Nordstrom family to take chain private: Morning Buzz

Get caught up quickly on the top news and calls moving stocks with these five Top Five lists. 

1. STOCK NEWS:

• Members of the Nordstrom family and El Puerto de Liverpool will acquire all of the outstanding common shares of Nordstrom for $24.25 per share in cash in $6.25B deal
• Despegar (DESP) to be acquired by Prosus for $1.7B or $19.50 per share
• Hyatt Hotels (H) announced an exclusivity agreement with Playa Hotels & Resorts (PLYA) under which Playa has agreed to negotiate exclusively with Hyatt regarding potential strategic alternatives
• Nissan Motor (NSANY) and Honda Motor (HMC) signed a memorandum of understanding “to start discussions and considerations” toward the establishment of a joint holding company in 2026
• Xerox (XRX) to acquire Lexmark International in deal valued at $1.5B, halves dividend

2. WALL STREET CALLS:

• BofA and Goldman Sachs initiated coverage of Pony AI (PONY) with Buy ratings
• H.C. Wainwright upgraded Aclaris Therapeutics (ACRS) to Buy
• Raymond James upgraded Weyerhaeuser (WY) and PotlatchDeltic (PCH) to Outperform
• William Blair downgraded Applied Therapeutics (APLT) to Market Perform
• Jefferies downgraded Mesoblast (MESO) to Hold

3. AROUND THE WEB:

• The Japan Fair Trade Commission is expected to find Google (GOOGL) guilty of violating the country’s antitrust laws, Nikkei Asia reports
• Financial regulator Bafin is conducting a special audit of Deutsche Bank (DB) and its fund subsidiary DWS as the bank has “apparently not yet dealt with the issue of money laundering,” Manager Magazin says
• Meta (META) plans to add displays to its Ray-Ban glasses as soon as the second half of 2025 to show notifications or AI responses, FT reports
• SoftBank (SFTY) CEO Son has developed an obsession with building the next Nvidia, Bloomberg reports
• Spotify (SPOT) executives and board members have sold $1.25B worth of the company’s stock this year, FT says

4. MOVERS:

• Rumble (RUM) higher after announcing a $775M strategic investment from Tether
• Sealsq (LAES) gains in New York after announcing it is advancing the field of Post-Quantum Cryptography
• Rigetti Computing (RGTI) increases after launching its 84-qubit Ankaa-3 system
• TeraWulf (WULF) lower after signing long-term data center lease agreements with Core42
• MicroStrategy (MSTR) falls after disclosing it acquired 5,262 bitcoins for $561M from December 16-22

5. EARNINGS/GUIDANCE:

• Ennis (EBF) reported Q3 results, with EPS higher year-over-year
• Boston Beer (SAM) backed its guidance for FY24
• Optical Cable Corporation (OCC) reported Q4 results, with CEO Neil Wilkin commenting, “OCC delivered a strong fourth quarter to finish the fiscal year”
• Anavex (AVXL) reported Q4 results, with EPS lower year-over-year
• Xcel (XELB) reported Q3 results, with EPS higher year-over-year

INDEXES: 

Near midday, the Dow was down 0.20%, or 87.77, to 42,752.49, the Nasdaq was up 0.62%, or 122.12, to 19,694.71, and the S&P 500 was up 0.27%, or 15.72, to 5,946.57.