These Five Stocks are Making Headlines On Wednesday

First-quarter Financial Results Put Pressure on This Steelmaker; Stock Down 2%

United States Steel Corporation (NYSE:X)’s shares are nearly 2% in the red in today’s trading session, after the U.S. largest steelmaker released its financial results for the first quarter of this year. U.S. Steel recorded a net loss of $340 million for the quarter, significantly higher than the net loss of $75 million reported for the first quarter of 2015. However, the company’s bottom-line figure substantially improved from the net loss of $1.13 billion recorded for the last quarter of 2015. This marks the seventh quarter of losses for the steelmaker in the past eight quarters. First-quarter net sales dropped to $2.34 billion from $3.27 billion in the first quarter of 2015. United States Steel Corporation (NYSE:X) also announced that it had filed with the International Trade Commission against Chinese steelmakers, who hoarded up a massive share of the U.S. domestic steel market in 2015. However, steel imports dropped approximately 35% to 5.1 million tons in the first two months of 2016 relative to the same period of 2015. Jonathan Barrett and Paul Segal’s Luminus Management acquired a 2.14 million-share stake in United States Steel Corporation (NYSE:X) during the final quarter of 2015.

Tax Services Provider’s Stock Down 15% Today

H & R Block Inc. (NYSE:HRB) has lost a whopping 15% of its market value in today’s trading session, after the Kansas City-based consumer tax services provider released disappointing U.S. tax results through April 19. The company said on Tuesday that its H&R Block U.S. assisted returns prepared declined 5.8% through April 19 to 12.2 million. As a result, the company announced plans to streamline operations, which would involve a workforce reduction of nearly 13%. “The volume losses are not acceptable and as CEO, I take complete responsibility for delivering stronger results”, outlined the company’s Chief Executive Officer Bill Cobb through a public statement. Soon after the release of the aforementioned statement, analysts at Oppenheimer downgraded H & R Block Inc. (NYSE:HRB) to ‘Market Perform’ from ‘Outperform’ and withdrew the price target of $29, saying that it was unfortunate that the company could not even reach previous heavily-reduced metrics. The company is anticipated to release its fiscal 2016 results on June 9, as well as reveal plans and outlook for fiscal 2017 during a conference call on that day. David Harding’s Winton Capital Management had 1.26 million shares of H & R Block Inc. (NYSE:HRB) in its equity portfolio at the end of December.

Disclosure: None