Why These 5 Stocks Are Surging Today

It certainly has been a good Wednesday for Vera Bradley, Inc. (NASDAQ:VRA) shareholders, as the value of their shares has appreciated by over 32% in morning trading on the back of a good earnings report released by the company this morning. For its third quarter, Vera Bradley, Inc. (NASDAQ:VRA) reported EPS of $0.27 on revenue of $126.67 million, exceeding estimates by $0.07 per share and $5.53 million in revenue. Because the company avoided promotional discounts, company wide gross margin jumped by 5.4 percentage points. Guidance was also strong, with management expecting EPS of $0.40-to-$0.43 on revenue of $151 million-to-$155 million for the fourth quarter, easily exceeding estimates of $0.39 and $149.2 million respectively. Renaissance Technologies, founded by Jim Simons, owned 955,300 Vera Bradley shares at the end of September.

Last but not least, Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) opened higher at the start of trading before retracing later in the morning, after the company announced that it will not spin off its Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (NYSE:BABA) shares in a separate holding company, as previously announced. Yahoo’s board decided against the move because of the uncertain tax implications associated with the spin-off. Instead, Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO)’s board is considering spinning off the company’s core web properties in a move that would pretty much be the opposite as spinning off its Alibaba shares, but with somewhat the same effect. In both cases, existing Yahoo shareholders will own two separate companies, with the hope that the market awards more value to Yahoo’s core properties by separating them from other assets. It’s been estimated that the market has been valuing its core business at next-to-nothing for some time.

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