IT-solutions company Citrix  got a rating upgrade from a Jefferies analyst, on expectations of the remote work environment.

 Analyst Brent Thill boosted his rating on the shares to buy from hold.Thill also raised his price target on the stock from $150 to $180 – which implies a 30% potential upside from Tuesday's closing price at $138.12.

Netflix shares plunged -11% after-hours, following a major miss of subscriber numbers in its first-quarter earnings report.

The video streaming giant’s global paid net subscriber additions were 3.98 million in the quarter, compared to 6.2 million expected by analysts polled by Factset.The company also said it only expects to add about 1 million subscribers in the current quarter.

Earnings per share of $3.75 per share,  however, beat expectations of $2.97 (according to Refinitiv survey of analysts).

Revenue came in at $7.16 billion, vs $7.13 billion expected by analysts polled by Refinitiv.

Prior to working four years at Tesla, Prescott led Uber’s  Advanced Technology Group’s legal team as senior counsel overseeing commercial, regulatory, litigation, privacy and cybersecurity.

Trey Campbell is joining Luminar as vice president and leader of its investor relations department.Prior to joining Luminar, he worked 20 years at Intel, starting as a financial analyst and later becoming the vice president of investor relations.

Last month, Luminar provided estimates for 2021 revenue at $25 million to $30 million, compared with around $14 million for 2020.

Toymaker Mattel’s shares were boosted  by an analyst at Berenberg, ahead of the company’s  first-quarter earnings report.

Berenberg analyst David Beckel raised rating to buy from hold on the shares, while raising his price target to $25 from $14.Beckel believes that both companies' strategies are unique enough so both can be winners. The analyst has a buy rating on Hasbro as well.

Beckel expects both the toy giants to grow revenue at "a healthy pace" even amidst difficult industrywide comps in 2021.

Grambling also hiked the price target on the  shares to $37, which implies a 38% upside potential over the most recent closing price.

The analyst cited industry-leading capacity growth, exposure to more “aspirational customers” and “… the longest liquidity runway and lowest leverage on fully recovered EBITDA” as factors behind the rating boost.

Earlier this month, Norwegian said that it plans to resume sailings from U.S. ports starting on July 4.The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), on the other hand, has only said that cruises can be restarted in summer but didn’t specify a restart date. 

Citing sources familiar with the matter, the Wall Street Journal reported that the app may instead consider an initial public offering.

Earlier, the software behemoth was reportedly in talks to offer more than $10 billion for Discord .Other potential buyers included Epic Games and Amazon.com.

Last year, Microsoft sought to acquire social-media app TikTok.

The firm also opened a 90-day catalyst watch on the solar energy equipment maker.

Citigroup analyst J.B. Lowe hiked First Solar's share-price target to $100 from $88 a share.The analyst sees many tailwinds ahead for the company, such as the potential inclusion of a 10-year solar tax credit extension and the revival of the 48C Advanced Manufacturing Tax Credit. Lowe also sees benefits from U.S. trade policy, including the extension of Section 201 tariffs on imported Chinese panels and possible sanctions against solar products sourced from Xinjiang.

Nikola   shares got an almost 50% price target cut from Wedbush analyst Dan Ives.

 Ives slashed his price target on the electric truck maker’s shares to $13 from $25.

According to Ives, “much of the Street hype around the Nikola story has been taken out with the slimmed down General Motors  partnership (no ownership stake), sunsetting the Badger product line, and toning down general expectations over the next 12 to 18 months.”

The analyst argued that despite Nikola’s potential, there are concerns that the execution and timing of the company’s  “ambitious goals” stay on track over the coming years.

 Johnson also noted that the mobile games market is the fastest growing segment in the rapidly growing video games industry.

Johnson mentioned that Zynga, which specializes in free-to-play social games, uses live services bolstered by solid data analytics to boost in-game monetization and returns from advertising."We think ZNGA has a competitive advantage in creating deeper relationships with its players over other mobile competitors," the analyst said.

According to Johnson, acquisition has been a key strategy for Zynga, and he estimates that the company holds around 2.5% market share of the “highly fragmented mobile games market". Johnson mentioned that Zynga has pursued  aggressive acquisition of companies with attractive properties wherein “it layers higher margin live services or advertising supported by its superior data analytics.

Anmuth affirmed his overweight rating on the shares.

Anmuth mentioned that Alphabet is well positioned across ads, clouds, and a number of other key initiatives to both drive and benefit from long-term digital trends.The analyst cited “attractive combination of top-line scale, growth and margins” as factors bolstering the view that valuation is attractive at 27 times the analyst’s 2022 estimated Alphabet GAAP earnings per share, or 22 times 2022 estimated GAAP earnings per share excluding cash and other bets.

According to Anmuth team’s valuation analysis, Alphabet has a market capitalization approaching $2 trillion, or $2,857 per share, which is 25% above where the shares currently trade.

 

On Monday, Zoom Video Communications unveiled a $100 million venture fund expand offerings of apps and hardware products.

The fund will invest in developer partners with early market traction.Portfolio firms will receive investments of between $250,000 and $2.5 million to build solutions that for Zoom customers’ communication and collaboration purposes, as indicated by the company.

"My hope is that the Zoom Apps Fund will help our customers meet happier and collaborate even more seamlessly, and at the same time help entrepreneurs build new businesses as our platform evolves," Founder and Chief Executive Eric S. Yuan in a statement.

It believes that the risk cannot be avoided by locking the device when not in use. 

Peloton issued a statement where it mentioned that it believes the Consumer Product Safety Commission's warning is "inaccurate and misleading."

"The Tread+ is safe for Members to use in their homes and comes with safety instructions and warnings to ensure its safe use.

On Friday, Sunrun  shares were upgraded to overweight from neutral at Piper Sandler. 

Piper Sandler set a $77 price target on the solar energy company’s shares, implying a 63% potential upside from the Thursday closing price.  Piper cited "strong growth story associated with residential solar" and the company's management team as key strengths.

Also, RBC analyst Elvira Scotto recently mentioned that Sunrun has roughly 25% of the total residential rooftop market, and its size, scale and brand bolster its ability to garner customers and secure better financing.RBC has an outperform rating and $81 price target on Sunrun shares.

Last month, Goldman Sachs analyst Brian Lee boosted rating on the company’s shares to buy from neutral.

Financial services company State Street  posted its first-quarter results that surpassed analysts’  estimates.However, its  revenue from interest on loans was below expectations.

State Street’s adjusted earnings for the quarter came in at $1.47 a share, compared to $1.35 a share expected by analysts.

Revenue fell around -4% year-over-year to $2.95 billion, also higher than analysts’ estimates of $2.87 billion. Fee revenue rose +4% in the quarter while servicing fees climbed +7%.

Cisco  got rating upgrades from several analysts in recent times, as many companies are expected to ask employees to get back to offices after last year’s pandemic-related remote working directives.

Shares of the technology behemoth were boosted to outperform from peer perform at Wolfe Research, with the latter citing strong IT spending that's expected to be a tailwind to Cisco estimates through 2022.Wolfe raised its price target to $63 a share from $48. 

Goldman Sachs also recently noted that employees' return to offices (following last year’s COVID-19 pandemic-induced remote working environment) would lead to better IT spending – something that should benefit Cisco amid a replacement cycle for older technology. 

In early March, JPMorgan also boosted the outlook on the stock, citing a recovery in enterprise spending. 

 

Bristol-Myers Squibb  got  approval for Opdivo as a treatment for gastric cancer from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Opdivo as an injection combined with chemotherapy to treat patients with advanced or metastatic gastric cancer, gastroesophageal junction cancer, and esophageal adenocarcinoma.FDA’s approval is based on a Phase 3 trial.

As demonstrated in the … trial, Opdivo is the first and only immunotherapy combined with chemotherapy to deliver superior overall survival versus chemotherapy alone in first-line metastatic gastric cancer, gastroesophageal junction cancer, and esophageal adenocarcinoma,”said Adam Lenkowsky, general manager of oncology at the company.

Earlier this week, Truist boosted rating on the pharmaceutical company’s shares to buy from hold, citing optimism about its drug pipeline.

Editas Medicine  shares got a sell rating  from Goldman Sachs as the latter initiated coverage on the stock.

Goldman Sachs analysts set a price target of $20 a share, a Wall Street low, on the biotech shares.According to the analysts, the risk-reward dynamic was skewed negatively for the company.

Goldman analyst Madhu Kumar mentioned in a note that initial results from Editas’ experimental Crispr gene editing product EDIT-11 in a rare eye disease may not lead to adequate productive editing to meaningfully improve patients' vision.

Retail giant Walmart is investing in self-driving vehicle firm Cruise, as part of a new $2.75 billion funding round.

General Motors is the majority owner in Cruise.

Walmart U.S. CEO John Furner said the company is impressed with Cruise’s “differentiated business model, unique technology and unmatched driverless testing.”

Walmart has partnerships with six self-driving vehicle companies, including Cruise, Ford Motor and Alphabet-owned Waymo.

The first investment round in Cruise announced in January was $2 billion, and it  included Microsoft, GM, which acquired Cruise in 2016, and other institutional investors.The additional investment includes Walmart and other institutional investors, according to the company.

On Thursday, Delta Airlines reported quarterly loss that was steeper than analysts’ anticipated.

The airline reported an adjusted loss of -$3.55 for the first quarter, versus -$3.17 a share loss expected by analysts polled by Refinitiv.

Revenue of $4.15 billion, however came in higher than the  $3.91 billion expected by analysts.

The company expects to break even in June, with rebound in travel following COVID19-induced slump.It said that domestic leisure bookings recovered to about 85% of 2019 levels; but international and business travel remain affected.

For its second quarter, Delta predicts that revenue will be 50% to 55% lower than the same period of 2019, on scheduled capacity that’s a third lower than two years ago.

Nashville Mayor John Cooper announced that Oracle would fund a $1.2 billion campus in his city.  According to the Mayor’s office, the campus will generate about $8.8 million annually in local sales and use taxes.

The computer technology company’s campus is expected to bring 2,500 jobs to the city by the end of 2027 and 8,500 by the end of 2031.The investment potentially includes $175 million in public infrastructure. 

The mayor revealed that Oracle will pay upfront all the infrastructure costs.

Oracle has requested a public hearing to seek approval of an economic impact plan with the Metro Industrial Development Board.