What Happened in the Stock Market Today
Steve Symington, The Motley Fool
Motley Fool August 23, 2019
Major benchmarks plunged on Friday after President Trump took to Twitter to call Federal Reserve Chairman Jay Powell an "enemy," likening the man he hand-picked for the job to Chinese President Xi Jinping. Trump followed that with a tweet "hereby" ordering "our great American companies" to "immediately start looking for an alternative to China," though it's unclear how the president might implement such an order.
By the end of the session, both the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJINDICES: ^DJI) and the S&P 500 (SNPINDEX: ^GSPC) lost well over 2%.
Today's stock market
Percentage Change
Point Change
Dow (2.37%) (623.34)
S&P 500 (2.59%) (75.84)
Data source: Yahoo! Finance.
As for individual stocks, Foot Locker (NYSE: FL) and salesforce.com (NYSE: CRM) each stood out -- for very different reasons -- following their latest quarterly reports.
Stock market charts on a red, white, and blue display showing losses.
Foot Locker trips up
Shares of Foot Locker plunged 18.9% after the footwear retailer told investors its second-quarter sales declined 0.4% year over year to $1.774 billion -- well below expectations for sales closer to $1.82 billion -- as currency headwinds more than offset a 0.8% increase in comparable-store sales. On the bottom line, that translated into adjusted net income of $72 million, or $0.66 per share, roughly $0.01 per share below consensus estimates and down from $0.75 per share in the year-ago period.
CEO Richard Johnson admitted the results arrived near the low end of the company's targets, but also noted its performance improved with each successive month in the quarter.
"We remain deeply connected with sneaker and youth culture," Johnson added, "and believe this positive momentum exiting the quarter has us well positioned for the back-to-school period and beyond."
Judging by today's drop, the market isn't convinced.
Salesforce's stellar quarter
Meanwhile, Salesforce stock gained 2.3% after the cloud-based customer relationship management (CRM) platform leader announced better-than-expected fiscal second-quarter results. Salesforce's revenue climbed 22% year over year to just under $4 billion. Adjusted net income arrived at $526 million, or $0.66 per share, down from $0.71 per share a year earlier (though its bottom line was negatively impacted by a recent $0.16-per-share reseller-agreement settlement).
Still, these results were well above Wall Street's consensus prediction for revenue of $3.96 billion and earnings of $0.47 per share.
Chairman and co-CEO Mark Benioff called it "an outstanding quarter" that left the company comfortable with increasing its full-year guidance to call for revenue growth of 26% to 27%, or to a range of $16.75 billion to $16.9 billion (up from $16.1 billion to $16.25 billion previously). Salesforce also reduced its full-year outlook for adjusted earnings per share to $2.82-$2.84 -- down from $2.88-$2.90 before, but technically marking an increase after accounting for the aforementioned reseller settlement.
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Steve Symington has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Salesforce.com and TWTR. The Motley Fool has the following options: long January 2021 $100 calls on Salesforce.com. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
This article was originally published on Fool.com
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