NEW YORK (awp international) – After the US interest rate hike and the significant gains of the previous day, the US stock markets should initially go down a bit on Thursday at the opening. The events are likely to be characterized by weak US economic data and what is probably the busiest day of the corporate reporting season.
The broker IG assessed the Dow Jones Industrial for three quarters of an hour before the start of trading around 0.1 percent in the red at 32,172 points. The Nasdaq 100 is expected to be around 0.4 percent lower at 12,555 points.
The US economy contracted again in the spring. After a decline in economic output at the beginning of the year, gross domestic product (GDP) fell by an annualized 0.9 percent in the second quarter. Analysts, on the other hand, had expected slight growth. The number of initial jobless claims fell only slightly last week.
From the company’s point of view, the focus is once again on the quarterly reporting season, which is in full swing. Facebook group Meta suffered its first drop in sales. The development is tantamount to the end of an era: Since the IPO in 2012, things have only gone up rapidly. Meta does not expect an improvement for the next few months either. Founder and boss Mark Zuckerberg announced that the group now wants to focus on long-term investments. The sales forecast for the current quarter was lower than expected by analysts. Investors dropped the stock 3.9 percent in premarket trading.
Drugmaker Pfizer raised targets for full-year growth and profit after strong business in the second quarter. In the past quarter, Pfizer benefited, as recently, from strong demand for the mRNA corona vaccine Comirnaty, which it is marketing together with the German biotech company Biontech. In addition, demand for the corona pill Paxlovid, which is intended to prevent a severe course of the disease, continued to increase. The papers became cheaper in premarket trading by 0.6 percent.
With plenty of tailwind from the important cancer drug Keytruda, the US pharmaceutical group Merck & Co is looking somewhat more confidently to sales development in the current year. For adjusted earnings per share, the old outlook has been narrowed somewhat. Shares gained 1.1 percent in pre-market US trading.
The strong position in the smartphone market is boosting the business of chip group Qualcomm. In the third fiscal quarter ended June, revenue increased 36 percent year-on-year. The profit even jumped by 84 percent. Apparently, this wasn’t good enough for investors, because the shares fell by 3.2 percent premarket.
The second-largest US automaker, Ford, managed a strong jump in sales of 50 percent in the second quarter despite adverse circumstances. The bottom line is that Ford earned around 19 percent more than a year ago. However, a renewed correction in the value of the stake in the electric car developer Rivian weighed on the result as in the previous quarter. Analysts had expected significantly weaker numbers. The stock jumped 6.8 percent pre-market.
JetBlue Airways is acquiring low-cost carrier Spirit Airlines for at least $3.8 billion in cash. This was announced by both companies after Spirit canceled a planned merger with Frontier Group on Wednesday. JetBlue will pay $33.50 per Spirit share, or even $34.15 depending on the schedule. Jetblue’s shares are up 0.5 percent premarket and Spirit’s are up 2.7 percent./edh/jha/
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