Futures are slightly lower this morning, following a strong buildup over the week- and another rally on Wednesday. S&P 500 futures are down 0.4%, with Nasdaq futures sinking 1%, and Dow Jones futures trading narrowly in the red.
Investors are keeping an eye out for jobless claims data out later today. According to CNBC, economists polled by Dow Jones expect first-time applications to have decelerated to 950,000 during the week ending Aug. 29- down from over 1 million the previous week.
Shares of Five Below are advancing 8% in Thursday’s pre-market session after the specialty value retailer’s 2Q revenues of $426.1 million topped analysts’ expectations of $405.8 million. Quarterly sales improved by 2.1% from the year-ago quarter. “We come away from our initial analysis of Q2 (Jul.)… decidedly upbeat upon near and longer-term prospects for FIVE and incrementally convicted in our positive call on shares” cheered Oppenheimer’s Brian Nagel post-print.
MongoDB is also rising post-print, after the company posted a solid beat-and-raise quarter. Campbell Soup, Ciena and Signet have all just reported earnings and revenue above consensus expectations.
However Ambarella is trading down 3.4% in Thursday’s pre-market session after the video and image processing chipmaker provided a lower-than-expected revenue outlook for 3Q. The company forecast revenues between $52 million and $56 million vs consensus of $56.4 million.
And CrowdStrike is also down 9% in early morning trading despite exceeding quarterly sales expectations mainly driven by demand for cloud-based security solutions amid the COVID-19 pandemic-led remote working trend. Shares have surged over 185% year-to-date.
Meanwhile Costco revealed that net sales spiked 15% in August as shoppers are returning to the stores and e-commerce revenue continues to accelerate. COST reported net sales of $13.56 billion for the four weeks ended Aug. 30, up from $11.79 billion last year. Oppenheimer analyst Rupesh Parikh says COST remains a top pick.
China’s electric-vehicle maker Nio Ltd. has also just released bullish data- showing that it shipped 3,965 vehicles last month, reflecting a whopping 104.1% year-over-year increase. Between January and August this year, car deliveries soared 109.9% to 21,667 vehicles on a year-on-year basis.
Corona: Novavax is up 8% this morning, after announcing the publication in The New England Journal of Medicine of Phase 1 data from its Phase 1/2 clinical trial of NVX‑CoV2373, its COVID‑19 vaccine candidate with Matrix‑M in healthy adults age 18-59. NVX‑CoV2373 demonstrated a reassuring safety and reactogenicity profile and induced robust antibody responses. “Based on the positive Phase 1 results, we have begun multiple Phase 2 clinical trials, from which we expect to collect preliminary efficacy” said NVAX’s Gregory Glenn.
Sanofi and GSK are also in spotlight this morning- with the duo announcing that they have now initiated the Phase 1/2 clinical trial of their COVID-19 vaccine candidate. A total of 440 healthy adults are being enrolled in the trial across 11 investigational sites in the United States. The companies anticipate first results early December 2020, gearing up to the initiation of a Phase 3 trial before year-end.
Finally Amazon has revealed that it is adding 7,000 more permanent jobs in the U.K. by the end of the year, as the demand for online deliveries continues to surge during the pandemic.
