These 2 Stock Winners Topped Apple's Big Gains Friday

The stock market soared on Friday, ignoring one high-profile earnings miss among the largest companies in the market and instead focusing on the relatively solid performance from Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL). By the end of the session, gains for the Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI 1.18%), S&P 500 (^GSPC 1.26%), and Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC 1.99%) were between 2% and 3%.

Data source: Yahoo! Finance.

Apple's gains amounted to more than 7.5%, an impressive performance for a company with a $2.5 trillion market cap. Yet a pair of winning stocks actually managed to out-do Apple in terms of percentage gains. Read on below to find out how biotech stock  pioneer Gilead Sciences (GILD -0.84%) and specialty insurance company Kinsale Capital Group (KNSL 2.48%) were able to put even the iPhone maker's substantial gains to shame.

Gilead looks healthy

Shares of Gilead Sciences finished the day up nearly 13%. The biotech company reported strong profits from some of its blockbuster products, helping to support the entire business.

Investors could have been forgiven for thinking that Gilead stock would have  reacted negatively rather than positively to its third-quarter financial results. Revenue was down 5% year over year to $7.04 billion. Operating income fell at a more precipitous rate, and net income of $1.79 billion fell 31% from year-ago levels. Adjusted earnings came in at $1.90 per share, down from $2.65 per share 12 months ago.

However, a huge portion of the declines in Gilead's sales came from the drop in revenue from remdesivir, which had seen increased demand due to its use in treating patients with COVID-19. Excluding those numbers, total product sales were up 11% year over year. Sales of the HIV treatment Biktarvy jumped 22% from year-ago levels, as did sales of products to treat hepatitis C. Best of all, oncological cell therapy product sales were up nearly 80% from the third quarter of 2021, showing the breadth of Gilead's product line.

Gilead also dramatically boosted its full-year guidance, anticipating $1.2 billion to $1.4 billion more in revenue with a new range of between $25.9 billion and $26.2 billion. Adjusted earnings of $6.95 to $7.15 per share would be $0.40 to $0.60 per share higher than its previous guidance. And with a valuable pipeline of candidate treatments still in development, Gilead made a strong impression on shareholders.

Kinsale holds up through the storm

Shares of Kinsale Capital Group fared even better, jumping 15%. The specialty insurance carrier suffered some headwinds from recent catastrophic  events, but it managed to get through them with less damage than some investors had feared.

The pounding that Kinsale took was evident from its third-quarter financial numbers. Net income eased lower by 10% to $33 million, working out to $1.43 per share, as catastrophic losses during the period quadrupled to $20.6 million.

Yet many of Kinsale's metrics stayed favorable. Gross written premiums jumped 44% during the quarter, and rising interest rates boosted net investment income by 71% from year-ago levels. Despite the impact of losses on underwriting income, Kinsale's combined ratio came in at 83.6%, well below the 100% mark that would indicate a complete loss of profitability, with Hurricane Ian's impacts accounting for 12.5 percentage points of incurred losses.

Insurance can be a lucrative place to invest, even though many see it as a less glamorous area of the market than technology. Companies like Kinsale Capital have a lot of growth opportunities, though, and they could pay off for long-term investors.