Tesla, Nuance Communications, Uber and more

Look at the companies that make headlines in the afternoon trading.

Tesla – Shares in Tesla rose nearly 3% after Canaccord Genuity upgraded the stock to buy, citing Tesla’s battery innovations. Canaccord also raised its 12-month price target on Tesla to $ 1,071 per share from $ 419 per share. The new target implies that the electric car manufacturer is contracting almost 60%.

Nuance Communications – Nuance’s share price rose more than 16% in afternoon trading after Microsoft announced it would buy the speech recognition company for $ 56 a share, about 23% higher than where its stock closed on Friday. The deal, another sign that Microsoft wants to acquire through acquisitions, is valued at about $ 16 billion and about $ 19 billion, including debt.

Uber — Shares of the giant that the giant gets rose 3.3% after setting a record gross margin in March. Uber said its mobility segment, or a driving enterprise, had the best month since March 2020, with an annual running rate of $ 30 billion. It was 9% higher than a month earlier.

Alibaba – The US-traded shares of Chinese internet giant jumped more than 9% after Chinese regulators fined the company $ 2.8 billion. The fine amounts to about 4% of Alibaba’s revenue from 2019. The action is part of a wider investigation of internet companies by Chinese regulators.

United Airlines shares in the airline fell 4% after United Airlines announced it would earn $ 3.2 billion in the first quarter, down 66% from the same quarter in 2019. According to FactSet, Wall Street analysts expect $ 3.35 billion.

Chipotle – The chain’s share price has risen more than 1% after Raymond James improved the stock to outperform the market. The Wall Street firm said Chipotle’s sales had fully contributed to the strengthening of industry trends over the past few weeks, adding that share prices had risen significantly. According to CNBC’s Jim Cramer, the stock is still a buy, even if it’s an all-time high.

Qualcomm – The chip share fell 1.6% after Evercore ISI downgraded the company to better than the best. Evercore said after the three-digit figure from Qualcomm since the settlement of Apple, most of the 5G smartphone is priced in the shares. Qualcomm and Apple settled a royalty and patent dispute in April 2019.

Plug Power – Morgan Stanley resumed coverage of the fuel cell business as equal weight, dropping shares by more than 8% during afternoon trading. The Wall Street firm said it was seeing a ‘modest’ share price for Plug Power upwards.

– with coverage of CNBC’s Jesse Pound, Yun Li and Tom Franck.