By Geoffrey Smith
Investing.com -- Stocks in focus in premarket trade on Tuesday, May 19th. Please refresh for updates.
- Walmart (NYSE:WMT) stock rose 3.8% after it reported a 74% rise in online sales in the three months through April, ensuring that it avoided the kind of blow dealt by lockdowns to smaller brick-and-mortar retailers.
- Earnings per share were some 5% ahead of expectations, even though operating margins suffered from a higher cost base.
- Home Depot (NYSE:HD)stock fell 1.4% but was still close to its pre-pandemic high in February, after it, too, saw the extra costs caused by the coronavirus eat into profit margins.
- Earnings per share were about 10% short of expectations, as the company was forced to cut operating hours and limit the number of customers allowed in stores. It also spent $850 million more to provide additional bonuses, double pay for overtime and add more hours of paid time-off.
- Imperial Brands (OTC:IMBBY) ADRs were 7.6% lower after the tobacco company cut its dividend by one-third in order to conserve cash and warned of a hit to sales through duty-free travel shots.
- The British company also said it risked losing customers to cheaper brands as consumer incomes suffered due to the economic fallout of the pandemic.
- Walt Disney (NYSE:DIS) stock was down 1.2% after the company lost the head of its streaming service Disney+. Kevin Mayer is set to become CEO of short-form video app TikTok after being passed over for the top job at Disney.
- Moderna (NASDAQ:MRNA) stock was down 3.8% at $77, some $3 below Monday's closing price, after taking advantage of the spike in its share price to sell another 17.6 million shares at $76 apiece, raising nearly $1.4 billion.
- United Airlines (NASDAQ:UAL) stock was up 6.6% after the company said it expected its July scheduled capacity to be around 25% of year-earlier levels, up from an expected level of only 10% in May and June.
- Southwest Airlines (NYSE:LUV) stock rose 5.2% after it said that bookings outpaced cancellations this month so far, the best performance it's shown since the pandemic erupted.