Category: Stock Market News

A lawsuit that accuses Apple Inc. of having an illegal monopoly on iPhone apps was revived by a federal appears court Thursday. The suit, which is seeking class-action status, could seek hundreds of millions of dollars in damages, claiming consumers were forced to overpay for apps. Apple broke the law by requiring apps to be sold only within its App Store, the suit says, and Apple took 30% of app developers’ revenues, which artificially inflated prices. Apple argued that it did not sell the apps themselves, and only served as a platform to distribute them, comparing its App Store to a shopping mall rather than an actual store. A lower court had dismissed the lawsuit, saying the plaintiffs did not have standing. In the ruling Thursday, Judge William A. Fletcher of San Francisco’s 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the plaintiffs did in fact have standing to sue, and that Apple’s argument was “unconvincing.”

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HomeStreet Inc. [s hmst] shares fell in the extended session Thursday after the financial services company said a rise in interest rates has hurt its mortgage business. HomeStreet shares, which were halted briefly, fell 9.5% to $28 after hours. The company expects full-year earnings of $2.34 and $2.36 a share, and fourth-quarter earnings of 7 cents to 9 cents a share. Analysts surveyed by FactSet had forecast fourth-quarter earnings of 50 cents a share and full-year earnings of $2.90 a share.

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Shares of Pandora Media Inc. rose more than 7% late Thursday after the internet radio company said it expects to report larger-than-predicted fourth-quarter sales on subscriber and advertising growth. The Oakland, Calif., based company also said it is planning layoffs and that it has surpassed 4.3 million paid subscribers. Pandora aims to end 2017 with 7% fewer employees, the company said in a statement. Pandora is scheduled to report fourth-quarter and full-year results on Feb. 9. At the time it reported third-quarter results, Pandora said it expected fourth-quarter sales in the range of $362 million to $374 million. It expected an adjusted loss between $51 million and $39 million. Shares of Pandora ended the regular trading day up 0.9%.

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Consumer Reports reversed its decision to not recommend Apple Inc.’s MacBook Pro laptops Thursday after the tech giant issued a fix to a bug that caused battery-life issues. The consumer-reviews publication said in December it could not recommend Apple’s laptops for the first time after computers it tested had widely varying battery life. Earlier this week, Apple said that it had fixed a bug caused by a little-used function in web browser Safari that Consumer Reports had used in order to ensure it was not seeing cached versions of websites. “Now that we’ve factored in the new battery-life measurements, the laptops’ overall scores have risen, and all three machines now fall well within the recommended range in Consumer Reports ratings,” Consumer Reports wrote Thursday.

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Nivalis Therapeutics Inc. plans to lay off 80% of its workforce, including President and Chief Executive Jon Congleton, as part of its restructuring plan. That will leave the company with 5 employees out of its current total 30. The reduction in staff is aimed at preserving the company’s cash as it explores various options. The clinical-stage pharmaceutical company said it expects to book restructuring-related costs of $3 million but will have $45 million to $47 million to pursue strategic deals. Meanwhile, Nivalis named Chief Financial Officer Michael Carruthers as interim president, effective Jan. 15. Shares rose 2.3% after hours.

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Shares of WPX Energy Inc. fell nearly 3% late Thursday after the Tulsa, Okla., energy company announced it had agreed to buy assets in the Permian basin in Texas. The company’s Permian acreage would increase to more than 120,000 net acres and the deal includes 23 producing wells, WPX said in a statement. WPX’s projected capital spending plan for the year would not increase, the company said. The deal would be worth $775 million and the company expects to pay for it using a combination of proceeds from an equity issuance and cash on hand. Shares of WPX had ended the regular trading day down 1.3%.

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WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — Vice President Joe Biden was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Barack Obama just eight days before the two are set to leave office. Obama on Thursday called Biden the “best vice president in history.” Biden is only the second sitting vice president to receive the award. President Gerald Ford gave his vice president, Nelson A. Rockefeller, the award in 1977 shortly before their terms ended. The other vice presidents to receive the award are Hubert Humphrey (in 1980, posthumously) and Richard Cheney, although Cheney was given his award in 1991 for his service as defense secretary under George H.W. Bush.

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The U.S. Senate easily passed a bill allowing James Mattis, a retired Marine Corps general, to be defense secretary. The law is needed because Mattis has not served the necessarily seven years between military service and the defense secretary job. The House is expected to pass the bill as early as Friday.

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A chart of Bank of America Corp.’s stock suggests that upside momentum had peaked nearly two months ago, or just one week after the election, although the stock’s price had continued to rise. That is a pattern that chart watchers refer to as bearish technical divergence, and is believed to warn investors against buying on dips. The stock’s Relative Strength Index (RSI), a momentum indicator that compares the magnitude of recent gains with the magnitude of losses, reached a 34-year high of 88.6 on Nov. 15–rises above 70.0 implies an overbought condition–and has steadily declined since to 61.9 as of Thursday afternoon. Meanwhile, the stock has run up 14% since Nov. 15, and remains just below the eight-year high of $23.39 hit in intraday trading on Dec. 15. This technical warning comes before the bank reports fourth-quarter results before Friday’s open. Falling below the Dec. 29 intraday low of $21.77, which is 5.1% below current levels, would break the bullish pattern of higher lows that has been in place the past six months. The stock has run up 43% over the past three months, while the SPDR Financial Select Sector ETF has climbed 20% and the S&P 500 has gained 6%.

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Oil futures climbed Thursday for a second straight session, buoyed by further indications that major producers are cutting back crude output. Strong demand growth in China and a fall in the U.S. dollar also provided support. February West Texas Intermediate crude rose 76 cents, or 1.5%, to settle at $53.01 a barrel. Natural-gas futures, meanwhile, saw the February contract climb 16.2 cents, or 5%, to finish at $3.386 per million British thermal units. Prices for the fuel ended at a nearly two-week high after U.S. government showed a larger-than-expected drop in weekly natural-gas supplies.

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