Category: Stock Market News

Shares of RH , formerly known as Restoration Hardware, topped 9% late Wednesday after the home furnishings retailer raised its third-quarter and fiscal 2017 guidance thanks to “a dramatically more efficient operating platform,” it said. Adjusted net revenues for the quarter are expected to be up 8%, despite a 1% negative impact from hurricanes Harvey and Irma, the company said in a statement. Adjusted diluted per-share earnings are expected to be in the range of $1.02 to $1.04, compared with a prior guidance of between 68 cents and 80 cents. RH said it expects net revenues for the third quarter to reach about $592.5 million, compared to a previous guidance of adjusted net revenues in the range of $575 million and $590 million. For fiscal 2017, the company called for net income in a range of $82 million and $87 million, from a previous forecast of $70 million to $77 million, and called for fiscal 2017 expenses between $120 million to $130 million, down from between $120 million to $140 million. The company said it expects fiscal 2018 net revenue between $2.58 billion to $2.62 billion, adjusted net income in the range of $125 million to $145 million, and free cash flow of more than $240 million. Shares had ended the regular trading day down 6.1%.

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NetApp Inc. shares jumped in the extended session Wednesday after the company beat fiscal second-quarter earnings and sales expectations. NetApp shares rose 4.6% to $47.96 after hours. The company reported second-quarter net income of $175 million, or 64 cents a share, compared with $109 million, or 38 cents a share, in the year-ago period. Adjusted earnings were 81 cents a share. Revenue rose to $1.42 billion from $1.34 billion in the year-ago period. Analysts surveyed by FactSet had estimated adjusted earnings of 69 cents a share on revenue of $1.38 billion. For the third fiscal quarter, analysts model earnings of 85 cents a share on revenue of $1.44 billion. Executives said that they expected fiscal third-quarter earnings of between $1.18 and $1.26 a share on sales of between $1.43 billion and $1.56 billion. NetApp stock has gained 30% this year, with the S&P 500 index rising 15%.

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Cisco Systems Inc. shares rallied in the extended session Wednesday after the networking company topped Wall Street estimates for the quarter and offered an earnings forecast slightly above the consensus. Cisco shares surged 3.8% to $35.40 after hours. The company reported fiscal first-quarter net income of $2.39 billion, or 48 cents a share, compared with $2.32 billion, or 46 cents a share, in the year-ago period. Adjusted earnings were 61 cents a share. Revenue declined to $12.14 billion from $12.35 billion in the year-ago period. Analysts surveyed by FactSet had estimated 60 cents a share on revenue of $12.11 billion. For the fiscal second quarter, Cisco estimates earnings of 58 cents to 60 cents a share on year-over-year revenue growth of 1% to 3%, or $11.7 billion to $11.93 billion. Analysts expect earnings of 58 cents a share on revenue of $11.7 billion.

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Agilent Technologies Inc. said late Wednesday its board of directors has increased the company’s dividend to 14.9 cents a share, payable Jan. 24 to shareholders of record as of Jan. 2. Shares of Agilent were flat in after-hours trading after ending the regular trading day down 0.2%.

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WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) – Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin on Wednesday said he won’t vote for the current tax plan, potentially jeapardizing the Republican effort to score its first signature legislative triumph in the Trump presidency. Johnson, a businessman before he became senator, contends the current plan helps big corporations more than smaller companies. “If they can pass it without me, let them,” Mr. Johnson said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal, a sister publication of MarketWatch. “I’m not going to vote for this tax package.” Republicans only control 52 seats in the Senate and can’t afford to lose more than a few votes. Johnson also briefly opposed a Senate bill to replace Obamacare, but he eventually sided with the rest of his conservative colleagues. He’s generally been a strong supporter of lower taxes and deregulation.

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Oil prices fell Wednesday to settle at their lowest level in nearly two weeks. The Energy Information Administration reported that U.S. crude supplies rose unexpectedly, for a second week in a row. Total U.S. crude production, meanwhile, rose to nearly 9.65 million barrels a day for the week ended Nov. 10. That was the largest average weekly output on record at the EIA, based on data going back to 1983. December West Texas Intermediate crude fell 37 cents, or 0.7%, to settle at $55.33 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

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Three freshman members of the UCLA basketball team, LiAngelo Ball, Jalen Hill and Cody Riley, have been suspended indefinitely, according to Bleacher Report and other outlets, after having had criminal charges reportedly dropped in connection with a recent alleged shoplifting incident at a Louis Vuitton store in Hangzhou, China. The players expressed remorse and apologized to the university and its storied basketball program as well as their families while making their first public statements Wednesday on the matter. President Trump, who wondered on Twitter this morning whether he would be thanked for his role in their release from detention after a week and who’d called his discussion of the issue with Chinese leader Xi Jinping a “great” one, was thanked by all three players at a televised news conference in Los Angeles.

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Gold prices settled lower Wednesday, easing back in the wake of two sessions of gains, as key U.S. dollar benchmark traded nearly flat for the session. The ICE U.S. Dollar Index was nearly unchanged at 93.794, trading off session lows which had helped boost dollar-denominated prices of gold earlier Wednesday. December gold lost $5.20, or 0.4%, to settle at $1,277.70 an ounce.

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Shares of Boot Barn Holdings Inc. shot up 6.4% toward a 10-month high in afternoon trade Wednesday, after J.P. Morgan upgraded the western and work-related footwear and apparel retailer. The stock has now run up 48% since Boot Barn reported fiscal second-quarter profit, revenue and same-store sales that beat expectations after the Nov. 2 close. J.P. Morgan analyst Matthew Boss raised his rating to overweight, after being at neutral since April 2016, and nearly doubled his stock price target to $17 from $9. After hosting a meeting with Boot Barn management, Boss came away more confident that sales have stabilized and that e-commerce has swung to a tailwind from a headwind the past three quarters, while the balance sheet has strengthened. Boss said that suggests company has “weathered the storm” of earnings compression it has suffered the past two years. He also stable-to-rising oil and gas prices suggests the economic backdrop in the key oil-and-gas states that Boot Barn operates in are improving. Despite the rally this month, the stock was still down 0.6% year to date, while the SPDR S&P Retail ETF has lost 9.1% and the S&P 500 has climbed 15%.

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General Electric Co.’s stock bounced sharply off earlier lows to rally 1.5% on heavy volume, enough to pace the gainers within the Dow Jones Industrial Average . The stock was down as much as 2.2% at its intraday low of $17.50 in the first minute after the open, and was up as much as 2.7% at its high of $18.38, which was reached a little after 11:00 a.m. ET. Volume of 86 million shares made the stock the day’s most actively traded. The stock was on track for just the fourth gain in the 18 sessions since the day after GE reported third-quarter results. The bounce comes after the 12.6% plunge in the past two sessions to six-year low, as investors and analysts expressed disappointment over new Chief Executive John Flannery’s turnaround plan. Despite Wednesday’s rally, GE’s stock was still by far the worst performer among Dow components over the past three months, shedding 27.8% over that time. The next worst were shares of Merck & Co. , which have lost 12.1%. Meanwhile, the Dow has gained 6.0% the past three months.

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