Yahoo Finance Trending tickers: Salesforce, Trump Media, JD Sports, National Grid
Salesforce (CRM)
The last time Salesforce stock experienced a one-day drop of the magnitude it saw on Thursday, George W. Bush was still in his first presidential term.
On Thursday, Salesforce's fiscal first quarter results and earnings call commentary sent shares 20% lower, making it the stock's worst day since July 2004. The decline weighed on the Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) during the trading session after Salesforce projected slowing sales growth in the current quarter.
Top executives of the cloud software vendor noted "measured buying behaviour" on the earnings call, with "elongated deal cycles, deal compression, and high levels of budget scrutiny".
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff also commented that the company was cautiously open to another large-scale acquisition, a shift from last year when he said that the company was pausing multibillion-dollar deals.
“We always are looking at what is the next level of innovation," Benioff said Wednesday. "But as we've committed to you, if we're looking at a large-scale acquisition, we're going to make sure that it is not dilutive to our customers, that it's accretive, that it ... has the right metrics.
"And we're also going to be quick to walk away from things that we are not totally confident in or that we don't have the trust with whatever company that we're looking at.”
Trump Media (DJT)
Shares of Trump Media & Technology Group, the parent company of former US president Donald Trump's social media platform Truth Social, fell 6% in early trading on Friday after Trump was found guilty on all 34 counts of falsifying business records intended to influence the 2016 presidential campaign.
Trump, who will likely appeal the verdict, will be sentenced on 11 July and faces up to four years in prison on each count.
Trump Media, the parent company of Truth Social, went public on the Nasdaq after merging with special purpose acquisition company Digital World Acquisition Corp.
Shares have fallen about 10% since the company's public debut at the end of March.
JD Sports (JD.L)
JD Sports was among the top fallers in the FTSE 100 on Friday, as its adjusted profit missed expectations.
Profit before tax and adjusting items fell 8% to £917.2m, which was slightly below the guided range of £915-935m.
Sales, meanwhile, matched broker expectations at £10.5bn for the 2024 financial year. Stock was down around 10% by mid-morning in London.
National Grid (NGPN.L)
At the other end of the FTSE 100, National Grid's shares were among the top gainers in London, up more than 23% after a slide late last week.
The moves lower came following news of a heavily discounted rights issue. The £7bn fundraise would be the largest from a company in Europe outside the banking sector in 15 years.
The fundraise is set to finance a £60bn investment programme over the next five years which will be directed towards its British electricity distribution and transmission businesses as well as funding the company’s networks business in New York and New England.
New shares are to be issued at 645p each, a discount of almost 35% to Thursday’s closing price.
National Grid expects the investment to help it to expand its asset base at an average compound rate of 10% over the five years to 2029 and to increase earnings at a rate of between 6% and 8% from 2025.
Analysts at UBS suggested on Thursday that the selloff was too harsh, and that the share issue had not permanently changed the business.
Watch: How Donald Trump's historic guilty verdict unfolded
