Stocks rose Friday and the
S&P 500
marked a new record close as tech stocks again led the rally on Wall Street.
These stocks made moves Friday:
Shares of
iRobot
plunged 27% after The Wall Street Journal reported the European Commission intends to block
Amazon.com’s
acquisition of the Roomba maker. The Journal, citing people familiar with the matter, said Amazon was told Thursday in a meeting with competition officials from the European Commission that the deal likely would be rejected. Amazon agreed to buy iRobot for $1.7 billion in August 2022. Amazon shares finished up 1.2%.
Spirit Airlines
rose 17% after the beleaguered budget carrier said it expects fourth-quarter revenue at the high end of its initial guidance and that bookings over the holiday period were strong. The stock had closed down 7.5% on Thursday following a Journal report that said Spirit was planning to explore restructuring options with advisors following the collapse of its merger with
JetBlue Airways.
In a statement sent to Barron’s after markets closed Thursday, a Spirit spokesperson said that the company “is not pursuing nor involved in a statutory restructuring.” Spirit shares fell 47% on Tuesday and 22% on Wednesday.
Super Micro Computer
gained 36% after the server and computer products maker said it expects fiscal second-quarter adjusted earnings of $5.40 to $5.55 a share, higher than analysts’ estimates of $4.51 and better than the company’s previous forecast of $4.40 to $4.88. It expects sales of $3.6 billion to $3.65 billion, also above Wall Street estimates. Super Micro cited “a strong market and end customer demand for our rack-scale, AI and Total IT Solutions.”
Advanced Micro Devices
rose 7.1% to $174.23 and
Nvidia
climbed 4.2% to $594.91 after shares of both chip makers closed at all-time highs on Thursday. AMD has risen 26% this year while
Nvidia
has soared 24%. The stocks have received a boost from investors’ appetite for everything related to artificial intelligence. On Thursday, AMD and Nvidia got a lift from
Taiwan Semiconductor’s
better-than-expected forecast.
Texas Instruments
finished up 4.1% to $173.65.
UBS
upgraded the stock to Buy from Neutral and raised the price target on shares of the chip maker to $195 from $170.
Travelers
rose 6.7% after the property casualty insurer reported fourth-quarter core profit of $7.01 a share, easily topping analysts’ estimates of $5.10. The company said the quarter saw higher underwriting gains and lower catastrophe losses.
Wayfair
said it would be cutting 1,650 jobs after acknowledging that it “went overboard in hiring during a strong economic period.” Shares of the online home furnishings retailer rose 10%.
Ally Financial
rose 11%. The bank reported better-than-expected fourth-quarter adjusted earnings and said its point-of-sale financing business was acquired by
Synchrony Financial.
Schlumberger
gained 2.2% after the oil services provider’s fourth-quarter revenue topped estimates on strong international growth. SLB also raised its quarterly dividend.
International Business Machines
climbed 2.8% to $171.48 after Evercore raised its rating on the stock to Outperform from In Line and increased the price target to $200 from $165.
AT&T
gained 1.7% to $16.67 after shares of the telecommunications company were upgraded to Outperform from Perform at
Oppenheimer
and the price target was set at $21. Oppenheimer raised its forecasts for revenue and earnings at
AT&T.
Chegg
was downgraded to Sell from Neutral at
Goldman Sachs
and the price target was cut to $8 a share from $10. Shares of the education technology company fell 2.2% to $9.84 after the analysts said the emergence of generative artificial intelligence software tools posed a major risk to providers on online courseware.
Write to Joe Woelfel at joseph.woelfel@barrons.com
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