Sports brand Nike and space company Virgin Galactic excel on the stock exchanges in New York on Friday. Nike presented very strong quarterly figures and positive expectations. Virgin Galactic has received approval from the FAA for commercial flights to space.
The key indicators on Wall Street showed small pluses after the new highs for the broad S&P 500 and technology exchange Nasdaq a day earlier.
Nike climbed 14.5 percent. The company almost doubled its turnover in the past quarter compared to a year earlier, when many sports stores were closed due to the corona pandemic. Nike expects sales to rise above $50 billion for the first time this fiscal year. Industry peers such as Under Armor and Lululemon Athletica hitch a ride with pluses of up to 3.6 percent.
Virgin Galactic, which comes from businessman Richard Branson, was raised almost 19 percent. A successful test flight with the VSS Unity in May convinced the US regulator to issue a license for commercial spaceflight for the first time. This was the third time the vehicle had passed 50 miles (80 km), the height used by the FAA as the boundary of space.
Shortly after the start, the Dow-Jones index recorded a gain of 0.4 percent at 34,325 points. The S&P 500 gained 0.1 percent to 4,272 points, and the Nasdaq advanced 0.2 percent to 14,392 points.
Parcel delivery company FedEx released quarterly results and outlook that fell less well with investors, losing 4.3 percent. The company faces increased costs and difficulty in finding sufficient staff. Industry partner UPS lost 1.3 percent. Car dealership CarMax also opened the books and won 3 percent. Technology group BlackBerry fell 2.4 percent after figures.
The US banks were also in the spotlight because they passed the stress test of the Federal Reserve. As a result, the banks can decide how much dividend they will pay out and how large share buyback programs are. Banks are expected to come up with plans for large profit distributions to shareholders. Stocks of Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Wells Fargo and Morgan Stanley showed mixed results.
It was also announced that personal spending by US consumers remained unchanged in May. A key inflation component in that data continued to climb.