Cal-Maine Foods, Lithium Americas, energy stocks: Top Tickers

Cal-Maine Foods (CALM) shares closed the day in the red as the company's first-quarter results missed expectations. The company reported that sales fell by about 30 percent.

Lithium Americas (LAC) shares jumped after the company split into two separate publicly traded companies, splitting from its Argentina unit (LAAC).

Energy stocks such as Exxon Mobil (XOM), Marathon Oil (MRO), and Phillips 66 (PSX), close the day in the red as oil prices pulled back from their 2023 highs.

Yahoo Finance Live breaks down some of the trending stocks of the day. For more expert insight and the latest market action, click here to watch this full episode of Yahoo Finance Live.

Video Transcript

JULIE HYMAN: Big egg maker, Cal-Maine Foods, those shares sliding as the egg producer provided a weak earnings report. The company's sales in the quarter slumped by about 30%. The shares down 7% on the day here. Average selling prices for shell eggs have returned to more normalized levels, said the CEO Sherman Miller. And the overall egg supply is recovering from avian influenza.

You know, we've been watching egg prices so closely. They were really a big headline there and part of CPI for a while. That was good news for Cal-Maine for a little bit, right? I mean, not easy to deal with an avian influenza outbreak but from a price perspective was positive. And so normalization in their case is not necessarily good for their sales.

JOSH LIPTON: Yeah. Reported earnings and missed sales down about 30%. And to your point, the average egg prices apparently down to 159 per dozen from 228 in the year ago period. Good news for me and my breakfast every morning, not so much for them.

JULIE HYMAN: Are you an egg guy every day?

JOSH LIPTON: Great egg guy, huge egg guy. Oh, yeah. You just combine it with, you know, your 40 milligrams of Lipitor, and you're fine. That's the idea.

JULIE HYMAN: I don't-- I think that's an old way--

JOSH LIPTON: Isn't that what doctors advise?

JULIE HYMAN: No, that's an old way of thinking.

JOSH LIPTON: Oh, is it?

JULIE HYMAN: I don't think there's such a concern about eggs and cholesterol anymore.

JOSH LIPTON: Don't be slandering the eggs. I should be saying.

JULIE HYMAN: I think eggs--

JOSH LIPTON: I'll stand down

JULIE HYMAN: --eggs are OK now. I don't know. All right.

JOSH LIPTON: Moving on Lithium Americas splits into two separate publicly traded companies. Shares surging as Lithium Americas separates from its Argentine segment. So this one, Lithium Mining startup now transforming into two companies, Julie. And I guess spinning off Lithium Americas Argentina to shareholders. So if you want to invest in lithium, critical for EVs, here's your chance.

JULIE HYMAN: So Lithium Americas owns the Thacker Pass Project, which is in Nevada. And this is something they've been working on for a while, because just like we are trying to get all kinds of supply chain things based or reshored here in the US, lithium is among them. Obviously, there's a huge demand for lithium because of batteries, particularly for electric cars. So this has been something that has been sort of a speculative play, because it's not yet producing lithium at that mine as of yet, because it's still under construction. But it's been an interesting story.

But you can see the shares falling of Lithium America as that split goes into effect. We've been watching a lot of splits over the past week or so.

JOSH LIPTON: It's been a theme.

JULIE HYMAN: And many of them have not been doing well.

JOSH LIPTON: No, no.

JULIE HYMAN: So it's been an interesting space to watch now, but we're going to continue to watch lithium one. We also are going to continue to watch energy stocks. Now, I was just talking about what was going on with them in terms of the overall sectors feeling the pressure in today's trading session. Oil prices pulling back from their 2023 highs last month. Exxon just one example, down by 4% here. But it has really been an interesting day for many of these.

And if you take a look inside the YFi interactive again, just to look at the sectors and get some perspective on what's been happening. So the XLE, that's today here for the XLE. But if you take it out to three months. And you will see a very different picture, where you have seen it as the best performing sector in the S&P 500. And that's because of what we have been seeing with oil prices, right?

Here's another look at that three months on an individual basis. So there's the heat map of all the big energy names on that three-month basis. If you look year-to-date, it is not as clear what's been going on. But really, the surge has been coming in the past few months for many of these companies.

Here's ExxonMobil, for example, that's the daily chart. If you look at year-to-date, you can see zig-zag but really coming up from the high-- from the lows in July and recovering since that time.

JOSH LIPTON: Yeah. The decline in oil price is just sending energy stocks lower across the board here. You point out Chevron, Exxon, Occidental Petroleum, take your name. We mentioned JPMorgan at the beginning of the show and their take on this. Their year-end target, 86 per barrel. So if you're an investor, you're trying to find the stocks that can work in that universe, you've got to maybe pick your spots. We had Neil Dingmann from Truist, though, giving us some names.

JULIE HYMAN: He did. And Conoco was among them. He said you want the lower cost oil producers that are able to get more margins out of that oil they're taken out of the ground.