By Geoffrey Smith
Investing.com — Stocks in focus in premarket trade on Wednesday. Please refresh for updates.
Moderna (NASDAQ:MRNA) stock was down 0.7%, paring earlier losses, after the healthcare news site Stat warned that the company still needs to provide much more data before it can be confident that its experimental Covid-19 drug will work. Moderna placed nearly $1.4 billion in new stock at $76 apiece on Tuesday, with underwriter Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS) also having a $200 million greenshoe option. Lowe’s Companies (NYSE:LOW) stock rose 5.7% after its quarterly numbers showed U.S. consumers leaning heavily on the home improvement store during lockdowns. Earnings per share were nearly one-third above consensus at Enforced leisure time at home appears to have called the bluff of husbands who have been swearing for years that they’ll “get around to doing that some day soon.” Target (NYSE:TGT) stock rose 1.4% after it, too, reported strong sales for the three months through April. Online sales rose by 141% (admittedly from a lower base than rival Walmart (NYSE:WMT)’s). The company had already flagged that much of the gain would be neutralized by higher operating costs tied to maintaining staff levels and safety standards. Even so, the bill of $500 million for such measures struck some as high. Harley-Davidson (NYSE:HOG) stock rose 3.1% after The Wall Street Journal reported that it’s scaling down deliveries and will discontinue some product lines as it adapts to a lower trajectory for demand. Royal Caribbean Cruises (NYSE:RCL) stock was up 3.8% despite reporting a wider-than-expected loss for the first quarter. While the cruise operator withdrew its guidance for the full year, it said it had started the year strongly and said booking rates were in line with historical norms. Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) stock was up 1.5%, helped by a Bloomberg report saying that the European Commission is looking at hefty subsidies for the electric car industry as part of its recovery plan for the EU economy.
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