Wall Street set to open lower
U.S. stock futures tilted lower on Tuesday as a resurgence of Covid-19 cases in China spooked traders ahead of a new batch of corporate earnings reports.
PepsiCo (NYSE: PEP), UPS (NYSE:UPS), 3M (NYSE: MMM), and General Electric (NYSE: GE) are among high-profile companies scheduled to report before the opening bell.
Google-parent Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOG), Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT), General Motors (NYSE: GM), Visa(NYSE: V), and Mondelez International (NASDAQ: MDLZ) will announce their results after the closing bell.
As of 5:30 a.m. ET, Dow futures were marked 105 points, or 0.31% lower to 33,860. S&P 500 futures dropped 10.75 points, or 0.25% to 4,282 while the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 lost 29.50 points, or 0.22% to 13,506.25.
Twitter agrees to be acquired by Elon Musk for $44 billion
Elon Musk has struck a deal to acquire and take Twitter (NYSE: TWTR) private in deal that values the company at about $44 billion.
Twitter accepted Musk’s offer late Monday, capping off what has been an unpredictable and volatile few weeks for the social media platform.
Under the terms of the agreement, Twitter shareholders will receive $54.20 in cash for each share they own, marking a 38% premium to the closing price of the stock on April 1, the last session before Musk revealed a 9.2% stake in the company.
The deal was unanimously approved by Twitter’s board of directors and is expected to close later this year.
“Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated.” Musk said in a statement.
“I also want to make Twitter better than ever by enhancing the product with new features, making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spam bots, and authenticating all humans. Twitter has tremendous potential,” he added.
Twitter shares were little changed in the premarket trading session on Tuesday.
Crude futures fall on a new Covid-19 outbreak in China
Crude futures were also trading lower early Tuesday after Chinese authorities expanded Covid-19 mass testing in the capital Beijing, sparking concerns that the nation’s strict zero-Covid strategy will hurt energy demand in the world’s second-biggest economy.
Beijing swiftly expanded its Covid-19 mass testing from one district this week to most of the city of nearly 22 million, raising expectations of an imminent lockdown like the one that has shut down the city of Shanghai. China is the world’s largest consumer of crude oil.
As of 5:30 a.m. ET, U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures were down 79 cents, or 0.8% to $97.75 a barrel. Global Brent crude futures lost $60 cents, or 0.59% to $101.56 a barrel.
