Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo space tourism rocket plane returns after a test flight from Mojave Air and Space Port in Mojave, California December 13, 2018.
Gene Blevins | Portal
Check out the companies making headlines in midday trading.
Virgin Galactic – Shares of the space company rose 13%. On Thursday, the company scheduled its first commercial space tourism flight for this month. Founded by billionaire Richard Branson, the company completed its final test flight in space in May.
iRobot — Shares rose 19% after UK regulators approved Amazon’s $1.7 billion takeover of vacuum cleaner maker Roomba. Meanwhile, Amazon slipped about 0.5%.
West Pharmaceutical Services – West Pharmaceutical Services rose 2.3% after Bank of America upgraded life science stock to buy from neutral and said it would benefit from the rise in weight-loss drugs.
Cava Group – Shares in Cava Group fell 15% during Friday trading, giving back some of the gains from Thursday’s massive debut on the New York Stock Exchange. On Cava’s first day of trading, the value of the shares more than doubled at times.
SoFi Technologies – The fintech stock fell more than 8% after both Bank of America and Piper Sandler downgraded it to “neutral” from “buy,” citing SoFi’s recent surge. Bank of America said the fundamental aspects of the expiry of the moratorium on student loan repayments are now largely priced in.
Adobe shares are up 2.5%. On Thursday, the company beat expectations and issued upbeat guidance when reporting for the second fiscal quarter. Adobe posted adjusted earnings per share of $3.91 on sales of $4.82 billion, while analysts polled by Refinitiv returned earnings per share of $3.79 and sales of 4.77 billion dollars expected. Adobe said that revenue for the current quarter and full year should come in about what Wall Street expects, while adjusted earnings per share over those periods were likely to come in higher than expected.
Nvidia — The chipmaker jumped more than 2% to another record high after Morgan Stanley analyst Joseph Moore switched his top pick from Advanced Micro Devices to Nvidia. The analyst said that Nvidia has more immediate upside potential than other stocks in the artificial intelligence space.
Micron Technology – Shares fell 1.5% after Micron Technology said a chip ban in China could hurt the company. “We now estimate that about half of the Chinese headquarters’ customer sales, representing a low double-digit percentage of Micron’s global sales, are now at risk of being impacted,” the company said in a Friday filing with US Securities and Exchange Exchange Commission filing exchange commission.
Humana – Humana shares are down 3.6%. The company reiterated its guidance for the full-year insurance segment benefit expense ratio of between 86.3% and 87.3%, but expects it to come in at the high end of that guidance. The company cited higher-than-expected “trends in outpatient utilization,” including emergency rooms, outpatient practices, and dental services, as driving this forecast.
According to FactSet, shares of Truist Financial fell 1.6% after Odeon Capital Group downgraded Truist Financial from “buy” to “hold.”
— CNBC’s Michelle Fox, Alex Harring and Yun Li contributed coverage.