Check out the companies that made headlines before the bell: Home Depot — The home improvement retailer rose 0.6% after the company reported better-than-expected sales and profits. Adjusted earnings per share were $3.43, beating the $3.41 per share expected by analysts surveyed by LSEG. Sales were $41.77 billion, exceeding expectations of $41.52 billion. Amer Sports — Shares rose 2.9% after the sportswear company behind the Wilson and Salomon brands reported first-quarter results that beat analysts’ expectations. Excluding items, earnings per share were 38 cents, beating the FactSet consensus estimate of 31 cents per share. Sales also exceeded expectations of $1.84 billion at $1.95 billion. Blackstone, Alphabet — These two stocks rose after Blackstone announced it would invest $5 billion of its own capital into a new artificial intelligence infrastructure company in partnership with Google. Blackstone’s stock rose 0.7%, and Google’s parent company Alphabet’s stock also rose. Chip stocks — The group was again under pressure as memory stocks continued to decline. Micron and Seagate fell 1.7% and 3%, respectively. Nvidia fell nearly 1%.
