Stocks declined Thursday despite some data indicating manufactured capital goods orders rose for a second consecutive month. The Federal Reserve’s Jackson Hole, Wyoming, meeting starts tomorrow.
The S&P 500 lost 0.14% while the Dow Jones Industrial Average declined 0.18%. The Nasdaq Composite fell 0.11%.
On another sluggish day for stocks, Guess?, Inc. (NYSE:GES), Netflix, Inc. (NASDAQ:NFLX) and Tiffany & Co. (NYSE:TIF) were easily three of the day’s best.
Guess?, Inc. (GES)
Apparel maker Guess?, Inc. surged 22.2% on about 10 times the average daily volume after the company reported better-than-expected second-quarter results.
GES earned 38 cents a share during the quarter, up from 21 cents per share a year earlier. GES reported adjusted earnings of 14 cents, easily beating analysts’ estimate of 6 cents. Guess reported sales of $545 million, slightly lower than the year earlier period and below the consensus estimate of $551 million.
GES said same-store sales dropped 2%, but that was much better than the 4.3% decline analysts were expecting.
Netflix, Inc. (NFLX)
Streaming video company Netflix, Inc. rose 2.2% after William Blair analyst Ralph Schackart revealed a bullish case for the entertainment content provider.
Schackart put a $145 price target on NFLX with a bear case scenario of $110 and a bull case scenario of $185. All of those targets imply significant upside from where shares of NFLX closed Thursday.
Schackart cited millennials as a potentially lucrative driver of future growth for Netflix, noting that many members of that generation currently consume NFLX content via their parents’ account, but that when they are old enough, they will become paying Netflix subscribers themselves.
The analyst sees millennials as integral to NFLX reaching its U.S. subscriber target of 60 million to 90 million.
Tiffany & Co. (TIF)
Shares of jeweler Tiffany & Co. climbed 6.4% after the New York-based company posted decent second-quarter results and did not alter its full-year guidance.
According to CEO Frederic Cumenal, “The global environment continues to reflect well known challenges that we believe have had broad effects on spending by local customers, as well as foreign tourists, especially from China.
TIF earned 84 cents a share during the quarter, down from 86 cents a year earlier, but ahead of the 71 cents per share analysts were expecting. Tiffany posted sales of $931.6 million, slightly below the consensus estimate of $933 million.
TIF said it expects fiscal 2016 earnings will decline by a mid-single-digit percentage while sales are expected to decline by a low-single-digit percentage, according to Zacks.
At the time of this writing, Todd Shriber did not own any of the aforementioned securities.
