Category: Stock Market News

Canada’s Cogeco Communications Inc. said Monday its Atlantic Broadband unit has agreed to buy all of the cable systems operating under the MetroCast brand name from Harron Communications LP for $1.4 billion in cash. MetroCast has a network of close to 236,000 homes and businesses in New Hampshire, Maine, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia and serves 120,000 internet, 76,000 video and 37,000 telephony customers. The company is expecting to generate $230 million of revenue in 2017. “With this acquisition, we are increasing our customer base in attractive markets adjacent to the ones we currently serve,” Cogeco Chief Executive Louis Audet said in a statement. The deal is expected to close in January of 2018 and will be financed secured debt provided by two banks and an equity investment by Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec.

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Kala Pharmaceuticals disclosed terms for its proposed initial public offering, in which it will sell 6 million shares at a price between $14 to $16 a share to raise up to $96 million. If the underwriters of the offering exercise all of the options granted to buy 900,000 additional shares to cover overallotments, the developer of treatments for eye diseases could raise up to $110.4 million. The stock is expected to be list on the Nasdaq Global Market under the ticker symbol “KALA.” J.P. Morgan, BofA Merrill Lynch, Wells Fargo Securities and Wedbush PacGrow are the lead underwriters. The stock is coming market at a time when the SPDR S&P Pharmaceuticals ETF has climbed 10.1% year to date through Friday, while the S&P 500 has gained 8.3%.

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Valeant Pharmaceuticals International Inc. shares jumped 1.2% in premarket trade Monday, after the company said it has paid down $811 million of senior secured loans, keeping it on track with its debt-reduction goals. The company said it used the proceeds of the recent sale of Dendreon Pharmaceuticals LLC to pay off the loans. “With this transaction, all mandatory amortization has been paid through 2019,” the company wrote in a statement. Valeant has reduced its debt by more than $4.3 billion since the end of the first quarter of 2016. The company, which started on a debt reduction track after an accounting scandal that battered its reputation and led to the ouster of its longtime chief executive, said it still expects to pay down $5 billion in debt using the proceeds of asset sales and free cash flow within 18 months of August 2016. Shares have gained 12% in 2017, while the S&P 500 has gained 8.3%.

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Scores of firefighters battled a serious blaze in London’s popular Camden Market on Sunday night. The London Fire Brigade tweeted that the fire was under control early Monday morning, local time, but crews would be “damping down” into the morning. The market is a major tourist attraction with more than 1,000 shops and food outlets. At one point, officials said the first, second and third floors of the north London complex were on fire, and more than 70 firefighters were on the scene. There were no immediate reports of injuries. Camden Market also suffered a major fire in 2008, which forced parts of the complex to be closed for months. In June, another massive fire killed at least 80 people in an apartment tower in west London.

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Online lender LendingClub Corp. said Friday it received a letter last week from consumer-lending company IEG Holdings Corp. stating IEG’s intention to buy up to 9.99% of the LendingClub’s shares on the basis of two shares of IEG stock for each share of LendingClub stock, a 38% discount to the current price of LendingClub’s stock. There’s no “rational economic basis” for LendingClub stockholders to accept the exchange offer, which “appears intended to mislead investors into mistakenly tendering into a deeply discounted offer,” LendingClub said in a statement. The offer is “grossly inadequate,” and LendingClub urged stockholders “not to be misled into tendering into the offer, if and when it is made,” it said. Shares of LendingClub were recently down 0.6% after ending the regular session up 1.1%.

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MetLife Inc. said Friday it has agreed to buy Logan Circle Partners LP, Fortress Investment Group’s fixed-income asset management business, for $250 million in cash. The deal is aligned with MetLife’s strategy of delivering value “by focusing on businesses with strong risk-adjusted internal rates of returns, low capital intensity and sustainable cash flows,” MetLife Chief Executive Steven A. Kandarian said in a statement. The acquisition is expected to close in the third quarter. Shares of MetLife were unchanged in late trading after ending the regular session up 0.5%.

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U.S. stocks finished higher Friday as tech stocks rebounded from a slump and the jobs report showed a higher-than-expected gain for June. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 94.30 points, or 0.4%, to close at 21,414.34, with shares of McDonald’s Corp. and Nike Inc. leading the average and more than 1% gains in Microsoft Corp. and Apple Inc. , for a weekly gain of 0.3%. The S&P 500 index rose 15.43 points, or 0.6%, to end at 2,425.18, led by a 1.3% gain in the tech sector and a 0.8% gain in consumer-discretionary stocks, for a less than 0.1% weekly gain. The Nasdaq Composite Index closed up 63.61 points, or 1%, at 6,153.08, for a weekly gain of 0.2%.

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Oil prices fell Friday to finish near a two-week low, pressured by growth in U.S. production and data showing a weekly climb in the number of domestic rigs drilling for oil. For the week, the price for U.S. benchmark oil lost 3.9%, the sixth such decline in seven weeks. August West Texas Intermediate crude fell $1.29, or 2.8%, to settle at $44.23 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange for the session.

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A popular way to bet on the beleaguered technology sector on Friday was on track to post its best one-day gain in about two weeks. The tech-focused Technology Select Sector SPDR ETF was trading at near its highest, up 1.4%, which would mark its best daily rally since June 19 when the ETF climbed 1.48%, according to FactSet data. Gains in the exchange-traded fund were led by solid advances in shares of Applied Materials Inc. , Seagate Technology Plc. and Qorvo Inc. , all up at least 3%. The resurgence in tech names, which have seen fitful trade over the past few weeks as questions about lofty valuations plague the sector, was in part helping the tech-laden Nasdaq Composite Index to power higher, up 1.1% on the day. Friday’s advance also comes after an upbeat employment report that showed the U.S. added 222,000 jobs in June, representing the second-best job haul this year. Healthy employment combined with muted levels of inflation are being read as underpinning a continued rise for risk assets, including stocks, with an expectation that the Federal Reserve will lift interest rates, increasing borrowing costs for companies, but at a more subdued pace. The S&P 500 index was up 0.7% at 2,426, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average was climbing 0.5% at 21,416.

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Shares of Rambus Inc. spiked higher in active afternoon trade Friday, amid reports that the semiconductor company was exploring a potential sale. The stock was up about 2.8% at around 1:25 p.m. ET, amid a broad rally in the chip sector, then rocketed to a gain of 13.4% in the next minute, prior to a trading halt on volatility. The stock pared some gains after the halt was lifted, to be up 7.2% on volume of 2.3 million shares, which was already nearly 4-times the full-day average. Despite the day’s rally, Rambus’s stock was down 11.8% year to date, while the PHLX Semiconductor Index has rallied 16.7% and the S&P 500 has gained 8.3%.

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