Stocks were rising Wednesday as Wall Street looked ahead to U.S. inflation data and the start of corporate earnings season later this week.
These stocks were making moves Wednesday:
Hewlett Packard Enterprise
reached an agreement to acquire
Juniper Networks
for about $14 billion. HPE will pay $40 a share in cash for Juniper, a roughly 32% premium to where the stock traded before The Wall Street Journal reported a deal was in the works. HPE said the deal would double the size of its profitable networking business, and “supercharges HPE’s edge-to-cloud strategy with an ability to lead in an AI-native environment.” Juniper shares rose 1.8% to $37.49 after soaring 22% on Tuesday. HPE was up 0.4%.
Coinbase
declined 2.6%,
Marathon Digital
fell 5.3%, and
MicroStrategy
was down 2.3% as
Bitcoin
traded down more than 3%. The Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday said its X account was compromised, disavowing a post from moments earlier that said the agency had approved the first Bitcoin exchange-traded funds to come to market.
Intuitive Surgical
was up 6.2% after the maker of robotic surgical equipment said it expected fourth-quarter sales of $1.93 billion, higher than analysts’ expectations of $1.87 billion. The company said worldwide procedures with its da Vinci robotic surgical system rose 21% in the fourth quarter from a year earlier.
Aehr Test Systems
was falling 10% after the company said the slowing sales growth rate of the electric-vehicle market was having a “negative impact on the timing of several current and new customer orders and capacity increases for silicon carbide devices used in them.” The company, which makes test systems for sensors and semiconductors, reduced revenue guidance for the fiscal year to between $75 million to $85 million, down from its previous expectations of $100 million.
WD-40,
the maintenance and cleaning products company, posted fiscal first-quarter earnings and sales that rose from a year earlier. Sales jumped 12% to $140.4 million. Shares rose 15%.
Smart Global
was up 14% after the computing and memory company company reported adjusted earnings in its fiscal first quarter of 24 cents a share, beating analysts’ estimates of 16 cents. The company reported record non-GAAP gross margin of 33.3% in the period, up from a year earlier.
Toast
rose 1.8% to $19.13 after shares of the cloud-based platform for restaurant operations were upgraded to Buy from Neutral at
Goldman Sachs
with a price target of $24.
Etsy
declined 1% to $76.03 after the stock was cut to Neutral from Buy at Goldman Sachs and the price target was reduced to $80 from $84.
TG Therapeutics
was down 8%. The biopharmaceutical company said it was targeting U.S. net product revenue of $220 million to $260 million for its multiple sclerosis treatment Briumvi in 2024.
Lennar
was rising 4% after the home builder raised its annual dividend by 33% to $2 a share, and said its board authorized a $5 billion increase to its stock buyback program.
Home builder
KB Home
is scheduled to issue quarterly earnings after the closing bell Wednesday.
Write to Joe Woelfel at joseph.woelfel@barrons.com
Read the full article here