EVs Raise Cash

EV makers Nikola and Lucid both announced secondary stock offerings today. As we mentioned in the textbook, SEOs often have a negative effect on stock prices, and these announcements were not exceptions. Nikola announced a $400 million stock offering, to be sold at the market price. The stock price dropped about 10 percent on the announcement. For Lucid, the company announced an $8 billion shelf offer to be sold over the next three years. In this case, the stock "only" dropped about 7 percent.

Chinese Companies Go Dark

"Going dark" typically means that a company delists its stock from an exchange. Today, three Chinese companies announced plans to go dark from the New York Stock Exchange. What is interesting is that the companies will still be listed on the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong. The reason for delisting from the NYSE is that American regulators have warned Chinese companies that they would be forced to leave U.S. exchanges unless they allowed regulators to see the records of the company auditors.   

Stock Repurchase Tax

The Senate recently passed the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. Major components of the Act include spending on climate change, increased IRS spending, and measures to lower the cost of prescription drugs. In order to pass the Act, a last minute change to get the necessary votes was a 1 percent excise tax on stock repurchases. As we showed in the text, dividends and stock repurchases affect a company and investors in much the same way. The tax may push companies toward dividends, although since the new tax wouldn't take effect until 2023, analysts are expecting large repurchases to be completed by the end of 2022.

Unexpected Inflation

As we discussed in the textbook, stock prices move when unexpected news comes to light. Economists expected that inflation for July would be 8.7 percent, lower than June's 9.1 percent. Instead, it was announced today that July's inflation was "only" 8.5 percent. The stock market reacted dramatically as the S&P 500 jumped about 2 percent and both the Nasdaq and Russell 2000 jumped almost 3 percent. And for investors in Disney the news was even better: EPS was $1.09 compared to the $.96 estimate, and the subscriber addition was 14.4 million streamers versus the expected 10 million. With the combined market news and company news, Disney stock jumped about 7 percent.