U.S. stock futures were mixed on Monday as investors continue to focus on the bond market following last week’s rise in bond yields.
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Dow futures were trading 0.24% lower, S&P futures were flat and Nasdaq futures were 0.75% higher at the time of writing.
On the earnings calendar today, So-Young (SY), Ebix (EBIX) and Cellcom (CELJF) will report before the bell, while Tencent Music Entertainment (TME), Synnex (SNX) and Viant Technology (DSP) will release their results after the market closes.
Seneca Biopharma (SNCA) was the most actively traded stocks with over 6 million shares having already changed hands at the time of writing.
Support.com was the biggest gainer in pre-market, up around 92%, followed by Seneca Biopharma (+37%) and Ricebran Tech (+27%).
Pre-market’s top laggards were Manitex (-46%), RLX Technology (-28%) and Turkcell (-14%).
In corporate news, Blackstone (BX) has made a takeover offer to acquire the struggling Australia-based casino operator, Crown Resorts Limited, for an indicative price of A$11.85 per share. Blackstone already owns a 9.99% stake in Crown which it acquired through Melco Resorts & Entertainment Limited in April 2020. Last week, Blackstone announced that it has agreed to buy European environmental service company DESOTEC through its private equity funds.
Hartford Financial Services Group (HIG) announced that it has received an unsolicited and non-binding takeover offer from Chubb Limited (CB). Chubb has agreed to pay $65 for each Hartford share which reflects a “premium of 26% based on its unaffected 20-day volume-weighted average share price of $51.70 as of March 10, 2021.
Enova (ENVA) has agreed to buy Chicago-based Pangea Universal Holdings for an undisclosed fee. CEO David Fisher said, “Enova will bring market-leading capabilities around high-volume transactions, marketing, mobile customer experience and, most importantly, machine learning and artificial intelligence.” Pangea’s powerful, easy-to-use mobile application provides secure, fast, and affordably priced international money transfers from the US to 40 countries.
Canadian Pacific Railway Limited (CP) has agreed to buy Kansas City Southern in a stock-and-cash deal worth $29 billion. The price tag, which comes in at $275 per share, represents a 23% premium to Kansas City Southern’s closing price on March 19. Canadian Pacific plans to issue 44.5 million new shares, with the cash portion to be funded through a combination of existing cash and debt issue of $8.6 billion.
In earnings news, shares of Embraer (ERJ) gained 6.8% on Friday after the Brazilian aerospace conglomerate reported a better-than-expected loss in the fourth quarter and posted revenues that surpassed analysts’ expectations. A loss of $0.07 per share in Q4 compared favorably to the $0.32 loss per share estimated by analysts. Total revenue came in at $1.84 billion, topping analysts’ expectations of $1.66 billion but declining 11.7% year-over-year.
