Investopedia Markets News (all except PF)

• Starbucks is handing out reusable red cups on Thursday as part of its annual Red Cup Day promotion, which is intended to cut back on single-use waste.
• Dozens are already selling the limited-edition cup on eBay at prices up to $80.

Did your Starbucks run out of red cups? Don't fret: Thanks to eBay, every day can be Red Cup Day.

Starbucks (SBUX) is hosting its annual Red Cup Day, during which customers ordering a holiday drink Thursday are eligible for a free, 16-ounce reusable cup. The promotion lasts as long as supplies do, and in prior years some cafes handed out their last cardinal-red-and-white cups by early afternoon.

Supply of the cup doesn't appear to be an issue on eBay. Dozens of the 2025 edition cups are already listed for sale on the site, with prices ranging from $7 to $80 for one paired with a "bearista" on the lid. More than 100 prior-edition cups were sold on eBay in the past year, with prices averaging around $10, according to eBay Seller Hub data. Some are currently listed at prices running into the five digits, though those seem steep to say the least.

The red cups are intended to reduce single-use waste. Starbucks knocks $0.10 off orders when customers provide their own cup—the red one, or something else—though it's unclear how often this happens. Starbucks didn't respond to Investopedia's questions in time for publication.

Starbucks cups aren't the only merch having a moment. Sales of Pokémon cards, Labubu dolls, model cars, and other limited-edition items are booming, which means you may be able to earn extra cash from forgotten toys.

The festive cups undoubtedly generate both hype and sales for Starbucks. Several customers have taken to social media to share that lines were abnormally long on Red Cup Day. The company is sure to cheer the business, with Starbucks more than a year into a turnaround campaign.

The java giant has been using algorithms to sequence and speed up orders, while trying to make cafes a more enjoyable place to spend time. Last month, CEO Brian Niccol said the effort was paying off, with Starbucks' breaking a six-quarter streak of falling same-store sales.

Niccol has told investors that Starbucks is better staffing stores, with the goal of improving customers' experiences. Still, Starbucks Workers United, a group organizing a union, launched a strike Thursday due to frustration over what it sees as understaffed stores, insufficient hours, inadequate pay, and other issues.

More than 1,000 baristas at 65 locations are engaging in what's being called the Red Cup Rebellion strike, Starbucks Workers United said. The campaign could ultimately impact about 550 locations, the group said. It wasn't immediately clear how disruptive the strike has been; Starbucks and Starbucks Workers United didn't respond to Investopedia's inquiries in time for publication.

Shares of Starbucks were recently down by about 1%, putting them off by about 5% so far this year.

• Thousands of federal workers furloughed or working without pay during the government shutdown will receive back pay in a matter of days.
  
• An estimated 730,000 working without pay and 670,000 on furlough missed about $14.6 billion in collective pay.
  
• The law requires the back pay to go out as soon as possible.
  

Finally, millions of missing paychecks are about to hit the bank accounts of federal workers as the government reopens from its 43-day shutdown.

With the government now re-opened, federal workers are on track to get back pay they're owed in a matter of days. Furloughed workers as well as those working without pay will get paid as early as Saturday, with the specifics varying by what agency they work for, Semafor reported, citing a document from the White House.

Back pay will help restore financial stability for federal workers, many of whom live paycheck-to-paycheck, and boost national economic activity.

Federal law requires the government to pay federal workers "at the earliest date possible" after a shutdown, rather than waiting for a regular pay period. While President Donald Trump had threatened not to give worker back pay, and had fired others, the law re-opening the government requires those dismissed to be reinstated and given full back pay.

The return of paychecks will be a relief for the affected workers—an estimated 670,00 furloughed and 730,000 working without pay according to the Bipartisan Policy Center—as well as the broader economy.

By the time the shutdown ended Wednesday, federal workers had missed a cumulative 3.1 million paychecks according to the BPC. At an average of $4,700 per paycheck by the BPC's estimate, that would mean about $14.6 billion in back pay will go out next week.

The resolution of the shutdown ends what was a "harrowing" experience for federal workers, who missed multiple paychecks and faced uncertainty about whether and when they could return to their jobs.

Forecasters expect the economy to mostly recover as the missing pay returns and workers make purchases they delayed during the shutdown. However, some of the economic damage may be permanent.

• The government's statistical agencies are getting to work producing key economic reports that were delayed by the government shutdown that ended Wednesday.
  
• Forecasters expect a few reports from September to be released in a matter of days, while others could be delayed for weeks. Another key question is whether reports from October will ever be released.
  

The government's data dark age is coming to an end, but it might take some time for the government's statistical agencies to catch up to their regular schedule.

Washington is getting back to work after having been shut for a record 43 days, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Bureau of Economic Analysis, the Census Bureau, and other agencies can now start to play catch-up. Based on past government shutdowns, experts believe that certain long-delayed economic reports will be released in a matter of days. Others may take weeks to compile, and some may never be released at all.

The U.S. economy looks precarious, which makes it imperative to supply fresh economic data to investors, economists and policymakers and other decision makers.

Investors, policymakers, and business leaders are especially anxious to see data on inflation and the job market, since recent reports have flashed some warning signs. The most recent government reports showed the job market slowing down and inflation heating up. That poses a dilemma for officials at the Federal Reserve who must decide whether to lower borrowing costs to boost hiring or keep rates higher to fight inflation.

"There is a lot of uncertainty about when the data flow will get underway, particularly given the duration of the shutdown," Nancy Vanden Houten, lead economist at Oxford Economics, wrote in a commentary. "Based on past shutdowns, we anticipate data originally scheduled for release in the first half of October—primarily data covering September—will be released fairly quickly. However, the timetable will vary depending on the normal data collection process for each indicator."

As of Thursday afternoon, the BLS and other agencies had yet to release revised schedules. Here's what economists expect:

Economists say the Bureau of Labor Statistics will publish its monthly report on job creation for September soon, as the bureau has already conducted the surveys used to gather the data. The report was originally scheduled for release on Oct. 3, two days after the shutdown began. Researchers at Goldman Sachs expect it to come out at some point next week, on Nov. 18 or Nov. 19.

Forecasters expected U.S. employers to have added 50,000 jobs for the month, according to a survey of economists by Bloomberg, up from 22,000 in August.

The Producer Price Index report, originally scheduled for Oct. 16, may also come out fairly quickly, because the data has already been collected, Vanden Houten wrote. The consensus forecast calls for producer prices to have climbed 0.3% in September after declining 0.1% in August.

Data on September's retail sales, reported by the Census Bureau, will likely be delayed for longer, Vanden Houten wrote, since that data collection would have continued into October, when the government was shut down. That monthly report was also scheduled for Oct. 16. The median forecast called for sales to rise 0.4% over the month, slower than the 0.6% increase in August.

The October jobs report may be problematic, since the government was closed when the BLS normally collects data. It's possible the bureau could release reports for October and November together in December, Vanden Houten wrote. The jobs report was supposed to come out Nov. 7.

Economists at Goldman Sachs expect the BLS should be able to report October payrolls, which are based on surveys of employers. However, the survey that estimates the unemployment rate, which is sent out to households, will be more of a challenge.

"The inability to conduct surveys will be especially problematic for the household employment survey," Vanden Houten wrote.

Whether or not the Consumer Price Index for October will ever be released is an open question. The data "cannot be estimated in the traditional way for October," Goldman economists wrote.

"We can't completely rule out the possibility that some October data is never released," Vanden Houten wrote.

The Consumer Price Index was scheduled for release Thursday, and forecasters expected it to show prices rose 3.1% over the year, the same annual rate increase as September, according to a survey of economists by Dow Jones Newswires.

The White House has raised the possibility that October's CPI and jobs reports will likely never be released, an unprecedented event in the history of the BLS going back to 1913.

The reports for November, normally released in December, are likely to be delayed at least a week as statistical agencies continue to play catch-up, Goldman said. Another wrinkle is that the prices used to create the Consumer Price Index may be distorted because the bureau will be collecting them in late November when holiday sales have started.

• The Dow posted its 17th record close of the year yesterday, ending a session above 48000 for the first time ever.
• The 30-name index of blue-chip stocks has outpaced the Nasdaq and the S&P 500 over the past two trading sessions—and over the past month.

Long live the Dow: The oldest of the three major stock-market barometers—and, usually, the least ostentatious—is popping wheelies these days.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average rallied above the 48000 level for the first time on Wednesday, posting its 17th record close of the year. And though its rise has lagged the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq Composite year-to-date, it has outpaced the two tech-heavy indexes in recent sessions and the past month. It's also taking less of a hit amid the market bleed today.

The Dow's 30-constituent slice of the equities market is faring better lately as investors rub some AI glitz out of their eyes and pull back from some of the tech stocks that have led much of the year’s rally. Some investment pros say the Dow's recent outperformance could continue as investors start to notice that there are other things to invest in besides big tech.

Tech stocks have been doing a lot of the legwork this year as broad market indexes notch record highs. For investors anticipating a pullback, they may find more opportunity in value and high-quality stocks.

Meanwhile, valuation concerns continue. "Technology stocks are trading 45% above the forward multiple of the rest of the market," said Eric Teal, chief investment officer for Comerica Wealth Management. "We believe the less tech-centric Dow index is likely to continue to outpace the S&P 500, given the relative valuation disparity."

The top performers in the Dow so far this year aren't exactly non-AI, but they aren't traditional tech stocks either: Caterpillar (CAT) has climbed 53% on the premise that it's a data-center play, while Goldman Sachs (GS) is up 44% over the same period, alongside other major bank stocks.

"We’re seeing a classic rotation underway," said Catalyst Funds CIO and portfolio manager David Miller. "Investors are taking some profits in mega-cap tech after an extended AI driven run and reallocating toward more reasonably valued sectors including industrials, financials, energy, and healthcare."

"Dow 48000 is more psychological than fundamental," he said. "But it signals that the market is broadening out."

• Oppenheimer analysts raised their price target for Nvidia's stock to $265 from $225, saying they believe the chipmaker "remains best positioned to win in AI."
• The stock has climbed close to 40% in 2025 as demand for the company's AI chips surged, though the shares have pulled back recently amid worries about an AI bubble.
• Nvidia is set to report its latest quarterly results next Wednesday.

One Nvidia bull just got more bullish.

Analysts at Oppenheimer boosted their target for the chipmaker's stock to $265 from $225, telling clients yesterday they believe Nvidia "remains best positioned to win in AI" after CEO Jensen Huang highlighted strong demand for its AI chips at an event last month.

Shares of Nvidia (NVDA) were down 4% at around $186 in recent trading, as the tech sector was leading losses on the major U.S. indexes on Thursday. (Read our daily markets coverage here.) Coming into today's session, the stock had gained 44% since the start of the year, though the stock is down from the record high of $212 set late last month.

Tech sector stocks have pulled back recently amid worries about an AI bubble, with a muted reaction to strong earnings from rival Advanced Micro Devices(AMD) last week and a drop in shares of AI software darling Palantir (PLTR) following its better-than-expected results suggesting investors may have become harder to impress, with weaker rewards and greater punishments in response to quarterly results.

That could mean a more challenging setup for Nvidia, as the chipmaker prepares to report its quarterly earnings after the closing bell next Wednesday.

Big gains for tech stocks this year on enthusiasm for AI plays such as Nvidia have helped propel the major indexes to fresh highs, though their run-up has also fueled widespread worries about a bubble, injecting uncertainty into the trade. Next week's earnings report from Nvidia could be a make-or-break moment for the AI trade.

Still, a big jump in AMD's stock price yesterday after the company unveiled ambitious new targets and CEO Lisa Su told analysts the company is seeing "insatiable" demand could point to potential for Nvidia to find more support with new announcements, despite some skepticism around the AI trade.

Most Wall Street analysts believe Nvidia's stock has room to rise, with 13 of the 14 analysts with current ratings compiled by Visible Alpha calling it a "buy," compared to one "hold." Their mean target around $212 would suggest 9% upside from Wednesday's close.

Major U.S. equities indexes fell Thursday, a day after President Donald Trump signed a funding bill to end the longest federal shutdown in U.S. history. Technology shares dragged the Nasdaq down nearly 2%, while the S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average were also lower.

Shares of The Walt Disney Co. (DIS) sank 9% to pace S&P 500 decliners after the media and entertainment giant reported weaker-than-expected revenue as its linear TV networks business continues to struggle.

Flutter Entertainment (FLUT) stock dropped 11% after the FanDuel parent cut its full-year revenue and adjusted EBITDA forecasts.

WEBTOON Entertainment (WBTN) shares plummeted 25% after the online comics site projected declining fourth-quarter revenue.

Cisco Systems (CSCO) stock surged over 4% after the network-equipment firm lifted its full-year profit outlook.

Sealed Air (SEE) shares soared 19% following a report that the maker of Bubble Wrap and other packaging products was in talks with private-equity firm Clayton Dubilier & Rice to be taken private.

Firefly Aerospace (FLY) shares jumped 17% after the company posted better-than-expected results and issued a rosy full-year revenue projection.

Oil futures rose nearly 1% at just above $59 a barrel. Gold futures were little changed at around $4,200 an ounce. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note ticked higher to 4.10%. The U.S. dollar was lower against the euro, pound, and yen. Prices for most major cryptocurrencies were mixed, with Bitcoin trading under $101,000.

• Thousands of high-income student loan borrowers are being blocked from switching to the Income-Based Repayment (IBR) plan, preventing them from qualifying for tax-free loan forgiveness.
• If processing delays are not rectified, these borrowers may not be able to have their loans discharged before the tax-free deadline expires at the end of the year.

Some student loan borrowers are being blocked from switching to a federal repayment plan that would help them get tax-free loan forgiveness before the end of the year.

Many borrowers are seeking to transition into the Income-Based Repayment plan, in which they may be eligible for student loan forgiveness before the end of the year. Those who become eligible for loan discharge in 2025, typically after making 20 or 25 years of qualifying payments, do not have to pay taxes on their loan forgiveness.

The problem is that the Department of Education and loan servicers are holding the IBR transfer applications for some borrowers rather than processing them, making it impossible for many to become eligible for forgiveness this year. Forgiveness for those who reach eligibility after 2025 will be treated as taxable income.

Millions of borrowers on the Saving for a Valuable Education repayment plan remain in forbearance, which prevents them from making payments that would qualify them for loan forgiveness.

Some of these borrowers have already met the payment requirement for forgiveness or are one to two payments away from doing so. However, borrowers on SAVE are ineligible for forgiveness, so they must transfer to IBR, Pay as You Earn, or Income-Contingent Repayment to finish their payments.

The IBR plan has been the primary plan that SAVE plan borrowers have transitioned to, as it generally offers more affordable payments than other plans and is the most stable option for the future, since the others will be phased out.

However, there's a significant hiccup preventing many SAVE plan borrowers from switching to the IBR plan: an income requirement scheduled to be phased out has still not been removed.

Millions of student loan borrowers could face a significant tax bill in the next couple of years if they don't have their loans discharged before the end of 2025, when a tax break expires.

A partial financial hardship requirement in the IBR plan requires the applicant's payments to be lower than they would be under a standard 10-year repayment plan. That means that borrowers with high incomes or low loan amounts are typically rejected from IBR.

A provision in the "One Big, Beautiful Bill" required the Department of Education to allow borrowers to switch to the Income-Based Repayment plan starting July 4, even if they do not meet the partial financial hardship requirement.

However, student loan servicers continued to reject applicants who did not meet this requirement for months after that.

In October, the Department of Education affirmed in a court filing that it would not deny borrowers who did not meet the partial financial hardship requirement. It also said borrowers who applied for IBR on or after July 4 but were rejected due to the requirement would be invited to reapply.

Yet, the department has not provided any updates on when it will begin processing applications for these borrowers. When Investopedia reached out to spokespeople from the Department of Education, it directed borrowers to its website, which says system changes to implement the updates to IBR will be completed in winter 2025.

The IBR plan remains the most affordable income-driven repayment plan for many SAVE borrowers seeking to make progress toward loan forgiveness.

Borrowers who do not meet the partial financial hardship requirement are not eligible to enter into the PAYE plan. The ICR plan does not require partial financial hardship and provides loan forgiveness for borrowers after 25 years of qualifying payments. However, payments under the ICR plan are generally more expensive than those under the IBR plan.

IBR payments are capped at what the borrower would pay under a 10-year standard plan. This is particularly important for borrowers who do not meet the partial financial hardship criteria, as their payments, calculated based on their income, will generally be very high.

SAVE borrowers who do not meet the partial financial hardship requirement and are looking to complete their payments before the loan forgiveness tax rule ends will either have to make high payments on ICR or hope they will be accepted into IBR in time.

Episode 268 of the Investopedia Express podcast with Caleb Silver (Nov. 10, 2025)

Subscribe Now: Apple Podcasts / Spotify / PlayerFM

Investors can’t help but feel like the stock market might be riding on the thin skin of a bubble, but the facts will tell us that even if we are, it doesn’t mean we should not expect more strong returns based on trends and price action. Carson Wealth’s Ryan Detrick and Sonu Varghese join the show to help up separate how we feel, and what’s really happening inside market dynamics. Plus, is AI too big to fail? The financial media has been pounding that drum given the hundreds of billions of dollars invested in building more "compute" to support the future plans of the biggest companies in the world. We’ll examine past euphorias to try to figure out the future.

Links for Show Notes:

• https://www.carsongroup.com/insights/facts-vs-feelings-podcast/
  

• The U.S. Treasury Department is no longer producing the penny, and it will start disappearing from circulation early next year.
  
• The one-cent coin, first minted in the late 1700s, has become virtually worthless because of inflation. An Investopedia reporter took a ride around his hometown in New Jersey in May to see what he could buy for one penny.
  

The U.S. government is no longer minting pennies, and soon, cash retail transactions will be rounded to the nearest nickel. What, exactly, does a single penny buy you these days? We took a drive around town to find out. 

On Wednesday, the U.S. minted the last penny in Philadelphia.

The one-cent coin had a good run. When first minted in the late 1700s, it was a small but useful amount of money, and could purchase something like a biscuit, a candle, or a piece of candy. But more than 200 years of inflation have eroded the value of the ubiquitous copper coins to the point where they're hardly worth the trouble of keeping track of, to say nothing of the expense of minting them—about four cents apiece, according to the Treasury Department.

By early next year, there won't be enough pennies in circulation, and stores will have to start rounding to the nearest five cents, the Treasury Department said.

That led us to wonder: Is a penny worth anything at all? Can you go into any business with a single penny and buy something with it? A quick Internet search suggested that a few items were available for a penny, including individual nails at some hardware stores, test sheets of paper at copy places, and one-cent stamps at the post office.

I wanted to see for myself. I took a ride around my hometown of Marlton, N.J., on a rainy Thursday afternoon in May to see if my spare change could be converted into goods and services of any kind.

The most straightforward way to spend a single penny seemed to be at the gas station, where regular unleaded was $3.099 a gallon. I pulled up to Wawa in my Chevy Malibu. By my calculations, I could get about two and a half tablespoons of gas, enough to power my car 450 feet to my next destination. I reached into my cup holder for a shiny copper-clad coin.

In New Jersey, it's illegal to pump your own gas. I would have to actually ask the attendant for $0.01 worth of fuel.

"This is going to sound weird," I said through the window. "I need exactly one cent worth of gas, or as close as you can get it."

The attendant was a good sport, and was even enthusiastic when I told him about the demise of the penny, and my experiment.

"I'll see what I can do," he said. "It's tricky though."

The quickest of quick taps on the fuel pump sent a tiny dribble of gas into the tank, and the readout shot up to $0.04. The cheapest trip to the gas station of my life by far, but quadruple what I had hoped to pay. I would either have to find a gas station with a slower pump, or go back to the drawing board.

My next idea was live bait: if I could find bait sold by the pound, perhaps an individual bit of fish food could be bought for a single penny and set free. It was about to be a nightcrawler's lucky day.

But it was not to be. At Dick's Sporting Goods, the bait was sold in $4.99 tubs, and by a quick estimate, each individual worm cost at least a dime anyway. A penny won't even get you a meal for a robin these days.

With food as expensive as it is, this seemed like a longshot. But I did have one idea: Shop-Rite has a hot food bar for $8.99 a pound. One of the items is fried rice. Since the average grain of rice weighs about 21 milligrams, I should be able to get something like 50 grains of rice for a penny. I put a tiny spoonful of rice into a take-out tray and took it to the self checkout machine: it came up as 29 cents.

I bought the rice, ate all but a few grains, and tried again. This time, the machine came up with an error and asked me to wait for a cashier. Maybe the nearly empty tray was too light for the scale?

"This is going to sound crazy," I told the cashier when he arrived. "But I am trying to buy exactly one cent worth of rice."

The cashier smiled and nodded, in the way you would do to someone who insists they're not crazy, manually entered a $0.01 cost to my transaction, and plunked my penny into the change receptacle. I had bought an absolutely minuscule amount of rice for one cent.

Given the penny's extreme lack of buying power, it seems long past time for the government to get out of the business of minting them.

Indeed, people have been calling for the death of the one-cent coin for decades. But the penny still has its defenders, and a surprising amount of research has been published about the pros and cons of eliminating the coin.

In February, a researcher at the University of Toronto found that getting rid of the penny could actually cost the government money in the end, since it would result in the need for more nickels, which also cost more to mint than their face value.

In a post-penny world, it's unlikely that price tags will change to reflect the new five-cent minimum denomination, if the experience of our neighbor to the north is any guide. Price tags ending in .99 are still common in Canada, which eliminated the penny in 2013.

Now, anything costing 99 cents will be rounded up to $1 at the cash register. Believe it or not, researchers have studied the potential impact of this. A 2001 study found that merchants would pocket all those extra pennies, equating to a "rounding tax" of $600 million a year on customers. But those findings were challenged by a 2007 article that found the "rounding tax" virtually disappeared when you took sales tax into account, since it pushed up prices on individual items enough to make them round down sometimes.

And if you are the type of person who sees the opportunity to get free stuff by making one- or two-cent purchases and having them rounded down to a cool $0, lawmakers are ahead of you. The law eliminating the penny specifies that those amounts will round up to five cents.

Editor's Note: This article originally ran in May. It's been updated to reflect that the last penny was minted in November.

News of the day for Nov. 13, 2025

Stock futures are slightly lower after the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed above 48,000 for the first time; President Donald Trump signed funding legislation to reopen the government through January, ending the 43-day shutdown; Walt Disney (DIS) shares are lower after the entertainment giant posted weaker-than-expected quarterly revenue; Cisco (CSCO) shares are soaring after the networking company's results topped Wall Street estimates; and Sealed Air (SEE) shares are moving higher on a report the packaging firm could be taken private. Here's what you need to know today.

Stock futures are slightly lower this morning after the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at a record high Wednesday ahead of the vote in Congress to end the federal government shutdown. Dow futures were down 0.1% recently, while futures linked to the benchmark S&P 500 and the tech-heavy Nasdaq slipped 0.2%. The S&P finished fractionally higher on Wednesday, while the Nasdaq is riding a two-day losing streak. Gold futures were up 0.8% at $4,245 an ounce, trading at their highest levels in three weeks. Bitcoin was at $103,000, up from an overnight low of around $101,000. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note, which affects borrowing costs on all sorts of consumer loans, inched higher to 4.09%.

President Donald Trump signed legislation passed in the House of Representatives on Wednesday that ended the longest U.S. government shutdown at 43 days. The bill, passed on a 222-209 vote, will fund government operations through the end of January. The legislation doesn’t restore the healthcare subsidies that were at the center of the shutdown, though congressional leaders have promised a vote on that issue in December. After Trump signed the bill, the Office of Management and Budget ordered all furloughed federal workers to return to their positions on Thursday. That would include staffers at government statistical agencies, whose absences have led to the delay of several key economic reports. The deal is also expected to eventually bring an end to the flight delays that have resulted from air traffic controller staffing issues.

Walt Disney (DIS) shares are sliding in premarket trading after the entertainment giant reported revenue that fell short of Wall Street expectations. Disney reported fiscal fourth-quarter revenue of $22.46 billion, a decline from the year-ago quarter and lower than the $22.75 billion expected from analysts tracked by Visible Alpha. Adjusted earnings per share of $1.11 were also lower than the same quarter last year, but came in ahead of the analyst consensus of $1.04. The company reported 8% sales growth in its closely-watched direct-to-consumer segment, which includes its streaming service, while revenue from its legacy TV business declined. Disney shares, which through Wednesday's close had gained about 5% so far this year, were down more than 4% ahead of the opening bell.

Cisco (CSCO) shares after surging the networking technology company posted results that topped analysts' expectations on the top and bottom lines. Cisco said its fiscal first-quarter revenue rose 8% to $14.88 billion, ahead of the $14.76 billion consensus estimate of analysts tracked by Visible Alpha. Adjusted earnings per share of $1 was two cents better than the analyst consensus. The company has been looking to capitalize on demand for artificial intelligence.  "Our relevance in AI continues to build and we have a multi-year, multi-billion-dollar campus refresh opportunity starting to ramp, with strong demand for our refreshed networking products,” Chief Financial Officer Mark Patterson said in a release. Cisco shares were up more than 6% in recent premarket trading.

Sealed Air (SEE) shares are sharply higher this morning following a report that the maker of Bubble Wrap could be taken private. The Wall Street Journal reported that buyout firm Clayton Dubilier & Rice was likely to value the company above its current market value of almost $5.4 billion. Citing people familiar with the matter, the Journal reported that a deal for the Charlotte, N.C.-based firm "could come together soon, though it remains possible talks could fall apart or another buyer could emerge." Shares of Sealed Air jumped more than 20% ahead of the opening bell.