U.S. Movers: Apple, Casey's General, Oracle, WestRock

Scott Peters
12 Sep, 2023
New York City

Stocks on Wall Street traded lower and higher crude oil prices weighed on market sentiment. 

The S&P 500 index traded down 0.2% to 4,471.24 and the Nasdaq Composite eased 0.4% to 13,8536.20. 

WestRock agreed to merge with Smurfit Kappa and form one of the largest packaging companies in the world. 

Smurfit WestRock, the newly formed holding company will be headquartered in Dublin, Ireland and will be listed on the London Stock Exchange and the New York Stock Exchange. 

WestRock stockholders will receive one Smurfit WestRock share and $5 cash and Smurfit Kappa shareholders will receive one share of the newly formed company. 

Smurfit Kappa shareholders will own 50.4% of the newly merged company. 

The combined packaging company will have about $34 billion in annual sales with about 65% of the revenue located in the Americas. 

WestRock jumped 7.7% to $36.75 and Smurfit Kappa Group Plc declined 8.0% in London trading to 2,824.0 pence. 

Oracle Corp dropped 9.2% to $126.71 after the database company reported weaker-than-expected revenue in the fiscal first quarter. 

Revenue in the quarter was $12.45 billion and adjusted earnings per share was $1.19, both fell short of some analysts' expectations. 

The company also guided lighter-than-expected revenue growth in the fiscal second quarter between 5% and 7% and adjusted earnings per share between $1.30 and $1.34. 

Cloud services and license support segment revenue increased 13% from a year ago to $9.55 billion but the cloud license and on-premises license segment revenue decreased 10% to $809 million.    

Hardware revenue fell 6% to $714 million. 

Casey's General Stores Inc jumped 4% to $246.30 after the retail chain reported better-than-expected quarterly results. 

Quarterly revenue increased to $3.87 billion and diluted earnings per share rose to$4.52.  

Apple Inc jumped 0.2% to $179.63 ahead of the company's annual event today and the company is widely expected to announce the release of iPhone 15.