Check out the companies making the biggest moves midday: Metsera — The biotech company rose 5% after Leerink Partners initiated the stock with an outperform rating and called for the stock to double. “The company’s platform and pipeline of novel obesity peptide-based therapeutics offer key advantages relative to competing assets,” the research firm said about Metsera. Kingsoft Cloud — The cloud name popped more than 13% after an upgrade to buy from neutral Bank of America. The bank cited AI and improving margins as drivers. “AI is acting as the key growth driver for its public cloud services (PCS), contributing 39% / 27% of public cloud services revenue / total revenues in 2Q25 (vs. low digital % revenue contribution in 2023),” BofA said. Brighthouse Financial — Shares surged more than 11% after The Financial Times reported, citing sources, that private equity firm Aquarian was in talks to raise funds for a takeover of the insurer. Albemarle — The lithium producer tumbled 11% after Chinese battery manufacturer Contemporary Amperex Technology said it plans to soon resume operations at its Yichun mine, which would ease lithium supply worries. Peer lithium producers SQM and Lithium Americas respectively dropped 8% and 4%. UnitedHealth — Shares rallied more than 6% after the insurer said in a regulatory filing that it’s expecting most members will be enrolled in highly rated Medicare insurance plans next year. Fox Corp. — The media empire fell 5.8% following the announcement that the Murdoch family resolved its succession battle, with Lachlan Murdoch winning control of the company. Apple — The iPhone maker dipped 0.7% ahead of the annual Apple event later today, at which several new products are set to be announced. Nebius Group N.V. — The Dutch-based provider of infrastructure and services to artificial intelligence builders soared 44% after Nebius agreed to deliver AI infrastructure to Microsoft. Dell Technologies — Shares eased 1.4% after Dell Technologies said its Chief Financial Officer Yvonne McGill will resign, effective Tuesday. David Kennedy, currently senior vice president of global business operations, finance, was named interim CFO. Mission Produce — The avocado and mango supplier was 4% higher after third-quarter earnings topped estimates. Mission earned 26 cents per share, excluding one-time items, on revenue of $357.7 million. Analysts polled by FactSet forecast earnings per share of 15 cents on revenue of $320.3 million. Casey’s General Stores — The Midwestern convenience store chain fell more than 1% after first-quarter results topped Wall Street estimates. Earnings of $5.77 per share topped the FactSet consensus forecast of $5.02, while revenue of $4.57 billion exceeded an estimated $4.46 billion. The stock had already run up 19% over the past three months and 31% over the past six. — CNBC’s Michelle Fox, Lisa Han, Sarah Min and Alex Harring contributed reporting.
