10 Firms Lead Thursday’s Rally on Better Earnings, Bargain-Hunting

Optimistic sentiment continued to drive Wall Street on Thursday, with all major indices closing higher.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose by 0.38 percent, the S&P 500 grew 0.53 percent, and the Nasdaq Composite was up by 0.25 percent.

Ten companies posted notable gains, largely fueled by strong earnings results for the fourth quarter and full-year 2024.

To come up with Thursday’s top gainers, we considered only the stocks with at least $2 billion in market capitalization and $5 million in daily trading volume.

The New York Stock Exchange building. Photo by Дмитрий Трепольский on Pexels

10. GE Vernova Inc. (NYSE:GEV)

Energy equipment manufacturer GE Vernova saw its share prices grow by 8.42 percent on Thursday to close at $382.94 apiece as investors took heart from news that it would pour in $600 million in its US operations over the next two years.

The latest investment represents the first phase of its $9-billion expansion program for the production of gas turbines, grid solutions, nuclear operations, onshore wind facilities, electrification, and energy research.

Of the $600 million, GE Vernova said $300 million will be used for producing gas turbines; $20 million for the production of switchgear, instrument transformer, and capacitor production; $50 million to boost automation and enhance the quality of its North Carolina factory; $100 million for facility upgrades in North Dakota, New York, Florida, and Texas; $10 million for a new manufacturing facility in Pennsylvania; and $100 million in its advanced research center in New York.

The initial investment alone is expected to create 1,500 new jobs.

9. Immunitybio Inc. (NASDAQ:IBRX)

Shares of Immunitybio rose 9.81 percent on Thursday to finish at $3.47 apiece as investor sentiment was buoyed by news that it sealed a collaboration and supply partnership with multinational oncology firm BeiGene.

The partnership involves the conduct of a confirmatory randomized Phase 3 clinical trial combining BeiGene’s tislelizumab and ImmunityBio’s Anktiva, which aims to confirm the efficacy and safety of a combination ANKTIVA plus CPI therapy and provide evidence of the potential for the two immunotherapeutic agents to improve overall survival in patients with advanced or metastatic NSCLC who have acquired resistance to immune CPI therapy.

The primary endpoint of the study is overall survival, with secondary endpoints including disease control rate, progression-free survival, objective response rate, and safety.