Xerox Surges on Lexmark Deal but Can’t Budge CE 100 Index

The CE 100 Index barely budged in a shortened trading week that left only two more days of stock market action for 2024.

The index was down a scant 0.02%, and the year-to-date performance — where the index is up 24.8% — continues to trail most major indices, save the Dow Jones Industrial Average, as seen below.

This time around, through the past week, six pillars were lower, and five eked out gains.

Xerox was the most notable gainer among individual names, up 9%, leading the Work segment 0.1% higher.

The company said last week that it had struck a deal to buy Lexmark International for $1.5 billion in a deal that Xerox said would expand its presence internationally, particularly in Asia (Lexmark, based in Kentucky, is owned by a Chinese consortium comprised of Apex Technology, PAG Asia Capital and Legend Capital).

However, Communications names were broadly lower, as the segment slipped 1.7%.  Snapchat, owned by Snap, has launched a new unified monetization program that places ads within a creator’s Stories and longer Spotlight videos. Beginning in February, creators with at least half a million followers and who post at least 25 times per month to Saved Stories or Spotlight will be eligible for the program.

Mixed Performance in Pay and Be Paid

Within the Paid and Be Paid segment, which slipped 0.5%, buy now, pay later (BNPL) names, including Affirm, off 1.5%, and Sezzle, down 2.5%, led the downside.

Visa shares gathered 0.3%, blunting some of those slides in the payments pillar. As reported by PYMNTS, Visa is seeing increasing consumer confidence during the holiday season. A company release this past week noted a 4.8% uptick in spending, a figure not adjusted for inflation. It also showed 77% of spending took place in physical, brick-and-mortar locations, and total retail spending in stores climbed at a rate of 4.1% compared to 1.6% last year, while online retail shopping rose by 7.1% versus 10.3% last year. There were also upticks in spending across a few categories, including electronics, clothing and accessories, and building materials.

Mastercard’s stock gathered 0.8%. Mastercard said it has launched a digital payments-focused partnership with Turkish FinTech company Dgpays.

The collaboration is aimed at promoting the adoption of digital payment solutions for consumers and businesses in Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa. As part of the partnership, Mastercard and Dgpays will develop payment technologies and loyalty solutions and the payments giant will also make a minority investment in Dgpays.

Walmart’s 0.6% dip came as the Shop pillar slid 0.7%.

The company said it would defend itself “vigorously” against a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) lawsuit filed against the commerce juggernaut and the FinTech Branch. The CFPB sued Branch and Walmart on Dec. 23, alleging that the companies illegally opened accounts for gig economy delivery drivers without their consent, required drivers to receive their pay through those accounts, collected junk fees from the drivers, and did not deliver the “instant access” to pay that they had promised as part of Walmart’s Spark Driver program.

Fastly’s stock lost 4.8% through the week, helping to take the Enablers segment down by 0.7%. Earlier this month, the company announced the availability of Fastly AI Accelerator, billed as a “semantic caching solution,” which was created to address the critical performance and cost challenges faced by developers with large language model generative artificial intelligence applications.

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