Intuitive Surgical shares are jumping after the company reported strong preliminary results for the fourth quarter
28 minutes ago
Shares of Intuitive Surgical (ISRG) rose sharply on Wednesday as the maker of the da Vinci robotic surgical device said it expects better-than-expected outcomes as surgeries surge.
In announcing its preliminary results for the fourth quarter, the company said that revenues rose 17% to $1.93 billion, exceeding analysts’ expectations. Full-year sales rose 14% to $7.12 billion, also beating estimates.
Intuitive Surgical said da Vinci procedures worldwide jumped 21% last quarter, mainly because the easing of COVID-19 restrictions in China led to increased operations there.
The company is expected to announce the final results on January 23.
Shares of Intuitive Surgical rose 6.5% to $351.98, their highest level since July, in midday trading.
-Bill McCall
Amazon shares rise after live broadcast and studio layoffs
1 hour and 3 minutes ago
Amazon (AMZN) shares rose more than 1% Wednesday morning after the company said in an email to employees that it would lay off hundreds of employees in its broadcast and studio businesses.
Amazon also announced that it will lay off 500 employees at its Twitch streaming unit. The cuts represent 35% of all Twitch employees.
“For some time now, we have been sizing an organization based on where we optimistically expect our business to be in 3 or more years, not where we are today. As is the case with many businesses,” the company said in a Twitch blog post. In the technology space, we now size our organization based on the current size of our business and conservative projections of how we expect to grow in the future.”
Amazon isn’t the only streaming company to back away from investing in content in the past year. Disney (DIS) cut its content budget by $3 billion last February, then cut it by another $3 billion in August amid writers and actors strikes. Netflix (NFLX) in May was reportedly aiming for a $300 million production cut in 2023.
Meanwhile, prices for streaming services have risen dramatically in the past two years, as companies have come under pressure to turn a profit after years of bleeding money.
Bitcoin and Coinbase decline ahead of ETF decision
2 hours and 17 minutes ago
Bitcoin fell Wednesday morning to around $45,000 ahead of a long-awaited decision by the Securities and Exchange Commission on a Bitcoin exchange-traded fund.
Cryptocurrency advocates have been hoping for an instant Bitcoin ETF for years, and their hopes were thought to have been briefly fulfilled yesterday afternoon when the Securities and Exchange Commission tweeted that it had approved the products. The post was quickly refuted by the regulator and removed from his page.
“@SECGov’s Twitter account was hacked, and an unauthorized tweet was posted. The SEC has not approved the listing and trading of spot traded products on a Bitcoin exchange,” SEC Chairman Gary Gensler tweeted after the incident.
Bitcoin jumped to nearly $48,000 immediately after the disputed tweet before falling to around $45,500.
Despite the SEC’s assertions that the tweet was false, markets and potential ETF issuers are certain it represents a false start more than anything else.
said Stephen McClurg, chief investment officer at Valkyrie, which has an application for ETFs before regulators Bloomberg On Tuesday, he is “95% sure we will trade (the spot ETF) on Thursday.”
Wednesday is the deadline for regulators to decide whether to approve or deny ARK Invest and 21Shares’ joint application for an ETF, and many expect the SEC to approve several applications at once to avoid playing the role of kingmaker.
ETF applicants like BlackRock and VanEck, anticipating approvals and fierce competition, filed a slew of updates with the SEC earlier this week outlining their fee structures, with many offering reduced — or waived entirely — fees. At launch.
Coinbase (COIN) shares followed Bitcoin’s decline, falling 4.5% in early trading on Wednesday. However, the cryptocurrency exchange, which was named custodian of several proposed ETFs, has seen its shares rise more than 200% in the past year.
Stocks make the biggest moves pre-market
3 hours and 20 minutes ago
Gains:
- Intuitive Surgical (ISRG): Shares jumped about 5% after the company said it placed 415 da Vinci robotic surgical systems in the fourth quarter and 1,370 systems in all of 2023, increases of 12% and 8%, respectively, from a year earlier.
- (TOST): Shares of the restaurant payment systems provider rose more than 5% to about $20 after Goldman Sachs upgraded the stock to “buy” from “neutral” and set a price target of $24.
- (LEN): Shares of the home builder rose 2% after it raised its annual dividend 33% to $2 per share and authorized an additional $5 billion stock buyback.
losses:
- Aehr Test Systems (AEHR): Shares of the company, which makes testing systems for semiconductors, fell 18% after it cut its fiscal year revenue forecast amid a slowdown in the electric vehicle market.
- Coinbase Global (COIN): Shares of the cryptocurrency exchange fell 3% after the SEC said a tweet claiming it approved Bitcoin ETFs for trading was false. Other stocks exposed to Bitcoin, such as mining company Marathon Digital Holdings (MARA) and Riot Platforms (RIOT), were also lower.
- Etsy Inc. (ETSY): Shares of the e-commerce platform fell nearly 2% after Goldman Sachs analysts downgraded the stock to “neutral” from “buy,” saying Wall Street estimates are somewhat reflective of the company’s near-term growth prospects.
Stock futures were little changed before the bell
4 hours and 12 minutes ago
Futures tied to the Dow Jones Industrial Average were virtually flat about an hour before markets opened on Wednesday.
S&P 500 futures rose less than 0.1%.
Nasdaq 100 futures rose by about 0.1%.