Visitors at the Tesla booth at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai, July 6, 2023.
Costfoto | Nurphoto | Getty Images
Check out the companies making headlines in midday trading.
Tesla — Shares of the electric vehicle maker jumped 6% after Morgan Stanley upgraded the stock to overweight from equal weight. Adam Jones, an analyst at Morgan Stanley, said that the company is poised to make a big leap in autonomous driving.
J.M. Smucker, Hostess — Smucker lost 6.2% after it agreed to buy Twinkies-maker Hostess Brands for $34.25 a share in a cash and stock transaction, valued at approximately $5.6 billion. Hostess’s hares rose 19% to a new 52 week high. Tenable Holdings, a provider of exposure management solutions, added 4.3% after JPMorgan upgraded it to overweight. The firm said the company should see improved fundamentals going forward.
Kenvue — Shares of the Band-Aid maker gained 3% after being upgraded by Deutsche Bank to buy from hold on Sunday. Wall Street firm said Kenvue is a quality company, and that the stock’s decline has provided an attractive entry. The J&J spinoff has lost 15% since going public in May.
Alibaba — The Chinese tech company shed 1.8% on the news that outgoing CEO Daniel Zhang would unexpectedly quit its cloud business. The company announced in June that Zhang would be leaving his position as Chairman and CEO of Alibaba Group, to focus on its cloud intelligence unit.
Meta – The tech giant gained 2.5% after the Wall Street Journal revealed that Meta was developing a new artificial intelligence system, which is as advanced as OpenAI’s latest model and even more powerful than Llama 2, the AI system it released just two months earlier. Meta plans to launch its product next year, according to the Wall Street Journal report.
Nubank – The U.S.-traded shares of the Brazilian financial firm rose nearly 6% after JPMorgan upgraded Nubank to overweight from neutral. JPMorgan wrote in a client note that Nubank is likely to continue to grow its market share in Brazil over the next several years, and it’s trading at “a good entry point” following a recent decline in stock price.
Qualcomm — The chip stock jumped 3.5% after the company announced that it will supply Apple with 5G modems for smartphones through 2026. Continued sales to Apple could boost Qualcomm’s handsets and soften the blow from potentially losing a key customer.
Media stocks — Shares of Disney
and Charter Communications gained more than 2% as both companies are nearing a deal that would end the blackout fight between the two companies. Shares of media peers Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramount also traded higher on the news, rising 2.2% and 1.9%, respectively,AstraZeneca — The pharmaceutical company’s shares lost nearly 3% midday Monday. Per Reuters, the pullback comes after a Sunday report in the Mail saying Chief Executive Pascal Soriot privately discussed leaving the company as early as next year.
Moderna — Shares of the drugmaker fell more than 2% after it announced it is partnering with German drug developer Immatics to further cancer vaccine developments. Moderna will pay Immatics an upfront payment of $120 million as part the deal.