Check out which companies are making headlines before the bell:
Walt Disney – Disney's "Beauty and the Beast" set a March opening weekend record with $170 million in North American ticket sales.
Transocean – The oilfield services company struck a deal to sell 15 drilling rigs to Norway's Borr Drilling for $1.35 billion. The deal includes 10 rigs already in Transocean's fleet and five that are under construction.
IBM – IBM introduced a new service that lets companies build applications in IBM's cloud using blockchain code.
MoneyGram – MoneyGram offered to share confidential information with suitor and rival electronic payments company Euronet Worldwide , according to Reuters. Euronet had made a $1 billion acquisition offer last week, despite MoneyGram already having a deal in place to be bought by Alibaba affiliate Ant Financial.
Sprouts Farmers Market — Sprouts is in preliminary talks to move with grocery chain Albertsons, according to a Bloomberg report. The early stage proposal involved taking the organic grocer private and adding it to Albertsons brands such as Safeway, Vons, and Shaw's. Reports of the talks are also lifting shares of Whole Foods.
Shake Shack – The restaurant chain's stock was upgraded to "neutral" from "underperform" at Wedbush, which gave valuation and lowered expectations as the primary reasons for its move.
Tiffany – The luxury goods retailer was upgraded to "outperform" from "neutral" at William Blair. The report said Tiffany's business has become more stable and that the stock may benefit from easier comparisons.
Unilever – The consumer products giant is set to sell some of its food brands for nearly $7.5 billion, according to British newspaper reports. That follows its rejection of a $143 billion takeover offer from Kraft Heinz last month.
Alaska Air – The stock was upgraded to "buy" from "hold" at Stifel Nicolaus, with Stifel pointing to so-far unrecognized value in the airline's loyalty program.
Nektar Therapeutics – The drugmaker announced positive results from a study of its new opioid pain medication, which is designed to treat pain effectively without causing abuse and addiction as has been the case with standard opioids.
Abbott Labs — Study results for Abbott's dissolving vascular stent showed significantly higher adverse events in patients than those treated with Abbott's older Xience stent. However, researchers did say that new guidelines involving the newer stent's use should improve results.
Intel – The chipmaker has debuted products based on its newest memory technology, which closes the gap between conventional and flash memory.
Mobileye – Mobileye is not locked into its takeover deal with Intel announced last week, according to a New York Post report. The paper said the maker of autonomous driving technology may be looking for a higher offer.
PPG Industries – PPG may have a renewed chance of buying Dutch rival and paint maker Akzo Nobel. The Wall Street Journal reports that activist investor Elliott Management owns a stake in Akzo, and is pushing it to engage in talks with PPG.
Sonic– Sonic was downgraded to "hold" from "buy" at Canaccord Genuity, which cites increased discounting and its belief that sales at the restaurant chain have been soft in recent months.
Apple – Apple is still rated "outperform" at Cowen, but the firm raised its price target to $155 per share from $135, saying current consensus estimates for Apple remain far too low.