Exterior view of a Walmart store on August 23, 2020 in North Bergen, New Jersey
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Check out the companies making headlines in midday trading.
Walmart — Shares fell about 10.5% after the big-box retailer reported quarterly earnings that significantly missed Wall Street’s expectations. Walmart posted adjusted first-quarter earnings of $1.30 per share on revenue of $141.57 billion. Analysts had expected a profit of $1.48 per share on revenue of $138.94 billion, according to Refinitiv consensus estimates. Walmart cited cost pressures from rising fuel prices, higher inventory levels and overstaffing.
Citigroup — The bank stock rallied roughly 8.2% the day after a regulatory filing revealed that Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway added more than 55 million shares to build a stake worth $2.95 billion in the first quarter. Shares of Citi have been underperforming the financial sector over the past 12 months and are still down 15% this year.
Paramount Global – Paramount shares surged nearly 14% after Berkshire Hathaway revealed a stake worth $2.6 billion in the media company. At the end of the quarter, the media company was Berkshire’s 18th-largest holding.
United Airlines – Shares of the air carrier jumped more than 7% after the Federal Aviation Administration cleared 52 Boeing 777 planes to fly again, after they were grounded for engine failure. The planes represent 10% of United’s capacity. United has said it plans to bring the planes back gradually starting later this month.
Take-Two Interactive Software — Shares surged 12.3% despite light guidance and a miss on a bookings metric from the video game company. Analysts are expecting a better outlook after the company closes a pending acquisition of Zynga.
JD.com – Shares of the Chinese e-commerce giant gained about 2% after the company beat revenue estimates for its most recent quarter, despite seeing a slowdown in growth as Covid-19 lockdowns weighed on consumer spending. Revenue came in at 239.7 billion Chinese yuan, an 18% increase from the previous year, compared with expectations of 236.6 billion yuan, according to Refinitiv.
Tencent Music Entertainment – U.S. traded shares of the Chinese online entertainment platform slid more than 3%. Tencent Music posted quarterly revenue of 6.64 billion yuan, a 15% decline from the prior year.
AMD – Shares of the semiconductor stock jumped 8.7% after Piper Sandler upgraded Advanced Micro Devices to overweight from neutral and said shares could rally nearly 50% after dipping this year.
Workday — Shares dipped 1.8% after UBS downgraded the HR software stock to a neutral rating from buy. The firm said Workday could be hit hard during an economic downturn.
Maxar Technologies — The space stock retreated nearly 2% after Bank of America downgraded Maxar to an underperform rating from neutral. The bank said it expects lower revenue and margins at the satellite imaging company moving forward.
Molson Coors — The beverage stock dipped more than 2% following a downgrade from Bernstein. The investment firm said that the recovery trade for Molson Coors has largely run its course and moved its rating to market perform from outperform.
— CNBC’s Yun Li, Jesse Pound, Sarah Min, Samantha Subin and Tanaya Macheel contributed reporting.
