FedEx, Winnebago Rise Premarket; Oracle, Darden, Rician Fall By Investing.com

By Peter Nurse 

Investing.com — Stocks in focus in premarket trade on Friday, December 17th. Please refresh for updates.

• FedEx (NYSE:) stock rose 5.5% after the delivery company reinstated its original fiscal 2022 forecast late Thursday, having negotiated persistent labor challenges with a relative degree of success during its peak holiday season.

• Oracle (NYSE:) stock fell 5.1% after the WSJ reported that the enterprise software company could pay as much as $30 billion, its largest acquisition to date, to buy Cerner (NASDAQ:), an electronic-medical-records company. Cerner stock rose 16%.

• Darden Restaurants (NYSE:) stock fell 3.6% after the owner of Olive Garden announced the planned retirement of CEO Gene Lee; that overshadowed the fact that it raised its forecasts for fiscal 2022 on solid quarterly results.

• Winnebago (NYSE:) stock rose 4.1% after the recreational vehicle manufacturer beat quarterly profit and revenue expectations, as the company benefited from the Covid-19 pandemic skewing tourism spending to domestic vacation opportunities.

• Rivian (NASDAQ:) stock fell 8.4% after the electric vehicle manufacturer reported a hefty net loss in its first quarterly results as a public company, and also said its expected production would fall short of its 2021 target, an inauspicious omen for its ambitious plans to scale up production much more next year.

• General Motors (NYSE:) stock fell 3.6% after the auto giant announced that Dan Ammann, the chief executive of its self-driving car subsidiary Cruise, is leaving with immediate effect. This comes just as the company is preparing to receive approvals to operate a self-driving car service in San Francisco.

• Starbucks (NASDAQ:) stock fell 1.4% after Baird downgraded its stance on the coffee chain to ‘neutral’ from ‘outperform’, warning of uncertainty over its business in China as well as rising costs.

• Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:) stock fell 1.3%, following the tech sector lower, and weighed by the news that around 50,000 Facebook users have been targeted by private surveillance companies.

• U.S. Steel (NYSE:) stock fell 5.1% after the steel producer issued disappointing guidance for the current quarter, citing higher expenses and cautious customer buying patterns.