By Geoffrey Smith
Investing.com -- Stocks in focus in premarket trade on Friday, 24th January. Please refresh for updates.
- 9:18 AM ET: Alibaba ADRs (NYSE:) fell 0.3% on concerns for Chinese consumption this year amid a clampdown on travel and public celebrations and the widespread closure of movie theaters and other places of mass gatherings, due to the spreading coronavirus outbreak. Standard & Poor’s Ratings Group warned on Thursday that the outbreak could take up to 1.2 percentage points off GDP growth this year.
- 9:13 AM ET: Ericsson (BS:) (NASDAQ:) ADRs fell 7.6% after the telecom equipment company flagged higher costs related to the rollout of 5G networks, along with a disappointing 4% annual drop in revenue in the U.S., which it blamed in part on the delays to the merger of Sprint (NYSE:) and T-Mobile US (NASDAQ:), which has been held up by antitrust concerns. The company nonetheless returned to profit in the quarter.
- 9:09 AM ET: Air Products and Chemicals (NYSE:) stock fell 0.1% after saying earnings in the current quarter would be some 4% below current consensus estimates. That overshadowed a modest beat on earnings for the final quarter of 2019.
9 AM ET: Intel (NASDAQ:) stock rose 4.9%, coming off earlier highs, after the company reported better-than-expected earnings and sales for the last three months of 2019. Demand from data centers that power Cloud servers, along with a surge in PC upgrades ahead of Microsoft’s deadline for ending Windows 7 support, were the main factors.
Broadcom (NASDAQ:) stock rose 3.3%, extending gains it made late on Thursday after announcing deals with Apple (NASDAQ:) for components worth up to $15 billion. Skyworks Solutions (NASDAQ:), some of whose products may be displaced by the agreements, pared losses to be flat.
American Express (NYSE:) stock rose 2.5% after the company reported better-than-expected earnings and revenue. Spending by customers using AmEx cards during the final quarter of 2019 rose 6% in the U.S. and 4% abroad. Net income fell though, with earnings per share falling some 14% from a year earlier.
Nextera Energy (NYSE:) stock fell 1.2% in a rare blip for the parent of Florida Power & Light that is now one of U.S.’s biggest producers of renewable energy. Chairman and CEO Jim Robo nonetheless said he’d be “disappointed if we are not able to deliver financial results at or near the top end” of its profit guidance through 2022, given its strong pipeline of projects
