Check out the companies making headlines in midday trading. United Airlines — Shares surged 14% after the airline posted a narrower-than-expected loss in the first quarter. Quarterly revenue came in at $12.54 billion, topping an LSEG estimate of $12.45 billion. Travelers Companies — The insurance stock fell 8% after a disappointing first-quarter report. Travelers said it generated $4.69 in earnings per share on $10.18 billion in revenue. Analysts surveyed by LSEG were expecting $4.90 in earnings per share on $10.51 billion of revenue. Higher-than-expected catastrophic losses appeared to be part of the reason for the earnings miss. Eli Lilly — Eli Lilly was flat even after announcing that its Zepbound weight loss drug showed promise in treating patients struggling with obstructive sleep apnea. ResMed , which makes medical devices that treat sleep and breathing disorders, slumped more than 6% on the news. ASML — The Dutch semiconductor equipment company’s U.S.-listed stock dropped nearly 8% after sales and new bookings fell short of expectations . Net sales declined about 22% year over year. Interactive Brokers — Shares popped 3% after Interactive Brokers posted quarterly results that came in slightly ahead of Wall Street’s expectations. The company also hiked its dividend to 25 cents from 10 cents. J.B. Hunt Transport Services — The transportation stock shed 7% on quarterly results that fell short of Wall Street’s estimates. J.B. Hunt posted earnings of $1.22 per share on $2.94 billion in revenue. Analysts expected earnings of $1.52 per share on revenue of $3.12 billion. Tapestry — The parent company of Coach and Kate Spade slipped around 1% following a report from The New York Times’ DealBook that the Federal Trade Commission is readying to block its takeover of Versace owner Capri Holdings . Shares of Capri dipped 1% as well. Autodesk — Shares sank more than 4% after Autodesk said it will delay its annual 10-K filing as a result of an ongoing internal investigation involving some of the company’s accounting practices. U.S. Bancorp — U.S. Bancorp shares dropped 5% after the regional bank lowered its net interest income guidance for 2024 as a result of stubborn inflation and the high-for-longer interest rate environment. Abbott Laboratories — The health-care stock slipped 3.2% on the back of weak guidance for current-quarter earnings. Abbott said to expect between $1.08 and $1.12 per share, excluding items, a range on the low end of the $1.12 consensus estimate of analysts polled by FactSet. That overshadowed an otherwise strong first quarter, with the company beating analysts’ forecasts on both lines. Alcoa — The aluminum stock added 1% on President Joe Biden’s expected announcement Wednesday that he wants to triple the China tariff rate on aluminum and steel imports. Alcoa is set to report earnings after the bell. Urban Outfitters — Shares dipped 3.4% after Jefferies downgraded Urban to underperform from hold, citing near-term concerns regarding the apparel retailer’s slowing foot traffic data, promotional headwinds and increased competition from peer retailers. — CNBC’s Jesse Pound, Hakyung Kim, Pia Singh, Michelle Fox, Alex Harring and Sarah Min contributed reporting.
Check out the companies making headlines before the bell. Cisco Systems — The networking technology stock added nearly 2% on the heels of a Citi upgrade to buy from neutral. Citi said artificial intelligence can become a bigger part of the business over time. Novocure — Shares soared roughly 22% after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Novocure’s Optune Lua wearable treatment for metastatic non-small cell lung cancer. Morgan Stanley — Shares gained more than 3% after the bank reported quarterly results before the bell that beat Wall Street’s forecasts, helped by higher-than-expected revenue from its wealth management, trading and investment banking operations. The firm’s earnings came in at $1.88 per share, versus the $1.58 expected by a LSEG analyst poll. Revenue was $15.38 billion versus the $14.41 billion consensus estimate. United Airlines — Shares rose about 1% after the airline beat earnings and revenue expectations for the third quarter. United also announced a $1.5 billion share buyback, its first since before the pandemic. ASML — Shares of the Dutch chip equipment firm slid 4% before the bell, adding to Tuesday’s losses after it accidently released its third-quarter results a day early . The report was disappointing as ASML cut its 2025 sales forecast, suggesting weakness in markets other than those that serve AI applications. J.B Hunt Transport Services — Shares jumped more than 7% after the company’s third-quarter results topped expectations. J.B. Hunt posted $1.49 earnings per share on $3.07 billion of revenue. Analysts polled by LSEG had forecast earnings of $1.41 per share on $3.02 billion of revenue. The company said demand for its intermodal service rose throughout the quarter. — CNBC’s Sean Conlon, Alex Harring, Sarah Min, Michelle Fox and Hakyung Kim contributed reporting.
Ted Pick, CEO Morgan Stanley, speaking on CNBC’s Squawk Box at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland on Jan. 18th, 2024.
Adam Galici | CNBC
Morgan Stanley topped analysts’ estimates for third quarter profit as its wealth management, trading and investment banking operations generated more revenue than expected.
Here’s what the company reported:
Earnings:$1.88 a share vs $1.58 LSEG estimate
Revenue: $15.38 billion vs. $14.41 billion estimate
Morgan Stanley had several tailwinds in its favor. The bank’s massive wealth management business was helped by high stock market values in the quarter, which inflates the management fees the bank collects.
Investment banking has rebounded after a dismal 2023, a trend that may continue as easing rates will encourage more financing and merger activity.
Finally, its Wall Street rivals have posted better-than-expected trading results, making it unlikely that the firm missed out on elevated activity.
Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba has invested heavily in its fast-growing international business as growth slows for its China-focused Taobao and Tmall business.
Nurphoto | Nurphoto | Getty Images
BEIJING — Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba‘s international arm on Wednesday launched an updated version of its artificial intelligence-powered translation tool that, it says, is better than products offered by Google, DeepL and ChatGPT.
Alibaba’s fast-growing international unit released the AI translation product as an update to one unveiled about a year ago, which it says already has 500,000 merchant users. Sellers based in one country can use the translation tool to create product pages in the language of the target market.
The new version is based only on large language models, allowing it to draw on contextual clues such as culture or industry-specific terms, Kaifu Zhang, vice president of Alibaba International Digital Commerce Group and head of the business’ artificial intelligence initiative, told CNBC in an interview Tuesday.
“The idea is that we want this AI tool to help the bottom line of the merchants, because if the merchants are doing well, the platform will be doing well,” he said.
Large language models power artificial intelligence applications such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which can also translate text. The models, trained on massive amounts of data, can generate humanlike responses to user prompts.
Alibaba’s translation tool is based on its own model called Qwen. The product supports 15 languages: Arabic, Chinese, Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Turkish and Ukrainian.
Zhang said he expects “substantial demand” for the tool from Europe and the Americas. He also expects emerging markets to be a significant area of use.
When users of Alibaba.com — a site for suppliers to sell to businesses — are categorized by country, developing countries account for about half of the top 20 active AI tool users, Zhang said.
Chinese companies have increasingly looked abroad for growth opportunities, especially e-commerce merchants. PDD Holdings‘ Temu, fast fashion seller Shein and ByteDance’s TikTok are among the recent global market entrants. Many China-based merchants also sell on Amazon.com.
Zhang declined to share how much the updated version would cost. He said it was included in some service bundles for merchants wanting simple exposure to overseas users.
His thinking is that contextual translation makes it much more likely that consumers decide to buy. He shared an example in which a colloquial Chinese description for a slipper would have turned off English-speaking consumers if it was only translated literally, without getting at the implied meaning.
“The updated translation engine is going to make Double 11 a better experience for consumers because of more authentic expression,” Zhang said, in reference to the Alibaba-led shopping festival that centers on Nov. 11 each year.
Alibaba’s international business includes platforms such as AliExpress and Lazada, which primarily targets Southeast Asia. The international unit reported sales growth of 32% to $4.03 billion in the quarter ended June from a year ago.
That’s in contrast to a 1% year-on-year drop in sales to $15.6 billion for Alibaba’s main Taobao and Tmall e-commerce business, which has focused on China.
Nomura analysts expect that Alibaba’s international revenue slowed slightly to 29% year-on-year growth in the quarter ended September, while operating losses narrowed, according to an Oct. 10 report. Alibaba has yet to announce when it will release quarterly earnings.