24 Feb BRK, HOOD, NKE, PLTR and more
Check out the companies making headlines in midday trading: Berkshire Hathaway — Class A shares of Warren Buffett’s conglomerate jumped nearly 4% following a strong earnings report . The conglomerate said its operating profit skyrocketed 71% to $14.5 billion in the fourth quarter, led by a 302% jump in insurance underwriting. Auto insurer Geico had the most positive effect on Berkshire’s insurance results. Meta Platforms — The Facebook parent company slipped more than 1% and was on pace for a fifth straight down day. Meta has dipped roughly 10% over the past five sessions, which marks its longest losing streak since August. Palantir — Shares tumbled 8.7% on Monday, on track for its fourth straight down day. The retail investor favorite has recently shown signs of fizzling , with shares down more than 24% compared with where they traded five sessions ago. Domino’s Pizza — The pizza chain pulled back 2% after fourth-quarter results missed analysts’ expectations. Domino’s reported earnings of $4.89 per share on revenue of $1.44 billion, while analysts polled by FactSet were looking for $4.90 per share on revenue of $1.48 billion. Same-store sales, a key metric for restaurants, also grew less than anticipated. Alibaba — The Chinese e-commerce giant plummeted 9%, reversing some of the 15.3% gain it saw last week following a better-than-expected earnings report . The move lower comes despite Morgan Stanley upgrading the stock to overweight from equal weight this week, with the firm citing accelerating cloud revenue growth as a catalyst. Robinhood — The brokerage stock fell more than 2% on Monday, putting it on track for its fifth straight losing session. Last week, Robinhood was downgraded by Wolfe Research to peer perform from outperform, and two corporate insiders disclosed recent stock sales. Nike — The clothing and footwear stock gained more than 4% after Jefferies upgraded Nike to buy from hold, and said the company is turning “back on its innovation engine.” Freshpet — The pet food stock advanced more than 8% after an upgrade to buy from hold from Jefferies, with the firm asserting that shares are “worth 50% above” where they are trading currently. The firm added that it expects Freshpet can grow sales 23% by 2027. Rivian — Shares tumbled nearly 8% after Bank of America downgraded the electric vehicle maker to underperform from neutral. Analyst John Murphy pointed to mounting competitive pressures, a softer-than-expected 2025 outlook and slowing EV demand alongside a potential pullback in U.S. EV incentives as reasons for the downgrade. Energy stocks — Power company stocks were lower on the heels of the a TD Cowen report last week concerning data centers and Microsoft. Analyst Michael Elias said Microsoft had “cancelled leases in the U.S. totaling ‘a couple of hundred MWs’ with at least two private data center operators.” Talen Energy and GE Vernova pulled back 2% each, while Vistra dropped nearly 4%. Constellation Energy shed about 7%. — CNBC’s Yun Li, Alex Harring, Lisa Kailai Han, Jesse Pound and Sean Conlon contributed reporting.