Why Ford, U.S. Bancorp, and Other Stocks Are on Investors’ Radars Today

In contrast to Wells Fargo & Co (NYSE:WFC)’s recent promise of limiting some cross selling, PNC Financial Services Group Inc (NYSE:PNC) is going the other way, at least according to this Bloomberg. CEO William Demchak was quoted as saying, “We’re rebuilding the engine here to drive gains and market share, increase cross-sell, and reduce our costs to serve loans. We don’t like to just be an interest rates story”. Unlike Wells Fargo, PNC employees haven’t purportedly created 2 million fake consumer accounts and the bank doesn’t have the media and Congress hounding it at the moment. PNC shares are 0.78% in the green so far today. A total of 45 funds from our database owned $1.36 billion worth of PNC Financial Services Group Inc (NYSE:PNC)’s stock, which accounted for 3.40% of the float at the end of June.

Immune Design Corp (NASDAQ:IMDZ) shares are off by more than 10% after the company priced its public stock offering of 4.8 million shares at $6.25 a piece. The underwriters of the offering have the 30-day option of buying up to an additional 720,000 shares at the offering price less commissions and discounts. Immune Design plans to use the money raised to fund R&D, product development, and for general corporate/working capital purposes. The number of investors tracked by us with holdings in Immune Design Corp (NASDAQ:IMDZ) inched up by one quarter-over-quarter to seven during the second quarter.

ENSCO PLC (NYSE:ESV) is trending after Bloomberg published a down-beat article on the industry. Although many in the industry believe utilization rates will bottom by the the middle of 2017, the article’s author thinks a meaningful fundamental rebound could take a long time to materialize. For rig rates to move higher, various analysts estimate that the utilization rate needs to reach 70%-85%, which might only happen if the number of working rigs fall to 120 from 160 currently operating (according to some estimates). In short, a lot needs to go right for offshore companies to do well. As one of the stronger companies in the sector in terms of balance sheet strength, ENSCO does have some time to wait for a recovery. Although whether it might have enough time is an open question. According to our data, ENSCO PLC (NYSE:ESV) was one of the most widely held offshore drillers by the smart money at the end of June, with 30 funds from our database reporting stakes in the stock.

Disclosure: none