Friday was a cracking day for the markets. The TSX closed up 149 points. The Dow Jones closed up 395 and the Nasdaq closed up 255. At time of writing, bitcoin is up $380 (U.S.).
Royal Bank of Canada has arranged a $750-million offering of 750,000 preferred shares, Series BU, at $1,000 per share. RBC has a market cap of $188.51-billion.
Blackstone Real Estate Partners X and Blackstone Real Estate Income Trust Inc. have agreed to acquire all Tricon Residential Inc. shares at $15.17 per share. Blackstone will pay cash and Tricon will be taken private once the transaction closes. Tricon has a market cap of $4.05-billion.
AngloGold Ashanti PLC has acquired 24.5 million shares of G2 Goldfields Inc. at $0.90 per share for proceeds of $22.05-million. G2 Goldfields will use the proceeds to explore its Oko project in Guyana. G2 Goldfields has a market cap of $132.8-million.
Devonian Health Group Inc. is seeking shareholder approval for a planned share rollback of 70 old shares for one new share. The company will seek this approval at its annual and special meeting on February 20, 2024. The company has a market cap of $27.14-million.
Blackwolf Copper and Gold Ltd. sampled 4.16 grams per tonne gold and 9.71 g/t silver at its Harry property in British Columbia. The company also sampled 29.2 g/t Au and 2,378 g/t Ag at its Cantoo property in Alaska. Blackwolf has a market cap of $16.6-million.
Pluribus Technologies Corp. has signed a forbearance deal with National Bank of Canada, in connection with a $23-million loan from National Bank that Pluribus has not paid back. Pluribus has a market cap of $4.63-million. In May, 2023, the company had a market cap of $23.14-million.
Horizons ETFs Management (Canada) Inc. will close nine exchange-traded funds after market close on March 28, 2024. The ETFs being closed are: Tactical Absolute Return Bond, Absolute Return Global Currency, Active Ultra-Short Term U.S. Investment Grade Bond, Active High Yield Bond, Active Floating Rate Senior Loan, U.S. Marijuana Index, Psychedelic Stock Index, Global BBIG Technology and Global Hydrogen Index.
Friday saw the return of some meme stock investors, as Barstool Sports leader Dave Portnoy put out an unfounded “mega buy” rating on Spirit Airlines Inc. This comes on the heels of a judge denying the company’s plan to be bought by JetBlue, which shot the stock down 47% on Tuesday. It was the most active stock on the New York Stock Exchange today and it closed up 17%. Spirit has a market cap of $622-million (U.S.).
Wayfair Inc.’s shares rose 10% on news that it is firing 13% of its staff. The company announced it will lay off approximately 1,650 employees. The company’s CEO, Niraj Shah, said the company “went overboard in hiring.” The company laid off about 1,700 employees in 2023, about 900 in 2022 and about 500 in 2020. The company expects the new wave of firings to generate annual savings of approximately $280-million (U.S.). Wayfair has a market cap of $6-billion (U.S.).
Arena Group Holdings Inc. dropped 36% today on news that it was firing “possibly all” of the staff at Sports Illustrated, a magazine that Arena publishes. Sports Illustrated is owned by Authentic Brands Group and Authentic notified Arena on Thursday that it was terminating its licensing agreement for the publication, effective immediately. This comes after Arena missed its quarterly licensing payment of $3.8-million (U.S.). Arena’s market cap is $30.27-million (U.S.).