Mid-Afternoon Market Update: Dow Rises Over 300 Points; Fuel Tech Shares Slide Following Q1 Results

Toward the end of trading Tuesday, the Dow traded up 1.34 percent to 25665.01 while the NASDAQ climbed 1.64 percent to 7,772.11. The S&P also rose, gaining 1.37 percent to 2,850.46.

Leading and Lagging Sectors

Tuesday afternoon, the information technology shares rose by 2.1 percent. Meanwhile, top gainers in the sector included TESSCO Technologies Incorporated TESS up 8 percent, and PagerDuty, Inc. PD up 9 percent.

In trading on Tuesday, utilities shares fell 0.7 percent.

Top Headline

Ralph Lauren Corp RL reported better-than-expected earnings for its fourth quarter on Tuesday.

Ralph Lauren reported quarterly earnings of $1.07 per share on sales of $1.505 billion. However, analysts were expecting earnings of $0.89 per share on sales of $1.47 billion.

Ralph Lauren raised its quarterly dividend from $0.6250 per share to $0.6875 per share. The company said it expects FY20 net sales growth of 2 percent to 3 percent year over year and Q1 net sales growth 3 percent to 5 percent year over year. Ralph Lauren added $600 million to its buyback program.

 

Equities Trading UP

INSYS Therapeutics, Inc. INSY shares got a boost, shooting up 33 percent to $1.2650 following a 74 percent decline Monday after the company warned of a possible bankruptcy. Janney Capital downgraded the stock from Buy to Neutral Tuesday morning.

Shares of Support.com, Inc. SPRT shot up 15 percent to $2.4499 following Q1 results. Support.com posted Q1 earnings of $0.08 per share on sales of $18.1 million.

SAExploration Holdings, Inc. SAEX shares were also up, gaining 10 percent to $3.78 after the company reported Q1 EPS, sales figures increased from the same quarter last year.

Equities Trading DOWN

Solid Biosciences Inc. SLDB shares dropped 30 percent to $6.24 after the company reported a wider-than-expected Q1 loss and announced negative data from its Phase 1/2 IGNITE DMD trial. Credit Suisse downgraded Solid Biosciences from Neutral to Underperform and lowered the price target from $7 to $6.

Shares of Fuel Tech, Inc. FTEK were down 35 percent to $1.61. Fuel Tech reported Q1 net loss of $0.05 per share, versus a year-ago loss of $0.01 per share. Sales came in at $10.155 million, missing estimates by $3.585 million.

Myovant Sciences Ltd. MYOV was down, falling around 25 percent to $12.91, despite reporting positive headline phase 3 results, potentially due to further data analysis showing the company's Relugolix drug having a lower placebo adjusted response rate than Abbvie's Elaris drug.

Commodities

In commodity news, oil traded up 1.5 percent to $61.96 while gold traded down 0.4 percent to $1,296.30.

Silver traded up 0.1 percent Tuesday to $14.79, while copper rose 0.2 percent to $2.724.

 

Eurozone

European shares closed higher today. The eurozone’s STOXX 600 climbed 1.01 percent, the Spanish Ibex Index rose 0.89 percent, while Italy’s FTSE MIB Index gained 1.45 percent. Meanwhile the German DAX gained 0.97 percent, and the French CAC 40 rose 1.5 percent while U.K. shares rose 1.09 percent.

Economics

The NFIB small business optimism index increased 1.7 points to a reading of 103.5 for April.

The import price index rose 0.2 percent for April, while export prices increased 0.2 percent last month.

The Johnson Redbook Retail Sales Index rose 1.3 percent during the first week of May versus April.