Midday Fly By: Sysco buying Restaurant Depot, Uber to acquire Blacklane

The major averages were broadly higher near noon to start the week following last week’s declines. Amid continued conflict in the Middle East and rising energy prices, President Trump said the U.S. is in “serious discussions” with Iran to end its military operations. However, he added that if a peace deal is not reached “shortly” and the Strait of Hormuz is not reopened, the U.S. will “conclude our lovely ‘stay’ in Iran by blowing up and completely obliterating all of their Electric Generating Plants, Oil Wells and Kharg Island (and possibly all desalinization plants!), which we have purposefully not yet ‘touched.'” Following the comments, oil prices are rising once again past the $100 per barrel mark.

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Get caught up quickly on the top news and calls moving stocks with these five Top Five lists.

1. STOCK NEWS:

• Sysco (SYY) agreed to acquire Jetro Restaurant Depot for a total enterprise value of $29.1B
• Uber (UBER) agreed to acquire global chauffeur service leader Blacklane
• Aurinia (AUPH) agreed to acquire Kezar Life Sciences (KZR) for $6.955 per share in cash plus a non-transferable contingent value right
• Spire (SR) will sell its gas marketing business to Boardwalk Pipelines for $215M in cash
• TJX’s (TJX) board raised its quarterly dividend 13% and said it plans $2.5B-$2.75B of share repurchases for FY27

2. WALL STREET CALLS:

• CrowdStrike (CRWD) upgraded to Outperform from Peer Perform at Wolfe Research
• Expedia (EXPE) upgraded to Buy from Hold at Jefferies
• Instacart (CART) upgraded to Buy from Hold at Jefferies
• Dole (DOLE), Nomad Foods (NOMD) downgraded to Hold at Deutsche Bank
• Starbucks (SBUX) initiated with an Underperform at BNP Paribas

3. AROUND THE WEB:

• In a recently published report, Morpheus Research says that MakeMyTrip (MMYT), a $3.5B online travel agency that is sometimes referred to as the “Booking.com of India” with 50% of the Indian OTA market, “openly defies regulators, scams customers, and pads profits through accounting tricks
• Banks led by JPMorgan (JPM) are dealing with pushback related to the terms of a $7.2B debt deal to fund Clayton, Dubilier & Rice’s takeover of Sealed Air (SEE), Bloomberg reports
• YouTube (GOOGL) employees have admitted their goal was “viewer addiction” and shut down proposed safety tools for kids since they did not provide a sufficient return on investment, NY Post says
• IQM Quantum Computers has secured $57.64M in venture financing from funds managed by BlackRock (BLK) to accelerate growth, Reuters says
• An analysis of billions of anonymized credit card transactions by consumer transaction analysis company Indagari indicates that Claude is seeing record growth in paid subscribers, with subscriptions more than doubling this year according to Anthropic, TechCrunch says

4. MOVERS:

• Compass Diversified (CODI) increases after announcing it will sell Sterno’s food service business to Archer for $292.5M
• iQiyi (IQ) gains in New York after applying for listing on HKEX
• Viridian (VRDN) declines after announcing results from its REVEAL-1 phase 3 trial of elegrobart
• Fermi (FRMI) lower after reporting FY25 results
• Boston Scientific (BSX) falls after Raymond James downgraded its rating on the stock to Outperform from Strong Buy

5. EARNINGS/GUIDANCE:

• Alaska Air (ALK) provided guidance for Q1
• USA Rare Earth (USAR) reported Q4 results, with CEO Barbara Humpton commenting, “2025 was the year that USA Rare Earth set the foundation to execute our integrated rare earth growth strategy”
• Spire (SR) cut its guidance for FY27
• Neumora Therapeutics (NMRA) reported Q4 results, with EPS missing consensus
• CBAK Energy Technology (CBAT) reported Q4 results, with revenue higher year-over-year

INDEXES:

Near midday, the Dow was up 0.88%, or 395.42, to 45,562.06, the Nasdaq was up 0.29%, or 60.40, to 21,008.76, and the S&P 500 was up 0.48%, or 30.52, to 6,399.37.