Mid-Morning Market Update: Markets Open Lower; Big Lots Earnings Top Expectations

Following the market opening Friday, the Dow traded down 1.09 percent to 24896 while the NASDAQ fell 1.2 percent to 7,476. The S&P also fell, dropping 1.11 percent to 2,757.

Leading and Lagging Sectors

Real estate shares rose 0.03 percent on Friday. Meanwhile, top gainers in the sector included Crown Castle International Corp. (REIT) CCI, up 2 percent, and Griffin Industrial Realty, Inc. GRIF, up 2 percent.

In trading on Friday, communication services shares fell by 1.8 percent.

Top Headline

Big Lots, Inc. BIG reported better-than-expected earnings for its first quarter and raised FY19 guidance.

Big Lots reported quarterly earnings of 92 per share, which beat the analyst consensus estimate of 70 cents. The company reported quarterly sales of $1.296 billion, which missed the analyst consensus estimate of $1.3 billion.

Big Lots raised its FY2019 adjusted EPS guidance from $3.55-$3.75 to $3.70-$3.85.

Equities Trading UP

Stellar Biotechnologies, Inc. SBOT shares shot up 73 percent to $2.07 following an 8-K filing late Thursday disclosing its board and Edesa Biotech approved a transaction that was originally disclosed on March 8. During the fiscal second quarter, Stellar Biotech entered into a share exchange agreement with Edesa Biotech, a Canadian biopharmaceutical company. Under the terms of the agreement, Edesa Biotech shareholders agreed to exchange their shares of Edesa for newly-issued common shares of Stellar.

Shares of Genocea Biosciences, Inc. GNCA got a boost, shooting up 59 percent to $7.16 after the company disclosed that GEN-009 clinical results presentation has been selected by ASCO's Journal of Clinical Oncology as a top 10 featured immuno-oncology abstract.

AMERI Holdings, Inc. AMRH shares were also up, gaining 18 percent to $0.3660 after the company initiated a Proof of Concept to migrate a client to the Google Cloud platform.

Equities Trading DOWN

Zuora, Inc. ZUO shares tumbled 30 percent to $13.91 after the company reported worse-than-expected Q1 sales results and issued weak Q2 and FY20 EPS and sales guidance.

Shares of CSS Industries, Inc. CSS were down 23 percent to $4.7126 after the company reported downbeat Q4 results.

XBiotech Inc. XBIT was down, falling 20 percent to $7.23. XBiotech priced its 4.848 million share common stock offering at $8.25 per share.

Commodities

In commodity news, oil traded down 2.1 percent to $55.40, while gold traded up 0.8 percent to $1,302.60.

Silver traded down 0.1 percent Friday to $14.48, while copper fell 0.8 percent to $2.6335.

Euro zone

European shares were lower today. The eurozone’s STOXX 600 fell 1.3 percent, the Spanish Ibex Index fell 1.8 percent, while Italy’s FTSE MIB Index fell 1.6 percent. Meanwhile, the German DAX dropped 1.8 percent, and the French CAC 40 dropped 1.5 percent while UK shares fell 1.1 percent.

Economics

U.S. consumer spending rose 0.3 percent for April, while personal income increased 0.5 percent.

The Chicago PMI rose to 54.2 in May, compared to a reading of 52.6 in April.

The University of Michigan's consumer sentiment index declined to 100 for May, versus an initial reading of 102.4.

New York Federal Reserve Bank President John Williams will speak in New York at 12:00 p.m. ET.

The Baker Hughes North American rig count report for the latest week is schedule for release at 1:00 p.m. ET.

Data on farm prices for April will be released at 3:00 p.m. ET.