Pedestrians pass in front of an Ulta Beauty store in New York.
Gabby Jones | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Check out the companies making headlines in midday trading.
Ulta Beauty — Shares of the retailer gained 6% after the company’s second-quarter profit topped expectations. Ulta earned 14 cents per share during that time period, compared with the 6-cent profit analysts polled by Refinitiv expected. E-commerce sales more than tripled year over year.
Coca-Cola — Shares of Coca-Cola rose 1.6% after the beverage giant announced a workforce restructuring plan. Coke said it will offer voluntary layoff packages to employees. On the operations side, nine new divisions will replace 17 business units and will focus on scaling new products faster and eliminating the duplication of resources.
Big Lots — Big Lots dropped 9% in midday trading despite better-than-expected profit and revenue results. And while comparable-store sales were up a robust 31.3%, CEO Bruce Thorn said sales might have been strong if not for tight inventories. “We brought in a lot more receipts in Q2 than we did a year ago, but we just weren’t able to fully keep up with the sales trends,” he said on the earnings conference call. “There were some sales dollars we probably left on the table.”
DraftKings — Shares of DraftKings fell as much as 5% in midday trading after Morgan Stanley downgraded the gambling company to equal weight from overweight. The brokerage said that while the stock’s 260% increase this year is valid, it’s concerned that the launch of Barstool’s sports app could steal market share. Uncertainty around the upcoming NFL season, on top of already-canceled athletic seasons, could also act as a headwind, Morgan Stanley said.
Dell — The tech stock climbed 5% after the company reported better-than-expected results for its second quarter. Dell reported adjusted earnings per share of $1.92 and $22.7 billion of revenue, down just 3% from the same period last year despite the pandemic. Analysts surveyed by Refinitiv were looking for earnings of $1.40 per share and $22.52 billion in revenue.
Workday — Shares of Workday soared more than 11% after the human resources and cloud software company reported better-than-expected quarterly results. Workday earned 84 cents per share in the second quarter, above an expectation of 88 cents per share per FactSet. Workday also hiked its revenue forecast for fiscal 2021 and announced a new co-CEO.
MGM Resorts International — The hotel and casino operator saw its shares rise more than 5% after it notified 18,000 previously furloughed employees that their separations would be permanent. MGM has been hampered by dropoffs in tourism and travel as well as reduced capacity at its venues and declines in conference and group business.
— CNBC’s Pippa Stevens, Jesse Pound and Yun Li contributed reporting.
Subscribe to CNBC PRO for exclusive insights and analysis, and live business day programming from around the world.