Investors Are Abuzz About These 5 Stocks This Morning

Although crude futures are up by more than 1%, volatility in the major indexes is low as the Dow Jones, S&P 500, and NASDAQ are each modestly higher. Among the stocks that investors are buzzing about today are Whirlpool Corporation (NYSE:WHR), Spirit Airlines Incorporated (NASDAQ:SAVE), SUPERVALU INC. (NYSE:SVU), Pioneer Natural Resources (NYSE:PXD), and BP plc (ADR) (NYSE:BP), after each company reported their latest quarterly financial results. Let’s see how each of them did and see what the smart money in our database thought of each stock heading into that earnings period.

At Insider Monkey, we track around 785 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).

Whirlpool Lower on Earnings Dissapointment

Whirlpool Corporation (NYSE:WHR) shares are down by 5% this morning after the company missed EPS and sales estimates. For the first quarter, Whirlpool earned $2.63 per share on sales of $4.62 billion, missing the bottom-line estimate by $0.05 per share and falling short of top-line expectations by $70 million. Although North American net sales rose by 4.3% year-over-year, Whirlpool’s Europe, Middle East and Africa net sales dropped by 7.7%, with the strong dollar playing a big part in that drop. Fiscal year 2016 guidance was for $14.00-to-$14.75 in adjusted EPS, $11.25-to-$12.00 in diluted EPS, and free cash flow of $700 million-to-$800 million. David Tepper‘s Appaloosa Management LP was one of the top shareholders of Whirlpool Corporation (NYSE:WHR) at the end of 2015.

Spirit Flying Higher After Earnings Beat

Spirit Airlines Incorporated (NASDAQ:SAVE) reported better-than-expected first quarter numbers and its stock is 3.7% higher this morning because of it. For the January-to-March period, the airline earned $1.01 per share on sales of $538.14 million, beating estimates of $0.96 per share in earnings and $536.18 million in revenue. Return on invested capital for the last 12 months ended March 31 was a solid 28.3% while cash and cash equivalents was $902.8 million. Out of the 786 elite funds that we track in our database, 35 of them owned shares of Spirit Airlines Incorporated (NASDAQ:SAVE) at the end of the fourth quarter.

On the next page we examine the latest activity regarding SUPERVALU INC, Pioneer Natural Resources, and BP plc (ADR).