Tuesday was a limp day for the U.S. markets amid a rise in the dollar and a dip in gold. By the trading day’s end, the S&P 500 Index and the Dow Jones Industrial Average each fell 0.5% and the Nasdaq Composite posted a 0.2% loss.
Among companies that you should keep your eye on as we head into Wednesday’s trade are Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR), Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) and Micron Technology, Inc. (NASDAQ:MU).
Here’s what could be moving these names today:
Twitter Inc (TWTR)
TWTR stock is up soundly in Wednesday’s premarket trade amid a Wall Street Journal report that says the social media company is “expected to field bids this week.”
Among the potential suitors:
- Salesforce.com, Inc. (NYSE:CRM) is widely expected to make a bid, with the WSJ saying CEO Marc Benioff has been trying to build a case to his company’s investors to build support to buy out Twitter. Salesforce, which just bought out Krux, would get not just a big slice of the spotlight with a TWTR purchase, but also immense amounts of personal data to work with. However, CRM also has a lot of other mergers and acquisitions to digest.
- Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG, NASDAQ:GOOGL) has not announced anything, but it is considered a bidder in this latest round of rumors — and often is paired with Twitter whenever the mill starts churning.
- Walt Disney Co (NYSE:DIS) reportedly was talking to financial advisers about bidding on Twitter. It would have to, of course, as Disney doesn’t have enough cash on hand to make the purchase.
Of course, one could argue that none of those companies would be better off in buying Twitter.
TWTR shares are up 5% in premarket trade.
Yahoo! Inc. (YHOO)
Verizon Communications Inc.’s (NYSE:VZ) purchase of Yahoo continues to look uglier by the minute, with a Reuters report now saying that YHOO secretly scanned customer emails for U.S. intelligence.
According to Reuters’ sources, Yahoo built custom software that scanned users’ incoming emails for information detailed bythe National Security Agency or FBI.
“Some surveillance experts said this represents the first case to surface of a U.S. Internet company agreeing to an intelligence agency’s request by searching all arriving messages, as opposed to examining stored messages or scanning a small number of accounts in real time,” the report said.
The revelation comes shortly after Yahoo officially acknowledged that at least 500 million user accounts were affected in a massive 2014 data breach.
YHOO is trading flat this morning.
Micron Technology, Inc. (MU)
Micron Technology is off on Wednesday morning despite strong fiscal fourth-quarter earnings.
MU reported an adjusted loss of 5 cents per share to beat analyst expectations for a 12-cent loss. Revenues of $3.22 billion also came ahead of the consensus mark for $3.13 billion.
Weighing on shares instead was Q1 forecasts. While its adjusted profit guidance of 13 to 21 cents per share is better than what Wall Street forecast, much of that is believed to be an effect of a change in accounting practices.
Still, Micron has been soaring for months on improvements in DRAM prices, and that should continue in the current quarter.
MU stock was off by 5% in Wednesday’s morning trading.
