By Geoffrey Smith
Investing.com -- Stocks in focus in premarket trade on Wednesday. Please refresh for updates.
- Moderna (NASDAQ:MRNA) stock was down 0.7%, paring earlier losses, after the healthcare news site Stat warned that the company still needs to provide much more data before it can be confident that its experimental Covid-19 drug will work.
- Moderna placed nearly $1.4 billion in new stock at $76 apiece on Tuesday, with underwriter Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS) also having a $200 million greenshoe option.
- Lowe’s Companies (NYSE:LOW) stock rose 5.7% after its quarterly numbers showed U.S. consumers leaning heavily on the home improvement store during lockdowns. Earnings per share were nearly one-third above consensus at
- Enforced leisure time at home appears to have called the bluff of husbands who have been swearing for years that they’ll “get around to doing that some day soon.”
- Target (NYSE:TGT) stock rose 1.4% after it, too, reported strong sales for the three months through April. Online sales rose by 141% (admittedly from a lower base than rival Walmart (NYSE:WMT)'s).
- The company had already flagged that much of the gain would be neutralized by higher operating costs tied to maintaining staff levels and safety standards. Even so, the bill of $500 million for such measures struck some as high.
- Harley-Davidson (NYSE:HOG) stock rose 3.1% after The Wall Street Journal reported that it's scaling down deliveries and will discontinue some product lines as it adapts to a lower trajectory for demand.
- Royal Caribbean Cruises (NYSE:RCL) stock was up 3.8% despite reporting a wider-than-expected loss for the first quarter.
- While the cruise operator withdrew its guidance for the full year, it said it had started the year strongly and said booking rates were in line with historical norms.
- Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) stock was up 1.5%, helped by a Bloomberg report saying that the European Commission is looking at hefty subsidies for the electric car industry as part of its recovery plan for the EU economy.