Why Mallinckrodt, Mechel PAO, and Newpark Resources Slumped Today
The stock market eased higher on Tuesday, with major market benchmarks remaining below their all-time record high levels but still advancing slightly. Bond yields eased downward, halting their recent rise and giving some nervous investors hope that an end to the big spike in interest rates could be imminent. Yet even though the Dow and S&P scored minor gains on the day, several individual stocks weren't so lucky. Mallinckrodt (NYSE: MNK), Mechel PAO (NYSE: MTL), and Newpark Resources (NYSE: NR) were among the worst performers on the day. Below, we'll look more closely at these stocks to tell you why they did so poorly.
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Mallinckrodt sinks on outlook worries
Mallinckrodt dropped 9% after releasing its fiscal fourth-quarter results Tuesday morning. From its past results, the drugmaker seemed to fare quite well, with a 14% rise in sales and profit that jumped by more than half from the year-ago quarter. However, Mallinckrodt said problems with an outside manufacturer hurt sales of its Therakos immunotherapy products. More discouraging was Mallinckrodt's assessment of its prospects for the 2017 fiscal year, which it believes will see sales continue to fall dramatically over the next year. With free cash flow and profit margin figures for the generics business also in question, investors weren't sufficiently satisfied with the rest of the company's prospects to feel comfortable bidding shares higher.
Mechel isn't seeing a steel rebound
Mechel declined 10% in the wake of the release of its third-quarter financial report. The Russian steelmaker reported that output of crude steel rose by less than 1% compared to the year-ago quarter and fell by 5% compared to the second quarter of 2016. Revenue from Mechel's power segment also fell thanks to mild weather conditions, and the mining segment suffered from extremely low prices for coking coal throughout much of the first nine months of 2016. Mechel said fourth-quarter pricing for coal seems to have jumped substantially, and that could therefore bode well for the future. Still, investors seemed surprised not to have reaped the rewards of the price hike more quickly, and that likely led to the decline today.
Newpark looks to raise money
Finally, Newpark Resources fell 13%. The Texas-based provider of fluid systems and integrated services for the oil and gas industry said late Monday that it would seek to sell $100 million in convertible five-year senior notes. Newpark says it expects to use the proceeds of the sale to pay down existing debt and for other corporate purposes as needed, but investors had the typical knee-jerk reaction of feeling that their interest in the oil services provider will be diluted by the new institutional investors. Combine that with a nearly $2 per barrel drop in the price of crude oil to approach the $45 per barrel mark, and it's easy to see why investors in Newpark Resources weren't happy with the move today.
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