Executive Mosaic’s GovCon Index stayed red mid-week, settling lower at $5,179.66 (-0.13%). Wall Street’s top three indexes posted gains, with the Nasdaq Composite (+2.17%) leading the way. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (+0.31%) and S&P 500 (+1.07%) started with losses but finished positive at the closing bell.
Arm Holdings (Nasdaq: ARM) and NVIDIA (Nasdaq: NVDA) climbed 10.3% and 8.15%, following the surge of tech giants and semiconductor stocks in afternoon trading. Starbucks (Nasdaq: SBUX) rose 5.21% on news of a possible new joint venture partnership structure in China. Meme stock GameStop (NYSE: GME) plunged 11.98% after reporting a 31.2% year-over-year revenue drop in Q2 2024.
The GovCon Index had fewer gainers than losers for the second straight day. AeroVironment (Nasdaq: AVAV) and Curtiss-Wright (NYSE: CW) topped the 13 winners, with +1.82% and +1.49%, respectively. Only HII (NYSE: HII) and Leidos (NYSE: LDOS) declined more than 1% among 17 underperformers.
Curtiss-Wright announced a $100 million expansion of its 2024 share repurchase program and a Board-approved quarterly dividend. Its Chair and CEO Lynn Bamford said, “This expanded share repurchase authorization reflects our board of directors’ continued confidence in the company’s ability to deliver profitable growth and strong free cash flow generation into the future.”
The U.S. Air Force awarded Accenture Federal Services, an Accenture (NYSE: ACN) subsidiary, a $1,598,720,367 ceiling firm-fixed-price, time and material task order under a previously awarded General Services Administration multiple award, schedule contract for the enterprise-scale cloud service provider reseller and enterprise-scale cloud software management services.
Raytheon, an RTX (NYSE: RTX) business, has been awarded also by the Air Force a $1.2 billion firm-fixed-price incentive modification to a previously awarded contract for Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missile Production Lot 38. This modification adds additional AMRAAM missiles, AMRAAM telemetry system production and other production engineering support hardware and activities.
Also, on Wednesday, the Labor Department reported that the US inflation rate dropped to 2.5% in August from 2.9% in July. While the consumer price index increased 0.2% for the month, the latest annual inflation rate is the lowest since February 2021. Market analysts say the stage is set for a rate cut, although it could be by 25 basis points only, not 50.
