Stock markets pushed upward to their best levels of the year on Wednesday, reacting positively to news that the Federal Reserve did not raise interest rates at its December meeting and largely sees its monetary policy as neutral at present. Early Thursday morning, it appeared that markets would continue to gain ground. Stock index futures were up as much as half a percent in premarket trading.
Even with the overarching support from the Fed, company-specific news continued to affect various individual stocks in different ways. Adobe (ADBE 0.87%) reported its latest financial results and saw its share price drop. However, Moderna (MRNA 1.69%) announced a potential victory that gave shareholders some new confidence that the biotech company could prosper even as its importance as a COVID-19 vaccine stock diminishes.
Adobe can't keep shareholders satisfied
Shares of Adobe were down 4% in premarket trading early Thursday. The creative software company got negative feedback from shareholders even as its fiscal fourth-quarter financial results for the period ended Dec. 1 were better than most of them had expected.
Adobe posted solid growth in its latest quarter. Revenue of $5.05 billion was up 12% year over year. Net income climbed 26% from year-ago levels to $1.48 billion, producing earnings of $3.23 per share. Adobe got balanced growth from just about all of its segments, with sales of its creative software products, its document cloud platform, and its digital experience products all climbing double-digit percentages from where they were 12 months earlier.
However, investors didn't seem to like Adobe's guidance. The company sees fiscal first-quarter sales of between $5.1 billion and $5.15 billion, which would be just 1% to 2% sequential growth. Similarly, full-year revenue projections for $21.3 billion to $21.5 billion imply full-year sales gains of just 10% to 11%, which would be consistent with fiscal 2023's 10% gains.
Adobe has largely flown under the radar with its efforts to integrate artificial intelligence (AI) into its product offerings. But AI represents a key long-term growth prospect, and Adobe just needs to make it clearer to shareholders that it's playing to win when it comes to technological innovation.
Moderna looks beyond COVID
Meanwhile, shares of Moderna soared 12% in premarket trading. The biotech company announced favorable results in a clinical study, showing shareholders a potential view of the path it could take to start a new phase of growth after its COVID-19 vaccine success in recent years.
Moderna and partner Merck released follow-up data from its Keynote-942 clinical trial evaluating Moderna's investigational individualized neoantigen therapy mRNA-4157 (V940). The trial involved patients with a form of high-risk melanoma, administering the therapy in conjunction with Merck's Keytruda therapy.
The trial has been going on for a while now, and after three years, the study showed that the combination treatment remained effective in improving recurrence-free and metastasis-free survival rates compared to using Keytruda by itself.
Moderna was pleased to see the investigational mRNA cancer treatment show benefits when used in combination with established treatments, and it sees immuno-oncology as an area that it can pursue further. For its part, Merck already has considerable experience in that subspecialty, which could open the door to further collaboration.
For Moderna, the news shows again that the company isn't going to be a one-hit wonder. With solid prospects in several key areas, Moderna's technology could have applications across the field of medicine.
