Twitter, Gap and 3 Other Stocks Are Making Headlines Today

It’s a positive day on the Street following a surprisingly impressive jobs report, which showed that a whopping 287,000 jobs were created in June, which represented the biggest monthly increase since last fall. Analysts were expecting around 170,000 new jobs.

Meanwhile, investors are watching a handful of stocks closely today, including Barracuda Networks Inc (NYSE:CUDA), Gap Inc (NYSE:GPS), Petroleo Brasileiro SA Petrobras (ADR) (NYSE:PBR), Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR), and Juno Therapeutics Inc (NASDAQ:JUNO). Let’s shed some light on the reasons behind these stocks’ movement today and see what the hedge funds in our system think of these companies.

Through extensive research we have determined that the best approach to outperform the broader indices is to follow hedge funds into their top small-cap ideas. In our backtests, a portfolio of the 15 most popular small-cap stocks generated monthly alpha of 81 basis points, versus 0.7 percentage points posted by hedge funds’ top large- and mega-cap picks (see more details here).

Barracuda Networks Beats Estimates

Barracuda Networks Inc (NYSE:CUDA) is over 16% in the green today following its better-than-expected first quarter earnings report. The California-based networks and cloud services company posted EPS of $0.20, sharply beating the consensus estimate of $0.11. Revenue in the quarter came in at $86.7 million, topping the estimated $83.84 million. The company also announced the appointment of Hatem Naguib and Ezra Hookano as Vice Presidents of the company and of Dustin Driggs to the post of Chief Financial Officer. A statement from Barracuda said that the management change will drive its security business and strengthen its leadership team.

Out of the 766 active funds in our database, 11 of them were bullish on Barracuda Networks Inc (NYSE:CUDA) at the end of the first quarter. Cliff Asness’ AQR Capital Management owned 147,135 shares of the company at that time.

Gap’s Net Sales Rise

Gap Inc (NYSE:GPS) has surged by nearly 5% in morning trading after the company announced that its net sales for the five-week period ended July 2 jumped by 2% from the same period of last year, to $1.57 billion. This is the first sales increase experienced by Gap in more than a year. In a statement, Gap’s CFO said that sales were partly driven by improvement in traffic trends in June, especially at Old Navy.

Edward Lampert’s ESL Investments was one of the 23 funds in our system that were bullish on Gap Inc (NYSE:GPS) as of the end of the first quarter. It held approximately 3.25 million shares of the company.

Head to the next page to see why Petroleo Brasileiro SA, Twitter and Juno Therapeutics are making headlines today.