Friday capped another strong week on Wall Street, and broader indexes like the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite put together solid gains of as much as 0.5%. Other markets captured greater attention from investors than stocks, as bond yields climbed to levels not seen since 2014, while dollar weakness lifted the values of key foreign currencies. Some of those moves stem from the looming threat of a government shutdown, but other fundamental economic issues are also supporting the shifts. Among stocks, some companies suffered from bad news that led to substantial share price declines. IBM (IBM -0.35%), GNC Holdings (GNC), and Intrexon (PGEN -3.68%) were among the worst performers on the day. Below, we'll look more closely at these stocks to tell you why they did so poorly.
Big Blue has the blues
Shares of IBM declined 4%, leading the losers in the Dow Jones Industrials after the tech giant reported its fourth-quarter financial results. The company known as Big Blue said that revenue was up for the quarter, reversing a six-year downward streak. However, tax reform created a large one-time charge of $5.5 billion that led IBM to a massive net loss for the period. Many companies have benefited from new tax laws, but IBM had to deal both with deemed repatriation of foreign profits and a reduction in the future value of the company's tax assets. Wall Street still doesn't seem convinced even by a return to revenue growth that IBM's strategy of emphasizing cloud and data analytics will be able to restore its reputation among tech investors.
Image source: IBM.
GNC gives back some gains
GNC Holdings stock dropped 9%, reversing course after a more-than-50% gain on Thursday. The previous day's jump came after GNC reported strong preliminary results for its fourth quarter, including same-store sales growth of 5.7% and more favorable adjusted earnings guidance than investors had expected to see. Some remain concerned that e-commerce giants could choose to offer nutritional supplements more actively, potentially supplanting GNC's niche retail focus area. The stock will need to bounce quite a bit further to make up for losses of roughly two-thirds in 2017.
Intrexon makes a sale
Finally, shares of Intrexon lost nearly 5%. The synthetic biology specialist announced that it had closed its secondary offering of stock to investors, selling 6.9 million shares of common stock at $12.50 per share. That price was more than 12% below the stock's price as of Thursday evening, reflecting the discount that new investors demanded for purchasing shares and thereby diluting existing shareholders to some extent. With the stock having already lost substantial ground in the second half of 2017, it was unfortunate that Intrexon had to raise cash at this time. Yet the fact that the stock didn't fall all the way to the $12.50 offering price shows some optimism among investors that Intrexon has the potential to rebound from tough conditions last year.
