Tag: stock market

Target Corp. reported Wednesday fiscal third-quarter profit and sales that beat expectations, but the stock tumbled 2.7% after the discount retailer provided a less-than-rosy profit outlook for the current quarter and said it expected a “highly competitive” holiday sales environment. Net income for the quarter to Oct. 28 fell to $480 million, or 88 cents a share, from $608 million, or $1.06 a share, in the same period a year ago. Excluding non-recurring items, adjusted earnings per share came to 91 cents, beating the FactSet consensus of 86 cents. Revenue increased 1.4% to $16.67 billion, above the FactSet consensus of $16.60 billion, as same-store sales growth of 0.9% beat expectations of a 0.4% increase. Comparable traffic increased 1.4%, while comparable digital sales rose 24%. The company expects fourth-quarter adjusted EPS of $1.05 to $1.25, compared with the FactSet consensus of $1.24, and raised its full-year adjusted EPS guidance range to $4.40 to $4.60 from $4.34 to $4.54. Fourth-quarter same-store sales are expected to be flat to up 2%, surrounding the FactSet consensus for 0.5% growth. The stock has run up 10.6% over the past three months through Tuesday, while the SPDR S&P Retail ETF has tacked on 3.1% and the S&P 500 has gained 4.6%.

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Inflation has been too low for too long and the U.S. central bank has to alter its communications with the markets to convince investors the central bank is willing to let it run hotter than the 2% target, said Charles Evans, the president of the Chicago Fed, on Wednesday. In a speech in London, Evans said the Fed must alter its statement to make clear that its inflation target of 2% is not a ceiling. “Our communications should be much clearer about our willingness to deliver on a symmetric inflation outcome, acknowledging a greater chance of inflation at 2.5% in the future than what has been communicated in the past,” Evans said. Many economists and Fed officials think the low inflation seen this year is due to transitory factors. But Evans said “it gets harder and harder for me to feel comfortable” with the transitory explanation “with each low monthly reading.”

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SendGrid Inc. priced its initial public offering higher than expected and will offer more shares than originally planned, which will lead the email-marketing company to a total take of at least $131 million. SendGrid, which sells a software platform that helps companies manage email communications with customers, announced Tuesday evening that it will sell 8.2 million shares at $16 apiece. The 8-year-old startup had previously planned to sell 7.7 million shares at a price of $13.50 to $15.50 a share. Underwriting banks, led by Morgan Stanley and JP Morgan, have access to another 1.23 million shares that could be sold and push the total take higher. SendGrid is on track to report $100 million in annual revenue for the first time this year, and is approaching profitability after raising more than $80 million in venture investment. Shares are expected to begin trading Wednesday morning on the New York Stock Exchange.

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Oppenheimer analyst Jason Helfstein downgraded Roku Inc. to underperform because the stock’s recent gains have made it difficult to justify the current valuation, he wrote in a Tuesday note to clients. Roku fell 13% to $36.95 during the regular session, and edged down less than 1% after hours. At its current prices, Helfstein says that Roku is the “most expensive publicly traded internet-based company on the basis of Platform revenue or Platform gross profit.” Helfstein said that even though the company is a leading streaming device and software maker, and beat expectations with its third-quarter results, that does not justify that three-fold gain the stock as made since it went public at $14. Helfstein set a price target of $28. Roku shares have climbed 163% from the initial public offering price, with the S&P 500 index gaining 2.8%.

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Hedge fund manager John Paulson took a fresh stake in avionics and information technology firm Rockwell Collins in the third quarter, while closing a position in American Internatonal Group , according to a quarterly regulatory filing on Tuesday. The 13-F filing by Paulson & Company showed the hedge fund held 112,400 shares of Rockwell Collins as of Sept. 30. The filing also showed Paulson and Company no longer held a stake of more than 4.14 million shares of AIG. Paulson also eliminated small stakes in Apple Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. , the filing showed.

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Bill Ackman’s Pershing Square Capital Management built up its position in Automatic Data Processing Inc. to 8.8 million shares at the end of September from 179,394 three months earlier as part of Ackman’s failed proxy battle. Earlier this month, shareholders of ADP sided with the management and rejected the hedge-fund manager’s attempt to secure three seats on the board. Pershing, however, trimmed its stake in Restaurant Brands International to 26.5 million shares versus 39.2 million at the end of June and cut its holding in Mondelez International Inc. to 13.93 million versus 14.5 million shares previously. The hedge fund’s positions in other companies, including Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc. , were mostly unchanged.

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Billionaire investor Carl Icahn did very little trading in the past quarter as he fell under conflict-of-interest scrutiny for his time as an adviser to President Donald Trump. In a late Tuesday Securities and Exchange Commission filing, Icahn’s holdings were virtually unchanged from the previous quarter, save for a 14-million-share reduction in Freeport-McMoRan Inc. to 77.2 million shares and a reduction of about 21,000 shares in American International Group Inc. in a position of about 43 million shares. Recently, Icahn faced questions from federal prosecutors over his advisory role to Trump. In August, Virginia Rep. Don Beyer accused Icahn of “profiting off of the public trust and taxpayer dollars.”

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George Soros’s hedge fund, Soros Fund Management LLC, eliminated or reduced investments in some of the biggest names in tech last quarter, including Facebook Inc. and Apple Inc. Soros divested a 1,700-share stake in Apple as well as 1.55 million shares of Snapchat parent company Snap Inc. , according to a quarterly filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The hedge fund greatly decreased its holdings in Facebook and Twitter Inc. , cutting Facebook shares from 476,713 shares to 109,451 and chopping investments in Twitter’s stock and debt. Among the new investments Soros opened in the quarter were General Electric Co. , General Motors Co. , Campbell Soup Co. and Oracle Corp.

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Lam Research Corp. on Tuesday said it will buy back up to $2 billion in shares over the next 12 to 18 months. Its board also approved raising the quarterly dividend by 11% to 50 cents a share. The dividend will be paid on Jan. 10 to shareholders of record on Dec. 6. Shares of Lam Research gained 1.7% after hours.

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David Einhorn’s Greenlight Capital reduced its stakes in iPhone maker Apple Inc. and automaker General Motors Co. in the third quarter, according to a Tuesday regulatory filing. Greenlight’s stake in Apple stood at 2,192,900 shares as of Sept. 30, reducing its stake by nearly 1.74 million shares, or 44%, compared to the end of the second-quarter, according to filing tracking service Whalewsidom.com. Greenlight cut its stake in GM by nearly 20.2 million shares, or 36%, to 34,561,500 shares, but also bought 2 million call options, which give a holder the right, but not the obligation, to buy the underlying security at a set price by a certain date. Greenlight bought 3.6 million shares of mattress maker Tempur Sealy International , while new stakes included nearly 8.4 million shares of Exela Technologies Inc. and 1.7 million shares of Venator Materials PLC .

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