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This is the closing bell on the stock Movers report the company's making moves at the close of US trading with Carol Masser, Tim Stenebeck, Romain Bostik, and Katie Greyfell.
Let's get to some individual gainers. IBM a top gainer in the S and P five hundred today, that stock up about five percent in the Tuesday trade. JP Morgan upgrading it to overweight from neutral. Separately, the company announced has joined the Open AI Daybreak cyber Partner program. The analyst over at JP Morgan says the upgrade reflects greater confidence and software acceleration ahead. Price target set to two
ninety one, the stock closing at two sixty four and change. IBM, by the way, has about sixteen by six holes and one cell rating among analyst tracked by Bloomberg. That press release, though after a close on Monday, that we also got from IBM, noted that this packed with open AI, would bring advanced AI capabilities into security operations to help enterprises counter machine speed threats. I don't know what that means, but let's go to some earnings.
Crossing the Bloomberg.
Terminal FedEx, the shipping company reporting earnings right now for the most recent quarter. This is their fiscal fourth quarter that just ended. It does look like a beat. Federal Express revenue up twenty one point five seven billion. That's a fourteen percent jump. That's just for the FedEx business. And I say that because they just spun off their freight business. If you include that freight business, A revenue was up thirteen percent to twenty five billion dollars. Operating
margins expanded to eight point four percent. Operating income was also up about three point four percent. EPs also looked like it beat at six point three one. Now we should point out these fourth quarter numbers include the freight business, which has just been spun out. They're given a forecast for the full year that excludes the freight business, as you will. They're also moving from a fiscal year to the full calendar year reporting, so it gets a little tricky.
Where they're saying for the full calendar year twenty twenty six, they expect to see adjusted EPs from continuing operations of sixteen dollars and ninety cents to share to eighteen dollars and ten cents a share. It's going to take us a while to get you a good comparison here on how that stacks up with analyst estimates here. But overall for the most recent quarter, it does look like a slight beat on several of the key metrics.
Yeah, keep in mind FedEx on quite a tear this year, up about thirty six percent here to date. We are seeing the stock trend about one point six percent lower. Raj Supermamium, he is a FedEx president and CEO in the press release saying this a direct quote, are profitable growth strategy is working. We are building momentum across our global industrial network, driving structural improvements and winning in high
value growth markets. With the successful spin off of FedEx Freight, we are entering this next chapter position to grow while further optimizing our network, lowering our cost to serve, creating meaningful long term value, and driving robust free cash flow. So some optimism there, and just to kind.
Of put a point a sorry, Jim, I just want to put a point on that too, what Carol was talking about, because this is a company that's really pivoted towards higher margin businesses, getting rid of some of that those lower margin of packages that you or I would get on our doorstep, focusing a lot more on the bTB, and you saw that with a huge jump in revenue. It was like ten percent just on the FedEx side, but if you look at actual volumes that was only
up two percent. So you had a huge gap there between the actual revenue side and the volume side, which seems to suggests if you're reading between the lines a little bit more pricing power.
Well, the company actually addressing this, Romaine, I'm glad you went there. The company cited improved improved segment operating results driven by higher US domestic international priority package yields, talking about continued cost savings from those transformation initiatives that you
reference Romaine increase US domestic and international export package volume. However, those factors were partially offset by increased purchase, transportation and wage rates, higher variable incentive compensation expenses, and the financial impacts of global trade policy changes. So some of those macro and micro factors affecting the bottom line.
Two.
And FedEx is seen as this economic barometer because it's parcel business. Really just carries this huge array of stuff for all kinds of consumers and all kinds of places. But I wonder if after the spinoff they will still be looked at upon as an economic barometer, especially after I mean, to be Romaine's point earlier, it's going to take a while for us to compare it to something.
Hey, here's something that's interesting too. Under Cash and capital Returns, they talked about cash and cash equivalents balance of about thirteen point three billion, including a four point one billion dollar cash dividend from the FedEx Freight spinoff, But it also says, in addition, the reported cash balance includes approximately eight hundred million dollars in IIPA TI free funds held for refund to customers, so that process is certainly happening.
Yeah, a few of those dollars I think belong to me.
So way, how are you going to get those?
Because I think I don't know, I have no idea how any of this works. But let's just say, yeah, AYIPA got a lot.
It'll be in your Venmo account. I think that's how it's going to work.
I do just want to point out too real quickly. We are going to hear from FedEx Freight. They report after the bell on Thursday the twenty fifth, just to be clear, so we'll get a sense here how that side of the business is holding up as a standalone company.
Okay, let's go back to some other gainers. I mentioned IBM, so I'm going to move on from that. I should point out the whole quantum area too. President Trump has been keen on that too, made some comments and some executive orders signed. Yesterday. You also had IBM's CEO there and Alphabet President Ruthportt there at the White House, still.
Getting interested in this. And when I first started hearing all the quantum stuff, I just thought this was a gobbling book. But the more I like I read about it, it seems like there is a little bit more proof of life there. I don't know when it actually translates into real revenue and profitability, but it does appear there's a lot going on there.
I mean, we're still kind of making our way through AI, Like, where does it fit into all of this?
Yeah, well, it's just kind of an extension of that. And I actually had a chance to interview our the CEO just a couple of weeks ago, and he basically said that some of his sort of proof of life targets the idea that IBM hardware would be used to hit some of those key targets in quantum that we would actually see that in twenty twenty six by the end of the year.
All right, all right, so we're keeping an eye on that. Some interesting stuff. I agree, there's a lot more activity going back to Avis budget though, this one up about two.
No.
This is weird because it's like one of those days where I feel like Tim should start and do all the decliners, given that, you know, three percent down day in the next Andre, this.
Is your clothes. Whatever you want to do.
Yeah, No, KEI Isabelle and I just like watching this.
Keep going, keep going. That's what we will show Finley.
What should I do?
What should I do?
Okay?
Avis two point two percent hired in today's session. They were up as much as almost six percent intra day high. Earlier in the day, Avis entered into a settlement agreement with Pentwater Capital Management and affiliated persons to resolve a lawsuit seeking recovery of short swing profits. The company says this in a filing. Keep in mind the stock is up about fifty percent year to date. Thirty two percent though of the float is short and one more for you.
It's not something we talk about tickers EPC Edge Well Personal that stock up about fifteen percent after Bloomberg News reported the make Care of Ship Raisers rejected rejected an unsolicited takeover offer of thirty dollars a share from pe firm Yellowood Partners. Okay him, all.
Yours, all right, Let's talk about some of these decliners very quickly. There were so many stocks in the chip in the chip sector that declina just did. The entire index. All thirty names in the socks fell today down seven point nine percent. Let's round that up to eight percent. It's still up ninety percent this year, though, but that the slump today followed what we saw in Asia overnight, with Samsung and sk hi Nix plunging more than ten percent.
This is the one I really want to talk about, though, guys. Robinhood and DraftKings both fell today. This after The New York Times reported that Meta Platform CEO Mark Zuckerberg directed a small team to create a smartphone app similar to similar to call She and Polymarket. You had Robinhood fall by two point three percent, DraftKings fall by two percent. Here's the thing, though, this app will probably use a video game like points system, and it would not wager
any money. Does this actually produce results that are accurate with predicting the future if you don't have any actual skin in the game.
Stockmover's report from Bloomberg Radio. Check back with us throughout the day for the latest roundup of companies making news on Wall Street and for the latest market moving headlines. Listen to Bloomberg Radio Live, catch us on YouTube, Bloomberg dot com, and on Applecarplay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app.