Stocks fell on Wednesday amid heightened tensions between the U.S. and North Korea, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI -0.77%) extending yesterday's downward momentum and the S&P 500 (^GSPC -1.11%) closing just in negative territory.
Today's stock market
| Index | Percentage Change | Point Change |
|---|---|---|
| Dow | (0.17%) | (36.64) |
| S&P 500 | (0.04%) | (0.90) |
Data source: Yahoo! Finance.
Image source: Getty Images.
Bank stocks had a particularly rough day, with the SPDR S&P Bank ETF (KBE -1.19%) falling 0.9%. Meanwhile, gold stocks climbed as investors sought safety in the precious metal, with the Market Vectors Gold Miners ETF (GDX -0.61%) up 1.6%.
As for individual stocks, earnings news had shares of both Fossil Group (FOSL 3.28%) and Walt Disney Co. (DIS -0.89%) falling today.
Fossil Group's painful quarter
Shares of fashion accessories specialist Fossil Group (FOSL 3.28%) plunged 25.1% after the company announced mixed second-quarter results.
Quarterly revenue fell 12.9% year over year to $596.8 million, as declines in traditional watch sales more than offset growth from Fossil's connected watch products. On the bottom line, that translated to a GAAP net loss of $344.7 million, or $7.11 per share. On an adjusted (non-GAAP) basis -- which excludes a $6.50-per-share non-cash asset impairment charge, $0.13 per share in restructuring charges, and an $0.08-per-share foreign currency headwind -- Fossil incurred a net loss of $0.40 per share. According to Fossil, the massive impairment charge stemmed from "the sustained compression of the company's market capitalization that occurred throughout most of the latter part of the second quarter of fiscal 2017."
For perspective, Wall Street's consensus estimates predicted Fossil would deliver a wider adjusted net loss of $0.46 per share on higher revenue of $596.8 million.
"With the first half of 2017 now behind us," said Fossil CEO Kosta Kartsotis, "we believe that our traction in wearables, our significant progress in our supply chain evolution and our reduction in infrastructure costs show that we are pursuing strategies that can improve our profitability and return the company to solid growth over time."
Even so, Fossil reduced its full-year 2017 guidance to call for net sales to decline in the range of 8.5% to 4.5%, compared to previous guidance for sales to fall in the range of 6% to 1.5%.
Disney's new streaming ambitions
Disney stock declined a comparatively modest 3.9% today on the company's own mixed report, but this marked an unusually large move for the $170 billion entertainment conglomerate.
Disney revealed that revenue in its fiscal third quarter (ended July 1, 2017) was roughly flat on a year-over-year basis at $14.24 billion, while net income declined 9% to $2.37 billion. But thanks to stock repurchases over the past year, and adjusting for new accounting rules for taxes on stock-based compensation, Disney's net income per share declined just 2% to $1.58. Analysts, on average, were expecting lower adjusted earnings of $1.55 per share, but higher revenue of $14.42 billion.
But arguably the biggest news to come out of Disney's report was unrelated to earnings. Rather, in a separate release, Disney not only announced it will launch its own ESPN-branded multisport video streaming service in 2018, but it also intends to introduce a Disney-branded direct-to-consumer streaming service in 2019.
As a consequence of the latter strategic shift, Disney surprised investors by noting it will end its distribution agreement with Netflix "for subscription streaming of new releases, beginning with the 2019 calendar year theatrical slate."
In other words, the video-streaming pioneer's users won't enjoy the newest Disney releases starting in 2019. But Disney should be able to more effectively capitalize on its enviable slate of films going forward.
