials love home renovations, and this is just an area that I see to continue trending higher. For me personally, I like KB Home first of all. I love Pulte as well. And we also see the likes of Home Depot and also Lowe's trading higher." Shay and Johnson also said their own anecdotal experiences with home renovation have also warmed them to the space. Shay said she's currently renovating the house she bought a few years ago, and it's become clear that renovation is "an area [where] people are spending a lot of money," hence her preference for stocks like Home Depot and Lowe's. Johnson, who helped his wife renovate his home's deck last summer, said the experience piqued his interest in the stock of Trex , the company that made the decking material he used. "I started analyzing the charts a little bit more carefully, and it's a very constructive-looking chart. In fact, we just added that into the Piper Sandler model portfolio just this week," Johnson said. "So, it has raised [my] attention level." Trex shares hit an all-time intraday high of $100.49 on Friday, but closed just shy of the $99.61 closing record it made Thursday. Disclosure: Piper Sandler is a registered market maker in the stock of PulteGroup, and Shay owns shares of the ITB, Lowe's and Home Depot. Disclaimer

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/10/17/tuesdays-top-stocks-to-watch-on-wall-street.html

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PulteGroup

Here are Tuesday's biggest analyst calls: Apple, Tesla, Dollar Tree, Amazon, Alphabet, Toll Brothers and more

Here are Tuesday's biggest calls on Wall Street: Wells Fargo upgrades Air Products to overweight from equal weight Wells Fargo said it sees robust earnings growth. "We are upgrading APD to OW from EW given its mega project backlog is expected to come on stream over the next several years boosting EPS growth." JPMorgan reiterates Alphabet as overweight JPMorgan said it's standing by its overweight rating heading into earnings next week. " GOOGL has been the quietest of the FANG names in our discussions w/investors recently, perhaps a function of less controversy & very limited forward outlook provided at earnings." Wells Fargo initiates Toll Brothers, Lennar, PulteGroup and D.R. Horton as overweight Wells Fargo said in its initiation of several homebuilders that "volatility presents opportunity." "We initiate coverage of U.S. Homebuilding & Building Products, with DHI, LEN , MAS, PHM & TOL OW; KBH, FERG & OC EW; and MHK UW. Recent volatility presents opportunity." Stifel initiates Amazon as buy Stifel said no other platform can come close to Amazon. "Initiating coverage with a Buy rating and $173 target price. No other e-commerce platform comes close to matching the scale that Amazon has amassed." Read more about this call here. Raymond James initiates Lam Research and Applied Materials as outperform Raymond James initiates Lam and Applied Materials and said the valuations appear reasonable for both names. "We view geopolitical factors as a net neutral and expect any additional risk from China export controls to be modest. Valuations do not appear stretched, and a case can also be made for multiple expansion given higher trough earnings." Loop initiates Microsoft as buy Loop said growth is set to accelerate for Microsoft. "We are initiating coverage of Microsoft with a Buy rating and $425 PT. In our view, MSFT growth is set to accelerate driven by the two most strategic businesses, Azure and GenAI products (M365 Copilot)." JPMorgan upgrades Viasat to overweight from neutral JPMorgan said it sees an attractive entry point for the satellite company. " VSAT shares have sold off ~56% since the 5/31 close of the Inmarsat deal vs SPX +~5%, and we believe the sell-off offers an attractive entry point with the stock now trading at 5.4x our FY25 EBITDA." JPMorgan upgrades CyberArk to overweight from neutral JPMorgan said it sees "accelerating demand" for the cyber company. "We see opportunity for upside in the wake of accelerating demand as CyberArk has some of the most favorable exposure to high priority Security spending within our coverage." Evercore ISI reiterates Tesla as in line Evercore ISI said Tesla shares will be volatile. "We raise our price target to $180 from $165 on the rollover to '26. We believe the recent re-rate due to AI/NVDA correlation will be sustained, but TSLA may see increased volatility the next 6 months on 15% EPS risk to '24/25 resulting in a very wide $140-$265 range." Evercore ISI upgrades Mobileye to outperform from in line Evercore ISI said it sees a compelling entry point for the auto tech company. " MBLY currently trades within our $35-45 'corridor' (25-35x '25 EPS of $1.20- $1.30) but with the rollover to '26 probability-weighted EPS of $1.85 would be a $45-65 stock." Goldman Sachs upgrades Dollar Tree to buy from neutral Goldman Sachs said in its upgrade of the discount retailer that it sees improving earnings growth. "We are upgrading DLTR to Buy from Neutral, as we see strong earnings growth potential supported by continued market share gains from improving traffic trends with sticky new customers, an improving discretionary cash flow outlook for lower and middle income consumers in 2024, and better shopability/in-stocks after recent investments." Citi upgrades Sunnova to buy from neutral Citi said the solar company's valuation is compelling. "While we believe NOVA's 3Q consensus has downside, valuation is too compelling for us to ignore." Goldman Sachs initiates Tripadvisor as buy Goldman Sachs said it sees upside to estimates for the travel website company. "For TRIP , our view is that the structural growth profile of the business is changing as metasearch gives way to lower funnel businesses that are exposed to secular growth tailwinds and see upside to Street estimates on the back of faster revenue growth at Viator/Experiences & scale/operating efficiencies leading to better profitability." Bernstein initiates Exxon Mobil as outperform Bernstein said the oil and gas giant is well-positioned. "We rate XOM Outperform. We reach our target price of $140/sh by applying a 7.0x multiple to 2025E EBITDA of $73.5B and incorporating additional FCF to shareholders." Morgan Stanley upgrades Hannon Armstrong Sustainable Infrastructure Capital to overweight from equal weight Morgan Stanley said investors should buy the dip in shares of the climate solutions company. "We believe the sell-off in HASI is overdone and incongruous with business fundamentals." Read more about this call here . Bank of America reiterates Apple as neutral Bank of America said its survey checks show iPhone lead times are picking up for Apple. "Our proprietary interactive dashboard shows that iPhone 15 Pro & Pro Max availability picked up from October 9th to October 15th." JPMorgan initiates Teck Resources as overweight JPMorgan said the metals and mining company is its preferred play. " Teck is our preferred copper play given its extensive pipeline of copper projects and likely exit from its carbon intensive coal business, which should drive a meaningful rerating."

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/10/20/wall-street-braces-for-big-tech-earnings-and-key-economic-data-in-the-week-ahead-as-treasury-yields-rise.html

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PulteGroup

Wall Street braces for big tech earnings and key economic data in the week ahead as Treasury yields rise

Major earnings reports and economic data will be in focus next week as investors seek clarity on how the Federal Reserve will proceed from here. Wall Street has some concerns as traders head into the thick of earnings season. A FactSet estimate that accounts for reports that have already come in and forecasts for the ones that haven't is showing S & P 500 earnings are on pace to have fallen 0.7% in the third quarter. But next week will bring the lion's share of results including reports from mega-cap darlings Alphabet, Amazon , Meta Platforms and Microsoft . Investors will assess how businesses are positioning for the possibility of a higher-for-longer interest rate environment. Disappointing results for the megacaps in particular could bode trouble not only for their respective stocks, but also for a broader market that has relied on their outperformance for its gains this year. While the S & P 500 is higher by 10% in 2023, the equal-weighted index is down slightly. Of note, Tesla shares sank more than 9% on Thursday following a pessimistic economic outlook from CEO Elon Musk during the company's earnings call. "We're getting some weaker than expected numbers right now," Sam Stovall, chief investment strategist at CFRA Research. "And I think that's causing investors to worry that maybe earnings are not going to be growing as much as we had anticipated." To be sure, the strategist thinks it's too early to call how the rest of the season will turn out. Wall Street notched a losing week on Friday. Its the S & P 500's first weekly loss in three weeks. The Dow Jones Industrial Average posted its third one-week decline in four weeks. This comes as the 10-year Treasury yield breached a key 5% psychological level. US10Y 3M mountain 10-year Treasury yield Will the Fed hike? Investors will also deliberate a slew of economic reports next week that take on greater significance ahead of the Oct. 31 to Nov. 1 Fed policy meeting. Markets are pricing in near certainty that policy makers will keep rates at their current levels following the November meeting, according to the CME FedWatch Tool . However, less certain is what the central bank will do later. Markets are pricing in a 24% likelihood of a 25 basis point hike in December, and a roughly 30% chance of an increase in January, the FedWatch tool shows. Market participants worry that reports that come in stronger than expected could provide grounds for the Fed to hike again this year. The third-quarter advance report for the gross domestic product that's set to come out Thursday is expected to show the U.S. economy grew 3.5% quarter over quarter, according to FactSet. The personal consumption expenditure, the Fed's preferred inflation gauge, is expected to have risen 0.6% in September, higher than the prior reading of 0.4%. Meanwhile, Atlanta Federal Reserve President Raphael Bostic on Friday said the Fed is not likely to cut interest rates until well into 2024. "The Fed has started to signal to the market that its strategy could be higher for longer, meaning to keep interest rates higher before cutting them, but that they were most likely about done with the rate hikes," said Ed Clissold, chief U.S. strategist at Ned Davis Research. "But if inflation and economic growth proves to be stronger than expected, the Fed may feel compelled to signal that it's not done raising rates." "And so, another hike or two in early 2024 does not seem to be priced into the market currently, and that could be problematic for risk asset like stocks," Clissold said. Navigating uncertainty All this is adding to uncertainty for investors as they monitor higher bond yields. This week, the 10-year Treasury yield briefly broke through the 5% level, a level that technical analysts expect could be breached again before the benchmark rate peaks. Fairlead Strategies founder Katie Stockton sees next resistance level at 5.25%, though she added bond yields are "overstretched" in the short term. "I think this move in rates eventually causes something to kind of freeze up and break," said Rob Ginsberg, managing director at Wolfe Research. "I'm not sure if it's the economy or another banking issue. I just know something will feel the implications of this violent move in rates." CFRA's Stovall agrees that the added uncertainty in markets sets the stage for additional choppiness ahead. "Corrections can occur in price and time," Stovall said. "And I think right now, the market is going through a correction in time because it doesn't know what's going on with the Fed, does not know what's going on with the economy." Week ahead calendar All events ET. Monday Oct. 23 8:30 a.m. Chicago Fed National Activity Index (September) Tuesday Oct. 24 9:45 a.m. S & P Global PMI Composite preliminary (October) 9:45 a.m. S & P Global PMI Manufacturing (October) 9:45 a.m. S & P Global PMI Services (October) 10 a.m. Richmond Fed Index (October) Earnings: Alphabet , Microsoft , F5 , Visa , Texas Instruments , General Electric , NextEra Energy , Raytheon Technologies , Sherwin-Williams , Dow, Inc. , General Motors , 3M , PulteGroup , Halliburton , Coca-Cola , Kimberly-Clark , Corning Wednesday Oct. 25 8 a.m. Building permits final (September) 10 a.m. New home sales (September) Earnings: Hilton Worldwide , General Dynamics , Old Dominion Freight Line , T-Mobile US , Boeing , Hess , Meta Platforms , Raymond James Financial , Align Technology , Whirlpool , International Business Machines , O'Reilly Automotive Thursday Oct. 26 8:30 a.m. Durable goods orders (September) 8:30 a.m. GDP (Q3) 8:30 a.m. Initial claims ( week ended Oct. 21) 8:30 a.m. Wholesale inventories preliminary (September) Earnings: Honeywell International , Keurig Dr Pepper , Northrop Grumman , PG & E , Mastercard , Amazon , Royal Caribbean Group , Tractor Supply , United Parcel Service , Willis Towers Watson , Hasbro , Southwest Airlines , Comcast , Hershey , Intel , L3Harris Technologies , Ford Motor , DexCom , Capital One , Chipotle Mexican Grill , Enphase Energy Friday Oct. 27 8:30 a.m. Personal consumption expenditure (September) 8:30 a.m. Personal income (September) Earnings: Phillips 66 , Chevron , AbbVie , Stanley Black & Decker , Exxon Mobil , Colgate-Palmolive , T. Rowe Price Group

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/10/13/cramer-on-the-sp-500s-top-10-performers-since-its-bear-market-low.html

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PulteGroup

The S&P 500's top 10 performers since its bear market low — and where Cramer stands on them now

The S&P 500 hit its bear market low one year ago, so CNBC's Jim Cramer gave his take on the index's top 10 performers since then. "I think some of them can keep winning from here, but some have definitely lost their luster in a world where rates are soaring again and we're increasingly worried, once again, about the economy," Cramer said.

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/10/03/underperforming-stocks-that-could-stage-a-fourth-quarter-comeback.html

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PulteGroup

These underperforming stocks are due for a fourth-quarter comeback, according to Wall Street

After a rocky third quarter, these stocks could be poised for a bounce back in the final stretch of 2023, according to Wall Street. Stocks struggled over the past three months as yields rose , 2023's popular technology trade hit a wall and the Federal Reserve indicated that rates may stay elevated for longer . The S & P 500 and tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite slumped 3.7% and 4.1%, respectively, for the period, and are coming off their worst months of the year . Amid this backdrop, CNBC Pro screened for underperforming stocks that may be due for a comeback in the fourth quarter. We used the following criteria and our stock screener to find the potential winners: Underperformed in the third quarter, falling more than 4%. Loved by analysts with a consensus buy rating and 20% predicted upside. Intact long-term trend trading above 200-day moving average. These are the names that made the cut. Beaten-down technology stocks and recent artificial intelligence mainstays Microsoft and Advanced Micro Devices were included in the screen. Over the past three months, the AI winners have fallen more than 5% and a little over 9%, respectively, due in part to pressures from rising bond yields. MSFT 3M mountain Microsoft shares over the last three months Wall Street sees more upside ahead for both companies even after surging this year on enthusiasm surrounding the technology. The consensus price target for AMD implies another 34% upside, building on its roughly 58% gain in 2023. Meanwhile, Microsoft could rally about 22% from these levels. A handful of cruise stocks that have struggled in recent weeks amid the jump in fuel prices also made the cut. Carnival experienced the biggest slump of the group over the past three months, falling nearly 28%. But shares still hover above their 200-day moving average, with the consensus price target implying more than 29% upside. CCL 3M mountain Carnival shares over the last three months Norwegian Cruise Line and Royal Caribbean also made the list with shares down more than 24% and about 12%, respectively. Royal Caribbean shares could rally another 35% from here — the biggest potential upside of the group. Live Nation Entertainment , Oracle , Netflix and homebuilders Lennar and PulteGroup also met the screen's criteria. — CNBC's Michael Bloom contributed reporting. Read more in CNBC Pro's Quarterly Investment Guide Danger, 'pothole' ahead: Economic growth slowing to a near-halt to end the year Oil prices and the dollar surged in the third quarter. These ETFs can help you reset your portfolio After a rough third quarter, here's what to expect from technology stocks into the end of 2023 Bitcoin has limited upside in the fourth quarter as the possibility of higher rates casts a shadow over crypto

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/12/16/this-weeks-best-performers-include-moderna-and-two-homebuilders.html

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PulteGroup

This week's best performers include Moderna and two homebuilders

Stocks sold off this week after the Federal Reserve raised interest rates to the highest level in 15 years , and signaled more hikes to come. But some names are still on track to post slight gains. This Fed on Wednesday hiked interest rates by 50 basis points. While the move marked a step down from the previous four increases, comments from the central bank and Chair Jerome Powell indicated higher-for-longer rates in 2023, heightening fears of a recession. Against this backdrop, the major averages are on pace to notch a second consecutive week of losses, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average and S & P 500 down more than 2% each. The Nasdaq Composite is slated to lose more than 3%. Despite the downward pressure on stocks, some names are poised to finish the week on a positive note. As of Friday's open, these are some of the stocks poised to buck this week's negative trend. This week's top performer was vaccine maker Moderna , with shares up nearly 17% as of Friday's open. It gained on the back of promising results from a trial of its experimental melanoma vaccine, which cut the risk of cancer recurrence or death by 44% when combined with Merck's Keytruda cancer treatment. Despite its solid gains this week, Wall Street isn't so optimistic about the stock, with just 30% saying it's a buy. The consensus price target suggests a little over 5% upside for shares from Thursday's close, with the stock down about 25% this year. Shares gave up some of their weekly gains Friday, last trading down almost 8%. Homebuilding stocks Lennar and PulteGroup are also on pace to finish the week on a positive note. Analysts at Barclays upgraded both stocks to overweight this week , saying that Lennar is one of the best-positioned names to capitalize on a housing trough in 2023. Shares of both stocks are down more than 19% this year, but were on pace to gain about 6% for the week as of Friday's open. About half of analysts say both Lennar and PulteGroup are a buy, with the average price target implying 7.2% and 14% respective upsides from Thursday's close. Analysts are divided over Lennar, with just 50% rating it a buy. PulteGroup, meanwhile, only has buy ratings from 46.7% of analysts. Another weekly winner was Fortune Brands Innovations , which spun off one of its divisions. Shares were set to gain 11.5% for the week as of Friday's open, following news that it joins the S & P MidCap 400 index, with First Solar replacing it in the S & P 500. About 47% of analysts say shares are a buy, offering 10.6% upside from Thursday's close. Energy stocks Baker Hughes , Halliburton and APA Corp also made the list.

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/22/analysts-downgraded-these-stocks-over-huawei-worries.html

QRVO

Qorvo

Wall Street analysts are worried most about these stocks following the US crackdown on Huawei

A man walking past a Huawei P20 smartphone advertisement is reflected in a glass door in front of a Huawei logo, at a shopping mall in Shanghai, China December 6, 2018. The ban on chipmakers selling to Huawei is having ramifications felt far and wide. Even as the U.S. government decided to delay imposing the restrictions by 90 days, that's not stopping Wall Street analysts from handing out downgrades and urging clients to adjust their portfolios. It's also hurting the broader market. Tech is the worst-performing sector this month, sliding more than 5%. While a few analysts remain hopeful for a resolution in the near-term, most weren't taking their chances surrounding the overall uncertainty. Some adjusted their price targets while one analyst went even further and removed a buy rating. Semiconductor companies Qorvo and Skyworks recently had their price targets reduced by analysts at Canaccord. "Huawei accounted for 13% and 8% of Qorvo's F'19 and F'18 revenue, respectively," said analyst T. Michael Walkley. "We believe our estimate reductions will likely prove conservative, as we believe the ban will likely get resolved in the coming months." "Huawei is the third largest customer for Skyworks and accounted for 10% of the company's F'17 revenue but below 10% for F'18, and we believe Huawei could represent roughly 10% of Skyworks revenue going forward should the ban get lifted due to improving 5G infrastructure demand," Walkley said. The collateral damage continued this week when telecommunications equipment company Lumentum cut earnings guidance. "We think the negative revenue impact from lost Huawei sales will likely be higher in 1QFY20 than in 4QFY19 due to there being a full quarter of ban in place," said MKM analyst Michael Genovese. He lowered his price target on the stock to $60 from $72. One analyst was more succinct in his downgrade of electronic measurement company, Keysight Technologies. "What's bad for the U.S. tech Industry isn't a positive for KEYS. China-related uncertainty may be an overhang on the shares in the near term," said Baird analyst Richard Eastman who went from outperform to neutral on the stock. Here are what analysts are saying about stocks downgraded on Huawei concerns:

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/17/seth-klarman-increases-tech-bets-in-the-first-quarter-here-are-his-top-holdings.html

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Qorvo

Seth Klarman increases tech bets in the first quarter. Here are his top holdings

Seth Klarman's Baupost Group doubled down on a handful of tech stocks and made a big bet on a little-known insurance company in the first quarter of 2021. According to SEC filings released Monday, the widely followed investor and CEO of Baupost Group increased his major positions in Intel , Alphabet , Facebook and Qorvo . Klarman's Intel position is now worth nearly $1.5 billion. Baupost Group owns $600 million of Google-parent Alphabet, $382 million of Facebook and $954 million of semiconductor stock Qorvo. Klarman, a value investor who has drawn comparisons to Warren Buffett over the years, also made a $572 million bet on Willis Towers Watson . The insurance company is now 4.6% of the hedge fund. Shares of Willis Towers Watson are up 25% in 2021. Last week, the company, in partnership with Aon, sold a $3.5 billion portfolio of assets to Gallagher. Baupost Group also made large new bets on International Flavors & Fragrance, Nuvation Bio, Cullinan Oncology and Thomas Bravo Advantage. The hedge fund now owns nearly $300 million of International Flavors & Fragrance and $90 million of Nuvation Bio. In the first three months of 2021, Baupost Group also bought shares of Finch Therapeutics Group and SVF Investment Corp. Take a look at Baupost Group's top holdings as of March. 31: Klarman's fund sold shares of Atara Biotherapeutics, eBay, Fidelity National Financial, FNF Group and Fox Corp. in the first quarter. It dissolved positions in Marathon Petroleum and Radius Global Infrastructure in the first three months of 2021. The hedge fund also exited positions in Redball Acquisition Corp., Vesper Healthcare Acquisition, ViacomCBS and Vista Oil & Gas. Seth Klarman, founder of the Baupost Group. Daniel Acker | Bloomberg | Getty Images

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/07/29/these-names-reporting-profits-next-week-often-top-estimates-and-rally.html

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Qorvo

These names reporting earnings next week often beat estimates and trade higher

Investors this earnings season continue to search for signs of relief in an economy consumed by rising inflation, a surging dollar and mounting fears of a recession. Amid this troublesome backdrop, not all companies will win big this season, but some names reporting earnings in coming days tend to beat analyst estimates and see their stocks trade higher on the back of those results. The second quarter brought with it generational highs in inflation, supply chain disruptions, Covid-19 lockdowns in China, another negative GDP print and the largest interest rate increase from the Federal Reserve since 1994 . As this second quarter earnings continues, investors are looking for insight into how companies fared under severe macroeconomic pressures and a potential slowdown in consumer spending. At the same time, they are closely watching forward guidance for clues into how these stocks could perform in the months ahead and how a 20-year high in the dollar could cut into future earnings . To find the names that typically outperform and usually see their stocks gain, CNBC Pro analyzed data from Bespoke Investment Group. Here are some of the names that surfaced: Booking Holdings The travel services company is slated to report Wednesday after the bell and typically beats earnings and sales estimates 89% and 72% of the time, respectively, according to Bespoke. Booking Holdings , which owns brands like Kayak, is trading down about 20% this year but when it tops earnings its stock tends to gain 2.27%, data shows. Bank of America recently listed Booking among a number of companies it expects to likely beat earnings estimates this season. Microchip When Microchip reports earnings Tuesday, investors could see better-than-estimated results. The technology company boasts a 73% earnings beat rate and trades 1.09% higher on average on the back of results, data show. A recent screen from UBS found that Microchip is among the names trading at a good discount for investors. Shares of Microchip are trading down nearly 23% on the year, although they've bounced back nearly 16% this month. Qorvo Qorvo is slated to post earnings on Wednesday after the bell. The semiconductor company beats on earnings and sales 97% of the time and sees shares rise 1.07% on average, Bespoke data suggests. Shares of Qorvo have come under pressure this year, falling about 34% as the semiconductor industry faces supply chain disruptions and a potential slowdown in consumer spending that could hit sales. Cowen downgraded the chip stock to market perform earlier this month, noting that weakening demand for smartphones could pressure revenue and margins. That said, the company could benefit from greater broadband adoption trends in the long-term. Barclays says Qorvo is among a number of consumer-focused semiconductor names likely posting weak guidance ahead. Regeneron Pharma The biotechnology company exceeds earnings and sales expectations 77% of the time, according to Bespoke. On average shares gain 1.58% after the company reports earnings. Regeneron 's stock is down about 8% this year and 21% off its 52-week peak. The company reports before the bell on Wednesday. Scotts Miracle-Gro Scotts Miracle-Gro shares have plummeted about 46% this year but, according to Bespoke data, the lawn care stock beats earnings and sales estimates 66% of the time, after which its stock adds 1.13%. The company reports earnings on Wednesday before the stock market opens.

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/02/cramer-reveals-winners-and-losers-in-trumps-huawei-blacklist-reversal.html

QRVO

Qorvo

Cramer reveals winners and losers in Trump's Huawei blacklist reversal

Semiconductor companies will benefit from the Trump administration's relaxing of sanctions on Huawei, but telecom equipment suppliers are still in the penalty box, CNBC's Jim Cramer said Tuesday. The "Mad Money" host said he only expects a partial rollback on the blacklist that President Donald Trump issued on the Chinese telecommunications giant last month. The White House wants American companies to get ahead of Huawei in the race to roll out 5G infrastructure, the fifth generation of wireless technology. "If you make plain vanilla tech that's used for handsets, just for your phone … I'm betting you're good to go," he said. "But if you're making components for telco infrastructure, I think you got a pretty big problem." Cramer expects the rollback will help Skyworks , Micron , Texas Instruments and Qorvo . Skyworks, which makes radio frequency chips for connected devices, is the biggest winner here, he said. While the chipmaker also has an infrastructure arm, the business primarily serves Nokia and Ericsson who are focused on the 5G buildout, he added. "I think it works, especially since the Chinese haven't retaliated against their top handset customer, Apple ," Cramer said. "Skyworks has a very strong management team. It is an extremely cheap stock that has just gotten beaten up here." Qorvo, which does a majority of its sales in China, is a "partial winner," the host said. The company's 5G business has been strong, but the semiconductor manufacturer cut its revenue forecast for the current quarter by $50 million after the Huawei blacklist was first announced, he noted. "The handset side of the business should be safer, but, you know what, I've got doubt about the telco infrastructure side that's all about 5G," Cramer said. "I expect Qorvo to do better, but it wouldn't be my number one pick here. It's sort of a microcosm for the broader group." The companies in Cramer's penalty box include telecommunications equipment providers such as Acacia , Ciena , Infinera , Finisar and Lumentum . Peter Navarro, Trump's top trade adviser, appearing on "Squawk on the Street" earlier Tuesday said the U.S. would only allow Huawei to buy items from American manufacturers that wouldn't impact national security, the host added. "If the White House wants to slow Huawei's quest for 5G domination, this kind of stuff is exactly the kind of stuff they're not going to let Huawei buy," Cramer said. "Before you start buying Huawei's suppliers hand over fist, you need to be careful, because we still don't have much detail about what happened, and I expect some of these suppliers will benefit a lot more than others and some [may] not benefit at all," he said.

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/05/buy-apple-supplier-qorvo-shares-due-to-healthy-demand-in-china.html

QRVO

Qorvo

This small Apple supplier is a way to ride ‘healthy’ iPhone demand in China, KeyBanc analyst says

A man looks at iPhone 7 series product at an Apple store on September 16, 2016 in Beijing, China. Qorvo shares will rise as the chipmaker benefits from improving phone demand in China, according to KeyBanc Capital Markets. The firm raised its rating on Qorvo shares to overweight from sector weight, predicting the chipmaker will report earnings per share above expectations in its next fiscal year. "We are upgrading QRVO … given healthy China smartphone trends, stabilizing iPhone demand, and greater than expected market share gains in China smartphones," analyst John Vinh said in a note to clients Wednesday. "We believe the healthy handset demand environment for China and Apple sets up well for the stock to outperform in the 2H in conjunction with share gains in China and content gains in the new iPhone.” The company manufactures radio frequency semiconductors, which enable the ability for smartphones to communicate with wireless networks. The Greensboro, North Carolina-based company has a market value of $10 billion. Vinh started his price target for Qorvo shares at $95, representing 23 percent upside from Tuesday’s close. The analyst said conversations with Asian supply chain companies revealed Qorvo is taking “meaningful” share for its products from Skyworks Solutions in China. He also noted iPhone demand isn’t getting materially worse, according to his checks. “Consistent feedback from multiple supply-chain partners across the iPhone ecosystem indicates that demand for both the iPhone 8 as well as the X has stabilized,” he said. “Feedback consistently indicates that demand in the 2Q has been largely in line with expectations, while a few partners indicate demand in the quarter was slightly weaker than original expectations.” Vinh estimates Qorvo will generate earnings per share of $6.41 in its fiscal 2019 versus the Wall Street consensus of $5.87. The company’s stock is up 16.3 percent so far this year through Tuesday versus the S&P 500’s 1.5 percent gain.

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/07/13/apple-hovers-above-competition-even-as-smartphone-market-stumbles.html

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Qorvo

Apple hovers above competition even as smartphone market stumbles, sources say

The global smartphone market may be in the toilet, but the iPhone 13 continues to sell well, and Apple is expecting its upcoming iPhone 14 to do even better at launch. Apple's slightly higher expectations for the forthcoming iPhone 14 underscore a growing belief among Wall Street analysts that the Cupertino, California company's sales are likely to hold up better than the broader smartphone industry if major economies enter a recession. Apple, which reports its fiscal third quarter earnings on July 28, conveyed its expectations to suppliers in initial forecasts as it carries out trial production of the iPhone 14, sources with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters. With Apple sitting at the higher end of the market, analysts believe that inflation in core items like food and fuel have taken a lesser toll on its relatively affluent user base. That comes as industry watchers such as Fubon Securities Investment Services chairman Charles Hsiao believe demand for consumer electronics will slow overall this year and next. An economic slowdown in China has already taken a huge bite out of the smartphone market, pulling global sales down 10% year over year to 96 million units in May, the most recent month for which full figures were available, according to Counterpoint Research. It's only the second time in nearly a decade that the monthly figure has slipped below 100 million handsets, the firm said. But two iPhone supply chain sources with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters that iPhone sales have continued to do well in July despite signs of cooling market demand for other smartphone makers. "Others are starting to take a hit," one of the sources said. The second source said July shipments for the iPhone 13 from one factory were a third higher than July last year. That pattern was especially unusual because sales of current iPhone models tend to slow down in July and August as consumers await new models that Apple traditionally releases in September. "Judging by shipment, sales of iPhone 13 are fairly good," the second source said. The iPhone has continued to sell well late into its cycle in part because "China demand rebounded sharply after lockdowns ended and the iPhone was a beneficiary" of a June shopping holiday in China, Cowen analyst Krish Sankar wrote in a note to clients. In keeping with its annual schedule, Apple has started trial production of the iPhone 13's successor with the goal of ramping up mass production in August so the devices can start shipping in the fall. The initial shipment forecasts Apple has given suppliers is "slightly higher" than that of iPhone 13 a year ago, the second source said. "It's slightly higher than last year. It's good, but not explosively good," the second source said. For the just-ended fiscal third quarter, some Wall Street analysts are bracing for a slight decline in iPhone 13 shipments even if volumes are higher at some individual factories. But analysts still expect the iPhone to fare better than rivals. Cowen, for example, expects Apple handset shipments to be down about 1% for the just-ended quarter, while overall handset shipments could be down as much as 13%. The divergence between Apple and the Android market is rippling through Apple's supply chain. "For Samsung's display unit, a better-than-expected performance in Q2 is expected due to shipments for iPhones, which is the only smartphone with strong sales," said Song Myung-sup, analyst at HI Investment & Securities. Cowen held steady its "outperform" rating on shares of chipmaker Skyworks Solutions , noting that it gets about 55% of its revenues from Apple for a radio chip in the iPhone. Skyworks rival Qorvo , by contrast, gets 30% of its revenue from Apple and has greater exposure to the Android phone market. Cowen downgraded Qorvo to "market perform." "Skyworks' greater relative exposure to Apple in its mobile business likely insulates the company in the near term from significant impacts associated with ... downward demand revisions," Cowen analyst Matt Ramsay wrote in a note to clients.

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/07/29/on-tap-this-week-jobs-report-plus-10-key-earnings-what-we-want-to-see.html

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On tap this week: Jobs report plus 10 key earnings. Here's what we want to see

All three major averages advanced for the week, powered by strong mega-cap earnings and favorable inflation data. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite led with a 2% gain, while the S & P 500 increased about 1% and the Dow rose 0.6%. Thursday snapped a 13-day winning streak for the 30-stock Dow average, a stretch not seen since 1987. Looking to next week, earnings season enters its second half with the last of our mega-caps — Apple (AAPL) and Amazon (AMZN) — set to report on Thursday. More economic data is on the way, which should show how the Federal Reserve is doing in its battle against inflation. That includes the super important monthly jobs report on Friday. 1. Economic releases : It's another big week for data following the Federal Reserve's expected decision this past Wednesday to raise the federal funds rate by another 25 basis points. The ISM Manufacturing report comes out on Tuesday and factory orders on Thursday. Combined, these reports provide insight into the state of manufacturing, which accounts for about 12% of U.S. GDP. This number been contracting for the past eight months as of June's ISM Manufacturing report. That trend isn't expected to have reversed in July, but investors are forecasting the rate of contraction to slow. Anything below 50 on the ISM purchasing managers' index (PMI) is indicative of a contraction while anything above that level points to expansion. The rate of contraction/expansion is measured by the distance from that 50-level benchmark. The further below 50, the faster the contraction and the further above 50, the faster the rate of expansion. Also out Thursday is the ISM Services PMI, which has showed the services industry has expanded for six months straight through June. Investors expect this trend to continue but don't expect the rate to ramp up. We'll get a better read on the employment picture on Wednesday with the ADP report and then, more importantly, on Friday's nonfarm payrolls report for July. As has been the case for many months, we want a strong headline number (200k is the estimate as of Friday) to be tempered by a slight slowdown in annual wage inflation (4.2% is the estimate as of Friday). Unemployment is expected to hold steady at about 3.6%. One thing to note: In past reports a lot of emphasis has been on the strength of the headline number and wage inflation on the view that higher-than-expected results would support elevated inflation. However, these two numbers have stayed high and inflation has come down — as we saw on Friday with the release of the June personal consumption expenditures price index. It will be interesting to see if investors are still as concerned about the impact these numbers may have on inflation. If we can get inflation down while keeping folks employed and making more than they did last year, that's an incredibly bullish set up as we work our way into 2024. Consumption represents nearly 70% of U.S. GDP and employment and wages play into consumers' buying power, even if the magnitude of their role in inflation is being somewhat questioned. 2. Quarterly earnings : Economic releases are important, especially the nonfarm payrolls report. But they are all backward looking. As a result, earnings will continue to garner the bulk of investors' attention as they provide better insight into the state of various industries at a granular level and in real time. We are about halfway though earnings season, with 51% of S & P 500 companies in the books, according to FactSet. Of those that have reported, 80% reported an upside earnings surprise while 64% reported better than expected revenue results. Let's hope the positive trend continues. Caterpillar (CAT) and Stanley Black & Decker (SWK) report Tuesday morning before the bell. For Caterpillar, there is going to be a lot of focus on the backlog and current state of dealer inventories. Caterpillar put up very strong results the last time around, but some investors worried those results were as good as it gets for the machinery maker, weighing on shares. It was a view we disagreed with due to billions of dollars earmarked by the government for infrastructure projects that should prolong the cycle. As for Stanley Black & Decker, we want to see progress on the three problem areas we called out in our initiation alert : too much inventory, bloated costs and a problematic supply chain. We're about one year into the company's restructuring, so we expect to hear about how it's going and what more can be done to unlock even more cost savings. Housing market dynamics should also be in focus as new home construction, repair, and remodeling in the U.S. all require tools like those made by Stanley Black & Decker. Later Tuesday after the bell, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), Starbucks (SBUX) and Pioneer Natural Resources (PXD) report. For AMD, we'd like further confirmation the PC market has bottomed, as well any updates on the timing of its MI300 AI chip production ramp. For Starbucks, it's all about demand in China. Management had good things to say about the region last quarter, but investors remain on edge about the pace of the post-Covid recovery. As for Pioneer Natural Resources, management missed the mark last quarter on realized prices and as a result took a hit on free cash flow performance. We want to see management get it right this time around, especially on free cash flow which is used for buybacks and the variable portion of the company's dividend payout. On Wednesday before the bell, Emerson Electric and Humana (HUM) report results. For Emerson, we really need to see some follow-through on the second quarter's strong performance. The name went into penalty box after reporting a disappointing fiscal first quarter but managed to work it's way out of the hole with a strong fiscal second quarter performance. Let's see if it can stay out. As for Humana, the benefits expense ratio (or medical loss ratio) will be in focus as an uptick in hospital visits and elective procedures have weighed on the name since mid-June. Bausch Health (BHC) is Thursday. Not much to say here, as the results will likely remain overshadowed by the ongoing Xifaxan litigation. As noted last quarter, a resolution in Xifaxan litigation and the spinoff of the remainder of its Bausch + Lomb stake represent the two most important future catalysts for the stock. Any commentary on these fronts would be welcome. Thursday after the close brings us to the main events of the week: Earnings from Apple and Amazon. From Apple, a general update on the business, some commentary on the demand in China and the opportunity in India (which investors see as the next major growth region) and maybe some comments on efforts to diversify the supply chain. Any commentary on feedback since the Vision Pro was unveiled would also be welcome. As for Amazon, we want to hear more about progress being made to rein in costs and grow into excess fulfillment capacity in its retail business. As for cloud unit AWS, we're listening for commentary on customer cloud optimization efforts as well as future capital expenditure expectations as the team works to build out it's artificial intelligence capabilities — a theme that was in focus during the calls hosted by Microsoft (MSFT), Alphabet (GOOGL) and Meta Platforms (META). For those looking to review first quarter performance ahead of these releases, be sure to keep our first-quarter earnings report card handy. Here's the full rundown of all the important domestic data in the week ahead. Monday, July 31 Before the bell: SoFi (SOFI), onsemi (ON), Symbotic (SYM), ImmunoGen (IMGN), Alliance Resource Partners, L.P. (ARLP), AerCap Holdings N.V. (AER), CNA Financial Corp. (CNA), Alexanders (ALX), Apellis Pharmaceuticals (APLS), Community Bank System (CBU), SJW Group (SJW), Hutchison China MediTech Limited (HCM), Camtek Ltd. (CAMT), Silvercrest Asset Management Group (SAMG), Loews Corp (L), Oxford Lane Capital Corp. (OXLC), Banco Santander - Chile (SAN), Silicom Ltd (SILC), SuperCom Ltd. (SPCB) After the bell: Arista Networks (ANET), Avis Budget Group (CAR), Diamondback Energy (FANG), Lattice Semiconductor Corp. (LSCC), Republic Services (RSG), Yum China Holdings (YUMC), Western Digital Corp. (WDC), Monolithic Power Systems (MPWR), Tenet Healthcare Corp. (THC), Vornado Realty Trust (VNO), BioMarin Pharmaceutical (BMRN), PetMed Express (PETS), AvalonBay Communities (AVB), Harmonic (HLIT), SBA Communications Corporation (SBAC), Brixmor Property Group (BRX), J & J Snack Foods Corp. (JJSF), Cushman & Wakefield (CWK), Hologic (HOLX), Leggett & Platt (LEG), Sonoco (SON), Sanmina Corporation (SANM), TFI International (TFII), Trex (TREX), TrueCar (TRUE), Welltower (WELL) Tuesday, August 1 10:00 a.m. ET: ISM Manufacturing PMI 10:00 a.m. ET: JOLTS Job Openings Before the bell: Caterpillar (CAT) , Stanley Black & Decker (SWK) , Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings Ltd. (NCLH), Uber Technologies (UBER), Pfizer (PFE), Enterprise Products Partners L.P. (EPD), Merck & (MRK), JetBlue Airways Corporation (JBLU), Allegro MicroSystems (ALGM), Altria Group (MO), SunPower Corp. (SPWR), SiriusXM Holdings (SIRI), Molson Coors Beverage (TAP), Marriott International (MAR), Toyota Motor Corp. (TM), BP p.l.c (BP), SYSCO Corp. (SYY), Global Payments (GPN), Marathon Petroleum Corp. (MPC), Shutterstock (SSTK), Ares Management LP (ARES), Equitrans Midstream Corporation (ETRN), International Game Technology (IGT), Illinois Tool Works (ITW), Ecolab (ECL), IDEXX Laboratories (IDXX), Rockwell Automation (ROK), Watsco (WSO), Bloomin' Brands (BLMN), Graphic Packaging International Corp. (GPK), Gartner (IT), Zebra Technologies Corp. (ZBRA), IQVIA Holdings (IQV), Oshkosh Corporation (OSK), Leidos Holdings (LDOS), Eaton Corp. (ETN), yte Corp. (Y), Lear Corp. (LEA) After the bell: Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) , Starbucks Corp. (SBUX) , Pioneer Natural Resources (PXD) , Devon Energy Corp. (DVN), Pinterest (PINS), MicroStrategy (MSTR), e.l.f. Beauty (ELF), SolarEdge Technologies (SEDG), Lumen Technologies (LUMN), Virgin Galactic Holdings (SPCE), Caesars Entertainment (CZR), VF Corp. (VFC), Exact Sciences Corp. (EXAS), Paycom Software (PAYC), Vertex Pharmaceuticals (VRTX), Suncor Energy (SU), Camping World Holdings (CWH), Mosaic (MOS), Chesapeake Energy Corp. (CHK), Match Group (MTCH), Boston Properties (BXP), American International Group (AIG), Allstate Corp. (ALL), Aspen Technology (AZPN), Columbia Sportswear (COLM), Electronic Arts (EA), Flowserve Corporation (FLS), Sprouts Farmers Market (SFM), Denny's, Corp. (DENN), Prudential Financial (PRU), Container Store Group (TCS), Ternium S.A. (TX), Vimeo (VMEO), AFLAC (AFL), Cardlytics (CDLX) Wednesday, August 2 8:15 a.m. ET: ADP Employment Survey Before the bell: Emerson Electric (EMR) , Humana (HUM) , Bausch + Lomb Corporation (BLCO), CVS Health (CVS), Generac Holdings (GNRC), Cameco Corp. (CCJ), Perion Network Ltd. (PERI), Kraft Heinz (KHC), Builders FirstSource (BLDR), Carlyle Group L.P. (CG), Scorpio Tankers (STNG), Teva Pharmaceutical Industries, Ltd (TEVA), Phillips 66 (PSX), Dynatrace (DT), Rithm Capital Corp (RITM), Wingstop (WING), Ferrari N.V. (RACE), Spirit AeroSystems Holdings (SPR), Vertiv Holdings Co (VRT), Johnson Controls (JCI), Allegiant Travel (ALGT), BorgWarner (BWA), CDW Corp (CDW), DuPont (DD), Driven Brands Holdings (DRVN), Scotts Miracle-Gro (SMG), Yum! Brands (YUM), Allegheny Technologies orporated (ATI), AmerisourceBergen Corporation (ABC), Ares Commercial Real Estate Corporation (ACRE), Adient plc (ADNT), Editas Medicine (EDIT), Garmin Ltd. (GRMN), WWE (WWE), Bunge Ltd. (BG), Criteo S.A. (CRTO), Seagen (SGEN) After the bell: PayPal (PYPL), Shopify (SHOP), QUALCOMM (QCOM), Occidental Petroleum Corp. (OXY), Unity (U), Robinhood Markets (HOOD), MercadoLibre (MELI), Energy Transfer LP (ET), Etsy (ETSY), Apache Corp. (APA), Albemarle Corp. (ALB), MGM Resorts International (MGM), Marathon Oil Corp. (MRO), Sunrun (RUN), Joby Aviation (JOBY), Confluent (CFLT), DoorDash (DASH), Innovative Industrial Properties (IIPR), HubSpot (HUBS), CF Industries Holdings (CF), Lemonade (LMND), Goodyear Tire & Rubber (GT), Fastly (FSLY), Realty ome Corp. (O), Upwork (UPWK), Metlife (MET), TripAdvisor (TRIP), Pacific Biosciences of California (PACB), EVgo (EVGO), Rush Street Interactive (RSI), Revolve Group LLC (RVLV), Zillow Group (ZG), JFrog Ltd. (FROG), Herbalife Nutrition Ltd. (HLF), Schrödinger (SDGR), Simon Property Group (SPG), Cheesecake Factory (CAKE), Clorox (CLX), McKesson Corp. (MCK), NerdWallet (NRDS), Public Storage (PSA), Qorvo (QRVO), Cerus Corporation (CERS), C.H. Robinson Worldwide (CHRW), Traeger (COOK), GXO Logistics (GXO), RE/MAX Holdings (RMAX), Rayonier (RYN) Thursday, August 3 8:30 a.m. ET: Initial jobless claims 10:00 a.m. ET: Factory Orders Before the bell: Bausch Health Companies (BHC) , Anheuser-Busch InBev (BUD), Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD), Cheniere Energy (LNG), ConocoPhillips (COP), Expedia (EXPE), Moderna (MRNA), Wayfair (W), Hasbro (HAS), CIGNA Corp. (CI), Lantheus Holdings (LNTH), Quanta Services (PWR), Regeneron Pharmaceuticals (REGN), Fiverr International Ltd. (FVRR), Air Products & Chemicals (APD), TopBuild Corp. (BLD), EPAM Systems (EPAM), InterDigital (IDCC), Lightspeed Commerce (LSPD), Aurinia Pharmaceuticals (AUPH), Cummins (CMI), HF Slair Corporation (DINO), Southern (SO), Starwood Property Trust (STWD), Vulcan Materials (VMC), Alnylam Pharmaceuticals (ALNY), Daqo New Energy Corp. (DQ), First Citizens BancShares (FCNCA), Cedar Fair Entertainment (FUN), Kellogg (K), Intellia Therapeutics (NTLA), Oaktree Specialty Lending Corporation (OCSL), Privia Health Group (PRVA), Becton, Dickinson & (BDX), Chimera Investment Corp (CIM), Canadian Natural Resources Ltd (CNQ), Shift4 Payments (FOUR), Hyatt Hotels Corp (H), Lion Electric (LEV), Portillos (PTLO), Shake Shack (SHAK), Deluxe Corp. (DLX), Iron Mountain (IRM), Murphy Oil Corp. (MUR), PBF Energy (PBF), Papa John's International (PZZA), Targa Resources Corp. (TRGP), Wix.com Ltd. (WIX), Apollo Global Management, LLC (APO), Butterfly Network (BFLY), Planet Fitness (PLNT), Sempra Energy (SRE), Aptiv PLC (APTV), Brookfield Infrastructure Partners L.P (BIP), Canada Goose Holdings (GOOS), Pitney Bowes (PBI), Parker-Hannifin Corporation (PH), Trimble (TRMB), WESCO International (WCC), WestRock (WRK), Arrow Electronics (ARW), Cars.com (CARS), Constellation Energy Group (CEG), Magellan Midstream Partners (MMP) After the bell: Amazon.com (AMZN) , Apple (AAPL) , Coinbase Global (COIN), Block (SQ), Airbnb (ABNB), DraftKings (DKNG), Cloudflare (NET), Fortinet (FTNT), Petroleo Brasileiro SA Petrobras (PBR), Amgen (AMGN), ContextLogic (WISH), Gilead Sciences (GILD), Opendoor Technologies (OPEN), Booking Holdings (BKNG), Atlassian Corporation Plc (TEAM), WW International (WW), Redfin Corporation (RDFN), Motorola Solutions (MSI), Yelp (YELP), Dropbox (DBX), Stem (STEM), Corteva (CTVA), Monster Beverage Corporation (MNST), Consolidated Edison (ED), Rocket Companies (RKT), Apple Hospitality REIT (APLE), Cirrus Logic (CRUS), EOG Resources (EOG), FIGS (FIGS), Funko (FNKO), Universal Display Corporation (OLED), Chesapeake Utilities Corp. (CPK), Opko Health (OPK), Sprout Social (SPT), Udemy (UDMY), CarGurus (CARG), DaVita (DVA), GoDaddy (GDDY), Kratos Defense & Security Solutions (KTOS), Progyny (PGNY), Post Holdings (POST), Tandem Diabetes Care (TNDM), Ziff Davis (ZD), Friday, August 4 8:30 a.m. Nonfarm payrolls Before the bell: fuboTV (FUBO), Nikola Corporation (NKLA), Fisker (FSR), Enbridge (ENB), Magna International (MGA), Dominion Energy (D), ACM Research (ACMR), Cinemark (CNK), Frontier Communications Parent (FYBR), Brookfield Renewable Partners (BEP), inTEST Corporation (INTT), Plains All American Pipeline, L.P. (PAA), TELUS International (TIXT), XPO Logistics (XPO), Fluor Corp. (FLR), Gray Television (GTN), Cboe Global Markets (CBOE), LyondellBasell Industries (LYB), Twist Bioscience Corporation (TWST), Global Partners LP (GLP) (See here for a full list of the stocks in Jim Cramer's Charitable Trust.) As a subscriber to the CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer, you will receive a trade alert before Jim makes a trade. Jim waits 45 minutes after sending a trade alert before buying or selling a stock in his charitable trust's portfolio. If Jim has talked about a stock on CNBC TV, he waits 72 hours after issuing the trade alert before executing the trade. THE ABOVE INVESTING CLUB INFORMATION IS SUBJECT TO OUR TERMS AND CONDITIONS AND PRIVACY POLICY , TOGETHER WITH OUR DISCLAIMER . NO FIDUCIARY OBLIGATION OR DUTY EXISTS, OR IS CREATED, BY VIRTUE OF YOUR RECEIPT OF ANY INFORMATION PROVIDED IN CONNECTION WITH THE INVESTING CLUB. NO SPECIFIC OUTCOME OR PROFIT IS GUARANTEED. CEO of Apple Tim Cook arrives at the Sun Valley Lodge for the Allen & Company Sun Valley Conference in Sun Valley, Idaho, July 11, 2023. Kevin Dietsch | Getty Images

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/08/03/stocks-making-the-biggest-moves-premarket-qualcomm-moderna-paypal-and-more.html

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Qorvo

Stocks making the biggest moves premarket: Qualcomm, Moderna, PayPal and more

Check out the companies making headlines before the market opens. Qualcomm — The chipmaker slipped 8.5% after it posted $1.87 in adjusted earnings per share on $8.44 billion in revenue for the second quarter, while analysts polled by Refinitiv respectively anticipated $1.81 and $8.5 billion. Qualcomm also gave soft guidance and noted weak smartphone chip sales. Deutsche Bank downgraded shares to hold from buy following the report, while JPMorgan and UBS maintained their respective overweight and neutral ratings. Moderna — Shares added 1.6% after the biotech company released its second-quarter results. Despite posting a quarterly loss and drop in revenue, Moderna raised its full-year outlook for its Covid vaccine, its only marketable product. Southwest Airlines — Shares of Southwest slid more than 3% after Jefferies downgraded the airline stock to underperform from hold. Jefferies said low-cost airlines appear to be struggling relative to premium peers, citing a key revenue margin for Southwest that shrunk during the second quarter. Albemarle — The energy stock added 5.4% following a mixed second-quarter report. Albemarle notably beat Wall Street expectations for earnings, reporting $7.33 per share excluding items against a consensus estimate of $4.44 compiled by Refinitiv. But revenue fell short at $2.37 billion on a $2.43 billion forecast. PayPal — Shares declined more than 8% after the company posted earnings that were in line with analysts' predictions Wednesday post-market. The payments company reported adjusted earnings of $1.16 per share, the same estimated by analysts polled by Refinitiv. Revenue came in higher than anticipated, with PayPal posting $7.29 billion, versus analysts' estimates of $7.27 billion. DoorDash — Shares jumped 3.5% after the company's second-quarter results came above analyst estimates. The company reported its best-ever quarter for revenue and total orders. Management also cited improvements in expense management. Roku — The streaming platform's stock shed 2% following a downgrade from Citi to neutral from buy. Citi said it would be moving to the sidelines, citing limited upside for shares. Clorox — The household goods manufacturer's shares jumped nearly 7% after posting an earnings and revenue beat in the second quarter. Clorox reported $1.67 in earnings per share on $2.02 billion in revenue. Analysts had estimated $1.18 in earnings per share on revenue of $1.88 billion, according to Refinitiv. The company also offered a strong full-year outlook. Etsy — Shares tumbled 9% after the company released its quarterly earnings report Wednesday after the bell. Although its earnings and revenue topped analysts' expectations, the company's guidance for the third quarter was lighter than expected. Qorvo — The stock rallied 6.8% after the company beat analysts' expectations on top and bottom lines in the second quarter. Management said it expects September quarterly revenue to increase sequentially more than 50%, "driven primarily by content gains" from Apple. Traeger — Shares jumped more than 24% following Traeger's second-quarter earnings announcement Wednesday post-market. The company posted 4 cents in earnings per share on $171.5 million in revenue. Analysts polled by FactSet had estimated a loss of 2 cents per share and $154.9 million in revenue. The company also raised its full-year revenue and earnings guidance. Unity Software — The software company surged about 5% after Unity exceeded analysts' estimates for revenue in the second quarter. The company posted $533 million in revenue, while analysts polled by Refinitiv estimated $518 million. DXC Technology — DXC Technology tumbled 24% after reporting earnings and revenue that missed estimates. The information technology firm reported adjusted earnings of 63 cents per share on revenue of $3.45 billion. Analysts polled by FactSet expected earnings of 82 cents per share on revenue of $3.56 billion. Separately, BMO Capital Markets downgraded the company to market perform from outperform following the results. — CNBC's Alex Harring, Sarah Min and Jesse Pound contributed reporting.

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/03/apples-suppliers-are-getting-crushed-by-its-lowered-revenue-guidance.html

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Qorvo

Apple's suppliers are getting crushed by its lowered revenue guidance

Apple's downgraded revenue guidance dragged its stock down 10 percent Thursday, and brought its suppliers and partners down with it. Guidance cuts from some of Apple's suppliers gave investors the first whiff of bad news regarding the company's iPhone sales. Apple has been sinking over the past quarter on fears of slowing iPhone sales. Turns out, those fears were justified, as investors learned in Apple's disclosure Wednesday that it was cutting revenue forecasts to $84 billion from its original projection of $89 billion to $93 billion due in part to weaker upgrades to the new iPhone models. Apple suppliers on Thursday sank almost as much as Apple itself. Qorvo , a radio frequency chip supplier for Apple, fell 9.1 percent Thursday, after it had already cut its own guidance in November. At the time, Qorvo said the reduction was due to "recent demand changes for flagship smartphones," Reuters reported. Lumentum , the first Apple supplier to cut its guidance and warn investors of slow sales, fell 8.4 percent Thursday. The company supplies the technology behind Face ID, the facial recognition system installed on the newer iPhone models. Semiconductor company Skyworks Solutions had also warned investors of lower revenue during its Septmeber-quarter earnings call, causing Citigroup to downgrade it shortly after due to speculation about the weak iPhone sales. On Thursday, Skyworks fell 10.7 percent. Corning , which makes the glass for iPhone screens, dropped 6.2 percent Thursday. Cirrus Logic, which supplies audio technology to Apple, hit its 52-week low after falling 8.5 percent. Chip suppliers for iPhones also sank, with Broadcom down 8.9 percent, Micron Technology down 5.3 percent and Intel down 5.5 percent. 3M , which makes touch sensor films for Apple screens, was down 3.8 percent. Qualcomm , which has been in an ongoing legal battle with Apple, was also down 3 percent. Correction: Apple's stock fell more than 8 percent Thursday. An earlier version misstated the day. Subscribe to CNBC on YouTube. Watch: CNBC's full interview with Apple CEO Tim Cook

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/08/stocks-making-the-biggest-moves-midday-qorvo-inogen-hasbro--more.html

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Qorvo

Stocks making the biggest moves midday: Goodyear Tire, Skechers, Mattel & more

A mechanic stacks used tires outside the service bay of a Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. auto garage in Shelbyville, Kentucky. Check out the companies making headlines midday Friday: Skechers — The shoemaker's stock jumped 18 percent after the company gave strong profit guidance for the quarter ahead. Skechers reported 2018 was "a year of record sales," with the fourth quarter breaking above $1 billion in sales for the first time. Goodyear Tire — Shares of the tire manufacturer fell nearly 10 percent and hit a new 52-week low Friday after missing Wall Street's expectations for the fourth quarter. The company cited currency headwinds and lower volume for the miss. Mattel — Shares of the toy company rose more than 19 percent on Friday following fourth quarter earnings that beat analyst estimates. The toy maker posted a profit of 4 cents per share, surprising analysts who expected a 16-cent loss. Mattel's revenue also successfully beat analysts expectations by $120 million. Inogen — Inogen's stock slid nearly 7 percent after short-seller Muddy Waters Research said it has taken a short position in the maker of oxygen therapy. "We believe management has created egregiously false narrative regarding their total addressable market and growth," said the short seller in a tweet. Qorvo — Shares of the semiconductor company fell more than 4 percent Friday after it guided fourth-quarter profit of $1.05, well below consensus estimates of $1.33. "Qorvo's March quarterly guidance reflects weakness in the broader smartphone market, partially offset by content gains with the leading Korea-based smartphone manufacturer and double-digit, year-over-year growth in IDP," Chief Financial Officer Mark Murphy said Thursday. Hasbro — The toy company's fourth-quarter profit fell short estimates by a wide margin Friday morning. Investors were partially pacified after the company outlined a slate of new toys for 2019. Shares of the toy maker were down 4.3 percent Friday after falling as much as 10 percent before the opening bell. Electronic Arts — The video game publisher jumped more than 11 percent in mid-day trading Friday, a sharp rebound after disappointing earnings earlier in the week. Electronic Arts said its newly released game "Apex Legends" topped 10 million players in less than a week. Motorola Solutions — Shares of the telecommunications company jumped 12 percent on Friday after reporting quarterly earnings that Wall Street's expectations for the fourth consecutive quarter. Motorola's revenue also surpassed analyst expectations. Coty — Shares of the beauty company shot up 28 percent after Coty beat second-quarter earnings expectations by 2 cents a share. Coty's rally comes after the stock has lost more than 55 percent in the last 12 months as the cosmetics company tries to turn around declining revenue and sales. — CNBC's Kate Rooney, Michael Sheetz, Matt Lavietes and Nadine El-Bawab contributed to this reports.

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/04/11/the-fed-will-cut-rates-before-the-ecb-former-boe-deanne-julius-said.html

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Quanta Services

Fed likely to cut rates before ECB blinks, former BOE member says

The U.S. Federal Reserve is likely to cut interest rates before the European Central Bank does, a former member of the Bank of England said, defying current market expectations. "I suspect that the Fed will be the first to really put a cut in," DeAnne Julius, a founding member of the Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England, told CNBC on Tuesday. Investors are closely monitoring central bank moves on the back of a considerable reduction in inflation across major economies. The expectation of reduced rates has boosted equity markets since late 2023. So far, Switzerland was the first major economy to cut interest rates back in late March. Market players are currently pricing in a 92.8% chance that the ECB will cut rates in June from the historically high level of 4%, according to LSEG data. The same database shows only a 53.5% chance of a cut by the Federal Reserve at their June meeting. Julius explained her forecast was based on the Fed's dual mandate, which looks at both inflation and employment in the U.S. economy. The latest job figures pointed to a buoyant U.S. labor market, and inflation has also dropped though it is still above the Fed's 2% target. "I think things move a little faster in the U.S., quite frankly. The labour market adjusts more quickly," she said. Strong economic data out of the United States has led market players to reduce their expectations for rate cuts from the Federal Reserve in 2024. Whereas at the start of the year, they were expecting about six rate cuts to take place in 2024, they are now only forecasting about three such reductions. "The labor market adjusts more quickly. I don't think the Fed will move very much, but I suspect that there could well be a little move there, somewhere, towards the second half of the year," Julius added. "And that would create a little space and maybe a little pressure even on the Bank of England ... whose economy is, of course, tied to the U.S. economy, and the European economy." Her comments come just ahead of a European Central Bank meeting due on Thursday. Though the central bank is unlikely to change rates at this gathering, markets are looking for some clues on whether the institution led by Christine Lagarde will be in a position to cut borrowing costs in June. "The ECB, [it] takes them a while to reach consensus. Because the situation is, inflation is far too high in some of the countries still, and below their 2% target in others. So, you know, theirs is not really an economic analysis, it's partly a political and an internal weighting of the different economies and the different politics in the different economies," Julius said. "So Christine Lagarde has a real job on her hands. And I think she does a good job. But that does mean that she's got to carefully move towards something that might be a consensus, and I don't think they're near a consensus yet for a rate cut." So far, Lagarde has stressed that policymakers will consider lowering interest rates at the June meeting, but she has signaled an uncertain path beyond that point. Notably, the June gathering will be the first one for which data from spring wage negotiations will be available.

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/02/wall-streets-favorite-infrastructure-stocks-ahead-of-bill-passage.html

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Wall Street likes these infrastructure stocks a lot as Washington gets set to give sector a boost

Lawmakers in Washington are getting closer to passing a sweeping infrastructure package, which could give a boost to construction and other related stocks. Here are some of Wall Street's favorite plays. The Senate on Sunday finalized the text of an infrastructure package that would pour $550 billion in new spending over five years into projects such as roads, bridges, public transport, broadband, rail, water and airports. The iShares U.S. infrastructure ETF , a broader way to play the trend, edged higher on Monday amid the news. CNBC Pro looked at the members of the iShares U.S. infrastructure ETF and identified the shares with at least 20% upside implied by the stock's average 12-month price target. Out of that pool, we identified the names that at least 70% of analysts say to buy, with a minimum of four analysts covering the stock. Take a look at the names in our screen, which used data from FactSet. (Source: FactSet. As of Aug. 2, 2021, premarket.) JPMorgan named Steel Dynamics a top pick in the North American steel sector in June. Analysts on average think the stock can run 24.1% higher in the next 12 months. "We believe STLD is one of the highest quality mini-mill steel producers in the U.S., and the timing of the company's Texas steel mill, which has among the most advanced capabilities in the world for an [electric arc furnace], could not be more ideal," JPMorgan's Michael Glick said. Credit Suisse called Quanta Services a top construction and energy pick. Out of the 15 Wall Street analysts covering the stock, 70.6% say to buy the stock. "As we sit today, the [Quanta] portfolio is very well-positioned to benefit from higher spend in new verticals of infrastructure like utility grid modernization, power grid hardening, renewables integration, electrification/electric vehicles, and telecom/5G," Credit Suisse's Jamie Cook said in a June note. RBC Capital Markets initiated coverage of Sunnova Energy in July with an outperform rating. The stock is expected to rally 41.7% in the next 12 months, according to Wall Street's average price target. "NOVA is a leader in the growing US residential rooftop solar market with ~4-5% share based on our estimates, but is capturing a larger portion of the market's growth," RBC Capital Elvira Scotto said. Other names on CNBC PRO's screen include Builders FirstSource , Oshkosh and Avient . —CNBC's Michael Bloom contributed reporting. Senator Susan Collins, a Republican from Maine, center, speaks during a news conference in the Dirksen Senate Office Building in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Wednesday, July 28, 2021. Stefani Reynolds | Bloomberg | Getty Images

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/08/18/stocks-like-honeywell-emerson-are-backdoor-winners-of-the-climate-bill.html

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Stocks including Honeywell and Emerson are under-the-radar beneficiaries of the climate bill

President Joe Biden just signed into law the largest climate funding package in U.S. history, creating opportunity for companies in industries far beyond just solar and wind generation. Citigroup said Wednesday that industrial, engineering and construction companies could also see gains ahead. "The broader goals to bolster energy security, decarbonize the economy, lower energy costs, and push domestic manufacturing provide, in our view, long-term growth opportunities for our companies and given US' commitment toward a net-zero economy by 2050, we see these/future investments supporting longer term visibility," the bank wrote in a report to clients. Two companies in particular that Citi likes are Quanta Services and MasTec . Both work in power transmission and distribution, which are key to building out renewable energy infrastructure. The Inflation Reduction Act earmarks grants and loan programs for states and electric utilities that speed the transition to renewables. That requires infrastructure that can carry the power from the production site to the end user. The package also includes funding to increase energy efficiency and decarbonize buildings and homes. Citi said this could lead to upside for HVAC companies including Trane Technologies , Johnson Controls and Carrier Global . Johnson Controls previously said there's a $240 billion market opportunity over the next decade supporting net-zero goals. Emerson and Honeywell , meanwhile, have exposure to hydrogen energy, which is also a beneficiary of the Inflation Reduction Act. "We think IRA of 2022 could further boost longer term spending as well as the sentiment toward clean energy, and we see continued multi-decade investment from U.S. states, companies, as well as other countries," analysts led by Andrew Kaplowitz said. In total, the IRA includes $369 billion in energy and climate-related initiatives. The package, which Biden signed Tuesday, came after months of gridlock in Washington. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., announced a surprise deal at the end of July. The package then swiftly passed the House and Senate. While it doesn't include as much for climate as was initially outlined in the Build Back Better plan, it's still the most ambitious climate-spending package in U.S. history. The bill aims to encourage renewable energy adoption, while also incentivizing domestic supply chains. "We do think investors' confidence level in higher projected energy transition/clean energy spend can be seen in our companies' valuations, and more importantly, we think the higher multiples are sustainable/justified based on the increased likelihood that clean energy focused spend will rise significantly over the next several years with IRA of 2022 as a catalyst," Citi said. - CNBC's Michael Bloom contributed reporting.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/10/startups-join-google-spacex-to-bring-new-technologies-to-space.html

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Start-ups join Google, SpaceX and OneWeb to bring new technologies to space

Space X CEO Elon Musk Photo by Kevork Djansezian For a long time, American space exploration was a closed circle: There was just one customer, the U.S. government (NASA) and a handful of giant defense contractors. Then in 2008 Elon Musk's SpaceX put the first privately financed rocket into orbit, Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin promised private flights, and space was suddenly a lively market with companies vying to put satellites and humans into orbit. A decade later hundreds of start-ups have flocked to the space sector, bringing sophisticated technologies that include artificial intelligence, quantum computing, phased array radar, space-based solar power, "tiny" satellites and services that could not be imagined just a few years ago. Space Angels, an early-stage investor that also tracks investments in the sector, reported that venture capitalists invested $5 billion into space technologies in the first three quarters of 2019, putting the year on track to be the biggest year yet, with Blue Origin pulling in $1.4 billion from Bezos. Since 2009, said Chad Anderson, CEO of Space Angels, investors have poured nearly $24 billion into 509 companies. Anderson said that SpaceX triggered the transformation not just by offering competition to NASA but publishing its prices for a launch. Before that revelation, space was really an opaque market, making it difficult for potential competitors to price their products. "It's been a really big decade for commercial space," said Anderson. The largest amount of venture capital still goes into the most fundamental task: putting satellites into orbit. Anderson says 89 companies have received funding for so-called small-lift launch vehicles. These are companies promising to put payloads of up to 2,000 kilos (4,400 lbs) into low Earth orbit. Their focus is a new generation of small satellites such as those used by OneWeb and SpaceX's StarLink, which promise broadband internet access in even the most remote parts of the world by deploying "constellations" of hundreds or even thousands of tiny satellites. watch now Satellites have become so mainstream you can now buy a standard 4-in. by 4-in. "cubesat" kit online. All this activity could mean 20,000 to 40,000 satellites joining the 1,000 now in orbit over the next few years. "It's quickly becoming congested," Anderson said of the market for small-lift launch. Of the venture-backed rocket companies, SpaceX and Rocket Lab, with launch sites in New Zealand and Virginia, are making regular launches, although Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic is scheduled to begin flying its manned shuttle this year. The sky is also getting crowded. Aside from the thousands of new satellites scheduled for launch, there is already a lot of clutter in space — as many as 250,000 pieces of junk and debris circle the Earth. Up to now the U.S. Air Force has taken the lead role in tracking debris and warning satellite operators about possible collisions. But the military's tracking radar, with some components dating back to the cold war, can only detect pieces 10 cm (4 in.) across or larger. LeoLabs, a start-up based in Menlo Park, California, has developed an advanced radar system that can detect objects in orbit as small as 2 cm (less than an inch) long. LeoLabs' Kiwi Space Radar was set up in Central Otago, New Zealand, in 2019. It is the first in the world to track space debris smaller than 10 cm. LeoLabs A tiny object traveling at several thousand miles an hour can cause severe damage to a satellite. LeoLabs enables customers to track their small satellites more easily and to safely move them to a new position. "That will take a lot of the collision risks off the table," says founder and CEO Dan Ceperley. His company has built phased array radars that steer the radar beam electronically — faster than a traditional dish antenna — in three locations: Alaska, Texas and New Zealand. To date, LeoLabs has raised $17 million from venture funds, including Marc Bell Capital Partners, Seraphim Capital, Airbus Ventures, WERU Investment and Space Angels. Many of the 1,000 satellites now in orbit are engaged in observing Earth. They monitor the weather, humidity and temperature, among dozens of other phenomena, and capture millions of images. SkyWatch, based in Waterloo, Ontario, recently closed a $10 million round of funding led by San Francisco's Bullpen Capital to develop its service to make satellite data easily available to companies. SkyWatch would handle licensing and payment for data through subscription fees, and companies could use its software to build their own apps for tasks such as tracking crops or assessing damage from natural disasters. SkyWatch CEO James Slifierz compares his timing to the aftermath of the creation of the global positioning system infrastructure. Once GPS was in place, civilian applications followed. The growing flow of data from satellites has raised concerns about data security. SpeQtral, based in Singapore, plans to build encryption keys based on the laws of quantum physics to protect space-to-Earth communications. "The security of any communications is essential," says Chune Yang Lum, CEO of SpeQtral, which has raised a $1.9 million seed round led by Space Capital, the venture arm of Space Angels. Quantum encryption has been touted as practically unbreakable. An illustration of the SPS-ALPHA (Solar Power Satellite by means of Arbitrarily Large Phased Array) transmitting energy to Australia. This approach, in concept phase, includes a series of enormous platforms positioned in space in high Earth orbit to continuously collect and convert solar energy into electricity. SPS-ALPHA concept and illustration, courtesy John C. Mankins

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/03/23/citis-top-stocks-to-navigate-macro-headwinds.html

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Investors face a slew of headwinds, Citi says. Here are its top stocks to play it — including one it says has upside of nearly 130%

Strategists at Citi have named their top stock picks to navigate what they call a "perfect storm of headwinds" for investors. Market participants have been buffeted by a seemingly never-ending stream of headwinds since the start of the year, including the highly infectious omicron Covid-19 variant, the specter of interest rate hikes and the Russia-Ukraine war, Citi's strategists said in a research note on Mar. 18. Despite the challenging environment, Scott Chronert, Citi's managing director and U.S. equity strategist, said steady earnings growth expectations are providing the main tailwind for stocks. He noted that inflation expectations and its spillover effects on supply chains have "remained stubborn" due to the recent spike in commodity prices but should improve as the year unfolds. In addition, the U.S. Federal Reserve's expected rate hikes this year should result in "decelerating but sustainable" GDP growth into 2023, he added. Against this backdrop, Citi's preferred sectors are banks, capital goods, diversified financials, health-care equipment and services, materials and retail. Citi's top pick within the large-cap space is General Motors . The bank has a price target of $100 on the stock, which closed at $43.60 on Mar. 21, representing a potential upside of 129.4%. Other stocks with more than 30% upside include Walt Disney , Advanced Auto Parts , Raymond James , Quanta Services , Enphase Energy and Global Payments . Within the small-and-mid caps space, Citi's preferred pick is OneMain Holdings . The bank's price target of $120 implies a potential upside of 108% to the stock's closing price of $57.70 on Mar. 21. The bank's list also includes several stocks with potential upside of more than 50%. They include TripAdvisor , LPL Financial , data centers equipment manufacturer Vertiv Holdings , Logitech and plastic products manufacturer Berry Global . A Citibank branch in the central business district of Singapore on Feb. 12, 2018. Ore Huiying | Bloomberg | Getty Images

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/07/quantum-dawn-v-sifma-cyber-doomsday-exercise-adds-global-scope.html

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The financial industry just finished its annual 'doomsday' cybersecurity exercise — here's what they imagined would happen

Traders work at the New York Stock Exchange on October 2, 2019. Johannes Eisele | AFP | Getty Images This week, the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, or SIFMA, held the fifth in a series of exercises meant to simulate a catastrophic cybersecurity event in the banking sector, known as "Quantum Dawn." The exercise offers an important yearly insight into what the financial services industry sees as its biggest risks and how it envisions a major cyber disaster unfolding. This year was the first Quantum Dawn exercise that incorporated participants from outside the U.S., including Europe and Asia. The scenario was a targeted ransomware attack with impacts on major banks across the globe, starting with the U.S. and moving across Asia and the U.K. watch now Ransomware has caused significant issues to major corporations, notably with two major attacks in 2017 known as WannaCry and NotPetya. The fictional scenario outlined by SIFMA highlights what would happen if such an incident targeted the biggest financial institutions, taking critical parts of the global financial system offline. A simulated global malware attack Around 800 participants from large banks, regulators and other financial firms from 12 countries joined the simulated cyberattack by conference call starting at 7 a.m. Thursday, said Thomas Price, a managing director at SIFMA. Other organizations established to share cyberthreat information also participated, including SIFMA's counterparts in Asia and Europe. The fictional event centered around a big unnamed U.S. company — one of the "systemically important financial institutions" designated as "too big to fail" by regulators. After the close of the stock market, the institution was attacked by malicious ransomware and knocked offline, Price said. The initial scenario was followed by a number of questions and discussion of rules around public disclosure of the incident and how the wider financial industry would coordinate and share information, he said. While the U.S. scrambled to deal with the first big outage, the same disruptive malware picked off another huge institution, in Asia, also taking it offline. watch now Then a third institution, in the U.K., was hit. At this point, Price said, "This scenario is impacting major institutions across the globe. Markets are highly volatile. So how do we respond to it?" Price said representatives from the Bank of England and the U.K.'s Treasury participated in describing their role in the escalating, global attack. The scenario ended with the ransomware migrating back to the U.S., where it impacted a financial market utility — one of the organizations responsible for facilitating payment and settlement activity in the U.S. Here, the participants described how mitigation efforts could help keep funds flowing and accounts settling. Despite the imagined technical nature of a rapidly accelerating financial cyberattack, Price said participants were primarily focused on communications. This included how those companies communicate internally to their own executives and employees and externally to their clients, he said. SIFMA will work with Protiviti, a risk and compliance consulting firm, to see how the participating organizations performed. They expect to publish a public report with observations and recommendations on closing any gaps discovered during the event. Follow @CNBCtech on Twitter for the latest tech industry news.

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/23/d-wave-is-raising-money-to-bring-quantum-computing-to-public-cloud.html

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Quantum computing is finally here, and a Canadian company has a plan to bring it to the masses

Vern Brownell, CEO of D-Wave Heidi Gutman | CNBC Vern Brownell spent the past eight years preaching quantum computing to a world that wasn't ready for it. As CEO of D-Wave Systems, Brownell has been overseeing the development of a type of superfast processor that to date has largely been limited to use in research labs. His Vancouver-based company first raised venture funding back in 2004, five years before he joined. But this week Brownell is in San Francisco and has plenty of eager listeners on his agenda. Fresh off D-Wave's $50 million in funding from Canada's PSP Investments, Brownell said he's meeting with banks and big investors about raising hundreds of millions of dollars later this year as the company prepares to move into the public cloud. "We intend to do a very large offering to take advantage of the position we're in," Brownell said, in an interview on Thursday. He said the financing — an alternative to an IPO — will be led by an investment bank and potentially include sovereign wealth funds and large private equity firms. Brownell has also talked with SoftBank's massive Vision Fund, calling it the type of investor that he would like to see participate. Existing investors include In-Q-Tel, the venture group that invests on behalf of the CIA, and Jeff Bezos' venture firm. Quantum computing's promise Quantum computing differs from classical computing, which is defined by binary code — 1s and 0s. With quantum computing, there are units called qubits that aren't limited to that binary state and have the ability to store dramatically more information. In 2015, Google said that its project with NASA using a D-Wave machine performed certain tasks 100 million times faster than conventional processors. Critical to D-Wave's future is getting this technology into the hands of everyday developers. Until now, researchers at Google , NASA, Lockheed Martin and the Los Alamos National Laboratory have used D-Wave machines, which cost millions of dollars, in complex experiments to see if quantum computing can solve problems in drug discovery, cybersecurity and space exploration. By mid-year, D-Wave's technology will be available in the public cloud for the first time through one of the big three vendors — Amazon , Microsoft or Google — Brownell told CNBC. He's not yet able to announce which one will host the service, but said the goal is to eventually be available on multiple platforms. "I want to be an arms merchant for the cloud providers," Brownell said. "Once one of them has this capability, all of them will want to have it." The D-Wave 2000Q Quantum Computer D-Wave The world clearly needs more powerful processors, as demand explodes for artificial intelligence workloads that require faster and more efficient chips than what's currently available from Nvidia and AMD . But there's a healthy amount of debate among researchers and scientists about whether quantum computers are useful for practical real-world applications. D-Wave's thumbnail-sized processors are deployed in massive refrigerators that have 18 layers of shielding to protect the quantum state. Last year the company started selling the $15 million 2000Q, which has 2,000 qubits, twice as many as the prior version. By getting into the public cloud, D-Wave can start letting developers experiment with its technology in much more cost-effective ways. Brownell said they'll even "be able to use small bits of quantum computing for free." 'From pure science towards engineering'

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/10/jim-cramer-100-year-old-dow-stock-honeywell-is-big-bet-on-future.html

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Jim Cramer: Why 100 year-old Dow stock Honeywell is a big bet on the future

In this article HON Follow your favorite stocks CREATE FREE ACCOUNT watch now Most companies kicked off the Dow Jones Industrial Average don't make it back on. But Honeywell , which was on the Dow from 1925 to 2008, was added back in August. "I was literally looking at my phone, and I had one of these Wall Street Journal tags come across that basically said, 'Honeywell and Salesforce and Amgen rejoined the Dow,'" Honeywell CEO Darius Adamczyk told CNBC's Jim Cramer at the CNBC Evolve Summit on Tuesday. That event came just a short time before Honeywell celebrated its 100-year anniversary. Getting to 100, and getting back on the Dow, speaks to how Honeywell has remained relevant. Adamczyk says technology, primarily software, has been key for Honeywell. As the company known for its industrial sector history expands into more business lines, the CEO said there is one common thread that reinforces the software story. Whether it is buildings' systems, aerospace, industrials, or warehouse automation, Honeywell is "predominantly a controls company," Adamczyk said. "Whether it's controlling how a building operates, controlling how an aircraft flies, controlling the warehouse, that is the common thread," he said. "When you control things, you have to be connected to everything, and you have to collect the data that's exhibited in all the devices, all the sensors throughout the systems." Zoom In Icon Arrows pointing outwards Honeywell, which has faced difficult business conditions for many of its operating units during the pandemic, has bounced back and reached its highest stock price in five years. Jim Cramer says it's still not "classically expensive." Honeywell is not just control the data flow, but using it to generate value, such as in energy savings. "Whether it's our offerings in connected buildings, connected aircraft, connected warehouse, we're just leveraging what we've been doing in a very different way. I know we're kind of viewed as this industrial company ... those are our roots, but we're also a controls company and a technology company." The Honeywell-connected enterprise business, which is run by Que Dallara, is a software as a service company. And it is at the forefront of bleeding edge technology, such as quantum computing, which seeks to supplant the era of the microchip as the limit on available computing power. "We're gaining customers literally by the day," Adamczyk said of quantum computing. "I mean, you know, I promised our investors that in 2020 this will become real and we'll start generating revenue and we are, and it's going to accelerate next year." Software is big part of Honeywell's future That is a microcosm of where the company is going long term as it moves beyond its roots, which the CEO described as "a hybrid that's going to have some hardware presence, but the software is going to become a much more prominent part of who we are and how we move forward." As the shipping business booms as a result of the coronavirus, Honeywell is also seeing big growth from its automated warehouse segment. "The business is booming right now, and it's not a surprise. I mean, obviously the Covid era really drove to home delivery, warehouse automation," Adamczyk said. "We're trying to move it even more towards the use of robotics, use of what we call a 'dark warehouse,' which is minimizing labor in a warehouse, and we're making great progress and winning a lot of jobs." The Honeywell CEO said it's been "a great bookings year" for Intelligrated — Intelligrated is the material handling automation and software engineering company. "I think it's only the beginning. Sure, Covid accelerated that trend, but it's something that's going to continue." We're trying to stay relevant to what it's going to need for the next decade. Darius Adamczyk Honeywell CEO

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/01/26/quantum-computer-worth-15-million-sold-to-tackle-cybersecurity.html

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Quantum computer worth $15 million sold to tackle cybersecurity

D-Wave claims that using the quantum computer will enable the cyber security firm to perform real-time security level rating, device-to-device authentication and identify, detect and prevent threats. D-Wave, the developers of the quantum computer, announced the sale to Temporal Defense Systems , earlier this week. Temporal Defense Systems are the first customers for the D-Wave 2000Q Quantum Computer. Previous D-Wave customers include Lockheed Martin, Google and NASA. A state-of-the-art computer system using quantum mechanics and valued at $15 million dollars has been sold to a cyber-security firm. Dr Michael Green, of AI media platform Blackwood Seven, explained the difference between a quantum and a normal computer. A standard computer uses binary data: every bit of data is either a one or a zero. Multiple bits are used to store memory, but each bit can only be in one state (position one or position zero) at any time. "A quantum computer works totally differently, because you replace the bit with something called a qubit," Green told CNBC during a phone interview last year. "The good thing about it is it can be in both states at the same time, so that means that if add, for example, five bits… that means that computer can be in 32 states at the same time. If you have five bits in a normal computer, it can still only be in one state at a time." This means a quantum computer could perform 32 calculations at the same time as a normal computer performs one. That may not sound impressive, but the more bits that are added, the more calculations that can be done at once. The D-Wave 2000Q Quantum Computer is claimed to have 2,000 qubits. D-Wave claims it was able to solve challenging problems 1,000 to 10,000 times faster than algorithms running on a server. "We are the only company selling quantum computers, and our growing ecosystem of users and developers gives us the benefit of their practical experience as we develop products to solve real-world problems," said Vern Brownell, D-Wave's chief executive, said in a press release. "While other organizations have prototypes with just a few qubits in their labs, D-Wave is delivering the systems, software, training, and services needed to build an industry." Applying quantum computing to cyber security will be revolutionary, according to James Burrell, Temporal Defense Systems' chief technology officer. "Combining the unique computational capabilities of a quantum computer with the most advanced cyber security technologies will deliver the highest level of security, focused on both prevention and attribution of cyber attacks," he said in a press release. Follow CNBC International on Twitter and Facebook.

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/11/09/how-arm-gained-chip-dominance-with-apple-nvidia-amazon-and-qualcomm.html

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How Arm is gaining chip dominance with its architecture in Apple, Nvidia, AMD, Amazon, Qualcomm and more

In this article WE Follow your favorite stocks CREATE FREE ACCOUNT From smartphones to AI Arm was founded in 1990 by 12 chip designers working out of a turkey barn in Cambridge. It was originally a joint venture between Apple, Acorn Computers, and VLSI, which is now part of NXP. Arm's big break came in 1993, when Apple launched its early handheld Newton device on the Arm610 processor. Haas said this gets at the "hallmarks" of the company. "We were born running a device off a battery that was going to be low cost," he said. Arm's big break came in 1993 when Apple released its handheld Newton device on the Arm610 processor. Arm Holdings That same year, Arm struck a deal with Texas Instruments, putting its processors in early Nokia mobile phones and beginning Arm's climb to become the dominant smartphone architecture it is today. Arm went public for the first time in 1998. Chief architect Richard Grisenthwaite was there. "We were about 100 people, and I've been very much involved in this tremendous transition that the company has gone through, expanding out from being targeting one particular market area into a wide range of different computing environments," Grisenthwaite said. Indeed, Arm grew rapidly in the 2000s, with the first touchscreen phones introduced in 2007 and the growth of connected home devices in the 2010s. Arm now has some 6,500 employees globally. Grisenthwaite said the majority of those employees are in the UK, and about a sixth are in the U.S., where Arm has offices in Arizona, California, North Carolina and Texas. It also has locations in Norway, Sweden, France and India. In 2016, Arm once again became a private company when Japan's SoftBank acquired it for $32 billion. Haas was president of the IP products group at the time, spearheading diversification into emerging markets, including AI. "PC and phone, automotive, data center and IoT. Those are the primary markets that we address. Every single one of those markets has AI embedded in some way, shape or form," he said. Arm has some 6,800 patents worldwide, with another 2,700 applications pending. Some of those are for Arm's Neoverse line for high-performance and cloud computing, which has helped it break into AI since its launch in 2018. In August, Nvidia announced its latest Grace Hopper Superchip, which couples its own GPUs with Arm's Neoverse cores. "By bringing those together and tightly coupling the way that Nvidia has with the Grace Hopper, they're able to come up with something that's something like 2 to 4 times the performance of what you'd get on an x86 system for a similar amount of power," Grisenthwaite explained. Cash and competition If you rewind just a couple years, Nvidia's interest in Arm went far beyond technology integration. Arm owner Softbank needed cash after losing money on high-profile investments in companies like WeWork and Uber . In 2020, SoftBank struck a deal with Nvidia to sell Arm for $40 billion. Eighteen months later, the deal fell apart, blocked by regulators and some of Arm's biggest customers, which also compete with Nvidia. Haas said he was, "Disappointed it didn't happen just because we spent so much time on it." Instead, Softbank announced plans to take Arm public again and Haas took over as CEO. Arm CEO Rene Haas talks with CNBC's Katie Tarasov in San Jose, California, on October 12, 2023. Katie Brigham Arm made its second public debut this September, climbing nearly 25% that day. The stock has fallen significantly since then. One risk comes from a free, open-source rival architecture called RISC-V. It's seen a recent surge in backing from some of Arm's big customers like Google, Samsung and Qualcomm, which may have been seeking alternatives when it looked like Nvidia was going to buy Arm. For now, RISC-V remains a low risk competitor according to Futurum Group CEO Daniel Newman. "RISC-V sits a few years behind where Arm is at, and I don't think we're going to hear a lot about it right away. I do think in low power, in IoT, in simpler designs, that RISC-V does have some traction," Newman said. Arm's bigger competition comes from x86. Developed by Intel in the 70s, x86 is the dominant architecture used for PC processors, with a massive amount of software developed for it. "The amount of software support is the thing that actually tends to determine the success or failure of that in the long run. Intel was very good early on with getting a ton of software support for x86," O'Donnell explained. Most servers have also traditionally been based on x86, but O'Donnell said that could shift. "What's happened in the server market is that the software has been componentized. It's broken up into containers and things like that, and that makes it easier to run on other architectures like Arm," he said. Amazon Web Services is a big player making Arm-based server chips. AWS launched its Graviton chips to rival x86 CPUs from AMD and Intel in 2018. "And really from there, Arm went from this mobile, low power IoT, automotive specialty embedded to holy cow, we can build next generation servers, PCs, and of course continue on this massive run of silicon for smartphones, all based on Arm," Newman said. 'If Apple can do it, can others?' Apple is the big partner helping Arm break into the laptop market. Apple moved to its own Arm-based processors in Mac computers in 2020, breaking away from the Intel x86 processors that had powered them for 15 years. In October, Apple announced its latest line of M3 processors and the MacBooks and iMacs running on them. Apple said Arm-based M3 gives the newest MacBook up to 22 hours of battery life. "Nobody really believed, until Apple went all in and basically cut ties with x86 instruction sets and said, 'We are going to bet the future of the Mac on Arm.' And that was a huge inflection for the company. It was a change of the guard. And this isn't to say that Intel's future is in big trouble, but it certainly started to raise some question marks as to, well, if Apple can do it, can others?" Newman said. In September, Apple extended its deal with Arm through at least 2040. Qualcomm is another major customer making its latest PC processors using Arm, although that relationship is strained. Arm is suing Qualcomm over the right to make certain chips with its technology. The issues started after Qualcomm acquired CPU company Nuvia in 2021, and with it, Nuvia's Arm license. "Nuvia was actually supposed to be designing a server chip initially, so they had different terms with them. And so Qualcomm thought they could have the same terms. Arm felt no, different companies have different terms. And it's boiled down to essentially that: legal discussions around what those terms ought to be," O'Donnell explained. The case is set to go to trial in 2024. Arm is also growing in the automotive space. Although its chips have long been in cars, it's now a rapid growth area with the rise of self-driving capabilities and partnerships with companies like Cruise. Arm's Grisenthwaite calls self-driving "one of the most computationally intensive tasks we've ever seen on this planet." "What we need to provide is a standard platform to allow the world's software developers to really concentrate on this incredibly hard task going forward," he said. This simplification is also making Arm the choice for non-chip companies like Apple, Amazon, Google and Microsoft designing their own custom silicon. "They've got a smaller team than entire companies built on that. And so you have to make that process easier and simpler. And that, for example, is where Arm is starting to move in terms of enabling the design of multiple components that connect together," O'Donnell said. Arm Holdings headquarters in Cambridge, England, on October 3, 2023. Max Thurlow 'China is a good market for us'

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/07/18/meta-and-qualcomm-team-up-to-run-big-ai-models-on-phones.html

QCOM

Qualcomm

Meta and Qualcomm team up to run big A.I. models on phones

Cristiano Amon, president and CEO of Qualcomm, speaks during the Milken Institute Global Conference in Beverly Hills, California, on May 2, 2022. Qualcomm and Meta will enable the social networking company's new large language model, Llama 2, to run on Qualcomm chips on phones and PCs starting in 2024, the companies announced today. So far, LLMs have primarily run in large server farms, on Nvidia graphics processors, due to the technology's vast needs for computational power and data, boosting Nvidia stock, which is up more than 220% this year. But the AI boom has largely missed the companies that make leading edge processors for phones and PCs, like Qualcomm. Its stock is up about 10% so far in 2023, trailing the NASDAQ's gain of 36%. The announcement on Tuesday suggests that Qualcomm wants to position its processors as well-suited for A.I. but "on the edge," or on a device, instead of "in the cloud." If large language models can run on phones instead of in large data centers, it could push down the significant cost of running A.I. models, and could lead to better and faster voice assistants and other apps. Qualcomm will make Meta's open-source Llama 2 models available on Qualcomm devices, which it believes will enable applications like intelligent virtual assistants. Meta's Llama 2 can do many of the same things as ChatGPT, but it can be packaged in a smaller program, which allows it to run on a phone. Qualcomm's chips include a "tensor processor unit," or TPU, that is well-suited for the kinds of calculations that A.I. models require. However, the amount of processing power that is available on a mobile device pales in comparison to a data center stocked with cutting-edge GPUs. Meta's Llama is notable because Meta published its "weights," a set of numbers that helps govern how a particular AI model works. Doing this will allow researchers and eventually commercial enterprises to use the AI models on their own computers without asking permission or paying. Other notable LLMs, like OpenAI's GPT-4, or Google's Bard, are closed-source, and their weights are closely held secrets. Qualcomm has worked with Meta closely in the past, notably on chips for its Quest virtual reality devices. It has also demoed some A.I. models running slowly on its chips, such as the open source image generator Stable Diffusion.

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/09/11/stocks-making-the-biggest-moves-premarket-qcom-tsla-twnk.html

QCOM

Qualcomm

Stocks making the biggest moves premarket: Qualcomm, Tesla, Hostess and more

Check out the companies making headlines in premarket trading Monday. Tenable Holdings — The exposure management solutions provider rose 3% before the market opened following an upgrade to overweight from neutral at JPMorgan. The bank said the company is positioned to see better business fundamentals in the future. Alibaba — Shares lost 1% after outgoing CEO Daniel Zhang unexpectedly quit its cloud business. In June, the company had said Zhang was leaving as chairman and CEO of Alibaba Group to focus on the cloud intelligence unit. Qualcomm — The semiconductor stock jumped 7.4% premarket after saying Monday it will supply Apple with 5G modems for smartphones through 2026. Continued sales to Apple will benefit Qualcomm's handsets business and could soften the blow of potentially losing a critical customer, analysts said. Apple's shares were 1% higher premarket. Kenvue — Shares added 3% in early trading after Deutsche Bank upgraded to buy from hold. The Wall Street firm said the slide in the Band-Aid maker has created an attractive entry point. The J&J spinoff has shed 15% since going public in May. Oracle — The database software provider gained 1.2% ahead of its quarterly earnings due postmarket Monday. Analysts surveyed by FactSet estimate earnings per share of $1.15 against company guidance of $1.12 to $1.16, and revenue of $12.47 billion. The stock has gained nearly 55% so far this year, boosted by excitement around generative AI. Tesla – The electric vehicle stock popped more than 6% before the bell after Morgan Stanley upgraded shares to overweight from equal weight, citing autonomous driving growth. The Wall Street firm called software and services revenue the "biggest value driver" for Tesla. J. M. Smucker , Hostess — J.M. Smucker slumped 10% in early trading after the peanut butter and jelly maker agreed to buy Twinkies maker Hostess Brands for $34.25 per share in cash and stock, valuing the cupcake maker at roughly $5.6 billion, including debt. Shares of Hostess popped 17.3%. The deal's expected to close by the end of January, 2024. Meta — The Facebook parent rose 1.5% after the Wall Street Journal said Meta is developing a new AI system as capable as OpenAI's most advanced model, and more powerful than the one it released two months ago called Llama 2. Meta hopes its new AI model will be ready next year, the report said. RTX — Shares of the company formerly known as Raytheon Technologies fell 3% after it revealed an engine manufacturing flaw would lower its pretax earnings by $3 billion. The problem forced it to speed up inspections. — CNBC's Alex Harring, Hakyung Kim, Michelle Fox Theobald, Samantha Subin, Sarah Min and Kif Leswing contributed reporting.

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/11/02/thursdays-top-stocks-to-watch-on-wall-street.html

QCOM

Qualcomm

Here are Thursday's biggest analyst calls: Amazon, Sunrun, Qualcomm, Eli Lilly, SolarEdge, Estée Lauder and more

Here are Thursday's biggest calls on Wall Street: Bank of America reiterates Qualcomm as buy Bank of America said it's standing by its buy rating on the stock after its earnings report Wednesday. "We believe that Qualcomm is a long-term beneficiary of growing 3G/4G/5G smartphone, tablet and cellular enabled machine to machine adoption worldwide." HSBC initiates Amazon as buy HSBC said it sees an "attractive entry point" for investors. " Amazon's structural opportunity in cloud surpasses even the lock-in effect with consumers in Ecommerce." BMO downgrades Sunrun to market perform from outperform BMO said a rebound for Sunrun is "elusive." "We appreciate RUN's cautious approach to residential solar growth compared with its rooftop solar peers, which has been a relative positive. However, RUN's cut to its capacity growth outlook this late in the year suggests a market rebound is elusive." Seaport upgrades KB Home and Toll Brothers to buy from neutral Seaport upgraded several homebuilders Thursday and said it sees a "favorable environment for early cycle builders." "Consequently, we upgrade KB Homes (KBH), M.D.C. Holdings (MDC), Meritage Homes (MTH), Taylor Morrison (TMHC), and Toll Brothers (TOL) to Buy (from Neutral) with valuation at ~1.0x book, acknowledging fundamental headwinds are rising, yet a historically favorable environment for "early cycle" builders." JPMorgan initiates WK Kellogg as neutral JPMorgan said it's uncertain about EBITDA growth for the cereal company. "We see the potential for gross margin expansion over time, powered by supply chain investments. However, we are not sure if this will translate into quite the level of EBITDA growth that KLG expects." Truist upgrades Amgen to buy from hold Truist said Amgen could be an obesity drug beneficiary. "We also note GLP-1/obesity data could be near-term catalysts that could drive up the stock." Bank of America upgrades Oscar Health to buy from neutral Bank of America said it's bullish heading into the insurer's earnings report next week. "We are upgrading OSCR to a Buy from Neutral as we expect the insurer to report strong Q3 results and positive 2024 guidance." Truist downgrades SolarEdge to hold from buy Truist said it sees too many negative catalysts ahead for the solar company. "Further we believe the rapid change in volume/margin outlook demonstrate the worryingly limited visibility SEDG has into sell through levels." UBS downgrades Eastman Chemical to neutral from buy UBS said it sees a more balanced risk/reward for the stock. "We downgrade EMN stock to Neutral, as we believe some of the benefits of market stabilization and new recycling initiatives are offset by a lower base earnings than our prior expectations." Citi reiterates Eli Lilly as buy Citi said it sees further upside after the company's earnings report Thursday. "In the absence of safety concerns for its existing or future incretin portfolio and with accelerating momentum as Mounjaro capacity increases, we continue to see upside to Lilly's already rich valuation." KBW upgrades Janus Henderson to market perform from underperform KBW said the asset management company is on the right track. " JHG's solid third-quarter result, better expense guidance, and meaningful share buyback authorization represents a confirmation that the transformation is on the right path." Seaport upgrades Rayonier to buy from neutral Seaport said in its upgrade of the timberland real estate investment trust that it sees an attractive entry point for Rayonier. "Bottom line, fundamentals have been challenging, but the stock, down ~24% ytd, trades at a wide discount to our assessment of NAV (net asset value). Management agrees and is doing something about it. Upgrade to Buy (from Neutral) with $32 price target." RBC downgrades Estée Lauder to sector perform from outperform RBC downgraded the stock after the company's earnings report. "While EL's F1Q'24 played out better than expected, the material guidance cut was a major disappointment. While the data points around China were negative during the quarter, we thought EL's guidance (provided last quarter) already embedded this dynamic. We were clearly wrong." Citi upgrades Clorox to buy from neutral Citi said in its upgrade of the stock that the worst of the negative catalysts is behind it. "We are upgrading CLX to Buy (from Neutral) as we believe the worst of the negative impacts from the August cyberattack is largely behind." Bernstein upgrades Chevron to outperform from market perform Bernstein said it likes the company's deal for Hess. "We're card carriers and as CVX communicates the value of HES growth to its value oriented shareholders, more will join. We expect geopolitical tensions wane and a return of CVX Israeli gas." Pivotal upgrades Roku to hold from sell Pivotal upgraded the stock after its earnings report Wednesday. " ROKU occupies an attractive position in the content ecosystem with penetration in the all-important US market of 50% of U.S. broadband households, scale (that management appears intent on proving out financially) and currently have the best product of any streaming aggregator." Guggenheim downgrades SolarEdge to neutral from buy The firm said it's "giving up" on its positive stance on the stock. "We are giving up on our positive stance on SEDG as the depth and duration of the downturn in revenue has exceeded our expectations. On one hand, it is tempting to buy into what will doubtlessly be a significant decline today, but on the other hand we don't see the company getting back to positive EBITDA until the second half of 2024." Stifel upgrades Generac to buy from hold Stifel said it sees an attractive risk/reward for the backup battery company. "After being on standby since assuming coverage about a year ago, we believe the risk/reward in the shares is favorable."

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/08/03/qualcomm-falls-as-phone-chips-falter-heres-what-the-pros-are-saying.html

QCOM

Qualcomm

Qualcomm shares tumble as phone chip sales falter. Here's what the pros are saying

Market Movers rounded up the best reactions from investors and analysts on Qualcomm . The experts, including Jim Cramer , talked about the semiconductor company a day after it had reported fiscal third-quarter adjusted revenue and guidance that missed estimates. Qualcomm cited slowing smartphone chip sales as a source for its financial woes, which declined 25% on a year-over-year basis. Net income also fell 52% from a year ago. Deutsche Bank noted the slumping handset chip sales as it downgraded Qualcomm's stock to hold from buy. Shares finished Thursday down 8.2%.

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/05/03/qualcomm-qcom-earnings-report-q2-2023.html

QCOM

Qualcomm

Qualcomm gives light forecast, phone chip sales fall 17%

Cristiano Amon, president and CEO of Qualcomm, speaks during the Milken Institute Global Conference in Beverly Hills, California, on May 2, 2022. Qualcomm said it expected around $8.5 billion in sales in the current quarter, short of Wall Street expectations of $9.14 billion. Analysts were expecting current-quarter earnings guidance of $2.16 per share, but the company said it would be around $1.80. Net income during the quarter ended in March fell 42% to $1.70 billion, or $1.52 per share, from $2.93 billion, or $2.57 per share, in the year-earlier period, the company said. Qualcomm reported second-quarter earnings on Wednesday that were in line with analyst expectations, but sales from handset chips, a core business for the company, declined 17% from a year earlier. Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon in a statement blamed the results on a challenging environment, and the company said it had not seen evidence that smartphone sales are recovering in China. The smartphone market is looking at a tough 2023, with shipments for the global market declining over 14% in the first quarter, according to IDC. "The evolving macroeconomic backdrop has resulted in further demand deterioration, particularly in handsets, at a magnitude greater than we previously forecasted," Amon said on a call with analysts. Total revenue declined 17% to $9.28 billion from the year-earlier quarter, the chipmaker said. Qualcomm's chip segment, called QCT, sells smartphone processors, automotive chips and other parts for advanced electronics. QCT revenue declined 17% to $7.94 billion during the quarter. The biggest part of the segment's revenue comes from handset chips, which are the processors at the heart of most Android phones. Qualcomm reported $6.11 billion in handset sales, down 17% from last year. The company said it expected a larger-than-normal decline in the third quarter for QTL revenue, saying it was related to "the timing of purchases by a modem-only handset customer." QTL is the company's licensing segment, which sells access to technologies needed for cellular service. Qualcomm rarely discusses its business with Apple , and didn't name the company, but Apple does purchase modems from the company for its iPhones and other devices. "Given the weaker handset forecast, until demand normalizes and visibility improves, we anticipate that customers will remain cautious with purchases," Qualcomm finance chief Akash Palkhiwala said on the call. The automotive business, which includes chips and software for cars, is still small, although it showed 20% growth during the quarter to $447 million in revenue. QTL reported an 18% annual decrease in revenue to $1.29 billion. Qualcomm said it made $900 million in share repurchases and paid $800 million in dividends during the quarter.

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/08/03/stocks-making-the-biggest-moves-midday-luv-qcom-roku-clx.html

QCOM

Qualcomm

Stocks making the biggest moves midday: Southwest Airlines, Qualcomm, Roku, Clorox and more

Southwest Airlines planes sit idle on the tarmac after Southwest Airlines flights resumed following the lifting of a brief nationwide stoppage caused by an internal technical issue, according to the U.S. Federal Aviation Authority, at Chicago Midway International Airport in Chicago, April 18, 2023. Check out the companies making headlines in midday trading. Roku — The streaming platform's stock shed nearly 2% after Citi downgraded shares to neutral from buy. The firm said that Roku shares, which have jumped about 120% year to date, may have limited further upside. Simon Property Group — Shares dropped close to 6% after Simon Property Group reported a decline in funds from operations compared with a year ago. During the second quarter, funds from operations came in at $2.88 per diluted share, compared with $2.91 per diluted share in the year-ago period. Southwest Airlines — Shares slipped 2.5% after Jefferies downgraded the air carrier to underperform from hold. The firm cited difficulty competing against premium providers. Etsy — Stock in the e-commerce company plummeted nearly 12% after reporting quarterly results. Etsy disappointed investors Wednesday with lower forward guidance despite a second-quarter earnings beat. Qualcomm — The chipmaker tumbled 9%. Qualcomm posted adjusted revenue of $8.44 billion, falling short of analysts' estimates of $8.5 billion, per Refinitiv. The company also gave soft guidance and noted weak smartphone chip sales. DoorDash — Shares of the food delivery company jumped almost 4% a day after the firm boosted its annual core profit forecast. DoorDash also reported revenue of $2.13 billion in the second quarter, beating analysts' estimate of $2.06 billion, per Refinitiv. The company did post a bigger-than-expected loss last quarter, however. Traeger — Stock in the grill maker soared 45% after an earnings beat following the closing bell Wednesday. Traeger reported adjusted earnings of 4 cents per share on $171.5 million in revenue, while analysts polled by FactSet had forecast a per-share loss of 2 cents and $154.9 million in revenue. Clorox — Clorox stock added to earlier gains with a 9.5% jump in midday trading. The company beat on earnings and revenue a day earlier, reporting an adjusted $1.67 per share and $2.02 billion in revenue against analysts' estimates of $1.18 per share and $1.88 billion in revenue, per Refinitiv. PayPal — Shares lost 11.3% during Thursday's midday trading session after the payments company posted earnings that were in line with analysts' predictions Wednesday post-market. PayPal reported adjusted earnings of $1.16 per share, which was also estimated by analysts polled by Refinitiv. The company's revenue beat the Street's expectations, posting $7.29 billion compared with analysts' estimates of $7.27 billion. Sunrun — The solar stock added 10% in midday trading after reporting earnings. On Wednesday, the company reported earnings of 25 cents a share for the second quarter, while analysts forecast a loss of 13 cents a share, per Refinitiv. Shopify — The e-commerce company fell 5% despite an earnings beat. On Wednesday, Shopify reported an adjusted 14 cents per share on $1.69 billion in revenue, while analysts polled by Refinitiv forecast 5 cents and $1.62 billion. EVgo — Shares surged 21% a day after the charging network operator reported a big earnings beat. EVgo posted an 8 cent loss per share, versus the 27 cent loss expected, according to Refinitiv. Revenue was $50.6 million, topping the $29.6 million expected Expedia — Stock in the online trip planner fell 17% after reporting a revenue miss for the second quarter. Expedia posted $3.36 billion in revenue, falling short of the $3.37 billion analysts expected, according to Refinitiv. The company issued soft guidance for the third quarter. Cummins — Shares fell more than 8% after Cummins missed on earnings in its latest quarterly report. The engine manufacturer reported earnings of $5.18 per share, excluding items, and $8.64 billion in revenue. Analysts polled by FactSet called for earnings of $5.25 per share and $8.39 billion of revenue. — CNBC's Alex Harring, Yun Li, Michelle Fox, Hakyung Kim, Sarah Min and Pia Singh contributed reporting.

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/08/02/stocks-making-the-biggest-moves-after-hours-pypl-hood-qcom-clx.html

QCOM

Qualcomm

Stocks making the biggest moves after hours: PayPal, Robinhood, Qualcomm, Clorox, DoorDash and more

Robinhood CEO and co-founder Vlad Tenev and co-founder Baiju Bhatt pose with Robinhood signage on Wall Street after the company's initial public offering in New York City, July 29, 2021. Check out the companies making headlines in extended trading. Robinhood — Shares of the trading platform slipped 4.7% after it reported quarterly results. The firm reported adjusted earnings of 3 cents per share in the second quarter, while analysts polled by Refinitiv forecast a loss of 1 cent. The company said monthly active users came in at 10.8 million, while analysts called for 11.2 million, according to StreetAccount. Etsy — The e-commerce company fell almost 6% in extended trading after Etsy gave guidance on third-quarter revenue and the lower end of the range was below what analysts anticipated. The company is calling for revenue ranging between $610 million and $645 million, while analysts called for $632 million, per Refinitiv. DoorDash — The food delivery giant added 4.6% Wednesday after posting quarterly results. DoorDash's revenue for the second quarter was $2.13 billion, while analysts called for $2.06 billion, per Refinitiv. However, the company posted a wider-than-expected loss of 44 cents a share, while analysts called for a loss of 41 cents per share. Qualcomm — Shares declined 7% after the company reported lower-than-expected revenue for its third fiscal quarter. Qualcomm posted $8.44 billion in adjusted revenue, while analysts polled by Refinitiv forecast $8.5 billion. Guidance for the fourth quarter was also light. Zillow — Stock in the online real estate company pulled back 2% after the company issued disappointing guidance for the third quarter. Zillow forecasts revenue of $458 million to $486 million, while analysts polled by FactSet are calling for revenue of $488.1 million. Qorvo — Shares climbed 3.7% after an earnings beat. Qorvo posted fiscal first-quarter earnings of 34 cents per share, excluding items, on revenue of $651 million. Analysts polled by FactSet called for 15 cents per share in earnings and revenue of $640.3 million. Clorox — Clorox stock ticked up 7% after flying past earnings expectations. The company reported adjusted earnings of $1.67 per share on $2.02 billion in revenue, while analysts polled by Refinitiv expected earnings of $1.18 per share and revenue of $1.88 billion. Tripadvisor — Tripadvisor shares gained 4%. The company reported revenue of $494 million in the second quarter, while analysts polled by Refinitiv anticipated $473 million. MGM Resorts — Shares of the casino operator dropped 5%, even as the company posted beats on the top and bottom lines in the second quarter. MGM reported adjusted earnings of 59 cents a share on $3.94 billion in revenue. Analysts polled by Refinitiv called for 54 cents a share in earnings and revenue of $3.82 billion. PayPal — PayPal shares tumbled nearly 6% after the company posted earnings that were in line with analysts' predictions. The payments company reported adjusted earnings of $1.16 per share, the same expected by analysts polled by Refinitiv. Revenue came in higher than anticipated, with PayPal posting $7.29 billion, versus analysts' estimates of $7.27 billion. Unity Software — Shares of the software company popped about 5% after Unity trounced analysts' estimates for revenue in the second quarter. The company posted $533 million in revenue, while analysts polled by Refinitiv sought $518 million. — CNBC's Darla Mercado contributed reporting.

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/08/03/stocks-making-the-biggest-moves-premarket-qualcomm-moderna-paypal-and-more.html

QCOM

Qualcomm

Stocks making the biggest moves premarket: Qualcomm, Moderna, PayPal and more

Check out the companies making headlines before the market opens. Qualcomm — The chipmaker slipped 8.5% after it posted $1.87 in adjusted earnings per share on $8.44 billion in revenue for the second quarter, while analysts polled by Refinitiv respectively anticipated $1.81 and $8.5 billion. Qualcomm also gave soft guidance and noted weak smartphone chip sales. Deutsche Bank downgraded shares to hold from buy following the report, while JPMorgan and UBS maintained their respective overweight and neutral ratings. Moderna — Shares added 1.6% after the biotech company released its second-quarter results. Despite posting a quarterly loss and drop in revenue, Moderna raised its full-year outlook for its Covid vaccine, its only marketable product. Southwest Airlines — Shares of Southwest slid more than 3% after Jefferies downgraded the airline stock to underperform from hold. Jefferies said low-cost airlines appear to be struggling relative to premium peers, citing a key revenue margin for Southwest that shrunk during the second quarter. Albemarle — The energy stock added 5.4% following a mixed second-quarter report. Albemarle notably beat Wall Street expectations for earnings, reporting $7.33 per share excluding items against a consensus estimate of $4.44 compiled by Refinitiv. But revenue fell short at $2.37 billion on a $2.43 billion forecast. PayPal — Shares declined more than 8% after the company posted earnings that were in line with analysts' predictions Wednesday post-market. The payments company reported adjusted earnings of $1.16 per share, the same estimated by analysts polled by Refinitiv. Revenue came in higher than anticipated, with PayPal posting $7.29 billion, versus analysts' estimates of $7.27 billion. DoorDash — Shares jumped 3.5% after the company's second-quarter results came above analyst estimates. The company reported its best-ever quarter for revenue and total orders. Management also cited improvements in expense management. Roku — The streaming platform's stock shed 2% following a downgrade from Citi to neutral from buy. Citi said it would be moving to the sidelines, citing limited upside for shares. Clorox — The household goods manufacturer's shares jumped nearly 7% after posting an earnings and revenue beat in the second quarter. Clorox reported $1.67 in earnings per share on $2.02 billion in revenue. Analysts had estimated $1.18 in earnings per share on revenue of $1.88 billion, according to Refinitiv. The company also offered a strong full-year outlook. Etsy — Shares tumbled 9% after the company released its quarterly earnings report Wednesday after the bell. Although its earnings and revenue topped analysts' expectations, the company's guidance for the third quarter was lighter than expected. Qorvo — The stock rallied 6.8% after the company beat analysts' expectations on top and bottom lines in the second quarter. Management said it expects September quarterly revenue to increase sequentially more than 50%, "driven primarily by content gains" from Apple. Traeger — Shares jumped more than 24% following Traeger's second-quarter earnings announcement Wednesday post-market. The company posted 4 cents in earnings per share on $171.5 million in revenue. Analysts polled by FactSet had estimated a loss of 2 cents per share and $154.9 million in revenue. The company also raised its full-year revenue and earnings guidance. Unity Software — The software company surged about 5% after Unity exceeded analysts' estimates for revenue in the second quarter. The company posted $533 million in revenue, while analysts polled by Refinitiv estimated $518 million. DXC Technology — DXC Technology tumbled 24% after reporting earnings and revenue that missed estimates. The information technology firm reported adjusted earnings of 63 cents per share on revenue of $3.45 billion. Analysts polled by FactSet expected earnings of 82 cents per share on revenue of $3.56 billion. Separately, BMO Capital Markets downgraded the company to market perform from outperform following the results. — CNBC's Alex Harring, Sarah Min and Jesse Pound contributed reporting.

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/09/25/iphone-15-pro-has-qualcomm-modem-repairable-phone-frame-analysis.html

QCOM

Qualcomm

iPhone 15 Pro analysis unveils Qualcomm modem and easier-to-repair smartphone frame

Apple's iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max have a new frame design, which could make repairing the devices' screens or swaps of their batteries easier, according to a teardown analysis by iFixit, a parts vendor and gadget-repair advocate. However, iFixit gives the new phones a poor repairability score: 4 out of 10. That's in part because Apple uses software to lock parts to specific devices, making independent fixes more difficult or near impossible. The iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max, which went on sale Friday, have a new design that attaches the phone's main parts to an aluminum frame, which is bonded to the titanium casing that users touch on the outside, iFixit found. Since the two most common smartphone fixes are replacing the battery and screen, the new design gives repairers easier access to those parts. Apple highlighted the change in its announcement this month and also dropped the price to swap a cracked back glass plate to $149 or $169, versus $499 or $549 on last year's Pro models. Screen repairs remain the same price, $329 or $379, depending on display size. Last year's mainstream model of the iPhone 14 — not the pricier Pro — also had a design featuring removable back glass. iFixit's analysis also highlighted that Apple's iPhones are using a Qualcomm X70 modem to connect to cellular carriers, after Qualcomm announced earlier this month that it would supply Apple with modem chips through 2026. However, iFixit, a strong advocate for the right-to-repair movement, said that many iPhone parts, including the phone's Face ID sensor, Lidar camera and wireless charging coil, are not replaceable without using an official Apple configuration tool to authenticate them. "Parts pairing in these models extends beyond mere mechanical compatibility, requiring authentication and pairing through Apple's System Configuration tool, further limiting genuine replacements to Apple-blessed ones and substantially impacting independent repair enterprises and the overarching issue of e-waste," iFixit wrote in a blog post. Earlier this year, Apple backed a right-to-repair bill in California, which passed in September. It requires manufacturers such as Apple to make rental tools, repair guides and authorized parts available to users to repair devices at home. In 2022, Apple introduced Self Service Repair, which allows repair shops and end users to rent professional-level repair tools and buy replacement parts from Apple. The right-to-repair movement is closely associated with the environmental movement, because repairing gadgets and extending their lifespans helps to keep them out of landfills. Apple's product announcements earlier this month heavily emphasized the company's environmental work, including marketing models of its Apple Watch Series 9 as carbon neutral. Apple representatives did not immediately respond to CNBC's request for comment.

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/12/14/amazon-explored-medical-diagnostics-was-in-talks-to-buy-confer-health.html

DGX

Quest Diagnostics

Amazon has explored getting into consumer health diagnostics — testing for disease at home

Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon, speaks to a group of Amazon employees that are veterans during an Amazon Veterans Day celebration on Monday, November 12, 2018. Amazon 's secretive special projects group has considered products for consumers to conduct medical tests in the home, which could take the company into the health diagnostics space, according to a person familiar with the company's plans. Two people say the company was in discussions this year to buy a venture-backed diagnostics start-up called Confer Health, but those talks did not result in a deal. Via its web site, Confer develops hardware for at-home tests starting with fertility and infections like strep throat. Their tests are designed to provide clinical grade results at home without visiting the doctor's office. The person said that Confer would have fit into a medical diagnostics project that was being actively explored over the summer. That project was led by a team under Babak Parviz, who joined Amazon from Google in 2014 to create a special projects lab focused partly on health. Within its diagnostics unit, the company was interested in fertility and geriatric tests for seniors, this person said. A different person who met with Parviz around the same time also said that he expressed strong interest in home health testing. It is not known whether Amazon has decided to move forward with the project. One person said that Confer deal talks fell apart in the summer, around the time that Amazon made the decision to acquire the Internet pharmacy company PillPack. But a move into the home health-testing space would be a signal of Amazon's ambitions to remake the entire health care supply chain. It could bring Amazon into competition with testing giants Quest and LabCorp , as well as retail health centers where the bulk of tests are performed today. If successful, it could save people trips to the doctor's office for simple things like checking to see whether they have the flu, and reduce the spread of communicable disease. Confer has raised just shy of $10 million in venture capital and is advised by Chamath Palihapitiya, a former Facebook executive who has been notoriously bullish on Amazon. Amazon and Palihapitiya did not return requests for comment. Confer Health declined to comment.

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/26/quest-and-labcorp-shares-surge-on-optimism-shrug-off-contract-losses.html

DGX

Quest Diagnostics

No exclusive deal, no problem: Quest and LabCorp shares surge on optimism

Samples are aliquoted at Quest Diagnostics Nichols Institute outside San Juan Capistrano. Quest Diagnostics is a leading provider of prenatal and genetic mutation tests. Losing exclusive contracts might normally seem like bad news, but shares of Quest Diagnostics and LabCorp surged on Friday after the rival lab services firms announced new non-exclusive agreements with health insurers. Starting in 2019, LabCorp will no longer be the exclusive lab provider for UnitedHealth , but it will gain access to Aetna . Meanwhile, Quest will lose its exclusivity with Aetna, but will be among UnitedHealth's preferred providers. Quest gained 4.9 percent on Friday, while LabCorp closed up 3.8 percent after hitting a historic high. "This expanded agreement is the culmination of our years-long effort to return to a full collaborative relationship with Aetna," said LabCorp CEO David King in a statement announcing the new partnership. He said the company was also pleased with the term of its new agreement with United. Analysts say the dual announcements mean Quest and LabCorp likely did not have to resort to rock-bottom pricing to hold onto their agreements, and likely won't suffer when it comes to market share. "Quest and LabCorp are now de-risked from the possibility of getting denied access to a major health plan. While we view Quest as the net winner given it picks up more "net lives" … we believe both labs are well positioned to win back business from regional labs that had benefitted from (their past) exclusion from major health plan," wrote Canaccord Genuity analyst Mark Massaro in a note to clients.

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/17/sell-this-medical-testing-stock-poised-to-fall-more-than-15percent-from-here-citi-says-in-downgrade.html

DGX

Quest Diagnostics

Sell this medical testing stock poised to fall more than 15% from here, Citi says in downgrade

It's time for investors to sell shares of Quest Diagnostics , according to Citi. Analyst Patrick Donnelly downgraded shares of the medical testing company to sell from neutral, citing risks ahead to the company earnings per share guidance and 4% to 5% long-term growth guide for its base business. "While management has continued to reiterate the $8.50 earnings number for FY23, even if we give the company credit for hitting this, we see the multiple as inflated and at risk for compression," Donnelly wrote in a note to clients Thursday. "The company is trading above a 3x P/E spread vs. LH, well above the prior 2-year average of 1.3x which we no longer think is warranted." Quest Diagnostics' lower operational leverage makes the company increasingly sensitive to modest cost hikes, Donnelly said. That could pose risks to 2023 estimates. "Even though the company has seen stable to positive reimbursement in the majority of its Health Plan agreements and improved pricing overall, we remain cautious," he wrote. Donnelly also said investors are failing to account for how a potentially serious flu season could impact Quest Diagnostics. "As flu symptoms screen like COVID, we believe patients could forgo both routine and esoteric testing as well as these consumer-initiated tests which traditionally would benefit DGX," he said. "Further, flu tests are more heavily conducted at the Point-of-Care vs. outsourced to labs like DGX and LH." Despite roughly 14% since the beginning of 2022, Citi expects more downside ahead for the stock. The bank trimmed its price target on the stock to $125 from $145. That means shares could fall another 16% from Wednesday's close. — CNBC's Michael Bloom contributed reporting

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/02/08/as-chatgpt-mania-spreads-companies-beyond-tech-also-think-about-ai.html

DGX

Quest Diagnostics

As ChatGPT mania takes hold, here's how companies beyond tech are using A.I.

ChatGPT is kicking off an artificial intelligence revolution , but it's not just big technology stocks that are taking a cue. AI's been in use for years, of course, helping companies improve products, efficiency and their business models. But now the launch of the Microsoft -backed language chatbot ChatGPT has ignited an AI frenzy, triggering speculation among investors and on Wall Street. According to data from UBS, ChatGPT likely amassed 100 million users in January alone, forcing Alphabet , Meta Platforms and other companies to explain during their quarterly earnings conference calls how artificial intelligence is being used to improve their business. Beyond the technology world, it's hard to imagine what role a buzzy tech word can play in everyday life, but AI tools can help companies better analyze data, cut costs, improve efficiency and — theoretically, anyway — increase value for shareholders. MSFT YTD mountain Microsoft's year-to-date performance Earnings calls from financial bellwethers, oil giants and industrial behemoths alike all underscore how the push for AI is taking hold in our everyday lives. Don't be surprised to see it affect how we live, sleep and work in the years to come. Media conglomerate Comcast , the parent company of CNBC, is harnessing AI to improve expenses and innovate within high-speed broadband, while Stanley Black & Decker mentioned it's using AI to help customers better measure the hardening of concrete. Using a search in FactSet, CNBC Pro found frequent usages of AI, artificial intelligence, ChatGPT or a variation of those terms, in fourth-quarter earnings call transcripts of a host of health, industrial and financial stocks. Here's how some of the biggest companies outside of technology are using AI to improve their businesses: Health-care companies bet on AI One of the biggest beneficiaries of the latest AI trends might be health-care companies. In its earnings call this month, GE HealthCare Technologies highlighted how AI and deep learning applications are helping clinicians improve efficiencies, better detect population trends and decrease scan times for imaging affecting about 5.5 million patients worldwide. Within the company's Vivid cardiac ultrasound portfolio in particular, CEO Peter Arduini said using AI is reducing time for imaging measurements and helping providers better assess heart muscle function. GEHC YTD mountain Shares rallied 19% in January and 3% so far this month GE isn't alone. Both Cardinal Health and hospital operator HCA highlighted the use of AI and machine learning in helping customers better manage inventory and purchasing. Even Quest Diagnostics noted how AI can benefit productivity and sampling. Some health companies also view machine learning and AI as tools to assist in areas with doctor shortages or fewer resources. Karleen Oberton, chief financial officer of medical imaging company Hologic , highlighted machine learning as a way to innovate the patient experience and potentially improve radiologist efficiency. Wells Fargo views health care and biotechnology as marking the next frontier for AI exploration. Analyst Nathan Treybeck, for example, recently initiated coverage of iRhythm Technologies with an overweight rating. The company creates Zio monitors, which harness AI and machine learning to detect arrhythmia more efficiently than more traditional technology. "Zio monitors have demonstrated leading patient compliance and diagnostic yield metrics," the analyst said, placing a $150 price target on Hologic shares, or nearly 38% upside from Tuesday's close. Financials Financials are another area of the market poised to benefit from AI, at least according to their management teams. Wells Fargo first announced its AI-powered virtual assistant known as Fargo in 2021. The tool, already in use among some employees, is slated to launch among customers later this year, CEO Charles Scharf said during an earnings call in January. WFC YTD mountain Wells Fargo shares have so far surged 16.6% in 2023 In December, Wells Fargo also unveiled Vantage, an AI tool that's able to offer client-tailored recommendations. Nasdaq President and CEO Adena Friedman said on an earnings call last month that the exchange operator believes it can develop AI-based orders within its markets platform using its cloud infrastructure and analytics engines. "These capabilities will also become available to our exchange technology clients as we work collaboratively with them to deploy cloud-based market infrastructures in their home markets," she said. Industrials and energy producers Old-school industrial stocks and energy providers and their servicers have also lauded the use of AI in improving efficiencies. SLB , the world's biggest offshore drilling contractor, noted strong growth in its AI solution sales harnessed to improve workflows, while Parker-Hannifin said artificial intelligence tools are helping it better forecast demand from customers and suppliers. Minneapolis-based utility Xcel Energy said it's using AI technology to improve efficiency at its plants and move from "reactive to proactive maintenance," said Brian Van Abel, Xcel's chief financial officer. "We're investing significantly in, call it real-time scheduling and other opportunities to use AI," he said. During a recent earnings call with investors, Caterpillar CEO Jim Umpleby said the construction equipment maker is "investing heavily" in AI tools to improve aftermarket service and repairs, and parts availability. CAT YTD mountain Caterpillar shares since the start of the year "We need to have the right parts at the right place at the right time and that's one of the benefits of having connected assets and also utilizing AI with those connect assets to ensure that we anticipate where those parts will be needed," he said. Even recruiting firms say that AI has its place in their business. Robert Half International mentioned the term AI at least five times on its January conference call, with management highlighting its use in finding job candidates. The tools "have transformed how we identify and select candidates; we're turning our attention to using AI to identify the warmest leads for our field professionals on the sales side," said CEO M. Keith Waddell. "It's early days, but we're optimistic." — CNBC's Michael Bloom contributed reporting. Disclosure: Comcast is the parent company of NBCUniversal, which includes CNBC.

https://www.cnbc.com/id/18133068

DGX

Quest Diagnostics

Quest Buying AmeriPath For $1.23 Billion

Medical-testing company Quest Diagnostics said Monday it will acquire diagnostic testing equipment company AmeriPath for $1.23 billion in cash, boosting Quest's cancer-detection business. AmeriPath, controlled by Welsh, Carson, Anderson and Stowe IX L.P., provides dermatopathology, anatomic pathology and esoteric testing and has annual revenue of more than $800 million. The total deal value, including about $770 million in assumed debt, comes to $2 billion, the companies said. Welsh, Carson had acquired AmeriPath in 2003 for $627 million. Shares of Quest fell about 4% Monday. Analysts said investors were disappointed by the high price paid for a company that has struggled with tough competition, as well as disappointment that the acquisition may reduce the possibility that Quest may be taken private in a leveraged buyout. "Our early view is negative, given (that) both AmeriPath and Specialty Laboratories, which was consolidated with AmeriPath, struggled as public companies," said Bank of America analyst Robert Willoughby. "Competitors, including Quest Diagnostics and LabCorp of America, successfully made inroads into Specialty Laboratories' market share, contributing to disappointing organic growth," Willoughby said. AmeriPath, which grew through multiple acquisitions, operates three divisions. Its Dermpath Diagnostics business has more than 80 dermatopathologists who interpret 2.4 million biopsies annually. Its anatomic pathology division focuses on gastroenterology, urology, oncology and women's health. Specialty Laboratories is a full-service clinical lab serving hospitals and physicians. Quest said the deal would accelerate its revenue and earnings growth. The acquisition is expected to have minimal impact on Quest Diagnostics' 2007 earnings per share and mostly boost earnings in 2008, excluding deal-related charges. "The deal appears to us to be a response to the lost (United Healthcare) deal," said Willoughby, referring to Quest's loss of a key insurance customer contract last year that accounted for about 7% of Quest's annual revenue. The acquisition "ties up capital better deployed on small pathology and other services acquisitions that would position it better with managed care payers for more sustainable, capital efficient growth," Willoughby said. Quest said it plans to pay for the transaction, refinance AmeriPath's existing debt, and the debt from the HemoCue acquisition completed earlier this year with the proceeds of a new $1 billion one-year bridge loan and a new five-year $1.5 billion term loan.

https://www.cnbc.com/id/19743488

DGX

Quest Diagnostics

Quest Shares Spiking on Buyout Talk, but Debt May Deter Deal

Recent spikes in Quest Diagnostics's stock price suggest the No. 1 medical testing company could be the latest buyout target in health care, but its valuation and debt load may keep private equity bidders at bay. Driven by private equity, dealmaking among health care service companies has been healthy for the past year. The run began with the $22 billion leveraged buyout of No. 1 hospital chain HCA in July 2006. And just last week, Manor Care, the biggest U.S. nursing home chain, accepted a $4.9 billion takeover offer. Companies in the $45 billion clinical lab testing market, which is dominated by Quest and Laboratory Corp of America, are natural targets because of their robust cash flows and steady earnings power, according to analysts. Indeed, analysts said a report surfaced on July 5 in an online publication that Quest could receive a takeover bid of $70 per share. But observers are lukewarm on the likelihood of a deal. "We are suspicious of LBO speculation -- unsubstantiated and widely reported in the media -- at current valuations," Cowen and Co. analyst Kemp Dolliver said. Quest's multiple and stock price, which now trades at about $55, "is high relative to the types of multiples than an LBO firm would pay," he said. In addition, the company's debt doubled with the acquisition of specialty lab Ameripath earlier this year and now stands at about $3.9 billion. Private equity firms typically buy companies to cut costs and sell them later, borrowing about two-thirds of the money needed to finance the deals. Dolliver said his analysis of 11 prior acquisitions, mostly by LabCorp and Quest, showed a multiple of 11.9 times earnings power. But those were lab-to-lab mergers, where economies of scale make wringing costs out easier than for an LBO group. Some have suggested the speculation could be linked to the fact that former Quest Chairman and Chief Executive Ken Freeman is now a special adviser at LBO shop Kohlberg Kravis and Roberts. "I think people use that as basis for a rumor to drive up the stock," Dolliver said. SPECIALTY APPEAL Shares of Quest are up about 3% so far in 2007 after rising 45% over the three years ended last December 31. LabCorp. is up about 10% year-to-date, but nearly doubled from 2004 through 2006. Quest's recent $2 billion acquisition of Ameripath provides an opportunity for growth, according to Jefferies analyst Arthur Henderson. Ameripath focuses on advanced tests such as those surveying a patient's genetic make-up to predict response to treatment. These newer tests generate more lucrative margins than the more traditional kind, like for cholesterol. "What is unique about the labs is the routine business is a total commodity, but the specialty side of it is really where the excitement is," Henderson said. And compared with other health care companies, he said, reimbursement prospects for the lab sector are relatively stable. Quest and its rivals do not rely as heavily on the federal government for payment the way hospitals do. But UBS debt analyst David Havens said that if the rumored deal occurred, Quest would be left with more debt than it could handle. "We would envisage a company with $11.7 billion in debt," he said in a note earlier this week. "Our analysis suggests that a full blown LBO of Quest is unlikely." Lehman Brothers analyst Adam Feinstein said a buyer might be willing to pay a double-digit premium to Quest's closing share price of $51.57 on July 3, before the latest round of speculation emerged. Such a price would be in line with the multiple buyers have been willing to pay for health care facilities over the past three years, he said. "We do believe the math could support a potential LBO, given the free cash flow characteristics," Feinstein said, "although the (rumored) $70-plus price per share appears high."

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/05/02/stocks-to-watch-tuesday-according-to-wall-street-analysts.html

DGX

Quest Diagnostics

Here are Tuesday's biggest analyst calls of the day: Apple, Ferrari, Dell, Tesla, Chegg, Penn & more

Here are Tuesday's biggest calls on Wall Street: Piper Sandler reiterates Tesla as overweight Piper said it's standing by its overweight rating on the stock, but lowered its price target to $280 per share from $300. "Since the Q1 call, investors have fretted about Tesla's willingness to trade price for volume, and while we share management's view that margins will eventually rise due to software, this won't occur quickly enough to offset the near-term impact of lower prices, higher warranty costs, and slower inventory turnover." Evercore ISI reiterates Apple as outperform Evercore said it's bullish on Apple shares heading into earnings later this week. " Apple should report modest upside to Mar-qtr driven by better iPhone units given better China/emerging market demand coupled with channel fill benefits." JMP initiates Planet Labs as market outperform JMP said in its initiation of the earth imaging company that it has a strong competitive moat. "We like Planet for several reasons, including: 1) it has a fleet of over 200 satellites which form the infrastructure for a scalable, one-to-many, software-like business model; 2) robust imagery archives that create a technical competitive moat; 3) Planet is still nascent in its growth trajectory." UBS initiates Ameresco as buy UBS said it sees an attractive entry point for shares of the renewable energy company. "We initiate coverage of AMRC shares with a Buy rating and $60 PT implying ~45% upside potential." Barclays downgrades Shoals to underweight from equal weight Barclays said in its downgrade of the solar company that shares of Shoals are overvalued. "Our change in rating is underpinned by 1) the pricey valuation and 2) a 2023 outlook that we believe has risk." Morgan Stanley upgrades Dell to overweight from equal weight Morgan Stanley says it's getting more constructive on shares of the PC giant. " DELL is our most-preferred US PC OEM given 1) secular share gains, 2) conservative FY24 guide, 3) attractive valuation, 4) a path to accelerated shareholder returns, and 5) potential S & P inclusion." Read more about this call here. Citi downgrades Coinbase to neutral from buy Citi said in its downgrade of Coinbase that there are too many unknowns. "We lower our rating to Neutral/High-Risk on the belief that until the regulatory 'rules of the road' are better established in the U.S., the stock will remain weighed down by this high level of uncertainty." Read more about this call here. Barclays initiates Ferrari as equal weight Barclays said in its initiation of the stock that it's waiting for a better entry point. "We are constructive on RACE's BEV transition, very high earnings visibility and compounding qualities, but wait for a better entry point." Rosenblatt initiates Palo Alto Networks as buy Rosenblatt said the cyber security is in a "solid" position. "In the problematic macro backdrop, hyper-threat environment enterprises and government organizations continue to spend on security. Palo Alto Networks is a diversified cybersecurity company most famous for its next-generation firewall (NGFW) used for perimeter network security." Roth MKM upgrades Penn to buy from neutral Roth said it's bullish heading into the company's earnings report later this week. "We upgrade PENN to Buy ($40 PT) ahead of a potential 1Q beat/raise on 5/4. We also see a case for strategic alternatives involving Penn's digital segments and see this narrative building in 2023." Bernstein upgrades Roper to outperform from market perform Bernstein said in its upgrade of the software company that it sees multiple expansion. "We believe we can reduce Roper's compounding model to two key levers: (1) organic FCF growth, and (2) multiples paid to acquire cash. We think both are set to improve, supporting the long-term mid-teens FCF growth target." Jefferies downgrades Chegg to hold from buy Jefferies downgraded the education tech company over AI headwind concerns. "We are downgrading CHGG to Hold (from Buy) with an $11 PT as AI headwinds start to impact the fundamental story." Read more about this call here. Wedbush downgrades SoFi to neutral from outperform Wedbush downgraded the stock due to concerns over sales margins. "We're downgrading shares of SoFi to NEUTRAL from OUTPERFORM as we believe there could be downside risk to its gain on sale margins and fair value marks of its loan portfolio." Bank of America downgrades Quest Diagnostics to neutral from buy Bank of America said in its downgrade of Quest that it has concerns about the company's deal for Haystack Oncology. "Overall, we have a favorable view on DGX's business, but we already had some concerns about reaching the margin and adj. EPS growth targets outlined at the March investor day, and this deal makes us more cautious." Barclays downgrades Capri, Under Armour and Victoria's Secret to equal weight from overweight Barclays downgraded several retail brands on Tuesday and says it's concerned about slowing consumer spending. "Downgrading FIGS to Underweight; GOOS, CPRI , EYE, UAA , VSCO to Equal Weight." Cowen reiterates Target and Walmart as outperform Cowen said it's standing by its outperform rating on the big box giants. "Ahead of 1Q, we prefer WMT as we favor prospects for +LSD% traffic as consumers, inclusive of the higher-end, seek value in food/essentials. Expect TGT to meet at least the low-end of a wide (LSD%) to +LSD% comp sales guide, but discretionary headwinds and NT EBIT margin fears will likely persist."

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/03/at-home-testing-from-covid-to-cancer-worth-2-billion-dollars.html

DGX

Quest Diagnostics

The at-home testing industry, from Covid to cancer, may be worth over $2 billion by 2025

The at-home testing market is bigger than just Covid tests, and it's bigger than over-the-counter pregnancy tests. In fact, the emerging marketplace of consumer-initiated lab testing may be worth more than $2 billion by 2025, according to Quest Diagnostics. "We have experienced over 100% growth in 2021 over 2020," Everly Health CEO Julia Cheek told CNBC. Everly Health provides at-home lab testing through Everlywell. New entrants, like Everlywell, coordinate testing to get it directly into the consumer's hands. Tests can calculate anything from fertility to STDs using the same testing infrastructure built by the likes of diagnostics companies as well as some of the top laboratories in the nation. "We are a wellness test. We do not diagnose any conditions. We give you information so that you can go have an informed conversation with your doctor," Modern Fertility co-founder Afton Vechery told CNBC. Vechery started Modern Fertility after realizing getting her own fertility information proved more difficult than she thought it would be. Her OB-GYN wouldn't order a panel of hormone testing. "They said, 'No, Afton, you're not trying and failing to conceive right now. We're not going to order that for you,'" she said. When Vechery eventually got these tests done, she received a bill in the mail for $1,500. "That was totally unexpected to me, and so we really wanted to bring this to market in a way where we could provide access for as many people with ovaries as possible," she explained of her experience and Modern Fertility's mission. Seventy percent of all health-care decisions are based on diagnostic testing services, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Watch the video above to learn more about how this business model works, the start-ups fueling the market and how costs compare with the traditional lab model.

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/21/stocks-making-the-biggest-moves-before-the-bell-att-ibm-crocs-blackstone-more.html

DGX

Quest Diagnostics

Stocks making the biggest moves before the bell: AT&T, IBM, Crocs, Blackstone & more

Check out the companies making headlines before the bell: AT&T (T) – AT&T rose 1.5% in premarket trading, after the company beat estimates by 9 cents with an adjusted quarterly profit of 87 cents per share. Revenue also came in above analyst forecasts, with AT&T seeing growth in demand for its phone and internet services as well as HBO and HBO Max. Danaher (DHR) – The maker of medical and diagnostic equipment earned an adjusted $2.39 per share for the third quarter, 24 cents above estimates, with revenue also topping predictions. Danaher saw a significant contribution to results from Covid-19 testing and treatment. Shares were flat in the premarket. Blackstone (BX) – The private equity firm stock gained 2.8% in premarket action, after earnings per share came in at $1.28, topping a consensus estimate of 91 cents. Blackstone benefited from strong investment performance, among other factors. Dow Inc. (DOW) – The chemical maker came in 19 cents above estimates with an adjusted third-quarter profit of $2.75 per share, with revenue also above estimates. Dow saw improved performance in packaging and specialty plastics as well as coatings, and the stock rose 1.2% in premarket trading. Quest Diagnostics (DGX) – The medical lab operator saw its shares jump 3.4% in the premarket following better-than-expected quarterly results. Quest earned an adjusted $3.96 per share, compared to a consensus estimate of $2.88 per share. The company's results got a boost from increased Covid testing, and it raised its full year outlook. Crocs (CROX) – Crocs surged 11.1% in the premarket, following adjusted quarterly earnings of $2.47 per share compared to a $1.88 consensus estimate. The shoe maker's revenue also beat forecasts, with digital sales up 69%. IBM (IBM) – IBM beat estimates by 2 cents with adjusted quarterly earnings of $2.52 per share, but revenue fell below analyst forecasts amid some weakness in the company's cloud business and a pullback in client spending. IBM slid 5% in premarket trading. CSX (CSX) – CSX reported quarterly earnings of 43 cents per share, 5 cents above estimates, with the railroad operator's revenue exceeding estimates as well. The beat was driven by an increase in shipping volumes that was 3% above the strong year-ago level. CSX shares rallied 3.9% in premarket trading. Tenet Healthcare (THC) – Tenet earned an adjusted $1.99 per share for its latest quarter, well above the $1.02 consensus estimate, and the hospital operator also reported better than expected revenue as well as raising its full-year earnings forecast. Tenet's results got a boost from increased admissions as well as a jump in revenue per admission. The stock jumped 4% in premarket action. Unilever (UL) – Unilever gained 1.3% in premarket trading after the consumer products giant reported better than expected quarterly results. The maker of Dove soap and Hellman's mayonnaise was able to raise prices to offset higher input costs, but warned that it expects inflation was likely to accelerate in 2022. Canadian National Railway (CNI) – The Wall Street Journal reported that activist investor Elliott Management has taken a "substantial" stake in the rail operator. Another activist investor, TCI Fund Management, already has a more than 5% stake in Canadian National. Shares were flat in the premarket.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/13/us-coronavirus-surge-leads-to-testing-delays-across-the-nation-quest-diagnostics-says.html

DGX

Quest Diagnostics

Surge in U.S. coronavirus cases causes testing delays across the nation as labs scramble to keep up

The surge in U.S. coronavirus cases has labs across the nation falling behind in processing and delivering test results with the turnaround time for Covid-19 tests taking days to a week or longer for many patients, two of the country's biggest lab diagnostics companies said Monday. "We attribute this demand primarily to the rapid, continuing spread of COVID-19 infections across the nation but particularly in the South, Southwest and West regions of the country," Quest Diagnostics said in a statement. The test manufacturer added that it can now perform up to 125,000 tests per day, roughly double its capacity compared with two months ago. "Despite that dramatic increase, demand for testing is increasing even faster," the company said. "As a result, our average turnaround time for reporting test results is slightly more than 1 day for our priority 1 patients. However, our average turnaround time for all other populations is 7 or more days." Priority one patients include hospital patients, pre-operative patients in acute care settings and symptomatic healthcare workers, the company said. Quick testing turnaround is crucial to the U.S. response, health officials say, so that infected individuals can be quickly isolated and contact tracers can find potentially exposed people early in their infection. Quest said it is working to ramp up capacity as quickly as possible, but "global supply constraints continue to be an issue." The company said it is working on new technology to improve its testing capacity and bring on new partners to more quickly process test results. "Yet, we want patients and healthcare providers to know that we will not be in a position to reduce our turnaround times as long as cases of COVID-19 continue to increase dramatically across much of the United States," the company said. "This is not just a Quest issue. The surge in COVID-19 cases affects the laboratory industry as a whole." LabCorp , another coronavirus diagnostic test manufacturer, echoed Quest's concerns, saying that demand for testing is outpacing their capacity. The company said it is processing more than 130,000 tests per day and plans to ramp that up to 150,000 per day by the end of the month. "Until recently, we have been able to deliver test results back to patients on average between 1-2 days from the date of specimen pickup," a LabCorp spokeswoman said in a statement to CNBC. "But with significant increases in testing demand and constraints in the availability of supplies and equipment, the average time to deliver results may now be 4-6 days from specimen pickup. For hospitalized patients, the average time for results is faster." The U.S. has processed an average of more than 665,000 tests per day between July 1 and July 12, according to a CNBC analysis of data collected by the Covid Tracking Project, an independent volunteer organization launched by journalists at The Atlantic. That's up from a daily average of just over 174,000 diagnostic tests processed nationally per day through April, according to CNBC's analysis. Since the beginning of the outbreak, public health officials and epidemiologists have called for the U.S. to invest significantly in test manufacturing and scaling up of the testing infrastructure. Harvard University published a report in April that said the U.S. would need to ramp up testing capacity to at least 5 million tests a day by early June and 20 million per day by late July in order to reopen the economy. However, the findings were dismissed by Adm. Brett Giroir, assistant secretary of health who is in charge of the government's testing effort, as "an Ivory Tower, unreasonable benchmark," adding that it was not needed based on the latest modelling at the time. Last month, as new cases of the coronavirus were beginning to surge again across parts of the U.S., President Donald Trump said at a campaign rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma that the growing outbreaks across the country were due to increased testing. He added that he told officials to "slow the testing down, please."

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/21/gop-lawmaker-leads-colleagues-in-swearing-off-big-tech-campaign-donations.html

RL

Ralph Lauren Corporation

GOP lawmaker Ken Buck urges colleagues to stop taking Big Tech money

Representative Ken Buck, a Republican from Colorado, speaks during a panel discussion at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Orlando, Florida, on Saturday, Feb. 27, 2021. The top Republican on the House Judiciary subcommittee on antitrust is leading six of his peers in swearing off campaign donations from Amazon , Apple , Facebook , Google and Twitter . Rep. Ken Buck, R-Colo., the subcommittee's ranking member, announced Wednesday the "Pledge for America," urging his peers to follow his earlier commitment to refuse Big Tech money. Those who sign are pledging not to accept donations from companies that violate the signers' convictions about "the free market and the free exchange of ideas." "The threat posed by these monopolies is a real and present danger to conservatives, libertarians and anyone who does not agree with these corporations' ultra-liberal points-of-view," the pledge says. Reps. Chip Roy, R-Texas, Greg Steube, R-Fla., Dan Bishop, R-N.C., Ralph Norman, R-S.C., Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., and Burgess Owens, R-Utah, all signed the pledge. The move is at least partially symbolic, given that several of the firms have already paused donations from their political action committees, as companies from other industries also opted to do, after the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. Amazon and Google both paused contributions from their PACs to members who voted against certification of the election results affirming President Joe Biden's victory. That would include several of the signatories: Biggs, Bishop, Norman, Owens and Steube. Facebook has paused all donations from its PAC. Apple does not have a PAC, and Twitter closed its PAC in November after it lay dormant for years. The pledge bans donations not only from the companies and their PACs but also from executives who work for them. It's the latest signal that conservatives are serious about cracking down on what they see as unfair treatment by the tech platforms, including allegedly censoring their viewpoints and monopolizing internet markets. Buck has been a close ally of antitrust subcommittee Chairman David Cicilline, D-R.I. Though the two have differed slightly in the extent of the remedies they believe are necessary to reinvigorate competition into digital markets, they have remained closely aligned on the root of the harms by the platforms through the subcommittee's investigation of Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google. Both have expressed a commitment to working on a bipartisan basis to introduce new laws to reform antitrust enforcement. The companies named in the pledge declined to comment or did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Subscribe to CNBC on YouTube. WATCH: How US antitrust law works, and what it means for Big Tech

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/26/why-volatility-could-suddenly-return-to-the-markets-in-november.html

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Ralph Lauren Corporation

High drama week ahead for markets with new Fed chair, tax reform, Apple and maybe higher interest rates

watch now The coming week should be filled with high drama for markets as President Donald Trump is expected to name a new Fed chair, and Congress is set to unveil much-anticipated tax reform legislation. It could be one of the most pivotal for markets in a long time. Trump's Fed pick has the potential to spearhead a major shift in monetary policy and deregulation, and interest rates have already been rising on speculation ahead of that announcement, expected by Friday. The tax bill is also of big market interest since it has already been a catalyst for broader stock market gains and could drive fiscal stimulus and boost corporate earnings if Congress approves the bill with anywhere near the tax cuts expected. That will potentially be unveiled on Wednesday. These two events are expected during what is already a super busy market week and an important time for the economy, which just notched the best two quarters in a row in three years. The 3 percent third-quarter growth came despite damage from hurricanes and heralds potentially stronger reports for October data. The week is packed with events. There's a Fed meeting Tuesday and Wednesday, a Bank of England rate meeting Thursday, the Treasury's refunding announcement Wednesday, and a lot of economic data, from personal consumption to ISM and jobs, all week long. The Fed is not expected to raise interest rates until December, but the Bank of England is expected to hike rates Thursday. There are also more than 120 S&P 500 companies reporting earnings, including tech and consumer bellwether Apple as well as Facebook, Pfizer and Aetna , a takeover target of CVS. Stunning strength in tech sector earnings, from the likes of Alphabet, Intel, Amazon and Microsoft, helped send the Nasdaq to new highs Friday and set up hopes for an Apple or Facebook surprise. "There's certainly going to be catalysts for volatility," said Art Hogan, chief market strategist at Wunderlich Securities. New head at Fed The bond market has been reacting to many headlines as candidates for the Fed chair were vetted by the White House and became rotating grist for Wall Street's tireless rumor mill. "We've got the Fed chair, and we've got a tax bill coming. Both of them are bullish for rates," said Dan Clifton, head of policy strategy at Strategas Research. Bond yields move opposite price, and the 2-year yield, most closely tied to Fed policy, hit 1.63 percent Friday, a fresh 9-year high. Bond yields have been rising amid speculation that the most hawkish choice, Stanford University economist John Taylor, could be named Fed chairman. Still, Jerome Powell, a current Fed governor, is the one viewed as the top choice of the Trump administration. "My guess is the markets would be more supportive of Powell," said Ed Keon, managing director and portfolio manager at QMA, a unit of PGIM. Powell's style is seen as closest to current Fed Chair Janet Yellen, "and they would see Powell as a continuation of that policy," Keon said. "John Taylor would be perceived as being more hawkish." CNBC reported Friday that Trump was leaning toward naming Powell to be the chair when Yellen's term ends in early February. Clifton said it's possible both Powell and Taylor could be named, with Taylor serving as Powell's vice chairman. Some strategists doubt Taylor, known for his formula-based 'Taylor rule,' would want to play second fiddle to Powell, a Republican first appointed to be a Fed governor in 2012. "When it comes down to it, when the vice president calls and says the president needs you to be the vice chair, it's hard to turn down the president," said Clifton. The Senate leadership already showed its preference for Taylor during a show of hands vote at the White House earlier this week. Clifton said Senate support for Powell would be easier to win with Taylor by his side, but Taylor is also seen as more disruptive for markets were he to be named Fed chair because he is seen as likely to push interest rates up faster. The bond market may have a more subdued reaction if Powell is named chairman. Taylor is viewed as someone who would see a much higher neutral rate for fed funds — 3.5 percent or more compared with the current Fed's 2.75 percent. "The knee-jerk reaction would be substantially higher rates and a big curve flattening in the U.S.," said Michael Schumacher, director, rate strategy at Wells Fargo. "I think you could see the 10-year yield go up 20 basis points relatively quickly to 2.60 to 2.65." That could send ripples through the stock market, said Hogan, of Wunderlich. "The market can certainly handle higher rates. It just can't handle 20 basis points in two weeks," Hogan said, noting the 10-year was recently at 2.20. "We've certainly had time to digest that possibility [of Taylor], but the stock market hasn't adjusted to that," he said. Wall Street's fear gauge, the CBOE Volatility Index , or VIX, has risen nearly 8 percent this month. Market could react to 'spinach' in tax bill, not 'candy' Clifton said it's possible the Fed news could come on Thursday, especially if the focus is on the difficult parts of the tax proposal. "Let's just say Nov. 1 comes and the tax bill gets released. This is an enormously wonderful tax plan on net. A lower corporate tax rate, lower individual rates …but the focus is going to be on the spinach and not the candy, so that could lead to bad press. So why not step on the bad press and announce your Fed chair Nov. 2?" he said. Clifton said the aspects of the tax bill that lack consensus are a controversial proposal to limit annual 401(k) contributions and the elimination of state and local tax deductions, which is important in states such as New York and California. The elimination of some interest deductions for corporations is also under scrutiny. The House on Thursday narrowly voted 216 to 212 to approve a budget resolution, a key step to tax reform. Twenty Republicans, most of whom represent high-tax blue states New York and New Jersey, opposed the measure. Tax reform is seen as a positive for stocks, but the . The stocks of higher-taxed companies . But Jack Ablin, CIO at BMO Private Bank, said he tracks small-cap behavior, and they've been recovering. Small-caps overall pay a higher tax rate than large-caps. The average tax rate for S&P 500 companies is about 27 percent, while it's over 30 percent for small caps. As for the broader market, Ablin says some anticipation for a tax bill has already boosted the market. "Half is already baked in. We get a 4 percent pop if we get it, and a 4 or 5 percent decline if we don't," he said. Strategists said it will be important to see how much agreement there appears to be among congressional factions when the bill is unveiled. Another factor in the early days of November that could get global interest rates moving higher is the Bank of England's rate-hiking meeting, where it is expected to raise interest rates. It follows the Fed in moving away from ultra-easy policy. The it is buying in its quantitative easing program in half but it extended the program, walking back slowly from its easing programs. The combined efforts of central banks to tighten policy could add pressure to rates. The Federal Reserve's open market committee meets Tuesday and Wednesday, and while it is not expected to raise rates until December, it could discuss its program to slim down its more than $4 trillion balance sheet. The Fed cut its monthly bond buying by $10 billion and will continue to reduce it. For that reason, the market will be keenly focused on the Treasury's refunding announcement on Nov. 1. "It's more of a background issue, but the Treasury starts to preview increasing supply for next year," said John Briggs, head of strategy at NatWest Markets. He said the expanding deficit should require more issuance. "They could be vague or specific. … I'd think its probably less than more at this point. But it's on the radar," he said. Always important is the monthly employment report, and the October report on Friday could be just as murky as the September report. Economists expect 310,000 nonfarm payrolls, after hurricanes Harvey and Irma resulted in a decline of 33,000 payrolls in September. The identity of the Fed chair could be the key news for markets since it could drive interest-rate expectations. But Marc Chandler, head of foreign exchange strategy at Brown Brothers Harriman, said the market has already been building in its own view without tax reform or information on the new Fed. "People are coming around to the idea that maybe not the three hikes as the Fed is expecting for next year, but two," he said. What to watch WATCH: Congressman urges Trump to dump Yellen

https://www.cnbc.com/2015/05/08/cramer-remix-the-two-key-stocks-im-watching.html

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Ralph Lauren Corporation

Cramer Remix: The two key stocks I'm watching

watch now Friday was a good example of everything that can happen when things go right on the stock market. It was a work of true beauty, in Jim Cramer's eyes. The monthly job report had just enough growth without inflation, calm oil, a boring dollar and strong earnings. A great Friday! However, there were also some huge takeaways from this action. In preparation for a new week, Cramer outlined the lessons below. First, the market will hit just when you least expect it. As soon as you are so pessimistic that you're ready to sell everything and the charts look like everything will implode, BOOM. That's when it rallies. Second, interest rates have finally peaked for 2015. They've done nothing but rise for the year, but now there is no real inflation and Europe is doing better. If the European economy is starting to grow, then why the heck would our rates be much higher than them? Third, if Europe is really as strong as Cramer thinks, then he expects American companies will do much better overseas. Just take one look at McDonald's when it announced a positive surprise in Europe on Friday morning. Lastly, Cramer reminded investors that the right time to buy is when companies give you a discount. Pretend you're in the supermarket and want the best price! When all of the traders are freaking out, that is the time to buy. So, now that everyone is on the same page, Cramer revealed the top stocks that he will be watching next week: Monday: Actavis Cramer considers this to be perhaps the most important healthcare company out there. If Actavis blows away the estimates, then he expects everything in healthcare to rally. It's one of the most important reports of the week! Wednesday: Macy's, Ralph Lauren, J.C. Penney, Shake Shack, Cisco Cisco : Cramer expects that the incoming CEO Chuck Robbins will build on the momentum created by outgoing CEO John Chambers. It remains a core position for Cramer's charitable trust. Read More Cramer game plan: Traders must worry about this Dusty McCoy, chairman and CEO of Brunswick Corp. Adam Jeffery | CNBC With the sunshine and warm weather returning to the East Coast, Cramer has been thinking about summer time—and his 17-foot Boston Whaler. Brunswick Corp is the world's top maker of recreational boats and boat engines, with a side leg dedicated to billiards tables and fitness machines. The company reported last week and missed Wall Street's estimates, partially because they took a hit from the strong dollar and partially because it invested heavily to generate future growth. As a result, investors sunk the stock 7 percent in a single session last Wednesday. "At these levels, I think Brunswick is darned cheap," the "Mad Money" host said. Could this be the perfect summer stock play? To find out, Cramer sat down with Brunswick CEO Dusty McCoy. "We look around the world and one of the things we try not to do is whine about currency. We've left our thesis intact; our guidance has not changed. We're just going to have to deal with this," McCoy added. Read More Cramer: Tesla engine for your boat? Done! There is no doubt to Cramer that Whole Foods is a great place to shop. But with those same-store-sales numbers reported on Wednesday, what the heck is he supposed to do with the stock? "I left work last night puzzled and unsatisfied about how to deal with Whole Foods after its hideous decline. Sometimes a company defies its stock, and sometimes a stock defies its company, and I fear this is one of those times," the "Mad Money" host said. Cramer loves the experience of walking around his local Whole Foods in Brooklyn. While some may complain that it's too expensive, he only thinks consumers are paying up for the prepared foods, which taste great and are still cheaper than going to a restaurant. However, Whole Foods' same-store-sales figure of less than 3 percent obviously disappointed investors, and the stock was hit hard. So, what the heck do you use to measure Whole Foods? The same-store-sales metric has always been key because it can show organic growth by discounting new locations that need time to grow. At this point, Cramer is completely puzzled. This Whole Foods fiasco has made him question his own methodologies. Maybe it needs that new, smaller-store concept, or maybe the same store measurement is still good and the stock just needs to take a beating. Either way, Cramer has deduced that this stock is not a bargain, and until it can demonstrate consistent growth, he will not recommend it. Read More Cramer: What the heck to do with Whole Foods A man walks into a Whole Foods Market in Brooklyn, New York. Getty Images

https://www.cnbc.com/id/100343655

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Ralph Lauren Corporation

Worst CEO of 2012: Best Buy’s Brian Dunn

Sydney Finkelstein, a professor of management at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth and author of "Why Smart Executives Fail" and "Think Again," shared his annual "Worst CEOs" list with The Daily Ticker. Two of the CEOs were so bad they are no longer on the job. For the CEOs who remain on the payroll, watch out. All of the CEOs on Finkelstein's 2011 list have been shown the door. While stock price is an important part of Finkelstein's criteria, it is not the only determining factor. The lack of corporate governance also plays an important part. Without further ado, the top two "Worst CEOs of 2012" are Brian Dunn of Best Buy (BBY) and Audrey McClendon of Chesapeake Energy Corporation (CHK). Honorable mentions also go to Facebook's (FB) Mark Zuckerberg and Groupon's (GRPN) Andrew Mason. 1. Brian Dunn, former CEO, Best Buy (resigned April 2012) "Brian Dunn...there is really not a lot of great things to say," says Finkelstein in the accompanying interview. "You have a company that is in a virtual free fall. The stock is down something like 50% this year; cash is down; EPS is down; same-store-sales are down. You name it's down." Dunn resigned this past spring; during his tenure Best Buy stock has fallen 80% in five years. The electronics retailer's competitors — like Amazon (AMZN), Wal-Mart (WMT) and Apple (AAPL) —have been breathing down its neck for years and Dunn did little to fight back, says Finkelstein. Dunn also deserves blame for not improving Best Buy's customer service, Finkelstein adds. Dunn also "completely wasted" $6.4 billion in company cash on stock repurchases, says Finkelstein. Dunn was also accused of dating a 29-year-old female employee. 2. Aubrey McClendon, CEO, Chesapeake Energy (resigned as chairman, still CEO) "Aubrey McClendon is a classic entrepreneur who breaks all the rules," says Finkelstein. While he was a visionary in his line of work, he also pushed the envelope when it came to mixing business finances with personal finances. For example, McClendon used the corporate jet for his personal use and he cut a corporate sponsorship deal with a sports team he privately owned. According to Finkelstein, McClendon's inappropriate behavior includes: Documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal show that several major Wall Street banks lent McClendon money and then received lucrative work as public-offering underwriters or financial advisers to Chesapeake. Personally borrowed $500 million from EIG Global Energy Partners, which had also been a large financier for Chesapeake. In securing personal loans from his company's business associate, McClendon exposed himself to a potential conflict of interest, as it's reasonable to expect him to feel pressure to serve EIG's interests in future corporate transactions, potentially at the expense of the best interests of shareholders. Reuters exposed a $200 million hedge fund trading oil and gas McClendon ran at the same time he was CEO of Chesapeake -- an obvious conflict of interest. "Nothing is illegal, everything is disclosed (as far as we know) but it sure doesn't look good," says Finkelstein. 3. Andrea Jung, Avon, Chairman of Board (resigned as CEO April 2012) Andrea Jung of Avon (AVP) made this year's list of worst CEOs due to a long string of poor performance and her inability to remedy operational issues, says Finkelstein. Avon's stock price is down 18% in 2012 and was down more than 80% in the last quarter. The U.S. Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission are also looking into Avon's potential bribery of foreign officials. The investigation has been ongoing since 2011 and to date Avon has spent $300 million in legal fees. 4. Mark Pincus, CEO, Zynga Mark Pincus of Zynga (ZNGA) made the list because of the huge declines in Zynga's stock price. Zynga's stock price is down 75% in 2012. Even though the number of users is increasing, the number of paying customers is shrinking, notes Finkelstein. On top of that, there has been an "incredible exodus of top executive talent, always one of the biggest warning signs for impending disaster," says Finkelstein. Another foreboding sign is the fact that the gaming company is dependent upon Facebook for 90% of its revenues. 5. Rodrigo Rato, President, Bankia (Spain) Rato became the chief executive officer in 2010 and resigned this year after wrongfully promoting the health of the bank and its shares. The Spanish government had to step in and bail out the financial institution. Check out these other videos from The Daily Ticker: January's Highlights (and Lowlights) in Executive Compensation February's Highlights (and Lowlights) in Executive Compensation March Highlights (and Lowlights) in Executive Compensation April's Highlights (and Lowlights) in Executive Compensation June's Highlights (and Lowlights) in Executive Compensation Zynga, Ralph Lauren: Most Outrageous Acts of Corporate America

https://www.cnbc.com/id/44946312

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Ralph Lauren Corporation

Trading High End Retail

Liz Dunn, a senior analyst at Macquarie, told the Fast team the retailer is gaining share and has strong returns, as well as strong operation margins. “So you get more bang for the buck in terms of earnings growth from that outperformance on the sales line,” Dunn said. “They also have a better growth profile than most of the other department stores.” Dunn also gave an 'outperform' rating to Coach. She said the New York based-company is growing globally and not that big in Europe yet, so it doesn’t have that potential overhang. Coach is also buying back stock, which will benefit the bottom line, she added. Another name on Dunn’s 'outperform' list is Abercrombie & Fitch . She expects to see earnings grow over 50 percent this year and something close to that growth for 2012. “It’s a phenomenal story and they’re really doing quite well.” ______________________________________________________ Got something to to say? Send us an e-mail at fastmoney-web@cnbc.com and your comment might be posted on the Rapid Recap. If you'd prefer to make a comment, but not have it published on our Web site, send those e-mails to fastmoney@cnbc.com. Trader disclosure: On Oct. 18, 2011, the following stocks and commodities mentioned or intended to be mentioned on CNBC’s "Fast Money" were owned by the "Fast Money" traders: STEVE WEISS Weiss owns RIMM Weiss owns KO Weiss owns EUO RICH ILCZYSZYN Ilczyszyn owns ZSL LIZ DUNN (RL) : Macquarie Group Limited is currently providing Ralph Lauren Corporation with non-securities services. Macquarie Group Limited or one of its affiliates received compensation for products and services other than investment advisory services from Ralph Lauren Corporation during the past 12 months. During this time, Macquarie Group Limited or one of its affiliates provided non-securities services to Ralph Lauren Corporation. ED NAJARIAN Neither ISI nor its affiliates beneficially own 1% or more of any class of common equity securities of the subject companies referenced in the Report. No person(s) responsible for preparing this Report or a member of his/her household serve as an officer, director or advisory board member of any of the subject companies. No person(s) preparing this report or a member of his/her household have a financial interest in the subject companies of this Report. At various times, the employees and owners of ISI, other than those preparing this Report, may transact in the securities discussed in this Report. Neither ISI nor its affiliates have any investment banking or market making operations. No person(s) preparing this research Report has received non-investment banking compensation form the subject company in the past 12 months. ISI does and seeks to do business with companies covered in this research Report and has received non-investment banking compensation in the past 12 months. REBECCA PATTERSON No disclosures CNBC.com with wires.

https://www.cnbc.com/id/44938641

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Ralph Lauren Corporation

Fast Pro: Short BofA if Rally Continues

“The whole financial sphere has really been killed and is so out of favor, that I do think there is value there,” he said, especially since they don’t have serious housing exposure. However, he’s yet to hit the buy button on Goldman because of its exposure to China. While Goldman posted deeper-than-expected losses, Ed Najarian said when you take out the private equity losses, you have core earnings losses of only about a dollar. And that’s better than the muted expectations for the financial firm going into the quarter. Stephen Weiss hasn’t changed his position—he’s still staying away from the banks. “This was just a relief quarter,” he said, adding that he doesn’t know what was short covering versus real buying. “They are very cheap stocks, [but] there’s just not a real catalyst to get them not to be very cheap stocks,” he noted. “I’m not buying them. There are plenty of other places to make money in the market.” ______________________________________________________ Got something to to say? Send us an e-mail at fastmoney-web@cnbc.com and your comment might be posted on the Rapid Recap. If you'd prefer to make a comment, but not have it published on our Web site, send those e-mails to fastmoney@cnbc.com. Trader disclosure: On Oct. 18, 2011, the following stocks and commodities mentioned or intended to be mentioned on CNBC’s "Fast Money" were owned by the "Fast Money" traders: STEVE WEISS Weiss owns RIMM Weiss owns KO Weiss owns EUO RICH ILCZYSZYN Ilczyszyn owns ZSL LIZ DUNN (RL) : Macquarie Group Limited is currently providing Ralph Lauren Corporation with non-securities services. Macquarie Group Limited or one of its affiliates received compensation for products and services other than investment advisory services from Ralph Lauren Corporation during the past 12 months. During this time, Macquarie Group Limited or one of its affiliates provided non-securities services to Ralph Lauren Corporation. ED NAJARIAN Neither ISI nor its affiliates beneficially own 1% or more of any class of common equity securities of the subject companies referenced in the Report. No person(s) responsible for preparing this Report or a member of his/her household serve as an officer, director or advisory board member of any of the subject companies. No person(s) preparing this report or a member of his/her household have a financial interest in the subject companies of this Report. At various times, the employees and owners of ISI, other than those preparing this Report, may transact in the securities discussed in this Report. Neither ISI nor its affiliates have any investment banking or market making operations. No person(s) preparing this research Report has received non-investment banking compensation form the subject company in the past 12 months. ISI does and seeks to do business with companies covered in this research Report and has received non-investment banking compensation in the past 12 months. REBECCA PATTERSON No disclosures CNBC.com with wires.