Stocks making the biggest moves midday: McDonald’s, Cracker Barrel, Alibaba, Worthington & more
Check out some of the companies making the biggest moves midday: McDonald’s — CEO Chris Kempczinski said at an investor day event he expects high inflation and flat traffic will continue to weigh on the restaurant industry. The burger chain reported U.S. same-store sales growth of just 0.8% in its most recent quarter as traffic to its domestic restaurants fell. McDonald’s shares fell more than 5% to their lowest since 2022. Cracker Barrel Old Country Store — The restaurant chain climbed 5% after reporting fiscal fourth-quarter adjusted earnings per share of 99 cents, up from 74 cents last year. Revenue of $849.3 million beat the consensus Wall Street estimate of $834.6 million, according to FactSet data, while restaurant level profit margins, cost of goods sold and adjusted EBITDA margins were all better than expected. Worthington Enterprises — The industrial manufacturing company rose 4% on an encouraging outlook from leadership. CEO Joseph Hayek said the company is seeing opportunities across its business, “including rapidly growing demand for our engineered [American Society of Mechanical Engineers] tanks used in liquid cooling systems for data centers.” First-quarter adjusted earnings and revenue surpassed the Street’s estimates, according to LSEG. Astrana Health — The AI-powered healthcare company sank 6% after reporting a “material” data breach. Astrana said in a regulatory filing that certain private and/or confidential information was accessed without authorization and said its investigation is ongoing. Royal Caribbean — Shares fell nearly 3% to a 52-week low after the cruise line operator announced plans to buy a 50% stake in the parent of Sandals and Beaches Resorts for $3 billion. Royal Caribbean said the deal should close early next year and add to earnings in 2027. Alibaba – U.S.-traded shares of the Chinese e-commerce company fell 4% as investors took chips off the table following a four-day win streak. This week, Alibaba launched its Zhenwu V900 artificial intelligence chip and shared plans to operate more than 20 gigawatts of global data center capacity by 2032. Paychex – Shares of the payroll processing company tumbled almost 7%. While first-quarter adjusted earnings beat estimates, revenue of $1.63 billion was in line with analysts’ expectations, according to FactSet. Revenue for Paychex’ Management Solutions business came in at $1.21 billion, missing the StreetAccount consensus call for $1.23 billion. IonQ – The quantum computing stock rose 5% after IonQ said it tested the industry’s first real-time quantum error decoder. The new capability allows for quantum error correction across operations without slowing down execution time, IonQ said. Maplebear — The Instacart owner fell 3% after announcing that it will let customers on its grocery platform use Meta’s personal AI agent Muse. It’s the latest AI platform to have a partnership with Instacart, joining OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Anthropic’s Claude and Google’s Gemini. Immunovant – The clinical-stage immunology company’s stock tumbled 9% after reporting disappointing results in a proof-of-concept trial for IMVT-1402 for the treatment of cutaneous lupus erythematosus (CLE). Immunovant will stop development in this area. Although the study didn’t achieve its goal for CLE, the company plans to continue developing the drug to treat other autoimmune diseases, including Graves’ disease. — With reporting by CNBC’s Davis Giangiulio, Michelle Fox, Darla Mercado, Christina Cheddar-Berk, Nick Wells and Amelia Lucas