Category: Stock Market News

Former British finance minister George Osborne will become the new editor of the London Evening Standard, the newspaper said Friday, confirming a BBC report. Osborne will remain a lawmaker in the British parliament. “I am proud to be a Conservative MP, but as editor and leader of a team of dedicated and independent journalists, our only interest will be to give a voice to all Londoners,” he said in a statement. Osborne was replaced as Britain’s Chancellor of the Exchequer in July in the wake of a government shakeup after the Brexit referendum in June 2016. In January, Osborne was named as a part-time adviser at fund manager BlackRock.

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Shares of Tiffany & Co. surged 1.6% in premarket trade Friday, after the high-end jewelry retailer beat fiscal fourth-quarter profit expectations and provided an upbeat outlook. For the quarter to Jan. 31, net earnings fell to $157.8 million, or $1.26 a share, from $163.2 million, or $1.28 a share, in the same period a year ago. Excluding non-recurring items, such as impairment charges for loans to diamond mining companies, adjusted earnings per share came to $1.45, above the FactSet consensus of $1.39. Revenue rose 1% to $1.23 billion, compared with the FactSet consensus of $1.22 billion. Same-store sales were unchanged from a year ago, beating the FactSet consensus for a 1.4% decline, as a greater-than-expected increase in Japan helped offset a bigger-than-expected decline in Europe. For fiscal 2017, Tiffany expects adjusted EPS to increase in the mid-single-digit percentage range over 2016’s $3.75, while FactSet’s EPS consensus of $3.85 implies 2.7% growth. The stock has rallied 16% year to date through Thursday, while the SPDR S&P Retail ETF has lost 4% and the S&P 500 has gained 6.4%.

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A federal judge on Thursday approved a $27 million settlement between Lyft Inc. and more than 200,000 current and former drivers, in a case over the terms of their employment status. The California-based drivers had sued Lyft for classifying them as independent contractors, when they argued they should have employee status so they could be reimbursed for their expenses. Last year, Judge Vince Chhabria rejected a $12.05 million settlement as too low. On Thursday, the San Francisco judge approved the revised settlement, which was agreed upon last May and maintains the drivers’ independent-contractor status. Most Lyft drivers will get about $130 from the settlement, though attorney Shannon-Liss Riordan said drivers who logged more than 30 hours a week will get payouts of up to several thousand dollars each. Rival ride-hailing service Uber Technologies Inc. faces a similar lawsuit, and a $100 million settlement in that case was rejected by a judge last summer as inadequate.

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The major stock market indexes may be falling, but the broader market of stocks is actually rising. The number of advancing stocks is outnumbering decliners by a 1,615-to-1,325 score on the NYSE, and by a 1,541-to-1,143 margin on the Nasdaq exchange. In addition, the volume of advancing stocks represents 51% of total volume on the NYSE and 56% of the total on the Nasdaq. Meanwhile, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is down 34 points, with 21 of 30 components trading lower. The S&P 500 is losing 0.2% and the Nasdaq Composite is slipping 0.1%.

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The Treasury Department has taken a pair of so-called “extraordinary measures” to stay under the debt limit, Secretary Steven Mnuchin wrote to congressional leaders on Thursday. Mnuchin said he is suspending investments in a civil service retirement fund and a separate federal employees’ fund. Analysts expect these measures to last through the fall.

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Biogen Inc. shares dropped 5.5% in morning trade Thursday after the company was downgraded by Leerink and Morgan Stanley to market perform with a $300 price target and equal-weight with a $305 price target, respectively. Analysts at both companies noted lackluster sales for Biogen’s Spinraza, which is the first drug approved for spinal muscular atrophy but has awhopping price tag: up to $750,000 in the first year, then $375,000 in later years. They also pointed to Biogen’s Alzheimer’s disease drug aducanumab, which is promising but risky, and could take two or more years for additional clinical trial results. Biogen is currently entangled in patent litigation over Tecfidera, a multiple sclerosis drug that is Biogen’s largest revenue generator. Decisions in those two cases are “the biggest near-term up/down driver where we have limited visibility on the outcome,” said Morgan Stanley analyst Matthew Harrison, who predicted outcomes for both around March 22 that could drive the stock down as much as 10% or up 5-10%. “What was previously mostly opportunity for Biogen’s stock (trial results, new product launch, takeout potential) has now shifted to risk, with significant competitors approaching for Biogen’s critical MS franchise, slower than expected near term adoption of Spinraza, and at least two more years until results emerge from the company’s Alzheimer’s disease program,” said Leerink’s Geoffrey Porges. Morgan Stanley’s Harrison emphasized that he had a positive long-term view of the company and its Alzheimer’s drug, but “we see limited near-term upside.” Shares of Biogen have risen 5.2% over the last three months, compared with a 5.4% rise in the S&P 500 .

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Data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration Thursday showed that domestic supplies of natural gas fell by 53 billion cubic feet for the week ended March 10. That was generally in line with the decline of 55 billion cubic feet expected by analysts polled by S&P Global Platts. Total stocks now stand at 2.242 trillion cubic feet, down 236 billion cubic feet from a year ago, but 395 billion cubic feet above the five-year average, the government said. April natural gas fell 7.8 cents, or 2.6%, from Wednesday’s settlement to $2.906 per million British thermal units.

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Shares of Oracle Corp. soared 8% in morning trade, putting it on track for the first record close in 16 1/2 years, as Wall Street analysts cheered the software giant’s quarterly results. Analyst Mark Murphy at J.P. Morgan upgraded Oracle to overweight from neutral, citing the company’s success in cloud subscriptions and the increase in the mix of recurring revenue. He raised his stock price target to $51, which is 9.7% above current levels, from $42. UBS analyst Fatima Boolani reiterated the buy rating while raising the stock price target to $48 from $45, saying beating expectations and the company’s positive tone in the “right areas” suggests the “stars appear to be aligning” for the company. RBC Capital’s Ross MacMillan boosted his price target to $47 from $46, saying he is more confident in the future growth potential as the decline in license revenue appears to be moderating. The stock was trading around $45.50, above the previous record close of $46.31 on Sept. 1, 2000. The stock has rallied 16% over the past 12 months, while the SPDR Technology Select Sector ETF has climbed 23% and the S&P 500 has gained 18%.

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U.S. stock-index benchmarks on Thursday opened higher, with the Nasdaq Composite on track to touch an intraday record, a day after the Federal Reserve lifted key interest rates, but implied that the U.S. central bank wasn’t in a rush to hike rates. The Dow Jones Industrial Average [: DJIA] opened up 41 points, or 0.2%, at 20,990, the S&P 500 index gained 2 points, or 0.1%, at 2,387, while the Nasdaq Composite Index traded near its intraday record of 5,911.79, up 10 points, or 0.2% at 5,910. Weakness in the dollar following the Fed’s policy decision on Wednesday also bolstered gold , sending it 2.4% higher, while yields on the 10-year Treasury note were at 2.52%, lower than where it started the week, as investors have bought government bonds, pushing yields lower after rates were increased by a quarter-point to a range of 0.75% to 1%. Typical bonds sell off, nudging yields higher as rates increase dilute the appeal of outstanding notes, but market participants said the less aggressive Fed stimulated buying. In corporate news, Oracle Corp. gained after reported quarterly results, while the public debut of Canada Goose Holdings Thursday was on investors’ radars.

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PTC Therapeutics Inc. plans to buy privately-held Marathon Pharmaceuticals’ controversial Duchenne muscular dystrophy drug for about $75 million in cash and $65 million in PTC common stock. Marathon is also eligible for annual net sales-based payments starting next year, and one $50 million sales-based milestone payment, with the purchase expected to close in the second quarter of 2017. The drug, Emflaza, was approved by the Food and Drug Administration in February and quickly became controversial once Marathon set its price at $89,000-a-year. Marathon paused the drug’s launch after the outcry. While high price tags are common for rare disease drugs, Emflaza is part of a class of drugs called corticosteroids that are used for DMD in other parts of the world. PTC Therapeutics Chief Commercial Officer Mark Rothera said the company plans to “re-examine the price of Emflaza,” and that more details would be released once the purchase closes. But company leadership also maintained that the drug is a “best-in-class anti-inflammatory disease-modifying therapy,” as Chief Executive Officer Stuart Peltz said on the company’s earnings call. “We believe from both published data and data from our own clinical trial, then Emflaza has approved efficacy and a desirable safety profile over existing steroid-based treatment.” This type of argument is commonly used by drugmakers to justify high price tags. But the company claimed it is committed to patient access, adding that about 9,000 DMD patients could benefit from the drug and “only a small fraction of these patients have been able to access Emflaza,” Chief Financial Officer Shane William Charles Kovacs said. PTC Therapeutics shares declined 6.6% in pre-market trade Thursday after reporting fourth-quarter earnings and announcing the drug acquisition. Company shares have declined 12.3% over the last three months, compared with a 5.6% rise in the S&P 500 .

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