BLBG: U.S. Stock-Index Futures Advance Before Retail-Sales Data
U.S. stock futures rose, rebounding from yesterday’s decline, as investors awaited a retail-sales report to gauge the strength of the world’s biggest economy.
FleetCor Technologies Inc. climbed 3.2 percent in late New York trading after it agreed to acquire Comdata Inc. for $3.45 billion. King Digital Entertainment (KING) Plc plummeted 22 percent in pre-market New York trading after posting worse-than-forecast sales and cutting its 2014 outlook.
Standard & Poor’s 500 Index futures expiring in September gained 0.5 percent to 1,939.2 at 7:30 a.m. in New York. U.S. stocks declined yesterday as investors watched developments in Ukraine and Iraq, while energy shares sank after Brent crude fell to a 13-month low. Dow Jones Industrial Average contracts climbed 61 points, or 0.4 percent, to 16,580 today.
“The retail sales data will be one of the first readings we see that will give us a hint about the Q3 number, so I suspect some of the people will be looking for something that indicates GDP growth will keep going and going,” Ben Kumar, an investment manager who helps manage $7 billion at Seven Investment Management LLP in London, said in a phone interview. “There seems to be this optimism, but I’m not particularly sure that it is based on much.”
Commerce Department data at 8:30 a.m. in Washington may show U.S. retail-sales rose in July for a sixth straight month, economists surveyed by Bloomberg predicted.
Earnings Reports
Four companies, including Macy’s Inc. and Cisco Systems Inc. report earnings today. About 75 percent of those that have posted results this season have beaten analyst estimates, while 64 percent have exceeded sales projections, data compiled by Bloomberg show.
FleetCor Technologies added 3.2 percent to $133.61. The provider of fuel cards said it will finance the purchase of Comdata with about $2.4 billion of new debt and issue about 7.3 million of its shares to Ceridian LLC, which owns the company. The purchase will allow FleetCor to expand in North America and enter the business of virtual bank-card payments.
King Digital Entertainment tumbled 22 percent to $14.25. The maker of the Candy Crush Saga video game said yesterday that gross bookings -- the value of virtual merchandise sold -- will fall in the third quarter. It also said second-quarter adjusted revenue rose 29 percent to $593.5 million from a year earlier. That missed analysts’ projections of $605.7 million.
Deere & Co. (DE) slipped 1.1 percent to $85.50 in early New York trading. The world’s largest agricultural-equipment maker cut its fiscal-year profit estimate as record crops weighed on grain prices and deterred spending by U.S. farmers. Deere predicted net income will fall to about $3.1 billion in the year through Oct. 31. It had forecast profit of about $3.3 billion.
To contact the reporter on this story: Jonathan Morgan in Frankfurt at jmorgan157@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Cecile Vannucci at cvannucci1@bloomberg.net Alan Soughley, Will Hadfield
