Don't we all feel we need some global happiness? Well, it certainly came true for the aptly named Joy Global Inc (NYSE:JOY) whose shares gained 20% on Thursday after the company bucked the trend of a commodities' malaise and reported profits where analysts expected break-even.
The mining equipment maker reported adjusted quarterly profit of 9 cents per share, while revenue came in below forecasts.
All told, the company said it performed better than expected in a challenging commodity market, and analysts are noting a double-digit increase in bookings last quarter.
Joy Global shares were last seen up 19.7% at $19.99.
Turning to the tech markets, there were several developments of note.
Box Inc (NYSE:BOX) shares dropped by 11.4% to $11.35 after the cloud storage company reported an adjusted loss of 18 cents per share for its latest quarter. Although that was 6 cents a share less than analysts feared and even revenue was slightly above estimates, the company's billings fell short of expectations, pressuring the shares.
Storage is a highly competitive industry, where every day the there seems to be more of it created for online use - and more competitors arrive too.
Everyone from Google Mail, to Evernote, to Samsung will offer free storage. So Box is not just competing against its immediate rivals like DropBox, but also against integrated solutions which happen to offer storage too.
If Box is having a hard time of it, so too other the likes of DropBox. In January, fund manager T. Rowe Price cut the valuation of its holdings in Dropbox by more than 50% and demonstrating declining investor confidence in the cloud file-sharing company. Among others to cut back were investors like Fidelity and BlackRock. Those actions pretty much put IPO plans on ice.
Meanwhile, Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL) was having a rough time of it, with shares dipping 0.8% to $97.70 while the Nasdaq ticker was higher on Thursday, after it was revealed the iPhone maker plans to raise up to $4bn in debt in Taiwan and Australia, according to Dow Jones. On Wednesday, that debt was believed to be only $1bn.
Separately, brokers at Goldman Sachs trimmed their earnings estimates for Apple, based on slower growth for the smartphone industry, and cut its price target to $124 per share from $136.
Goldman also had a band in the share performance of another tech company on Thursday, as Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA), the graphics chipmaker's coverage was initiated by the investment bank.
It might seem puzzling that someone as influential in Android tablet devices since 2011 was only just being recognised now, but Goldman Sachs wasted no further time as it gave Nvidia a "buy" rating, saying Nvidia was a rare example in the semiconductor industry of a growth story. Goldman cites the proliferation of graphics chips in non-traditional markets such as automotive as a driver of the future.
Nvidia shares were up 0.6% at $47.10.
Finally, Oracle (NYSE:ORCL) shares were down 4.1% at $38.63 after the business software company became the target of a lawsuit by a former senior finance manager, who said she faced retaliation for questioning cloud business accounting practices which she felt were unlawful.
Svetlana Blackburn, a former senior finance manager at Oracle, is accusing the business software maker of trying to pressure her into cooking the books in an effort to boost the company's stock price, according to a lawsuit filed Wednesday in a federal court.