The stock market lost ground on Thursday, with the tech sector generally leading the way lower. Initial enthusiasm in the wake of the midterm elections gave way to caution about the prospects for slowing earnings growth in 2019, as investors will only get one more quarter of year-over-year tax savings. The Federal Reserve did little to ease worries as well, keeping itself on course to make further interest rate increases over the next few months. Bad news hit some individual stocks hard, and Wynn Resorts (WYNN -1.90%), Ctrip.com International (TCOM 0.06%), and Talend (TLND) were among the worst performers on the day. Here's why they did so poorly.
Wynn warns of Macau weakness
Shares of Wynn Resorts dropped 13% after the casino resort giant's third-quarter earnings report raised concerns about the health of the Asian gaming capital of Macau. Operating revenue jumped 10% year over year, but despite similar-sized gains in adjusted net income, investors had hoped to see slightly better earnings results. More troubling were comments that Wynn executives made in its quarterly conference call suggesting that despite long-term confidence in Macau's prospects, it wouldn't be surprising to see a pullback take shape over the next few quarters. Stocks across the casino industry lost ground on the comments, showing the general nervousness about investments related to China.
Image source: Wynn Resorts.
Ctrip gets grounded
Ctrip.com International stock plunged 19% in the wake of the company's release of third-quarter financial results. Performance looked generally solid, including a 15% rise in net revenue that helped produce adjusted earnings that were better than expected. Yet even CEO Jane Sun referred to "ongoing macro uncertainty" in positive comments about the travel specialist's performance, and given the turbulence among Chinese stocks lately, that was enough to send shares sharply lower. With products like its Skyscanner aggregator website, Ctrip has put itself in a strong position to profit whenever Chinese customers are willing to spend money to travel.
Talend makes an acquisition
Finally, shares of Talend plummeted 31%. The cloud data integration solutions provider reported third-quarter results that included revenue gains of 36% and strong subscription growth in its cloud products. That seemed relatively favorable, as did calls for full-year sales that largely sustained Talend's impressive growth rates. Yet investors seemed to focus on anticipated losses, and news that the company would pay $60 million in cash to buy self-service data integration provider Stitch didn't seem to generate optimism despite assertions from Talend CEO Mike Tuchen that the two companies should complement each other well. In today's volatile market environment, even good results can prove insufficient to prevent big downward moves for stocks -- just as euphoria earlier in the year sometimes produced upward movements that weren't entirely justified by the fundamentals.
