Check out the companies making headlines in midday trading. Wingstop — Shares of the chicken wing chain jumped about 13% on an upbeat outlook . Wingstop said it sees flat to low-single-digit domestic same-store sales growth for fiscal 2026. In the fourth quarter, the company’s same-store sales declined 5.8% on a year-over-year basis, coming in better than the 6.7% slide analysts expected, per StreetAccount. Moody’s — Shares moved 6% higher after the credit-ratings and research company reported a beat on both the top and bottom lines. Its adjusted fourth-quarter earnings came in at $3.64 per share, above the $3.43 a share expected from analysts polled by FactSet. Revenue was $1.89 billion, versus the $1.86 billion consensus estimate. Moody’s also guided for full-year adjusted earnings to come between $16.40 and $17 per share, versus the $16.47 a share expected from analysts. Madison Square Garden Sports — Shares popped 13% after the sports company announced plans to consider the spinoff of its New York Knicks NBA franchise from its New York Rangers NHL business. The split would create two distinct publicly traded companies. Garmin — Shares popped 11% as the maker of smartwatches and navigation tools posted better-than-expected fourth-quarter earnings and issued a strong 2026 forecast. The company said it’s seen strong demand for fitness products. Garmin also raised its dividend and announced a $500 million buyback program. Insulet — The maker of insulin monitoring devices rose 6% after fourth-quarter results topped expectations driven by record new customer starts for its Omnipod 5 device. Insulet expects 2026 revenue to grow between 20% and 22% from 2025, while adjusted earnings per share rise more than 25% year over year. The company also plans to buy back $350 million in stock. Republic Services — Shares fell 5% as the waste management company’s 2026 earnings and revenue forecast came up short due to weak demand for its environmental solutions. The company expects adjusted earnings of $7.20 to $7.28 per share this year on revenue of $17.05 billion to $17.15 billion. Analysts surveyed by LSEG had anticipated earnings of $7.31 per share and revenue of $17.33 billion. Charles River — Shares of the contract drug developer fell 4% as its 2026 revenue forecast disappointed. Analysts said the company is facing a challenging environment as it tries to boost organic revenue growth in the second half of the year. Nvidia — The chipmaker ticked up 2% after Meta expanded its partnership with Nvidia to use millions of the company’s AI chips, including standalone central processing units, for its data center build-out. Palo Alto Networks — Shares of the cybersecurity company tumbled 5% after Palo Alto issued a weak earnings forecast for the current quarter. The company sees adjusted earnings for the fiscal third quarter ranging from 78 cents to 80 cents per share, while the LSEG consensus sought 92 cents per share. Cadence Design Systems — The computational software company’s shares advanced 9%. Cadence Design sees full-year adjusted earnings ranging from $8.05 to $8.15 per share, while the LSEG consensus called for $8.05 per share. The company also said its year-end backlog for 2025 was a record $7.8 billion, adding that it expects to recognize $3.8 billion in revenue in the next 12 months from remaining performance obligations. Caesars Entertainment — Shares rose 13% after the casino operator beat on its fourth-quarter financial results. Revenue for the three-month period came in at $2.92 billion, surpassing the LSEG consensus estimate of $2.89 billion. Caesars Digital adjusted EBITDA for the period came in at $85 million, compared with $20 million a year ago. Axcelis Technologies — The stock plunged 15% after the semiconductor solutions firm issued lower-than-expected guidance for its first-quarter results. The company sees earnings of 71 cents per share excluding some items for the first quarter. That’s well below analysts’ consensus estimate of $1.01 earnings per share, FactSet data shows. The firm also expects revenue to come in at $195 million, lower than the Street’s consensus forecast of $207.2 million. Palantir — The software firm was up 4% after Mizuho upgraded the stock to outperform. Analysts said that a recent valuation reset has improved the company’s risk-reward setup and that strong commercial growth as well as government demand is likely to translate to sustainable growth and margin expansion. Global Payments – Shares surged 15% after the payments technology firm posted better-than-expected guidance for the current year. The company said it expects to notch earnings of $13.80 to $14 per share by the end of 2026, topping a FactSet consensus of $13.58 per share. It also said that adjusted net revenue growth will come in at roughly 5% by the end of this year, or slightly higher than analysts’ forecast of 4.7%. Global Payments also beat on earnings and revenue for the fourth quarter. — CNBC’s Liz Napolitano, Itzel Franco, Darla Mercado, Michelle Fox and Sarah Min contributed reporting. Correction: Madison Square Garden Sports reported its earnings on Feb. 5. An earlier version of this story misstated the timing.
