The S&P is slightly lower, but not moving far from the unchanged line, while the Nasdaq continues to outperform following a relatively quiet morning for the market. The Dow is hanging in with mild gains as well, although Boeing (BA) is slipping after its monthly order update showed that its commercial order book fell below 5,000 planes for the first time in seven years.
ECONOMIC EVENTS: In U.S. data, the NFIB small business optimism index fell 5.7% to to 90.9 in April, hitting a seven year low. The consumer price index dropped 0.8% in April, while the core CPI rate slid 0.4%, which was a little lower than analysts had forecast.
TOP NEWS: Shares of GrubHub (GRUB) are 34% higher near noon after Bloomberg's Ed Hammond and The Wall Street Journal's Cara Lombardo each separately reported that Uber Technologies (UBER) has made an offer to acquire the rival food delivery service. Following the reports, Needham analyst Brad Erickson said such a deal would be consistent with his bullish thesis that Uber Eats could eliminate as much as $500M of its roughly $1.2B in losses last year through such a GrubHub acquisition.
Meanwhile, PNC Financial (PNC) announced its intent to sell its investment in BlackRock (BLK) through a registered offering and related buyback by BlackRock. PNC currently holds common stock and Series B convertible participating preferred stock in BlackRock, which converts into common stock upon a sale, together representing a 22%, or approximately 35M shares, economic ownership interest in the company. Following that announcement, Dealreporter said in recap that "presumably PNC is now on the hunt for another big bank deal" and the deal-focused news service speculated Regions Financial (RF), Comerica (CMA), KeyCorp (KEY) and Fifth Third (FITB) as potential PNC takeover targets, contacts tell The Fly.
Shares of CymaBay (CBAY) have surged after an expert panel completed an independent review analyzing findings from its Phase 2b study of seladelpar in patients with nonalcoholic steatohepatitis, or NASH, and concluded there was no clinical, biochemical or histological evidence of seladelpar-induced liver injury in the study. On the flip side, Genfit (GNFT) is sharply lower after announcing that its Phase 3 study for elafibranor in patients with NASH failed to meet its primary endpoint.
MAJOR MOVERS: Among the noteworthy gainers on the S&P were a number of oil & gas names, including Oneok (OKE), Marathon Oil (MRO) and Devon Energy (DVN). Also higher were Amcor (AMCR) and IFF (IFF) which gained a respective 7% and 3% after reporting quarterly results.
Among the notable losers following earnings were Eventbrite (EB) and Commvault Systems (CVLT), which fell 23% and 14%, respectively.
INDEXES: Near midday, the Dow was up 3.80, or 0.02%, to 24,225.79, the Nasdaq was up 32.89, or 0.36%, to 9,225.24, and the S&P 500 was down 3.99, or 0.14%, to 2,926.33.
Use JTKWY
+15.7 (+33.53%)
Uber
+2.005 (+6.33%)
PNC Financial
-2.17 (-2.12%)
BlackRock
-29.27 (-5.93%)
Regions Financial
-0.12 (-1.22%)
Comerica
-0.83 (-2.58%)
KeyCorp
-0.17 (-1.59%)
Fifth Third
-0.52 (-3.02%)
Acquired by GILD
+2.44 (+132.61%)
Genfit
-14.63 (-65.99%)
Oneok
+2.43 (+7.74%)
Marathon Oil
+0.435 (+7.57%)
Devon Energy
+0.6 (+4.82%)
Amcor
+0.58 (+6.57%)
IFF
+4.12 (+3.11%)
Eventbrite
-2.555 (-24.31%)
Commvault
-6 (-13.20%)