By Geoffrey Smith
Investing.com -- Stocks in focus in premarket trading on Wednesday, 29th January. Please refresh for updates.
8:15 AM ET: L Brands (NYSE:LB) stock rose 9.9% to a five-month high after The Wall Street Journal reported that founder Leslie Wexner is in talks to step down as CEO and find a buyer for the company that owns struggling lingerie chain Victoria’s Secret.
8:11 AM ET: Xilinx (NASDAQ:XLNX) stock fell 8.0% to an eight-week low after the chipmaker posted a sharper-than-expected decline in sales in the fourth quarter, something it blamed on a slowdown in 5G investments and government restrictions on its business with China’s Huawei. Profit fell 32%, less than feared.
Analysts estimate Huawei had accounted for as much as 8% of Xilinx’s total revenue before U.S. restrictions forced it to source chips from companies outside the U.S.
8:03 AM ET: Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) stock rose 1.7% to within touching distance of its record-high level of $323.32, after posting earnings for its fiscal first quarter that were 10% ahead of expectations. The company also beat on revenue after strong performances from its app store as well as its wireless AirPods and its core smartphone business.
CEO Tim Cook acknowledged the impact of the coronavirus but said the company has alternatives to its suppliers in Wuhan, the city at the center of the outbreak. Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) expects revenue for the current quarter to be between $63 and $67 billion, an unusually wide range that reflects the uncertainties created by the virus.
7:56 AM ET: Boeing (NYSE:BA) stock rose 1.6% after an otherwise dismal quarterly report at least included no further delays to the expected timeline for the 737 MAX’s return to service. The company lost $636 million in 2019, its worst financial result in some 20 years, while net debt rose 10% and operating cash flow turned negative to the tune of $2.4 billion. Revenue at the defense and space division also declined.
“We recognize we have a lot of work to do," said Boeing (NYSE:BA) President and Chief Executive Officer David Calhoun, who took over after the ousting of Dennis Muilenberg on Christmas Eve. “Fortunately, the strength of our overall Boeing portfolio of businesses provides the financial liquidity to follow a thorough and disciplined recovery process.”
The stock is still down 29% from its peak in February last year.
7:49 AM ET: Advanced Micro Devices (NASDAQ:AMD) stock fell 4.6% after the chipmaker disappointed hopes that it will challenge Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) for primacy in the high-margin business of selling chips to data centers. The company said quarterly sales at the unit that includes data center chips were well short of expectations, and also predicted a drop in unit sales in the current quarter.
7:42 AM ET: McDonald’s (NYSE:MCD) stock fell 0.2% despite reporting comparable sales growth of 5.9% in the three months through December, above expectations of 5.2% and the highest global sales growth in more than 10 years.
7:34 AM ET (1234 GMT): General Electric (NYSE:GE) stock rose 6.8% after the company’s fourth-quarter earnings beat expectations, helped by a strong performance by its aviation business. The company said it expected underlying earnings per share to fall this year to around 55c from 65c in 2019, although it said operating margins would improve again. It also predicted a wide range of $2 billion to $4 billion for industrial cash flow, a measure that analysts use to track the health of its individual businesses. They had churned out $3.9 billion in 2019, but this year's figures is set to be affected by further asset disposals.