Yahoo Finance Trending tickers: Meta | Ford | Unilever | Intel
The latest investor updates on stocks that are trending on Thursday
Meta (META)
Meta shares fell 4.2% on Wednesday, and are down 3% in pre-market trading on Thursday, after the social media platform warned that near-term ad spending could be affected by global macro conditions.
This was despite posting 23% year-on-year quarterly revenue gains to $34.15bn (£28.28), exceeding the $33.5bn analysts expected. Monthly and daily active users on it's 'Family of Apps', including WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram, rose 7% from last year.
Ad impressions across all of Meta’s apps grew 31% in the September quarter while the company also reported a 6% decrease in average price per ad.
However, it was still a slower rate of decline than in the same period the year before, when average price per ad fell 18%.
Meta also revealed that it had doubled profits compared to the year prior, reporting net income of nearly $11.6bn – during the same quarter in 2022, Meta’s profits had dropped by half.
"While encouraging, we believe investors are viewing the wide range for 4Q revenue guidance as a near-term sign of caution," Justin Patterson, analyst at KeyBanc Capital Markets, said.
"CEO Mark Zuckerberg stated that Meta is continuing to focus on operating efficiency, and will be deprioritizing non-AI projects to shift resources toward AI," he added. "While commentary on a hiring backlog may have made some nervous about potential opex acceleration, we view the core message as clear: Meta plans to grow headcount at a much slower rate going forward."
Ford (F)
Ford has made a tentative agreement with union chiefs to end a workers’ strike at its US plants which has been ongoing since mid-September.
The move, which still needs to be approved by union members, is expected to provide staff with a 25% wage increase over the four-year deal, with an initial increase of 11%.
The lowest-paid temporary workers would see pay rises of more than 150% over the period. The union also won the right to strike over future Ford plant closures.
"We told Ford to pony up and they did," United Auto Workers (UAW) president Shawn Fain said.
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However, Ford’s 16,000 workers who have been on strike have been asked to return to work ahead of the vote.
The strike, which started on 15 September, is the first in the UAW's 88-year history to target all three carmakers at once.
Shares climbed 2.3% in pre-market trading on Thursday on the back of the news, and comes ahead of Ford's quarterly financial results later today.
Unilever (ULVR.L)
Unilever, the maker of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream and Marmite, has seen its shares fall 3% on the day, trading near a one-year low, after it announced its third quarter results.
It revealed underlying sales growth of 5.2%, with prices increasing by 5.8% and volumes declining by 0.6%.
The group left its 2023 guidance unchanged, targeting underlying sales growth of above 5%, with a modest improvement in underlying operating margin.
“This is another drab quarter from Unilever with underlying sales growth being entirely led by higher prices and volume declines accelerating in the quarter," Charlie Huggins, manager of the Quality Shares Portfolio at Wealth Club, said.
"Europe was particularly weak with volumes falling by over 10%, and the percentage of Unilever's business winning market share on a rolling 12 month-basis fell to a disappointing 38%."
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He added: "Unilever's new CEO, Hein Schumacher, recognises that the group could and should be doing better. His 'Action Plan', announced today, is designed to reinvigorate performance through more impactful innovation, productivity savings and an improved culture.
"From here it's all about the execution. Anyone can talk a good game with pretty PowerPoint slides, but actually doing it is quite another matter. Unilever's previous strategy updates promising greater agility, productivity and innovation ultimately didn't really deliver. This Action Plan feels like it has more substance, but the proof will be in the pudding."
Unilever also named a new chief financial officer and replaced division heads as Schumacher seeks to revive the company, focusing investment on its top 30 brands.
Intel (INTC)
Intel stock has continued its decline this week after a report that Nvidia (NVDA) was developing an Arm-based CPU for the PC market.
It is set to report its third quarter earnings after the closing bell on Thursday, with an expectation of $13.5bn revenue in the quarter, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
This is an 11.7% decline compared to the $15.3bn the company reported in the same period last year. Wall Street is anticipating adjusted earnings per share of $0.21, down 64.2% year-on-year.
Intel’s Client Computing revenue is expected to hit $7.4bn in Q3, a decline of 9.2% year over year. But estimates point to a return to growth in Q4, with analysts anticipating year-over-year growth of 15.7%.
Intel’s data center and AI business, meanwhile, is expected to show more signs of progress toward a return to growth. Wall Street estimates indicate the segment’s revenue will come in at $3.9 billion. That is still down 7.4% year over year but an improvement versus the last two quarters when growth slowed by double digits.
It comes as Intel is in the midst of a massive corporate turnaround. After losing ground to long-time rival AMD (AMD) in the PC chip space, the firm has taken a beating for not being able to match Nvidia's AI capabilities.
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