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Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc. shares are down 3% in premarket trading after it said it expects a 14.6% decline in same-store sales for the fourth quarter. The company forecast a low-single digit same-store sales increase for 2015 during the third-quarter earnings announcement in October. The company forecasts earnings per share between $1.70 and $1.90 for the fourth quarter in an 8-K filing published Wednesday. The FactSet consensus is for EPS of $2.54. One-time expenses for the quarter will be in the $14 million to $16 million range, including expenses tied to food replacement in select restaurants, lab analysis, and retaining experts, all tied to E. coli and norovirus illness outbreaks in recent months. The company has authorized a stock buyback program totaling $300 million in addition to the $300 million authorized on Dec. 4. A total of $116 million remained available from that previous buyback program as of Dec. 31, 2015. Chipotle also said it received a federal grand jury subpoena requiring it to produce a range of documents tied to a norovirus incident in Simi Valley, CA in Aug. 2015. The company said it’s not yet possible to determine whether it will incur any fines or other liabilities tied to the subpoena. Chipotle stock is down 37% for the past three months while the S&P is up 1.9% for the same period.

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Seven oil tanks are on fire in east Libya after a series of attacks by Islamic State, the country’s National Oil Co. said on Wednesday, according to Dow Jones Newswires. The attacks happened in Libya’s eastern oil ports and have raised concerns about the longer-term damage on the country’s oil industry. The incident follows assaults earlier in the week, which have sparked an appeal for help from the National Oil Co. The company said in a statement on its website that it “condemns, in the strongest terms, the vicious attacks on the oil crescent area over the last two days and deplores the loss of life and the damage caused to tanks at Ras Lanuf and Es Sidar.” Oil prices appeared to shake off the news, with Brent oil falling below $35 a barrel to trade at an 11-year low. Crude oil was down 3.8% at $34.61 a barrel.

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WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) – The market’s expectation that the Federal Reserve will only raise interest rates twice in 2016 are too low, said Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Stanley Fischer on Wednesday. “We think they’re too low,” Fischer said in an interview with CNBC. The Fed’s own forecast in its “dot plot’ are for four rate hikes this year. Fischer said this was more “in the ballpark.” He added that policy is not on automatic pilot. “We don’t know enough now to know how many [rate hikes] there will be,” Fischer said, because the Fed will have to respond to events.

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Apple Inc. reported record-breaking sales for the holiday season, with customers spending more than $1.1 billion on apps and in-app purchases. This was the biggest holiday season for the App Store and Jan. 1, 2016 broke the store’s single-day record with customers spending more than $144 million. The most popular purchase categories were gaming, social networking and entertainment, including apps such as Minecraft, Snapchat and Clash of Clans as well as Netflix. “We are excited that our customers downloaded and enjoyed so many incredible apps for iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch and Apple TV, spending over $20 billion on the App Store last year alone,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. Apple shares were down 2% Wednesday morning.

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Troubled drug company Valeant Pharmaceuticals International Inc. said Wednesday it has appointed a former finance director as interim chief executive, while its current CEO Michael Pearson remains in hospital with severe pneumonia. The company named Howard Schiller as interim CEO. Schiller was chief financial officer at Valeant from December 2011 through June 2015 and is currently a board member. He came to the company after a 24-year stint at Goldman Sachs . The company also named its independent director Robert Ingram as interim chairman of the board. The timing of Pearson’s return remains uncertain and he will remain on medical leave until further notice, the company said in a statement. Valeant shares were down 3.8% in premarket trade, and have lost 30% in the last 12 months, while the S&P 500 has gained 0.7%.

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Monsanto Co. shares dipped more than 1% in premarket trade on Wednesday following better-than-expected first-quarter earnings. The agriculture company reported a net loss of $253 million for the first quarter, or 56 cents loss per share of, compared with net income of $243 million, or per-share earnings of 50 cents during the same period a year ago. Monsanto’s adjusted loss per share was 11 cents, less than the FactSet consensus of a 23 cents per share loss. Sales of $2.22 billion dropped compared with $2.87 billion in the year earlier period, and they were below the $2.38 billion FactSet consensus. Monsanto said it has finalized a plan to reach its $500 million per year target in savings by the end of 2018.

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Smith & Wesson Holding Corp. shares fell nearly 3% premarket Wednesday, after Wedbush downgraded the stock to neutral from outperform following a big move in its shares. Smith & Wesson rallied this week along with other gun stocks on expectations that new gun checks will prompt a surge in sales of guns and after the company raised its outlook for its January quarter. “While gun industry sales are clearly in ‘surge’ mode, it is difficult to discern just how much of these sales are in fact incremental to the industry versus pulled-forward demand, with plenty of historical examples of both,” analysts wrote in a note. Given a healthy valution and a stock that has climbed more than 150% in a year, “we are taking money off the table, and downgrading,” said the note.

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T-Mobile US inc. said Wednesday it added 2.1 million customers in the fourth quarter, bringing the total net additions for 2015 to 8.3 million. The company had more than 63 million customers at the end of the year, Chief Executive John Legere said in a statement. The company added 1.3 million branded postpaid customers in the fourth quarter, and added 4.5 million for the full year. Wholesale net customer additions totaled 301,00 in the quarter and 2.4 million for the year. Shares were not yet active in premarket trade, but are up 50% in the last 12 months, while the S&P 500 has gained 0.7%.

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Panera Bread Co. on Wednesday became the latest company to move toward using more natural ingredients with the news that its soups no longer contain any artificial colors flavorings or preservatives. Panera said it sells about 200 million services of soup a year, and they no longer contain any of the common ingredients found in commercial soup, such as soy and corn protein, maltodextrin and sodium phosphate. The company said it’s the first national restaurant to offer ‘clean’ soups. Shares were down 1.1% in premarket trade, but are up 11.5% in the last 12 months, while the S&P 500 has gained 0.7%.

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Activist investor Starboard Value LP on Wednesday delivered a letter to Yahoo Inc. management, urging it to accept that major changes are needed at the company, including changes to management, the board composition, strategy and execution. “Despite over three years of effort and billions spent on acquisitions, the management team that was hired to turn around the core business has failed to produce acceptable results, in turn, causing massive declines in profitability and cash flow,” Starboard wrote in the letter. Investors have lost all confidence in the management team and the board, the letter continued. Most of Yahoo’s current value stems from its investment in Alibaba over ten years ago, “and the good fortune that Alibaba’s management team has executed well such that this investment today is worth over $30 billion,” it said. Yahoo’s current market cap is about $30.5 billion. The current valuation is either a massive tax liability, or reflects the fact that the company’s core business is worthless, or a combination of the two, it said. “We are confident that a separation of these assets can be accomplished through either a sale of the core business or a spin of the core business,” it said. Yahoo shares fell 0.9% in premarket trade, and are down about 35% in the last 12 months, while the S&P 500 has gained 0.7%.

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