It was a fairly calm day on Wall Street, with two of the three major indices giving back some of their gains from yesterday. Traders were said to still be digesting the comments from Janet Yellen yesterday, discerning what they will mean for interest rate changes going forward.
In economic news, weekly jobless claims were slightly higher for the week ending March 14, rising to 291,000, and just below estimates of 292,000. That was seen as neutral by most.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.65%, while the S&P 500 gave back 0.49%. The Nasdaq was a bit stronger, gaining a fraction on the day. All in all, it was a strange day in which mixed or even seemingly bad news still sent certain stocks higher, which is how we saw Guess?, Inc. (NYSE:GES), Nordic American Tanker Ltd (NYSE:NAT) and Juno Therapeutics Inc (NASDAQ:JUNO) end up as three of today’s best stocks.
Guess?, Inc. (GES)
GES stock soared 16% after the apparel manufacturer reported fourth-quarter earnings of 63 cents a share, 5 cents above the Zacks Consensus estimate, but down 24.1% from the year ago quarter.
Additionally, revenue of $696.7 million was 9.3% below last year and missed the Zacks estimate of $702 million. Yet company expenses were lower and online sales were trending higher.
Adding to the tepid earnings, GES stock had its target price reduced by Jefferies Group LLC from $23 to $21, while it maintained its “hold” rating on GES. That’s not exactly a ringing endorsement, but the market ignored the Jefferies analysis to send GES stock higher.
Perhaps it was merely a relief rally for a stock that was down almost 25% since mid-December.
Nordic American Tanker Ltd (NAT)
NAT stock was up 5% after CEO Herbjorn Hansson sent a letter to shareholders, reassuring them that falling oil prices did not hurt Nordic’s bottom line, and that the company will be looking to increase its dividend this year. NAT currently yields 6.4% based on its last four payments.
It’s remarkable that Nordic would be talking about increasing its dividend at this time, but traders liked what they heard and acted accordingly.
Hansson himself recently bought 50,000 shares of Nordic American Offshore Ltd (NYSE:NAO), a subsidiary of NAT.
Juno Therapeutics Inc (JUNO)
It seems as if any stock that has to do with biotech or pharmaceuticals can only go up right now, regardless of earnings. JUNO stock soared 17% after announcing a fourth-quarter adjusted loss of $1.61, not even coming close to the consensus estimate of a loss of 33 cents a share. In addition, there was no revenue generated during the quarter.
Juno has a pipeline of cancer-based antagonists, and is working on various drugs which target leukemia and non-Hodgkin lymphoma. However, most of its products are in initial testing phases.
JUNO stock hit the public markets in December 2014, so this was its first quarterly earnings report as a publicly traded company. Clearly, it didn’t take much to make investors happy.
As of this writing, Ethan Roberts does not hold a position in any of the aforementioned securities.
