The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index fell 0.9% and the S&P 500 Index declined 0.3% as the US Federal Reserve was expected to release the minutes of its January meeting. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 0.1%.
In earnings news, shares of Wix.com climbed almost 4% after the cloud-based website development platform reported a lower-than-feared loss in 4Q. Wix posted a non-GAAP net loss per share of $0.03 during the fourth quarter, which came in ahead of the $0.11 net loss expected by analysts. Revenue increased 38% year-on-year to $283 million topping analysts’ estimates of $270.22 million. In 2020, the company added about 1 million net new subscriptions and crossed $1 billion in annual collections. Wix CEO Avishai Abrahami said, “At this growth rate, in the next 5-7 years, 50% of anything new built on the internet will be done on Wix.”
Vishay Precision sank 8.3% as the producer of precision sensors and sensor-based systems posted 4Q earnings per share (EPS) of $0.43, which were in line with analysts’ expectations. Meanwhile, revenue rose 9.1% year-on-year to $75.45 million, topping analysts’ estimates of $70.92 million. The 4Q revenue growth was attributable to a 23% increase in foil technology products, higher precision resistors sales and an 8% increase in force sensors sales.
Investors were not impressed with RingCentral’s better-than-expected fourth-quarter results. The stock dropped more than 4% even as the cloud communications company’s 4Q earnings of $0.29 per share beat the consensus estimates of $0.27 per share and grew 31.8% year-over-year. The company’s 4Q revenues rose about 32% year-over-year to $335 million and topped the Street’s estimates of $317.4 million. Looking ahead, the company forecasted 1Q and 2021 guidance that also came in ahead of analysts’ estimates. Oppenheimer analyst Timothy Horan, who has a Buy rating on the stock said, “we believe RNG shares have decent valuation support with estimates mostly derisked by conservative guidance, the business acceleration, and good growth catalysts expected next year.”
In other telecoms news, Nokia announced a partnership with telecom operator Elisa to boost the deployment of industrial grade private mobile networks. The target of the collaboration is to achieve market leadership in the high growth Finnish business market. The two companies will use new and existing radio network infrastructure to deploy private networks. Nokia and Elisa will collaborate on 5G private mobile solutions to help Finnish businesses accelerate digitalization and adopt industry 4.0 solutions aimed at boosting their productivity.
In electric vehicle news, Ford Motor announced a $1 billion investment into a new EV manufacturing center in Cologne, Germany as the US automaker plans to go all-electric in Europe by 2030. The carmaker expects its first European-built all-electric passenger vehicle will roll off the assembly line starting in 2023. Ford plans to have electric or plug-in hybrid models of its commercial vehicle range in Europe by 2024. By mid-2026, 100% of the company’s passenger cars in Europe will be either electric or plug-in hybrid vehicles that will move to all-electric by 2030.
In corona updates, Pfizer and BioNTech have inked an agreement to supply 200 million additional doses of their COVID-19 vaccine to 27 European Union (EU) member states. Furthermore, the European Commission (EC) has an option to buy an additional supply of 100 million doses as part of the agreement. This new agreement takes the total COVID-19 vaccine supply to the EU to 500 million doses. The additional 200 million doses are expected to be delivered this year, with 75 million doses to be supplied in the second quarter of 2021. Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla commented, “With this new agreement with the European Commission, we now expect to deliver enough doses to vaccinate at least 250 million Europeans before the end of the year.”
Last, but not least, shares of Lakeland Industries fell 4.4% after the manufacturer of protective clothing announced the repurchase of $5 million worth of its outstanding shares. The new share repurchase program will replace its previous share repurchase program that had about $800,000 remaining for repurchases. The repurchased shares can be used for funding share issuances under employee stock plans approved by stockholders and other general corporate purposes. The stock has gained 30% over the past month.
