DuPont de Nemours stock rises on Q4 earnings beat

Yahoo Finance Live’s Julie Hyman, Brad Smith, and Brian Sozzi discuss DuPont de Nemours earnings and the stock's reaction.

Video Transcript

[AUDIO LOGO]

JULIE HYMAN: All right, let's talk about another mover. Keeping an eye on industrial materials maker DuPont, the company beat estimates on the top and bottom line. It did come up short on its guidance for the first quarter. And the shares are actually up by 5%, which is perhaps a little surprising because that first-quarter guidance was pretty lousy. They were talking about earnings per share of $0.80. That's $0.09 below what analysts were estimating. But, indeed, the last quarter they matched on revenue and beat on earnings per share.

The company is talking about for the full year that they are expecting continued strength in particular areas of the business-- water and auto adhesives, among other things-- and stable demand across industrial and markets. So perhaps that's encouraging to investors. The company, by the way, is also raising its dividend by 9%. So maybe that's bringing in some folks.

BRIAN SOZZI: And the only reason I really care about DuPont-- yes, DuPont, old company, I get it. But really, I use it-- their earnings-- for clues on many other companies. And if you go into their earnings release, and it's a good read, really helpful. If you're up this morning, you're trading, check out this DuPont release.

And you go down the page and you go to the Semiconductor Technology section. And they talk about weakness and fab utilization rates. That immediately has maybe a little concerned on what Intel is trying to do, try to develop its own fabs and seeing weakness there as it tries to roll into. And industrials, to your point, Julie, weakness in auto. We heard that from Ford when it reported last week. Weakness in semiconductors. We've been hearing that from a lot of players.

And then this was also interesting calling out weakness in smartphones and personal computing. And this, of course--

JULIE HYMAN: Well, we know that.

BRAD SMITH: Yeah.

BRIAN SOZZI: Of course, the whole week started this week with Dell firing 6,000 people. So a really cool earnings release to pick through.

BRAD SMITH: Yeah, Ed Breen the executive chairman and CEO of DuPont saying, within this report, the face of weak conditions, certain end markets, namely here electronics and construction. We've continued to hear that. They still delivered some revenue and operating results in line with their expectations.

But it still is so much about that forecast going forward from here and where some of the offsets, at least in their improvement against their own benchmarks, where that starts to materially or at least hopefully move in their favor. But as of right now, some of the fabrication process that you mentioned, it's tough to bring any type of nanometer technology production online and in a rapid clip to the point that investors would be appeased.

BRIAN SOZZI: Not a fab situation yet there, Brad.

[LAUGHTER]

BRAD SMITH: Yes. Fab, fit, fun. All right.