5 Blazing Stocks: Samsung Strikes Out Against Apple, FedEX Jumps 1% and Sprint Heads Lower

January 06, 2012

Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) shares are ticking up .39 percent early Friday. Samsung lost a legal battle to have sales of the iPhone halted in Italy. Samsung claims Apple broke some of its wireless-communications patents.

Despite reporting a dip in same-store sales, shares of Best Buy Co. (NYSE:BBY) are up .60 percent. The company said December same-store sales declined by 1.2 percent, and customer traffic was lower than expected. Shares of retail competitor Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) are also edging slightly higher.

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FedEX Corp. (NYSE:FDX) shares jumped 1.12 percent after Wells Fargo (NYSE:WFC) initiated coverage of the company with an outperform rating. The bank also placed a price target of $102 to $106 per share. United Parcel Service Inc. (NYSE:UPS) shares also gained .21 percent.

Shares of Sprint Nextel Corp. (NYSE:S) are down .45 percent this morning. CEO Dan Hesse acknowledged that Sprint has been throttling back speeds to the 1 percent heaviest consumers of smartphone data. Shares of Verizon Communications (NYSE:VZ) and AT&T (NYSE:T) also declined.

According to CRN, veteran channel executive Tom LaRocca left Hewlett-Packard (NYSE:HPQ) to become VP of worldwide product strategy at Oracle (NASDAQ:ORCL). CRN cited LaRocca’s LinkedIn (NYSE:LNKD) profile. Shares of HP fell .40 percent after the news.

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To contact the reporter on this story: Eric McWhinnie at staff.writers@wallstcheatsheet.com

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Damien Hoffman at editors@wallstcheatsheet.com