Check out the companies making headlines in the midday trading: Berkshire Hathaway – Class A stock in Warren Buffett’s conglomerate rose nearly 4% following a strong earnings report. The conglomerate said its operating profit rose 71% in the fourth quarter to $14.5 billion, leading to underwriting jumping of 302%. Auto insurance company GEICO had the most positive effect on Berkshire insurance outcomes. Meta Platform – Facebook’s parent company was slipping over 1%, moving forward with the pace of its fifth downday. Meta has soaked about 10% in the past five sessions. This marks the longest winning streak since August. PALANTIR – Stocks fell 8.7% on Monday, getting back on track with their fourth downday. Retail investors’ favourites have recently shown signs of foaming, with stocks down more than 24% compared to where they were traded before the five sessions. Domino’s Pizza – The pizza chain has pulled back 2% after fourth quarter results missed analysts’ expectations. Domino reported revenues of $1.44 billion, $4.89 per share, while analysts voted by Factset were looking for $4.90 per share with $1.48 billion, earnings of $4.90 per share. Sales at the same store, an important restaurant metric, were also growing more than expected. Alibaba – The Chinese e-commerce giant plunged 9%, turning back some of its 15.3% profit seen last week following an exceeded revenue report. Move Low drops despite Morgan Stanley being upgraded from weight this week to overweight. Robinhood – Stocks of the brokerage fell more than 2% on Monday, moving on well for the fifth straight loss session. Last week, Robinhood was downgraded by Wolfe Research, Peer Perform downgraded from Autoporform, with two corporate insiders revealing their recent stock sales. Nike – After Jeffries upgraded Nike to buy from holds, it has earned more than 4% of clothing and footwear stocks, and the company said it is “back to the innovation engine.” FreshPet – Pet Food Stock has advanced more than 8% after an upgrade to buy from Hold from Jeffries. The company claims that the stock is “valued over 50%” where it is currently trading. He added that FreshPet expects to be able to increase sales of 23% by 2027. Stocks fell nearly 8% after Rivian – Bank of America downgraded the electric car maker from neutral to low performance. Analyst John Murphy pointed out slowing EV demand along with competitive pressure, a softer than expected outlook for 2025, and potential pullbacks for US EV incentives as a reason for the downgrade. Energy Inventory – Power Company stocks were low last week after an A TD Cowen report on data centers and Microsoft. Analyst Michael Elias said Microsoft “cancelled its lease in the US and added ‘hunds of MW’s’ with at least two private data center operators.” Talen Energy and Ge Vernova each pulled back 2%, while Vistra fell nearly 4%. Constellation energy dropped by about 7%. – Reported by CNBC’s Yunli, Alex Hurling, Lisa Kailay Han, Jesse Pound and Sean Conlong.
