Stocks making the biggest moves midday: Palantir, Moderna, Ulta Beauty, Alibaba and more
Check out the companies making headlines in midday trading: Global pharma stocks — Shares of several vaccine makers declined after President-elect Donald Trump selected prominent vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as health secretary on Thursday. Shares of Moderna and Pfizer slipped nearly 9% and 5%, respectively. BioNTech , which helped develop a Covid vaccine with Pfizer, shed 5%, while GSK declined about 2%. Even names such as Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk were lower, with both stocks slipping about 4%, amid concerns that the drug approval process could be slowed. Super Micro Computer — Shares of the embattled server company fell 2% ahead of a Monday deadline that could result in the company being delisted from the Nasdaq. Super Micro is late on filing a year-end report with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, putting it on the wrong side of the Nasdaq’s rules. This would be the 11th losing day in the last 13 trading sessions for Super Micro. Alibaba — S hares slipped more than 2% after the Chinese e-commerce giant’s fiscal second-quarter sales fell short of estimates amid a weakening consumer backdrop in China. Alibaba’s revenue of 236.5 billion yuan came out 5% higher year on year but below analysts’ expectations of 238.9 billion yuan, per LSEG. Palantir — Shares jumped 7% after the analytics software provider said it is moving its listing to the Nasdaq Global Select Market from the New York Stock Exchange. Palantir expects to be eligible to join the Nasdaq-100 Index once it makes the switch. Domino’s Pizza , Pool Corp. , Ulta Beauty — Shares of the pizza chain edged up 0.3% after Warren Buffett ‘s Berkshire Hathaway announced a new stake in Domino’s, while Pool Corp. gained almost 2% as the conglomerate purchased a small stake in the swimming pool supplier. Ulta slipped nearly 3% after Berkshire Hathaway revealed in a regulatory filing that it had sold around 97% of its shares, nearly dissolving its position in the beauty retailer. Berkshire had just bought the stock in the second quarter, making Ulta a relatively new bet. AST SpaceMobile — Shares plunged more than 11% on the heels of the company’s weaker-than-expected third-quarter results. AST SpaceMobile reported a loss of $1.10 per share on revenue of $1.1 million. That is well below the loss of 20 cents per share and $1.8 million in revenue that analysts were expecting, according to FactSet. Applied Materials — The semiconductor equipment manufacturer dropped 8% after providing a softer-than-forecast revenue outlook for the current quarter. Applied Materials told investors to expect $7.15 billion in the first fiscal quarter, less than the estimate of $7.22 billion from analysts polled by LSEG. However, the company beat expectations on both lines in the fourth fiscal quarter and issued positive guidance for adjusted earnings per share. — CNBC’s Sean Conlon, Alex Harring, Jesse Pound, Hakyung Kim and Lisa Han contributed reporting.
