Category: Stock Market News

TreeHouse Foods Inc. said Monday it has named Steven Oakland as chief executive officer and president, effective March 26. Oakland, most recently vice chair and president, U.S. food and beverage at The J.M. Smucker Company , is replacing Sam Reed, who will serve as non-executive chairman of the board through July 1 before retiring. TreeHouse makes packaged foods and beverages at manufacturing facilities in the U.S., Canada and Italy, focusing on private label products for retail grocery and food away from home customers. TreeHouse shares were not yet active premarket, but have fallen 54% in the last 12 months, while the S&P 500 has gained 13%.

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Clearside Biomedical Inc. shares surged 53% in premarket trade Monday, after the company announced positive results in a late-stage trial of a treatment for macular edema associated with non-infectious uveitis, a swelling that affects the back of the eye. The company said the trial of its suprachoroidal CLS-TA involving 160 patients met its primary and secondary endpoints. “We currently expect to submit a new drug application for suprachoroidal CLS-TA in patients with macular edema associated with uveitis to the FDA in the fourth quarter of 2018, and we are also evaluating a number of options for submissions to regulatory agencies in additional territories outside of the United States,” Chief Executive Daniel White said in a statement. Shares are down about 8% in the last 12 months through Friday, while the S&P 500 has gained 13%.

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National Front, the French far-right political party led by Marine Le Pen, will change its name and refocus on immigration in an effort to attract more support from voters, according to a Reuters report Monday. Le Pen, who lost last year’s French presidential election to Emmanuel Macron, is expected to unveil the new name when the party meets on March 10-11. The party is also set to move away from its stance against the euro, the European Union’s common currency, as that’s been a turnoff for voters, the report said. “We’re keeping our fundamentals, our basis: security, immigration,” National Front lawmaker and party spokesman Sebastien Chenu told Reuters. The report arrived after euroskeptic, populist parties in Italy performed better than anticipated in Sunday’s general election.

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U.S. stock futures pointed to a weaker open on Monday, as investors appeared unsettled by signs of further political instability in Italy after elections and on lingering trade-war fears. Dow futures stumbled 113 points, or 0.5%, to 24,423, while S&P 500 futures dropped 16.2 points, or 0.6%, to 2,674.25. Nasdaq 100 futures slid 37.25 points, or 0.6%, to 6,768. Major indexes posted hefty weekly losses, with the Dow industrials tumbling 391 points at one stage on Friday before paring that loss to 70.92 points. That weakness came after President Donald Trump, in a surprise move, on Thursday announced tariffs on steel and aluminum imports, ramping up rhetoric around a potential trade war. Meanwhile, investors were looking at results of Sunday’s Italian elections, with no clear winner emerging thus far. That could mean a prolonged period of political uncertainty in one of the eurozone’s biggest economies. The euro was weaker against major rivals. Asian markets were mostly lower, led by a 1.4% drop for Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index . Gold prices rose modestly, while oil prices were largely flat.

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Special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation has subpoenaed a mountain of documents concerning President Donald Trump and his top campaign advisers, NBC News reported Sunday night. According to a copy of the subpoena reviewed by NBC, Mueller is seeking emails, text messages, work papers, telephone logs and more, going back to Nov. 1, 2015. Investigators are reportedly seeking documents of anything having to do with Trump and current and former aides including Steve Bannon, Michael Cohen, Rick Gates, Hope Hicks, Paul Manafort, Corey Lewandowski, Carter Page, Keith Schiller and Roger Stone. Last week, NBC News reported Mueller was asking witnesses if Trump directed hacked Democratic emails to be released.

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IPG Photonics Corp. will join the S&P 500 index replacing shares of Scripps Networks Interactive Inc. , according to S&P Dow Jones Indices late Friday. IPG, which makes lasers and laser equipment used in the materials industry, will replace Scripps before the market opens on March 7, S&P said. Scripps is being acquired by Discovery Communications Inc. . Shares of IPG were down 0.1% after hours.

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Shares of McDonald’s Corp. sank sharply lower Friday, registering its worst dollar decline in its history as a publicly traded company and its worst percentage drop since October of 2008, according to FactSet data, which has McDonald’s data going back to 1972. McDonald’s became a publicly traded company in 1965. The decline for shares of the fast-food chain also represented its worst weekly decline since 2008 and the sharpest total dollar decline for a week ever. Shares of the component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average ended down 4.8% or $7.43, weighing on the price-weighted blue-chip benchmark. For the week, McDonald’s shares are off 9.2%. Friday’s drop came as RBC Capital Markets cut its price target for the company to $170 from $190. The bank also cut its U.S. same-store expectations after a slow start to the $1 $2 $3 menu. RBC maintained its outperform rating on the fast-food giant’s stock. Analysts say “deteriorating industry conditions” and “disappointing” sales of the new value menu drove the U.S. same-store sales forecast for the first quarter down to 1% from 3.5%.

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U.S. stocks closed mostly higher in a wild action on Friday, with the Nasdaq and S&P 500 snapping a three-session losing streak as President Donald Trump escalated the rhetoric around a potential trade war in the wake of a pledge for tariffs on steel and aluminum imports. However, fears ebbed by the end of the session. The Dow closed down about 70 points, or 0.3%, but the average had been down by as many as 390 points. McDonald’s was the biggest drag on the benchmark exacting a toll of about 50 points. The S&P 500 index , however, closed higher, up 0.5% at 2,691, while the Nasdaq Composite Index rang up a gain of 1.1% at 7,257.

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Stock of Perrigo Co. Plc closed 4.3% higher at $82.99 on Friday, snapping a three-day losing streak for the shares, as Wall Street cheered the pharma company’s earnings. Perrigo Thursday reported adjusted earnings of $1.28 a share on sales of $1.28 billion. Analysts polled by FactSet had expected adjusted earnings of $1.25 a share on sales of $1.26 billion. Perrigo also said it expects 2018 per-share earnings to be in the range of $2.24 to $2.64, and adjusted EPS guidance to be in the range of $5.05 to $5.45 for the year. The analysts surveyed by FactSet expect adjusted earnings of $5.32 a share for the year.

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The Associated Press reported on Friday that the Securities and Exchange Commission dropped its inquiry into Apollo Global Management, the private equity firm, late last year after the company had given White House adviser Jared Kushner’s family real estate firm a $180 million loan a month earlier. Apollo reported in its 2018 annual report that the SEC had halted its inquiry into how the firm reported the financial results of its private equity funds and other costs and personnel changes after the Obama administration had subpoenaed it for information related to the issue, according to the AP. There is no evidence that Kushner or any other Trump administration official had a role in the SEC’s decision, according to the AP, but the timing of the end of the inquiry raised potential conflict-of-interest questions about Kushner’s family business and his role as an adviser to his father-in-law, President Donald Trump. The AP report came a day after The New York Times reported that Apollo executives had met several times at the White House with Kushner before making the loan.

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