Tag: stock market

Shares of GrubHub Inc. surged 4.5% in premarket trade Friday, after Morgan Stanley turned bullish on the online food-ordering company, citing faster diner growth as a result of accelerating restaurant additions. Analyst Brian Nowak raised his rating to overweight, after being at equal weight since May 2016. He raised his stock price target to $44, which is 18% above Thursday’s closing price of $37.37, from $36. “In our view, active diner growth–a sign of GRUB’s ability to bring on new users–and gross food sales per active diner–measuring GRUB’s ability to grow share of stomach–remain the two most important metrics in evaluating the health of GRUB’s business,” Nowak wrote in a note to clients. “We see bullish indicators in both of these, which are likely to lead to higher earnings power and upward revisions.” The stock has dropped 9.3% over the past three months through Thursday, while the Amplify Online Retail ETF has gained 2.7% and the S&P 500 has tacked on 6.5%.

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Netflix Inc.’s stock rallied 0.9% in premarket trade Friday, after Deutsche Bank upgraded the streaming video service, citing expectations that Netflix will report better-than-expected results next week. Analyst Bryan Kraft raised his rating to hold, three months after starting coverage with a sell rating. He raised his stock price target to $110, but that was still 15% below Thursday’s closing price of $129.18, from $92. Kraft said when he initiated coverage of Netflix, he believed the company had “an attractive business model,” but the stock was priced two years ahead of the fundamentals, and that a sale of the company was “highly unlikely.” His new rating and price target is based on a higher subscriber trajectory internationally, a lower tax rate and the believe that fourth-quarter results will beat guidance for international subscribers. “The key driver of the stock price around earnings reports has predominantly been subscribers,” Kraft wrote in a note to clients. Netflix is scheduled to report results after the market closes on Jan. 18. The stock has run up 29% over the past three months, while the S&P 500 has gained 6.5%.

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GameStop Corp. said Friday same-store sales fell 18.7% in the nine-week holiday period to end December, weighed down by weak demand for “Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare” and “Titanfall 2” and aggressive discounting on Thanksgiving and Black Friday. Total sales came to $2.50 billion, down 16.4% from the year-earlier period. Chief Executive Paul Raines said sales were hurt by holiday weakness, pricing pressure and lower traffic. “We are disappointed with our overall results, but looking broadly, we did see continued growth in our non-physical gaming businesses and we expect this category to approach 40% of our earnings in fiscal 2016,” he said in a statement. The company is still aiming to save $100 million in sales, general and admin costs by 2019, he said. GameStop is sticking with its fourth-quarter forecast for EPS of $2.23 to $2.28, below the FactSet consensus of $2.33. Shares were not yet active in premarket trade, but have fallen 8% in the last 12 months, while the S&P 500 has gained 17%.

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Federal Reserve chief Janet Yellen said late Thursday that key parts of the 2010 Dodd-Frank law — including higher capital requirements and enhanced supervision for big banks — should not be scrapped, according to a Wall Street Journal report. She has previously warned against rolling back Dodd-Frank rules, and it is something that President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to do. On Thursday, Yellen also said the U.S. economy faces no serious short-term obstacles, according to a Bloomberg report.

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Tesla Motors Inc. on Thursday night announced details of how it will start charging some customers to use its high-speed Supercharger network. Buyers who order their Model S and Model X vehicles after Jan. 15 will receive free annual credits for 400 kWh, about enough electricity for 1,000 miles, the company said in a statement. After that, they will be charged “a small fee” to use a Supercharger station, with exact prices varying state to state, and country to country. The free-credits plan will not apply to buyers of the Model 3, which is expected to roll out later this year. “We are only aiming to recover a portion of our costs and set up a fair system for everyone; this will never be a profit center for Tesla,” the company said. As examples, Tesla said Superchargers would cost about 20 cents per kWh in California, and that a road trip from San Francisco to Los Angeles would cost about $15. A cross-country trip from Los Angeles to New York would run about $120. The charges will not apply to existing Tesla owners, who can continue to use Superchargers for free. Tesla first announced the plan to charge new users in November.

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Drone startup Lily Robotics was sued for false advertising and unfair business practices by the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office on Thursday, the same day the company announced it was shutting down after failing to secure more funding. Lily made $34 million in pre-orders last year, and said it would send automatic refunds to customers. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the district attorney’s office said Lily failed on its promise to deliver the drones to customers, and it lured sales through a misleading promotional video. Lily’s drones had been hyped as revolutionary for their autonomous flight capabilities, and won an innovation award at CES 2016. The San Francisco-based startup had 60,000 orders for the drones, which cost $899. Lily had delayed production of the drones a number of times, and mass production never got off the ground.

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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.

Market Pulse Stories are Rapid-fire, short news bursts on stocks and markets as they move. Visit MarketWatch.com for more information on this news.

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