These Were the 2 Stocks to Watch Friday

Investors are now firmly in bull mode to start 2023, as major market benchmarks extended their beginning-of-year gains Friday. Gains for the leading Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC -2.05%) were the largest, but both the Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI 0.56%) and the S&P 500 (^GSPC -0.88%) were up as well.

Data source: Yahoo! Finance.

Plenty of stocks made news, including a host of banking institutions that announced their earnings and reversed early losses. However, many investors missed out on moves from Delta Air Lines (DAL -0.58%) and Wendy's (WEN 1.32%) following their respective earnings reports. You can read up on the details here.

Delta stock drops despite solid quarter

Shares of Delta Air Lines finished lower by 3.5% on Friday. The airline posted solid results for the fourth quarter of 2022, but investors didn't seem impressed even as Delta gave a fairly rosy outlook for 2023.

Delta's operating revenue jumped 17% year over year in Q4 to $13.44 billion, closing a year in which the number was 8% higher to $50.58 billion. Net income for the quarter fell to $828 million, but adjusted earnings of $1.48 per share were generally better than expected.

Delta has made significant progress in recovering from the hit it took at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, as operating revenue for the quarter was 8% higher than in the same period during 2019 before the pandemic began. Full-year revenue came just 2% shy of 2019 levels.

Best of all for longer-term investors, Delta expects revenue to grow 15% to 20% in 2023, with earnings between $5 and $6 per share. For a stock priced at just $38 per share, Delta seems to have investors who are extremely skeptical that the airline will be able to do as well as it expects beyond the next year.

Wendy's looks appetizing for investors

Meanwhile, shares of Wendy's jumped 6%. The fast-food giant reported preliminary Q4 and full-year 2022 results that made investors excited about its future.

Wendy's said that it saw systemwide sales growth of 8.4% globally year over year to $3.39 billion, including a 16.8% rise internationally on a constant-currency basis. Same-restaurant sales were up 6.4% systemwide, again with U.S. stores lagging behind their international counterparts by a significant margin. Revenue for Wendy's climbed 15.5% on an adjusted basis to $431 million, and adjusted pre-tax operating earnings were up 20% from year-ago levels.

Wendy's investors also got a nice reward in the form of a dramatic increase in the stock's quarterly dividend. Beginning in March, shareholders will receive $0.25 per share quarterly from Wendy's, which is double the amount of its previous dividend. In addition, Wendy's Board of Directors authorized $500 million in share repurchases, cancelling the previous buyback program that had been half the size.

Perhaps most notably, activist investor Nelson Peltz of Trian Fund Management gave positive comments about Wendy's future, expressing Trian's confidence in the capital allocations moves that the fast-food company is making. That suggests that Peltz won't be pushing for any further changes as he shifts his attention to other companies in his portfolio.