In This Article:
Alibaba (BABA) shares jump Tuesday after its founder Jack Ma and Chairman Joe Tsai purchased over $200 million worth of stock combined, signaling confidence.
Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) beat fourth-quarter earnings estimates but shares lagged as questions loom around medical device margins amid acquisitions and cost pressures.
Procter & Gamble (PG) posted mixed results, topping EPS forecasts but missing on revenue and lowering its full-year outlook.
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Editor's note: This article was written by Angel Smith
Video Transcript
JOSH LIPTON: Let's check in on some trending tickers. We're starting today with Alibaba getting a boost. The company's co-founder Jack Ma and chairman Joe Tsai reportedly buying over $200 million worth of Alibaba shares. That's according to "The New York Times". So Alibaba, Julie, big names making some big purchases.
We got founder Jack Ma has been buying shares. Bought $50 million worth of stock in the quarter. Of course, Ma is no longer executive chairman, but still an important shareholder over there. And then Chairman Joe Tsai has been buying too. And Bloomberg pointing out this is actually the first time his fund has purchased shares since at least the last quarter of 2017.
JULIE HYMAN: Yeah. And it seems to represent a change here, right? Because even Ma himself has been sort of critical of Alibaba falling behind some of its competitors, Temu Group. Temu, for example, owned by PDD. So there's, you know, so this seems to represent a vote of confidence, if you will, in the company that he founded. And I think that's part of the reason why we are seeing other investors follow him.
The other reason, of course, is the stock has done so poorly, right? And so that's part of the reason. You could also-- and we're going to talk about this more in the show-- put it down perhaps somewhat to the report that China is considering some measures to prop up its stock market. So all of that combined it seems helping with Alibaba.
JOSH LIPTON: To your point, we should note, I mean, the stocks popping today. But yikes, I mean, it's still down about 40% in the past 12 months.
JULIE HYMAN: Yes, it is. Let's talk about another company we're watching today. That is Johnson & Johnson. It posted an earnings beat for the fourth quarter sales, surging in its pharmaceutical and medical devices business. The shares, though, are down here 1.6%. It looks like analysts and investors were zeroing in on the profit margins in its medical device unit. The company put that down too. They had some costs related to an acquisition. They had commodity, inflation. They called it an unfavorable product mix as well. And so that's something that's been weighing on the stock.