Stock futures slip after Nasdaq registers worst day since October: Live updates

European stocks had a muted open, with the regional Stoxx 600 index starting the session flat before nudging 0.2% higher by 8:20 a.m. London time.

Sectors remained a mixed bag, with health-care stocks up 1.04% and technology and mining both down by around 0.6%.

The U.K.’s FTSE 100 was up 0.25% while France’s CAC 40 dipped 0.1% and Germany’s DAX was flat.

Shares of Chinese automaker BYD slipped 0.76% even as the company produced more new energy vehicles compared with Tesla in 2023.

BYD manufactured more than 3 million new energy vehicles in 2023, outstripping Tesla’s 1.84 million units.

While total production surpassed that of Tesla, BYD manufactured 1.6 million battery-only passenger cars and 1.4 million hybrids, putting Tesla on top for battery-only output.

Most of BYD’s cars sell in a lower price range than Tesla’s.

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— Evelyn Cheng

Shares of Apple suppliers in Asia tumbled on Wednesday, tracking a 4% drop in the iPhone maker overnight after Barclays downgraded the stock.

Barclays cut Apple’s rating to underweight and trimmed its price target to $160 from $161.

Samsung Electronics shares slid as much as 3.01%, leading losses on South Korea’s Kospi that fell 1.78%. The South Korean electronics giant, as well as some of its subsidiaries, supply Apple with its screens and battery components.

Apple chip supplier Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp also dropped as much as 2.02%, while shares of Hon Hai Precision Industry, which assembles iPhones and is known internationally as Foxconn, fell 0.48%.

— Lim Hui Jie, Shreyashi Sanyal

Window and door maker PGT Innovations received an unsolicited $41.50 a share cash buyout offer from Miter Brands, topping a Dec. 18 agreed upon offer of $41 a share from Masonite International.

PGT climbed another 4.6% postmarket Tuesday after dropping 1.2% during regular trading.

PGT’s board, alongside its financial advisor Evercore, will “carefully review” the Miter offer “to determine if it is reasonably likely to lead to a superior proposal.”

PGT first rejected a $33-a-share buyout offer from Miter in early October, according to reports from Reuters at the time. Reuters said Miter is backed by Koch Industries.

— Scott Schnipper

Office Depot and OfficeMax parent ODP Corporation fell 5% postmarket after a Jan. 2021 agreement with hedge fund HG Vora expired and Marcus Dunlop, an HG partner, left the ODP board effective Dec. 31, 2023.

HG Vora, which owns 3m ODP shares representing about 8%, remains “supportive of the Board’s ongoing efforts to execute on its long-term strategy and shareholder-focused capital allocation plan,” Dunlop said.

On Dec. 18, HG Vora disclosed an 18.5% position in Penn Entertainment, said it engaged in talks with management and the board to enhance shareholder value and asked for representation on the board, according to a 13D filing with the SEC.

— Scott Schnipper

The rising insurgence of artificial intelligence applications propelled technology stocks higher in 2024.

But some investors have been questioning the viability of the AI trend, comparing it to previous short-lived themes like the Internet bubble of the 1999s or the VR bubble of the 2020s, according to Bank of America’s Robert Cheng.

The analyst, however, disagrees with these concerns.

“We believe AI is different because the key players are global CSPs [cloud service providers] and enterprises, vs. mostly start-ups focusing on consumer market during the Internet and the VR bubbles,” he wrote. “CSPs/enterprises invest AI-related capex to enhance/create business models and increase sales/efficiency.”

— Lisa Kailai Han

Outback Steakhouse owner Bloomin’ Brands jumped 4% after the company named two directors to its board as part of an agreement reached with activist investor Starboard Value, which owns a roughly 10% stake in the company.

Both Dave George, former chief operating officer of Darden Restaurants, and Jon Sagal, a partner at Starboard, will join the board.

Bloomin’ also announced it is forming an operating comittee on its board tasked with indeifying potential areas of improvement.