Hot Stocks
08:45 EDT Week in review: How Trump's policies moved stocks - Catch up on the top industries and stocks that were impacted, or were predicted to be impacted, by the comments, actions and policies of President Trump and his administration with this weekly recap compiled by The Fly: 1. AT&T, BOEING INVESTING AFTER TAX BILL: With both the Senate and House passing the GOP tax plan on Wednesday, AT&T (T) reiterated its plan to invest an additional $1B in the U.S. next year if the bill is signed into law, which President Trump did on Friday morning. AT&T also said it will pay a special $1,000 bonus to more than 200,000 U.S. employees. "If the President signs the bill before Christmas, employees will receive the bonus over the holidays," said AT&T chairman and CEO Randall Stephenson. Meanwhile, Boeing (BA) Chairman, President and CEO Dennis Muilenburg also announced immediate commitments for an additional $300M in investments that will move forward as a result of the new tax law, including $100M for corporate giving, $100M for workforce development and $100M for "workplace of the future" facilities and infrastructure enhancements. 2. PAY INCREASES, BONUSES: On Wednesday, Fifth Third Bancorp (FITB) announced plans to raise its minimum hourly wage for all employees to $15 and distribute a one-time bonus of $1,000 for more than 13,500 employees once the tax legislation is signed into law. Similar commitments about minimum wages or bonuses were also made by Wells Fargo (WFC), BB&T (BBT), FCB Financial (FCB), Associated Banc-Corp (ASB), OceanFirst Financial (OCFC), Texas Capital Bank (TCBI). Outside of the banking sector, bonus announcements attributed to the passage of the new tax bill were also made by Kansas City Southern (KSU) and Sinclair Broadcast Group (SBGI). 3. ALTRIA UPGRADE: Earlier this week, Berenberg analyst Jonathan Leinster upgraded Altria Group (MO) to Buy from Hold to reflect the proposed U.S. corporate tax changes. While he acknowledged that there are "undoubtedly" a significant number of complications, including foreign income dividends and ceilings on the amount of tax deductibility of debt interest, the analyst told investors that he believes that the major impact of the Republican tax bill on Altria Group will simply be the reduction in the base rate. He has assumed that the headline rate for the company will decline from 35%-36% to 21%-22%. 4. HUBBELL: On Wednesday, Wells Fargo analyst Rich Kwas raised his price target for Hubbell (HUBB) to $143 from $136 as he believes tax reform is a positive for most of his coverage, especially small-mid cap names that are U.S.-domiciled and have overwhelming U.S. revenue/earnings exposure like Hubbell. 5. FINANCIAL SERVICES: On Thursday and after the passage of the new tax bill, Oppenheimer analyst Glenn Greene told investors that he anticipates Black Knight (BKI), Fiserv (FISV), Jack Henry (JKHY), SEI Investments (SEIC) and TSYS (TSS) to see the largest relative benefits given high percentage of domestic earnings, with 20%-plus estimated earnings accretion. Alternatively, the analyst believes Cognizant (CTSH), First Data (FDC) and Infosys (INFY) could see more modest benefit, considering Cognizant/Infosys' lower proportion of domestic earnings and First Data's elevated level of debt/interest expense. PayPal (PYPL) is not expected to benefit from tax reform, and could actually see a modest increase in its effective tax rate, he added. "Week in Review" is The Fly's weekly recap of its recurring series of "Trump Effect" exclusive stories.
|
