Category: Stock Market News

The White House is due to meet with certain videogame executives this afternoon about violence in games, but shares of the major publishers are up ahead of the meeting. Activision Blizzard Inc. is leading the pack, with shares up 2.8%. Shares of Electronic Arts Inc. and Take-Two Interactive Software Inc. are up 1% and 0.8%, respectively. “Trump’s scapegoat meeting with game industry reps doesn’t worry me,” Benchmark analyst Mike Hickey wrote in a recent note to clients. He cites a 2011 Supreme Court decision that deemed videogames an expression of First Amendment rights. “Future courts will rely on this decision to make their own judgments, and that would apply to any law that Trump may attempt to spearhead through congress,” Hickey added. Activision shares are up 57% over the past 12 months, while EA shares are up 45% and Take-Two shares are up 89%. The S&P 500 has gained 16% in that time.

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MoviePass has hired former Viacom Inc. , Spotify and Comcast Corp. executive Mike Berkley to serve as the cinema-going subscription service’s chief product officer, according to a Variety report. Representatives for MoviePass and MoviePass owner Helios & Matheson Analytics Inc. were not readily reachable for comment. MoviePass has often struggled to keep up with the rapid growth its experienced since cutting the price of its monthly subscription to $10 from as much as $50 last August. The company has been building out a team to handle the demands of its new prominence, including hiring a chief marketing officer and head of fraud prevention. Berkley said in a statement acquired by Variety that MoviePass is one of the most exciting companies to emerge in the industry in recent years, that it’s having the same sort of impact on theatrical exhibition of films that Netflix Inc. has had on TV. Shares of MoviePass owner Helios & Matheson have gained more than 48% in the last 12 months, while the S&P 500 index is up close to 16%.

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Shares of Progress Software Corp. tumbled 9.3% toward a three-month low in morning trade Thursday, Benchmark swung to bearish from bullish on the business software company after one of its largest shareholders disclosed the sale of its entire stake. Praesidium Investment Management Co. said in an SEC filing late Wednesday that it no longer owned any voting shares of Progress Software, after disclosing last month that it owned 4.33 million shares, or about 9.3% of the shares outstanding as of March 31. Analyst Mark Schappel at Benchmark downgraded Progress Software to sell from buy, as Praesidium’s sale of its entire stake in the company means the activist hedge fund “will no longer be a change agent for the company and a catalyst for the stock.” He slashed his stock price to $35 from $42. He said given the stock’s “meaningful appreciation” since Praesidium went public with its strategy demands, “we believe the hedge fund determined that most of the ‘easy money’ had been made, and that further share gains would likely come at the expense of an arduous, costly and time consuming proxy battle, which was likely the next step in the process.” The stock has still rallied 39.2% over the past 12 months, while the S&P 500 has gained 15.5%.

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The U.S. Energy Information Administration reported Thursday that domestic supplies of natural gas fell by 57 billion cubic feet for the week ended March 2. Analysts surveyed by S&P Global Platts had forecast a decrease of 59 billion, but the five-year average withdrawal is 129 billion. Total stocks now stand at 1.625 trillion cubic feet, down 680 billion cubic feet from a year ago, and 300 billion below the five-year average, the government said. April natural gas was down 2.7 cents, or 1%, at $2.75 per million British thermal units, little changed from before the data.

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The Securities and Exchange Commission charged Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith Inc. with failing to perform required gatekeeping functions in the unregistered sales of securities on behalf of a China-based issuer. The order found the Bank of America unit sold nearly 3 million shares of Longtop Financial Technological Limited’s securities despite red flags indicating that the sales could be part of an unlawful unregistered distribution. Merrill Lynch didn’t admit or deny findings and paid a $1.25 million penalty and more than $154,000 in disgorgement and prejudgment interest.

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U.S. equity markets opened modestly higher on Thursday as investors appeared less worried about the prospect of trade wars, expecting recently announced tariffs to be watered down to exempt major trading partners such as Canada and Mexico, according to some reports. President Donald Trump is expected to sign a decree that lays out his plan for levies on steel and aluminum imports this week, perhaps as soon as 3:30 p.m. Eastern Time on Thursday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 75 points, or 0.3%, to 24,876. The S&P 500 index rose 5 points, or 0.2% to 2,733, while the Nasdaq Composite gained 28 points, or 0.4% to 7,424. Among the best performers on the S&P 500, Express Scripts Holding Company soared after news that Cigna would buy it in a $67 billion deal.

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Shares of Hovnanian Enterprises Inc. tumbled 3.9% in early trade Thursday, after the homebuilder reported a wider first-quarter loss and a sharp decline in revenue. The net loss for the quarter to Jan. 31 was $30.8 million, or 21 cents a share, compared with a loss of $143,000, or flat on a per-share basis, in the same period a year ago. Revenue declined 24.4% to $417.2 million, as consolidated deliveries fell 20.5% to 1,025 homes. Chief Executive Ara Hovnanian said the company was in a “transition period” because of the adverse impacts of having to pay off $320 million in debt in late 2015 and 2016, when the high-yield market was closed to the company. “As a result, we were unable to replenish our land position sufficiently in 2016 and 2017. This led to a reduction in community count and revenues, impacting our overall profitability,” Hovnanian said. “We are confident the most challenging quarter for fiscal 2018 is behind us and we expect future quarters this year should yield improved operating results, as we continue to rebuild our company.” The stock has lost 2.2% over the past 12 months through Wednesday, while the iShares U.S. Home Construction ETF has run up 25.6% and the S&P 500 has gained 15.6%.

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Trump administration officials requested a $100 billion reduction in the U.S.-China trade deficit when meeting with President Xi Jinping’s top economic deputy last week, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter. In a tweet on Wednesday, President Donald Trump said Washington asked for a $1 billion reduction.

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Shares of Micron Technology Inc. are up 1.2% in Thursday morning trading after analysts at KeyBanc Capital Markets raised their price target on the stock to $65 from $53. The analysts, led by Wes Twigg, now anticipate sequential ASP declines of 2% for the fiscal third and fourth quarters, less than the 3% declines they’d previously predicted. “DRAM demand remains very high, and contract pricing has continued to increase this year amid persistent undersupply,” Twigg wrote. “While we expect new supply to come online later this year, we expect bit supply to remain below demand for most of the year, and pricing could continue to increase.” In general, the analysts see “relatively healthy memory markets over the midterm to long term.” Micron shares are up 113% over the past 12 months, while the S&P 500 is up 15% and the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index is up 43%.

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Shares of Israel-based Vascular Biogenics Ltd., which is operating as VBL Therapeutics, plummeted 63% toward a record low in premarket trade Thursday, after the biopharmaceutical company said a phase 3 trial of its brain cancer treatment failed to meet its primary endpoint. “We are disappointed that our encouraging Phase 2 data were not replicated in the GLOBE phase 3 study, and once we receive the full and final data we will be analyzing them carefully to better understand the outcome of the study,” Chief Executive Dror Harats said. “We believe that VB-111 may still hold promise for other indications we currently or may study in the future.” The stock had rallied 13.3% over the past 12 months through Wednesday, while the S&P 500 had gained 15.4%.

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