Stocks making the biggest moves premarket: Alibaba, Applied Materials, Ulta Beauty and more

Take a look at the corporations that made the headlines before market opening.

Applied Materials

• There was an over 8% plunge in stocks following a weak revenue projection for the present quarter by the semiconductor equipment manufacturing giant. The company has predicted a revenue of $7.15 billion for the first fiscal quarter, which falls short of the $7.224 billion expectations as polled by LSEG. Despite announcing better-than-anticipated fiscal fourth-quarter outcomes and a positive adjusted earnings per share outlook, this didn’t buoy the shares.

Alibaba

• Stocks of the Chinese e-commerce behemoth soared more than 3% post the announcement of exceeding profit predictions for its fiscal second quarter. Despite grappling with soft consumer expenditure in China that resulted in disappointing sales, Alibaba’s net income saw a 58% YoY increase, owing to its equity investment performance. Its reported revenue of 236.5 billion yuan, though 5% higher YoY, fell short of the analysts’ expectations of 238.9 billion yuan, as per LSEG data.

Moderna

• The stock of this biotech firm saw a 1.8% decrease, following the continuing drop from Thursday after the announcement came that Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a notable vaccine skeptic, was nominated as the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services by President-elect Donald Trump.

Domino’s Pizza, Pool Corp.

• The pizza chain’s shares shot up nearly 6% after Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway announced a new stake in Domino’s via a regulatory filing. Berkshire Hathaway’s acquisition of over 1.2 million shares translates to an investment worth around $550 million at the end of September. Pool Corp. also noticed a 6% rise after the conglomerate acquired approximately 404,000 shares of the swimming pool supplier, valued at $152 million post the period.

Ulta Beauty

• Stock of the beauty retailer witnessed a 5% dip after Berkshire Hathaway disclosed in a regulatory filing that it had almost liquidated its position in the company, offloading around 97% of its shares. Ulta Beauty was a fresh investment for Berkshire, initiated in the previous quarter.

Palantir

• The defense technology stock saw an upward movement of over 2% after declaring its decision to switch its listing venue to the Nasdaq Global Select Market from the New York Stock Exchange. The company expects that post the shift, it would be eligible to join the Nasdaq-100 Index.