Mid-Afternoon Market Update: Dow Jumps Around 300 Points; AlloVir Shares Spike Higher

U.S. stocks traded mixed toward the end of trading, with the Dow Jones climbing around 300 points on Wednesday.

The Dow traded up 0.85% to 35,206.75 while the NASDAQ fell 0.96% to 13,488.42. The S&P also rose, gaining, 0.16% to 4,469.17.

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Leading and Lagging Sectors

Real estate shares jumped by 1.9% on Wednesday. Meanwhile, top gainers in the sector included Compass, Inc. COMP, up 9% and Rexford Industrial Realty, Inc. REXR up 6%.

In trading on Wednesday, communication services shares fell 3.7%.

Top Headline

Procter & Gamble Co PG reported better-than-expected earnings for its third quarter and raised its FY22 sales outlook.

Procter & Gamble reported third-quarter FY22 sales growth of 7.1% year-on-year to $19.38 billion, beating the consensus of $18.73 billion. Adjusted EPS of $1.33 beat the consensus of $1.30.

P&G raised FY22 all-in sales growth outlook to 4% - 5% (previously 3% - 4%). The company continues to expect FY22 core EPS growth of 3% - 6% versus FY21 Core EPS of $5.66.

Equities Trading UP

AlloVir, Inc. ALVR shares shot up 24% to $6.70 after the company announced the U.S. Food and Drug Administration granted Regenerative Medicine Advanced Therapy designation to its lead investigational multi-virus-specific T cell therapy, posoleucel.

Shares of I-Mab IMAB got a boost, shooting 16% to $14.92. I-Mab is weighing options including a sale of the business, Bloomberg said.

Healthcare Services Group, Inc. HCSG shares were also up, gaining 18% to $19.65 as the company reported first-quarter FY22 revenue growth of 4.7% year-over-year to $426.8 million, beating the consensus of $424.77 million.

Equities Trading DOWN

Netflix, Inc. NFLX shares tumbled 36% to $223.87 after the company reported downbeat revenue for its first quarter. Global streaming paid partnership increased 6.7% year-over-year to 221.64 million, while global streaming paid net additions were down 200 thousand. Several analysts also downgraded the stock.

Shares of Roblox Corporation RBLX were down 11% to $37.32. Goldman Sachs, on Tuesday, downgraded the stock from Buy to Neutral and lowered its price target from $108 to $50.

Holley Inc. HLLY was down, falling 11% to $12.36. Holley reported a secondary offering of 6.5 million shares of common stock. The company also said it sees Q1 net sales of $199 million to $200 million.

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Commodities

In commodity news, oil traded down 1% to $101.57, while gold traded down 0.2% to $1,954.30.

Silver traded down 0.6% Wednesday to $25.235 while copper fell 1.5% to $4.6485.

Euro zone

European shares were higher today. The eurozone’s STOXX 600 gained 0.84%, London’s FTSE 100 rose 0.37%, while Spain’s IBEX 35 Index rose 0.87%. The German DAX climbed 1.47%, French CAC 40 climbed 1.38% and Italy’s FTSE MIB Index climbed 1.03%.

The trade balance in the Eurozone swung to a EUR 7.6 billion deficit for February, versus a EUR 23.6 billion surplus in the year-ago month. Industrial production in the Eurozone rose 0.7% month-over-month in February.

Italy recorded a trade deficit of EUR 1.7 billion in February versus a year-ago surplus of 4.8 billion. Annual producer inflation in Germany accelerated to 30.9% in March from 25.9% in February.

Economics

Existing home sales dropped 2.7% month-over-month to an annualized rate of 5.77 million in March.

US crude oil inventories fell 8.02 million barrels in the week ended April 15th, the most since January 2021, the Energy Information Administration said.

The Federal Open Market Committee released its Beige Book report.

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COVID-19 Update

The U.S. has the highest number of coronavirus cases and deaths in the world, reporting a total of 82,416,680 cases with around 1,016,150 deaths. India confirmed a total of at least 43,047,590 cases and 522,000 deaths, while Brazil reported over 30,279,270 COVID-19 cases with 662,260 deaths. In total, there were at least 506,133,930 cases of COVID-19 worldwide with more than 6,228,730 deaths.