Top Business News of the Week: AT&T, NVIDIA, MannKind, PG&E, Walmart and Many More

October 14, 2017 by Jon C. Ogg

The Dow and S&P 500 are at all-time highs, and the bull market is now closer to nine years old than eight. Even though the indexes are all well above 200% from their 2009 lows, the reality is that it is not a bull market everywhere. There are also a lot of news items outside of earnings that have to be considered by equity investors.

24/7 Wall St. has compiled 10 of the top business news items, where there was specific company news driving the shares, for the week ended Friday, October 13, 2017.

Some great performance was seen, but there were also some serious let downs. These were certainly not the only big movers for the week, but these were definitely among the top business news stories making an impact on shares. More detail from our prior in-depth coverage is available on most of these stories.

AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T) is still trading down like it’s just an old-fashioned telecom player without a diversified future for DirecTV and Time Warner. Its shares were down big this past week over lost accounts and from costs related to hurricane damage. AT&T shares were trading at $35.70 on Friday’s close, just above the 52-week low of $35.10, for a drop of 7.5% for the week. The only good news right now is that its dividend yield is back up to about 5.5% for new investors.

Barracuda Networks Inc. (NYSE: CUDA) seems to be a great company in networking and security, but meeting expectations sometimes isn’t enough for solid tech companies. Its shares recovered a bit from a low of $22.01 during the week to $22.50 late on Friday. Still, that is down over 12% from its pre-earnings price of $25.74 earlier this week. The 52-week trading range is $19.06 to $26.40.

CarGurus Inc. (NASDAQ: CARG) proved yet again that the IPO market is not dead. It exploded higher after pricing 9.4 million shares at $16 per share, and that was even above the expected price range of $13 to $15 per share. This stock was close to $29.00 late on Friday, and the lowest trade post-IPO was $25.85. Let’s call this 80% premium to the original pricing.

Infinity Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ: INFI) reminded biotech investors that a company doesn’t have to be acquired for its shares to almost double. The small-cap biotech released positive solid tumor treatment news for a presentation this week, and its shares rose from $1.67 ahead of the news to as high as $3.75 afterward on 60 million shares. The stock was back down at $2.90 by the end of the week, after some serious profit taking, but that would still be around an 85% gain.

J. Jill Inc. (NYSE: JILL) lost about half of its value on poor sales expectations this week. The ladies apparel retailer was trading at $5.11 late on Friday’ close, for a drop of near 51% from its $9.93 price before releasing its forecast. To make matters worse, J. Jill shares were at $10.62 just the prior Friday, and the stock’s 52-week high is $14.40. Losing almost two-thirds of your value is no good, and it’s hard to just blame Amazon and e-tailing for a drop of that magnitude.

Juniper Networks Inc. (NYSE: JNPR) was downgraded to Neutral from Buy at Merrill Lynch on Tuesday, and then it later came out by the company itself that lower sales would hurt results and that was followed by multiple analyst downgrades. This stock was at $28.43 the prior Friday and fell to a low of $25.08 after its confession. The only good news here is that 12% loss for the week at the lows shrank as Juniper shares recovered up to $25.82 late on Friday. Maybe a drop of about 9% for the week isn’t so bad. Its 52-week range is $22.41 to $30.96.

MannKind Corp. (NASDAQ: MNKD) had a wild week, with up and down news that gave its believers and its haters reason to fight all over again. Its stock had traded up the prior week as well, rising from $2.17 to $5.03. The firm H.C. Wainwright issued a Buy rating and a $7 target that forced short sellers into covering even more shares short up to $6.71 earlier in the week. That would have been a 30% gain, but MannKind announced a $61 million direct stock offering through that same firm and the stock immediately sank back down to $5.47 on the news. MannKind shares were down more than 3% to $5.28 on Friday’s close, still giving it a gain of 5% for the week. Sadly, with the week’s high of $6.96, that is also down almost a quarter of its value from the peak this week.

NVIDIA Corp. (NASDAQ: NVDA) just keeps on chugging, and its stock hit all-time high after it unveiled its supercomputing platform for driverless cars. The stock was at $194.59 late on Friday, and the high for the week was $195.00. Let’s call that another 7% gain for the week alone, but let’s also not forget that the average analyst price target is still down at $170 or so because the analysts cannot raise their targets fast enough. NVIDIA now has a market cap of about $117 billion, making it worth more than 11 times 2019 expected revenues.

PG&E Corp. (NYSE: PCG) may have a role in the fires in Northern California. Local news reports suggest downed power lines may be linked to the fires that destroyed many properties in wine country and that have claimed lives. This was still a “developing story” late in the week, but the California electric utility’s shares were down 10.5% at $57.72 on Friday, after a drop of almost 7% on Thursday. That is a drop of 16% just in a week, without a known resolution. PG&E’s consensus analyst target of $71.52 may have to come down from here.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE: WMT) seems to be the only brick-and-mortar giant that knows how to answer Amazon these days. The company sees online sales up 40% and expects its total revenue to reach $500 billion. Oh, and the Walmart team decided to unveil a new $20 billion stock buyback plan this week too. Walmart shares ended Friday at $86.62, up about 9.7% for the week. The world’s largest retailer has a market cap of $258 billion, and while that is among the largest stocks in America it is still barely half that of the $482 billion market cap for Amazon.

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