William Blair analyst Tim Mulrooney attributes the weakness today in shares of ServiceMaster Global Holdings (SERV) to fears surrounding the potential negative impact from Hurricane Florence. The stock in midday trading is down 2.5%, or $1.46, to $57.86. For comparison purposes, the analyst notes that Hurricanes Harvey and Irma caused 53 temporary branch closures at Terminix in Q3 of 2017, negatively affecting revenue and EBITDA by $4M and $3M, respectively. However, Mulrooney expects ServiceMaster shares to appreciate following the successful spin-off of American Home Shield and a turnaround in the Terminix residential business and buildout of its commercial business. Further, the stock trades at a "significant discount" to shares of Rollins (ROL), the analyst tells investors in a research note. As the only two publicly traded pure-play pest control operators, ServiceMaster should be able to partly narrow its valuation gap with Rollins over time, Mulrooney argues. He keeps an Outperform rating on ServiceMaster shares.

Serve Robotics (SERV), an autonomous sidewalk delivery company, announced the pricing of its underwritten public offering of 10,000,000 shares of common stock at a price to the public of $4.00 per share, for aggregate gross proceeds of $40 million, prior to deducting underwriting discounts and offering expenses. The offering includes the participation of one of Serve's largest stockholders and strategic partners, Postmates, LLC, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Uber Technologies Inc (UBER). Serve plans to use net proceeds from the offering to fund research and development of the next generations of Serve's robots, manufacturing activities, geographic expansion, and for working capital and other general corporate purposes. Aegis Capital Corp. is acting as the sole book-running manager for the offering.