Stocks sagged again Friday, but the Dow Jones Industrial Average eked out a monthly advance. The S&P 500 lost half a percent while the Dow gave up 0.32%. Retreating healthcare and technology names weighed on the Nasdaq Composite, sending that index to a Friday loss of 0.62%.
Risk appetite was hard to come by, as highlighted by the ascent of gold and silver to fresh 15-month highs. Stocks struggled throughout the last week of April, and they head into May leaving investors to ponder if “sell in May and go away” is a strategy that will work this year.
There were some sources of strength Friday though, and National-Oilwell Varco, Inc. (NYSE:NOV), Pandora Media Inc (NYSE:P) and TiVo Inc (NASDAQ:TIVO) were the day’s strongest names.
National-Oilwell Varco, Inc. (NOV)
Oil services provider National-Oilwell Varco soared 9% today even as oil prices fell modestly, but another catalyst may have been at play to lift NOV shares: Speculation that NOV could be for General Electric Company (NYSE:GE
) as GE, a member of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, looks to bolster its oil services footprint.
On Thursday, NOV reported a first-quarter loss of six cents a share, which was better than the 11-cent loss analysts expected. Revenue of $2.189 billion was also slightly ahead of the $2.184 billion analysts expected.
Shares of NOV are up more than 15% over the past month.
Pandora Media Inc (P)
Shares of online music provider Pandora jumped more than 5% on volume that was better than triple the daily average after the company said its first-quarter revenue increased to $297.3 million from $230.8 million.
P boosted its full-year revenue guidance to $1.41 billion to $1.43 billion, up from previous guidance of $1.4 to $1.42 billion. Wall Street is expecting P to report 2016 revenue of $1.41 billion.
P lost 20 cents a share in the first quarter, but that is better than the 31-cent a share loss .
TiVo Inc (TIVO)
TiVo, the maker of the eponymous set-top boxes used for recording television shows, climbed almost 6% on volume that was more than 20 times the daily average after the company received a takeover offer from Rovi Corporation (NASDAQ:ROVI).
ROVI said it will acquire TIVO for $1.1 billion, or $10.70 per share in cash and stock, a 13.6% premium to where shares of TIVO closed yesterday. TIVO investors will receive $2.75 per share in cash and the remainder of that total in stock, according to .
TIVO and ROVI have 10 million and 18 million customers, respectively.
At the time of this writing, Todd Shriber did not own any of the aforementioned securities.
