Following through on yesterday’s intraday bullish reversal, the buyers picked the ball up early today and carried it higher. The S&P 500‘s close of 2052.32 was 0.6% better than Thursday’s closing value.
Yet, the rally failed to carry the index above a key technical ceiling forming around 2060 — leaving stocks mostly on the fence come Monday morning.
Not every name managed to eke out a modest gain, however. Campbell Soup Company (NYSE:CPB), Deere & Company (NYSE:DE) and Foot Locker, Inc. (NYSE:FL) each used more than their fair share of red ink.
Here’s the deal.
Campbell Soup Company (CPB)
Consumers lost their taste for soup last quarter, if results from Campbell Soup Company are any indication. Sales fell 1.6% last quarter, to $1.87 billion, coming up short of the expected top line of $1.91 billion.
Still, earnings of 65 cents were 1 cent better than anticipated, and 4.8% stronger than the year-ago bottom line. The market saw the glass as half-empty rather than half-full though, sending CPB shares down more than 6%.
Nevertheless, the prolific soup company has its supporters. Jim Cramer encouraged investors to stick with their CPB stake, explaining, “… this has been a great turnaround story … I have tremendous faith in this turn. I don’t think it’s over.”
Campbell Soup Company agrees, upping its full-year profit outlook to between $2.93 and $3.00 per share, up 11% to 13% from the previous year’s bottom line.
Deere & Company (DE)
Deere & Company hasn’t pulled itself out of its revenue rut just yet, given last quarter’s numbers and its full-year guidance.
In its second fiscal quarter of the year, the farm machinery manufacturer earned $1.56 per share on $7.11 billion worth of revenue … both down from year-ago comparisons of $2.03 per share of DE stock and sales of $7.4 billion. Still, the company topped expectations for earnings of $1.48 per share and revenue of $6.71 billion.
DE investors weren’t impressed though, sending shares down 5.5%, mostly in response to the company’s contracted full-year profit outlook. Rather than earning the $1.3 billion that it suggested it would for 2016 just three months ago, now the company believes it will only earn $1.2 billion this year.
Foot Locker, Inc. (FL)
Last but not least, the earnings bug bit Foot Locker today as well, sending FL shares down more than 6% as a result.
Last quarter — the company’s first fiscal quarter of 2016 — Foot Locker earned $1.39 per share on revenue of $1.99 billion. The bottom line was better than the $1.29 per share of FL the retailer earned in the same quarter a year earlier, and sales grew from $1.92 billion a year earlier. Per-share profits also rolled in as expected. However, sales came up a bit short of expectations.
But, the real kick-start of the stock’s selloff was waning sales of basketball shoes, perhaps indicating an end to the shoe-buying mania stirred up by superstar-support from the likes of LeBron James and Stephen Curry. Such manias tend to be cyclical, and largely out of Foot Locker’s control.
As of this writing, James Brumley did not hold a position in any of the aforementioned securities.
