Category: Stock Market News

The U.S. stock market opened lower Friday, with the major indexes on track for weekly losses. Weaker-than-expected data on retail sales and inflation pointed to an uncertain economic environment, while investors grew cautious amid political uncertainty. The S&P 500 opened 2 points, or 0.1%, lower at 2,392. The Nasdaq Composite was flat at 6,118 at the open. The Dow Jones Industrial Average began the session down 27 points, or 0.1%, at 20,890.

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Shares of Ziopharm Oncology Inc. tumbled 12% in morning trade Friday, after the biotechnology company’s stock offering priced at a deep discount. The company said its follow-on offering of 9.7 million shares priced at $5.15, which is 28% below Thursday’s closing price of $7.12. The stock hasn’t closed as low as $5.15 since Oct. 14, 2016. The company has 132.4 million shares outstanding, according to FactSet. Ziopharm said that including the proceeds from the offering, expected to be $50 million, the company should have enough cash to fund operations into the fourth quarter of 2018. The stock has soared 33% year to date through Thursday, while the iShares Nasdaq Biotechnology ETF has climbed 9.9% and the S&P 500 has gained 6.9%.

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Shares of Chemours Co. ran up 3% toward record highs in premarket trade Friday, after J.P. Morgan turned bullish on the chemicals company for the first time, citing optimism over the company’s newer generation refrigerants. Analyst Jeffrey Zekauskas raised his rating to overweight, after being at neutral since August 2015. He started coverage of Chemours at underweight in June 2015. Zekauskas raised his stock price target to $50, which is 19% above Thursday’s closing price of $41.88, from $39. “The simple and broad outline of the investment case for Chemours is that the company has a proprietary set of very profitable newer generation refrigerants with patent lives extending to 2022 with excellent growth potential,” Zekauskas wrote in a note to clients. He said demand for the new refrigerants are growing from the auto market, boosted by regulatory changes aimed at minimizing global warming. The stock recently traded at $43.13 ahead of the open, above Thursday’s all-time intraday high of $42.79. The stock has soared 90% year to date through Thursday, while the S&P 500 has gained 7%.

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President Donald Trump threatened to cancel White House press briefings and said former Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey should hope there are no “tapes” of conversations between he and Trump. In a series of tweets Friday morning, Trump said it wasn’t possible for his surrogates to have “perfect accuracy” about his presidency — a reference to conflicting accounts of Comey’s firing as FBI director. He said maybe the best thing to do is cancel “press briefings” and hand out written responses. The tweet about Comey refers to three conversations Trump has said they have had, though he did not elaborate about the existence of tapes.

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Tiffany & Co. was upgraded to buy from neutral at Goldman Sachs based on the company’s exposure to a resurgence in luxury retail. Goldman analysts say the luxury boost is from increases in tourist spending and a “firming” high-end shopper in the U.S., driven by higher consumer net worth and equity market values. “This momentum is evident in a healthy first-quarter acceleration in sales growth reported by luxury peers, which has historically been a good coincident indicator for Tiffany comp sales,” the Friday note said. Goldman’s Lindsay Drucker Mann also thinks Tiffany could create free-cash flow through operational improvements like better inventory turnover. New leadership, including three new board members and a new chief executive, with previous CEO Mike Kowalski serving in the interim, could be a catalyst for new strategies. Tiffany shares are unchanged in Friday premarket trading, but up 38.7% for the past year. The S&P 500 index is up 16% for the last 12 months.

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J.C. Penney Co. Inc. appears to have reported a surprise fiscal first-quarter profit, compared with Wall Street expectations of a loss, but the real surprise may be that adjusted earnings per share of 6 cents included a non-recurring gain from the sale of assets totaling $117 million. Based on the 309.6 million outstanding shares used in the calculation of earnings per share, that sale added about 38 cents to the adjusted bottom line. If that gain was excluded, the department store chain would have recorded a loss of 32 cents a share. The FactSet consensus was for a per-share loss of 21 cents a share. The stock was down 4.9% in premarket trade, as revenue missed and same-store sales declined more than expected. The stock has tumbled 36% year to date through Thursday, while the S&P 500 has gained 7%.

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Veritone Inc. , a cloud-based artificial intelligence provider, priced its initial public offering at $15 a share Friday to raise $37.5 million. It sold 2,500,000 million shares and has granted the underwriters a 30-day option to buy an additional 375,000 shares. The shares are scheduled to begin trading Friday on the Nasdaq Capital Market, Nasdaq’s smaller-cap market. Wunderlich is the sole book-running manager of the offering.

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Shares of Capricor Therapeutics Inc. plunged 60% toward record lows in premarket trade Friday, after the biotechnology company announced disappointing results from an interim trial of its treatment for heart-attack patients, which will result in job cuts. The company said the trial of CAP-1002 demonstrated “a low probability” of achieving a statistically-significant difference in the primary endpoint of change from baseline scar size. “The lack of a clear difference in the change in scar size from baseline to six months between the active and control groups in the interim observations from ALLSTAR was unexpected,” said Chief Executive Linda Marban. She said. however, the favorable safety profile in the study supports the prospect of its administration in patients with Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD). The company plans to cut the size of its workforce and the scope of its operations to focus on its DMD program. The stock had rallied 15% year to date through Thursday, while the iShares Nasdaq Biotechnology ETF had climbed 9.9% and the S&P 500 had gained 7.0%.

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J.C. Penney Co. Inc. shares fell 7.4% in Friday premarket trading after the retailer announced first-quarter sales that missed consensus. Net loss was $180 million, or 58 cents per share, versus a loss of $68 million, 22 cents per share, for the same period last year. Adjusted EPS was 6 cents, including the sale of assets totaling $117 million and $8 million. Sales totaled $2.7 billion, down from $2.8 billion last year. The FactSet consensus was for a loss of 21 cents per share and sales of $2.8 billion. Same-store sales were down 3.5% for the quarter, below the FactSet consensus for a 0.7% drop. Home, Sephora shops, jewelry and salon all had positive same-store sales. J.C. Penney reaffirmed its full-year 2017 guidance for adjusted EPS of 40 cents to 65 cents and same-store sales from a 1% decline to a 1% rise. The FactSet consensus is for EPS of 48 cents. J.C. Penney shares are down 36.3% for the year so far while the S&P 500 index is up 7% for the period.

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Shares of Eli Lilly and Co. jumped 1.6% in premarket trade Friday, after the company said a late-stage study of a migraine treatment met its primary goals. The trial of galcanezumab, an investigational treatment for the prevention of episodic and chronic migraine, met its primary endpoint. “The robust results from these three studies bring us one step closer to helping people experience more migraine-free days, an important treatment goal for those living with this serious disease,” Christi Shaw, president of Lilly Bio-Medicines, said in a statement. The company is now planning to submit a biologics license application to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in the second half. More than 38 million Americans suffer from migraine, which affects three times more women than men. Lilly shares have gained 9% in 2017 through Thursday, while the S&P 500 has gained 7%.

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