These Stocks Moved the Most Today: Zions Bancorp, Jefferies, Amex, Oracle, Novo Nordisk, Lilly, State Street, CSX, and More

Traders at the New York Stock Exchange. (NYSE)

Key Points

• Zions Bancorp stock rises after receiving an upgrade to Outperform from analysts at Baird. A selloff in the stock Thursday over bank loan worries was ‘overdone,’ said the analysts.
• Novo Nordisk tumbles after President Donald Trump suggests its prices for Ozempic and Wegovy could drop to $150 from around $1,000.
• American Express rises after beating analysts’ earnings estimates in the third quarter.

Stocks rose Friday as Wall Street perked up after President Donald Trump suggested his on-again, off-again meeting with China President Xi Jinping ultimately could take place later this month.

These stocks made moves Friday:

Zions Bancorp jumped 5.8% after falling 13% on Thursday. Analysts at Baird boosted Zions to Outperform from Neutral and maintained a $65 price target on shares of the regional lender. The upgrade came after Zions took a $50 million charge-off in its third quarter due to legal actions against parties affiliated with two of its borrowers. The selloff was “overdone,” Baird said, arguing that the credit risk likely was limited to these particular loans.

Regional bank peer Western Alliance Bancorp. gained 3.2%, rebounding some after closing down 11% on Thursday. The bank said it filed a lawsuit in August against one of its borrowers, alleging the company committed fraud.

Jefferies Financial climbed 5.9% to $51.70 after tumbling nearly 11% on Thursday. Analysts at Oppenheimer on Friday upgraded the stock to Outperform from Perform with a price target of $81. Oppenheimer said the investment bank’s exposure to First Brands was “very limited.” Last week, Jefferies said a unit of one of its asset managers had invested roughly a quarter of its $3 billion trade finance portfolio in assets tied to First Brands, the auto-parts supplier that filed for bankruptcy in late September.

American Express rose 7.3% after the credit-card giant reported third-quarter earnings that beat analysts’ estimates as revenue rose 11% to $18.43 billion, topping forecasts of $18.05 billion. Amex also raised the lower end of its full-year guidance range on profit and revenue.

U.S.-listed shares of Novo Nordisk fell 3.1% after Trump suggested the price of its blockbuster diabetes and weight-loss drugs Ozempic and Wegovy could be reduced to $150 a month. The current list price for the medicines is around $1,000. Trump’s comments came amid a wider push for lower medicine prices for Americans. Shares of Eli Lilly, which makes rival drugs Mounjaro and Zepbound, fell 2%.

State Street’s third-quarter earnings beat Wall Street estimates but the stock fell 1.4% after net interest income declined 1.1% to $715 million, “primarily driven by lower average short-end rates and deposit-mix shift,” the bank said.

Oracle declined 6.9% after shares of the enterprise software company closed up 3.1% in the previous session. The move higher Thursday followed the stock whipsawing throughout the trading session as Oracle discussed the outlook for the next five years and weighed in on cloud margins. Following a report by the Information last week saying that profit margins at Oracle’s cloud server-rental business were surprisingly low, the company attributed the low number to the rapid expansion of data-center expenses before customer contracts go live.

Shares of Interactive Brokers fell 3.3% even as the electronic brokerage’s third-quarter earnings beat analysts’ expectations. Earnings of 59 cents a share topped Wall Street forecasts of 54 cents. Earnings were helped by higher trading volumes as the stock market rally has enticed investors to open more accounts and use more margin.

CSX, the railroad company, posted third-quarter adjusted earnings of 44 cents on revenue of $3.59 billion, beating expectations for earnings of 42 cents on revenue of $3.57 billion. The stock rose 1.7%.

AST SpaceMobile declined 6.7% to $83.49 after shares of the satellite operator were downgraded to Underweight from Overweight at Barclays. The analysts left their price target unchanged at $60. While direct-to-cellular will prove to be a “very attractive opportunity” and AST SpaceMobile has key assets to succeed, the stock’s valuation “has become excessive,” the analyst said.

Kenvue ended Thursday’s session as the worst-performing stock in the S&P 500, sliding 13%. A lawsuit filed Tuesday at the U.K. High Court alleged Johnson & Johnson, which spun off Kenvue in 2023, knowingly sold baby powder that was contaminated with asbestos, a carcinogen. The lawsuit targeted both Johnson & Johnson and Kenvue U.K. Ltd., a subsidiary. Kenvue denied the allegations in a statement, saying the baby powder “did not contain asbestos, and does not cause cancer.” Kenvue shares rose 8.4% on Friday, while J&J shares rose 0.6%.

Write to Joe Woelfel at joseph.woelfel@barrons.com and Mackenzie Tatananni at mackenzie.tatananni@barrons.com