Investing

7 Major After-Hours Movers on Thursday

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The notion that the Dow Jones industrials and S&P 500 both managed to come screaming back from the lows of the day to close positive might have been impressive enough for most investors and traders. The number of earnings and other corporate announcements have managed to create major moves in Thursday’s after-hours trading sessions.

24/7 Wall St. has provided some brief news on the major movers, and trading color ahead of the close and in the after-hours session has been added on each. These are the top seven after-hours movers we have tracked. Admittedly, there were other winners and losers on the move as well.

Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) was very active in the after-hours trading session after blowing out earnings and showing how almost half of the country is now an Amazon Prime member. Amazon closed up 0.7% at $1,870.68 ahead of earnings, and Thursday evening’s post-earnings reaction had shares trading up almost 12% at $2,093.00.

Amazon already had seen many analysts hike their price targets in January ahead of the report, and its consensus analyst target price ahead of the report was $2,191.96. Amazon is now the fourth tech giant in the $1 trillion market cap club. If this holds, that’s above the prior $2,035.80 all-time high. Amazon’s after-hours trading was more than 2.4 million shares as of 5:20 Eastern Time.

Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ: EA) was trading down 0.5% at $111.64 ahead of earnings, and the video game publishing giant was down 4.4% at $106.70 afterward. Electronic Arts had a $115.31 consensus target price, and its 52-week high is $114.13.

Flex Ltd. (NASDAQ: FLEX) was trading down 1.2% at $17.47 ahead of Thursday’s close, but after beating earnings the shares were up over 8% at $14.02 in the after-hours trading session. The 52-week high was $13.76 ahead of this move.

International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE: IBM) finally named a new chief executive as the company decided it needed a more modern approach. Arvind Krishna, head of many of IBM’s strategic imperatives, and who was behind the Red Hat acquisition, was appointed CEO and Ginni Rometty will stay on as non-executive chair. IBM shares initially rose more than 4% to $143 after closing at $136.77 on Thursday.

Navistar International Corp. (NYSE: NAV) has received an offer from VW’s Traton to acquire the rest of the company for a sum of $2.9 billion. Shares were down 0.17% at $24.07, with a 52-week range of $21.32 to $39.52, on Thursday. The offer price was shown to be $35 per share, but Navistar was trading up 50% at $36.20 in the after-hours trading session.

Vertex Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ: VRTX) is bucking the trend of big biotechs not doing well after earnings. It traded down 0.9% to $230.31 ahead of earnings on Thursday, but the biotech giant was up 5% at $242.00 after the report. Trading volume is not as active here, as in other biotech leaders with lower share prices. That would be a 52-week high above $237.47.

Western Digital Corp. (NASDAQ: WDC) traded up 0.3% to $66.96 ahead of earnings, but the after-hours trading was up nearly 6% at $70.90. Western Digital’s 52-week high is $72.00, but this was more than a $100 stock in early 2018.


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