Market Insider

Stocks making the biggest moves midday: Tesla, Microsoft, Ford, Twitter, eBay & more

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella speaks at the Digital-Life-Design conference in Munich, Germany, on January 16, 2017.
Tobias Hase | picture alliance | Getty Images

Check out the companies making headlines in midday trading:

Tesla – Shares of Elon Musk's automaker climbed 17.8% in trading after Tesla reported third-quarter results that surprised Wall Street, delivering a profit of $1.86 a share. The stock's pop was one of its biggest in the past decade after the report, which also showed Tesla making faster than expected progress on building its highly anticipated factory in Shanghai.

Microsoft — Shares of the tech giant rose 2% on quarterly results that topped analyst expectations. Microsoft reported earnings per share of $1.38 on revenue of $33.06 billion. Analysts polled by Refinitiv expected a profit of $1.25 per share and sales of $32.23 billion. The beats were driven by a 59% surge in revenue for Azure, Microsoft's cloud business.

Ford – Shares of Ford tanked 6.6% after the automaker lowered its guidance for the rest of the year based on falling consumer demand, primarily in China. The automaker said it expects to make less profit than previously expected for the year, lowering its 2019 earnings guidance to between $6.5 billion and $7 billion. Deutsche Bank downgraded Ford to hold from buy following the announcement.

Twitter – Twitter shares had their worst day since February 2014, its second worst day of trading ever, after the company said advertising issues contributed to a sizable revenues miss in the third quarter. The stock dropped 20.8% after Goldman Sachs cut its price target on the company by more than 30%.

eBay – Shares of the e-commerce company dropped 9.1% after eBay reported quarterly results that saw the critical measure of gross merchandise value (GMV) fall for a third straight quarter. Even though eBay's results were slightly better than expected on the top and bottom lines, Wall Street analysts emphasized the company's earnings were unexceptional.

Dow – Shares of Dow rose 4.7% after the chemical company beat on the top and bottom lines of its third quarter results. Dow reported earnings of 91 cents on revenue of $10.764 billion. Wall Street expected earnings of 73 cents per share on revenue of $10.735 billion, according to Refinitiv.

3M – The industrial and consumer company's stock fell 4.1% after reporting worse-than-expected revenue, in addition to 3M's lowered forecast for both fourth quarter and fiscal year earnings.

PayPal – A break-out quarter for PayPal catapulted its stock up 8.6%. Total payment volume, a key metric for PayPal and its peers, came in at $178.7 billion, well ahead of expectations. It reported earnings per share of 61 cents versus 52 cents forecast.

Hershey – The consumer products giant's stock dropped 2.2% after Hershey reaffirmed its fiscal year earnings forecast between the range of $5.68 a share to $5.74 a share, below the $5.76 a share Wall Street analysts surveyed by FactSet expected.

– CNBC's Maggie Fitzgerald, Tom Franck and Fred Imbert contributed to this report.