Major Stocks Making News: Amazon, Tesla, Lululemon, More

Crude futures are hovering around the $51 per barrel mark early Wednesday morning, with traders looking forward to today’s EIA weekly report. Among the stocks trending this morning are Lululemon Athletica inc. (NASDAQ:LULU), Renren Inc (NYSE:RENN), Tesla Motors Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA), Blackstone Group LP (NYSE:BX), and Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN). We’ll dig into why investors are paying attention to these stocks today and see how the smart money is positioned in them.

At Insider Monkey, we track around 765 hedge funds and institutional investors. Through extensive backtests, we have determined that imitating some of the stocks that these investors are collectively bullish on, can help retail investors generate double digits of alpha per year. The key is to focus on the small-cap picks of these funds, which are usually less followed by the broader market and allow for larger price inefficiencies (see the details here).

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Lululemon Turns In Mixed Quarter

Lululemon Athletica inc. (NASDAQ:LULU) is 3% higher in pre-market trading after reporting fiscal first quarter earnings of $0.30 per share on revenue of $495.5 million, missing the consensus estimate by $0.01 per share on the bottom-line and beating expectations by $7.78 million on the top-line. Sales rose by 17% year-over-year, led by comparable-store sales which inched up by 3% year-over-year and direct-to-consumer sales which rose by 17.6% year-over-year. Management expects fiscal year 2016 revenue of $2.305 billion-to-$2.345 billion and diluted EPS of $2.08-to-$2.18. Lululemon Athletica inc. (NASDAQ:LULU) was in the portfolios of 28 funds in our database at the end of March, up by six from the beginning of January.

Renren Reports Earnings

Renren Inc (NYSE:RENN), a leading real-name social networking internet platform in China, reported a loss of $0.03 per share on $10.78 million in revenue for the first quarter, compared to a loss of $0.02 per share and revenue of $8.34 million in the first quarter of 2015. Gross profit in the latest quarter was $2.4 million, as the company continues to find new ways to create shareholder value. Given that the stock trades below book value, shareholders hope management can execute to unlock further shareholder value. The company ended March with over $76 million in cash and cash equivalents. Of the 766 elite funds in Insider Monkey’s database, 6 funds owned $8.67 million worth of Renren Inc (NYSE:RENN) shares at the end of the first quarter.

On the next page we examine why Tesla, Blackstone Group, and Amazon are in the news this morning.

Elon Musk Terminates Rumor

Tesla Motors Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) is in the spotlight today after CEO Elon Musk shot down rumors that Tesla might be sourcing some batteries from Samsung SDI for an upcoming vehicle. Mr. Musk said in a tweet that, “Would like to clarify that Tesla is working exclusively with Panasonic for Model 3 cells. News articles claiming otherwise are incorrect.” Mr. Musk expects Tesla Motors Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) to ramp production up to 500,000 vehicles per year by 2018, two years ahead of the previous guidance. Seeing as 2018 is only two years away, Tesla may need as much help as it can get to achieve its goals. Evidently, sourcing batteries from Samsung SDI for Model 3 cells is not one of the methods it will use to achieve that however. The number of funds in our system with holdings in Tesla rose by ten quarter-over-quarter to 39 as of the end of March.

Blackstone Group LP in the Running for Billion Dollar Acquisition

According to Reuters, Blackstone Group LP (NYSE:BX) is in advanced talks to buy Acrisure LLC in a deal potentially valued at over $2 billion when including debt. Acrisure LLC is a U.S. insurance brokerage that generated $231 million for the 12 months ended September 2015. Although the talks are in an advanced stage, there is no guarantee of a deal. Of the funds that we track, 29 funds held $241.26 million in Blackstone Group LP (NYSE:BX) holdings on March 31, down from 31 funds with $308.78 million in positions on December 31.

Amazon.com Invests More In India

Seeing as Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) is renowned for its long-term thinking and India is expected to be one of the great e-commerce growth markets over the next three decades, it’s not surprising that Amazon has announced that it is planning to invest over $5 billion in the country, or $3 billion more than previously indicated. Amazon will presumably use some of the capital to build more fulfillment centers to increase the speed of delivery. The company could also use the additional capital to potentially expand its AWS infrastructure in the nation too. Andreas Halvorsen‘s Viking Global owned over 3.4 million shares of Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) at the end of March.

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