3 Stocks to Watch on Wednesday: Anthera Pharmaceuticals Inc (ANTH), Mastercard Inc (MA) and Western Digital Corp (WDC)

Advertisement

It was a good day for U.S. stocks as gold prices fell and the financial sector was booming once again, up 1% on Tuesday. The S&P 500 Index grew 0.3%, the Dow Jones Industrial Average surged 0.2% and the Nasdaq Composite gained 0.5%.

3 Stocks to Watch on Wednesday: Anthera Pharmaceuticals Inc (ANTH), Mastercard Inc (MA) and Western Digital Corp (WDC)Anthera Pharmaceuticals Inc (NASDAQ:ANTH) made a big announcement yesterday, while Mastercard Inc (NYSE:MA) raised its quarterly dividend and Western Digital Corp (NASDAQ:WDC) changed its quarterly guidance.

Here’s what you should know:

Anthera Pharmaceuticals Inc (ANTH)

Anthera Pharmaceuticals announced a major management change Tuesday.

Board of Directors member J. Craig Thompson has been promoted as CEO. The company was previously led by Paul Truex, who stepped down from the position and became the new Executive Chairman.

Truex will work as the Chairman of the Board and continue to offer counsel to the company’s management team. Additionally, Chairman of the Board Dr. Christopher Henney is leaving his post following 10 years in the position, but he will still be a Board member.

Truex commented on the addition of Thompson to Anthera, noting that his 12 months in the company have been fruitful. One of his biggest achievements is helping to commercialize Sollpura, a pancreatic enzyme replacement therapy.

The company is also developing blisibimod, which is for IgA nephropathy, and Anthera believes Thompson is the man to lead the charge and expand moving forward.

The news sent ANTH shares rocketing 15.7% after the bell.

Mastercard Inc (MA)

Mastercard is buying back $4 billion worth of its class A shares.

The payment processor also announced that it is raising its quarterly dividend in a bid to boost investor morale within the company. Mastercard has about $1.3 billion left of its $4 billion buyback program.

The new dividend is 16% higher than its previous total of 19 cents per share. Its current total is set at 22 cents per share, and the company has 1.09 billion class A shares.

Mastercard has been making waves lately, announcing a program called Decision Intelligence. The service plans to use artificial intelligence technology to aid banks and other financial institutions, helping to reduce wrongful credit card declines.

The technology will help monitor each transaction more closely, helping to avoid fraudulent activity.

MA shares gained 0.8% after hours Tuesday.

Western Digital Corp (WDC)

Western Digital is raising its guidance for its second quarter.

Non-GAAP earnings for the company’s three-month period will be in the range of $2.10 to $2.15 per share. The figure is significantly higher than previous earnings estimates of $1.85 to $1.95 per share.

The company also recently announced a new flash-based storage system and a new hard drive yesterday. The product is called 3D NAND and it is used in a SanDisk Edge microSD card that comes equipped with 256GB of data.

The product has been made possible thanks to the company’s acquisition of SanDisk earlier this year, which cost $19 billion. The new hard drive is the Ultrastar SN200 NVMe PCIe SSD.

The product will have a size capacity of up to 7.68TB.

WDC shares are down 4.8% Tuesday.

As of this writing, Karl Utermohlen did not hold a position in any of the aforementioned securities.

More From InvestorPlace


Article printed from InvestorPlace Media, https://investorplace.com/2016/12/stocks-watch-wednesday-anthera-pharmaceuticals-inc-anth-mastercard-inc-ma-western-digital-corp-wdc/.

©2024 InvestorPlace Media, LLC