Markus Andrews

An Exxon Mobil gas station in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 28, 2023.
Al Drago | Bloomberg | Getty Images

With the Federal Reserve now on a rate-cutting campaign, dividend stocks may soon get their moment in the spotlight.
Investors looking for lucrative dividend-paying stocks can track the recommendations of top analysts, who consider various aspects like a company’s fundamentals and consistency in dividend payments before selecting a stock.

Here are three dividend-paying stocks, highlighted by Wall Street’s top pros on TipRanks, a platform that ranks analysts based on their past performance.

Exxon Mobil

This week’s first dividend pick is oil and gas giant Exxon Mobil (XOM). The company recently announced better-than-anticipated third-quarter results, driven by a solid rise in production. It is worth noting that the company achieved its highest liquids production in over 40 years with 3.2 million barrels per day.
The dividend aristocrat returned $9.8 billion to shareholders in the third quarter. Moreover, the company increased its quarterly dividend by 4% to 99 cents per share. With this hike, Exxon has increased its dividends for 42 consecutive years. XOM stock offers a forward dividend yield of 3.3%.
Following the Q3 print, Evercore analyst Stephen Richardson reiterated a buy rating on Exxon stock with a price target of $135. The analyst noted that the company’s strategy to invest through the cycle trough and boost spending on major projects and acquisitions like that of Pioneer Natural Resources boosted the prospects of its Upstream business.
“The benefit of incremental investments and perhaps more importantly the high grading of the asset base has put XOM on a different competitive footing vs. the industry but also vs. its own historical results,” said Richardson.

The analyst noted that the company’s cash flow from operations, excluding working capital changes, of $15.2 billion was flat on a quarter-over-quarter basis but exceeded his expectations by nearly $1.1 billion. He also highlighted that Exxon’s net debt declined by $1.1 billion in the quarter, reflecting $2.3 billion of net working capital inflow.
Richardson ranks No. 924 among more than 9,100 analysts tracked by TipRanks. His ratings have been profitable 61% of the time, delivering an average return of 9.6%. See Exxon Ownership Structure on TipRanks.

Coterra Energy

We move to another energy player, Coterra Energy (CTRA). It is an exploration and production company with operations focused in the Permian Basin, Marcellus Shale and Anadarko Basin. In the third quarter, shareholder returns represented 96% of the company’s free cash flow (FCF) and included a quarterly base dividend of 21 cents per share and share repurchases worth $111 million. 
Coterra Energy aims to return 50% or greater of its annual FCF to shareholders and recently highlighted that it has returned 100% year to date. CTRA stock offers a dividend yield of 3%.
On Nov. 13, Coterra announced two separate definitive agreements to acquire certain assets of Franklin Mountain Energy and Avant Natural Resources and its affiliates for a total amount of $3.95 billion. The company thinks that the acquisition of these two Permian Basin asset packages will expand its core area in New Mexico and boost its organizational strengths.
Reacting to the news, Mizuho analyst Nitin Kumar reaffirmed a buy rating on the stock with a price target of $37 and a “Top Pick” designation. He said that while the assets being acquired are less attractive than Coterra’s existing Permian inventory on the basis of pure well productivity, their higher oil mix and lower well costs offset this shortcoming.
While Kumar thinks that these acquisitions are not transformative, he remains bullish on CTRA’s long-term prospects and thinks that “as the lowest-cost producer of gas, CTRA should be able to support above-peer cash generation even at lower prices or wide differentials, which complement oil-driven FCF from the Permian.”
Kumar ranks No. 187 among more than 9,100 analysts tracked by TipRanks. His ratings have been profitable 64% of the time, delivering an average return of 14.3%. See Coterra Energy Stock Charts on TipRanks.

Walmart

Finally, let’s look at Walmart (WMT). The big-box retailer delivered impressive third-quarter results and raised its full-year guidance, thanks to the strength in its e-commerce business and improvement in categories beyond groceries.
Earlier this year, Walmart raised its annual dividend per share by about 9% to 83 cents per share, marking the 51st consecutive year of dividend increases.
Following the results, Jefferies analyst Corey Tarlowe increased the price target for WMT stock to $105 from $100 and reaffirmed a buy rating. The analyst noted that the company’s same-store sales continued to be fueled by increased transactions, higher unit volumes and favorable general merchandise trends.
Tarlowe highlighted that improvement in Walmart’s margins helped deliver better-than-expected earnings in the quarter. Specifically, WMT’s Q3 gross margin improved by about 20 basis points due to several reasons like increased e-commerce profitability, inventory management and a favorable business mix. Further, the operating margin expanded by 10 basis points, thanks to drivers like increased gross margin and higher membership income.
The analyst also noted the improvement in general merchandise sales in Walmart U.S., supported by factors such as enhanced assortment and share gains across all income cohorts. 
Overall, Tarlowe is bullish on the stock and remains “incrementally encouraged by WMT’s ability to offer customers improved value, witness robust growth, and gain share ahead.”
Tarlowe ranks No. 331 among more than 9,100 analysts tracked by TipRanks. His ratings have been profitable 67% of the time, delivering an average return of 17.6%. See Walmart Hedge Fund Activity on TipRanks. More

Pavlo Gonchar | SOPA Images | Lightrocket | Getty Images

Company: Henry Schein (HSIC)

Business: Henry Schein is a solutions company for health care. It operates through two segments: health care distribution, and technology and value-added services. The health care distribution segment distributes an array of offerings, including consumable products, small equipment, laboratory products, large equipment and equipment repair services. The technology and value-added services segment provides software, technology and other services to health care practitioners. It offers dental practice management solutions for dental and medical practitioners. It also develops solutions for the orthopedic treatment of lower extremities (foot and ankle) and upper extremities (primarily hand and wrist).
Stock Market Value: $9.36B ($75.08 per share)

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Henry Schein in 2024

Activist: Ananym Capital Management

Ownership: n/a
Average Cost: n/a
Activist Commentary: Ananym Capital Management is a New York-based activist investment firm which launched on Sept. 3. It’s run by Charlie Penner (former partner at Jana Partners and head of shareholder activism at Engine No. 1) and Alex Silver (former partner and investment committee member at P2 Capital Partners). Ananym looks for high quality but undervalued companies, regardless of industry. The firm would prefer to work amicably with its portfolio companies, but it’s willing to resort to a proxy fight as a last resort. It holds approximately 10 positions in its portfolio and currently manages $250 million.

What’s happening

On Nov. 18, Reuters reported that Ananym is pushing Henry to refresh the board, cut costs, address succession planning and consider selling its medical distribution business.

Behind the scenes

Henry Schein is a leading global distributor of health-care products and services primarily to office-based dental and medical practitioners. The company operates through two segments that offer different products and services to the same customer base: (i) health care distribution and (ii) technology and value-added services. Health care distribution covers Henry Schein’s distribution of dental and medical products, such as laboratory products, pharmaceuticals, vaccines, surgical products, dental specialty products and diagnostic tests. This segment, which accounts for 93.5% of net sales, is sub-divided between dental (61.1% of total net sales) and medical (32.4%). While the company’s primary go-to-market strategy is in its distribution capabilities, it also sells its own corporate brand portfolio of products and manufactures certain dental specialty products. In terms of scale, the company is the global leader in dental distribution and second in medical distribution to office-based physicians. Henry Schein’s other segment, technology and value-added services (6.5% of net sales) covers the sale of practice management software and other value-added products. With a market cap of roughly $9 billion, the company generates approximately $1 billion of free cash flow annually.

Despite Henry Schein’s leading market position, attractive market structure, differentiated value proposition and strong earnings power, no value has been delivered to shareholders over the past five years on a total shareholder return basis (0%, as of Nov. 15), versus 59% for the S&P 500 health-care index and 105% for proxy peers. The main source of this underperformance is relatively clear: cost control. Since 2019, the company has grown revenue at a 5% compound annual growth rate and gross profit at a 6% CAGR. But it has spent all that extra revenue and then some on operating expenses resulting in 8% annual operating expense growth and adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization margins falling to 8% from 10%. Putting it differently, in 2019 the company had $10 billion in revenue, $3.1 billion in gross profit and $916 million in EBITDA. Today, it has $12.5 billion in revenue, $3.9 billion in gross profit and $815 million in EBITDA. Part of the reason for this is that the company has spent more than $4 billion (nearly 45% of its current market cap) on poor acquisitions that have delivered a return on invested capital well below the company’s cost of capital. Moreover, management has failed to integrate these acquisitions leading to bloated selling, general and administrative expenses. The first thing that needs to be done is for Henry Schein to execute a comprehensive cost restructuring plan of more than the $100 million the company has announced. There is a potential $300 million of actionable savings that could increase earnings per share by 35% or more.
Next, the company needs to do a better job with capital allocation. It must stop using cash flow to make acquisitions or pay back its debt that has a 6% cost and start using it to buy back stock at these prices. The company trades at a 13-times the next 12 months price-earnings multiple — near a 15-year low point. Henry Schein has stable cash flow and a strong balance sheet. Along with cash flow, it could increase net leverage to 3.0-times from 2.6-times to acquire more than 10% of its float today and 40% of its float through 2026, as opposed to the meager $300 million to $400 million of share repurchases (< 5% of market cap) it has announced for 2025. This would further increase EPS by potentially 50%. In addition to these steps, the company's medical business presents a strategic opportunity. While Henry Schein has successfully carved into the office-based physician niche as the No. 2 player, the business environment is far more competitive and will favor larger distributors. This asset could be worth $2.5 billion or more in a sale, which would be share price accretive and could be used to further repurchase the company's discounted shares. Many companies have serious issues and need an activist to endure. This is a company that does not need an activist to survive, but it would greatly benefit from an activist who could help optimize its operations and balance sheet. Henry Schein is a great company that has gotten sleepy and been allowed to coast when it could have been soaring. Part of the reason the market has allowed this is because it has been compared to its sleepy peers, Patterson and Benco. Benco is a private company and Schein's three-year return of -12% has blown away Patterson's -41%, but Schein should be benchmarking itself against the largest U.S. health-care distribution companies like Cardinal Health (+135%), Cencora (+93%), and McKesson (+173%). Perhaps not in terms of scale or end-markets, but more in aspiration and dedication to shareholders. This would require a refreshed board. Several directors have been in their seats at Henry Schein for over a decade and the board lacks best-in-class distribution expertise. A new board can come in and create a succession plan for Stanley Bergman, who has been CEO for 35 years. This is easier when the company can retain top management. But under the current board, the company has experienced a concerning level of executive turnover since 2021. Ananym does not have an activist history yet, but knowing Charlie Penner and Alex Silver as we do, we would expect them to strive to work amicably with management to create value for shareholders. We do not expect that the firm will insist on a board seat for an Ananym principal. However, we do expect that Ananym will suggest several well-qualified industry executives who can help make the changes necessary to create significant shareholder value from a board level. But do not confuse the investor's friendly demeanor and amicable engagement for weakness. The firm is a fiduciary to its own investors and will do whatever is necessary to create value at its portfolio companies. The director nomination window does not open until Jan. 21, 2025, and we would expect that the parties will work out an agreement before then. Ken Squire is the founder and president of 13D Monitor, an institutional research service on shareholder activism, and the founder and portfolio manager of the 13D Activist Fund, a mutual fund that invests in a portfolio of activist 13D investments. More

Data center campuses power artificial intelligence and cloud computing
The campuses could grow so large that finding enough power and suitable land to accommodate them becomes increasingly difficult.
Renewable energy alone won’t be sufficient anytime soon to meet their power needs.
Natural gas will have to play a role, which will slow progress toward meeting carbon dioxide emissions targets.

An Amazon Web Services data center in Ashburn, Virginia, US, on Sunday, July 28, 2024.
Nathan Howard | Bloomberg | Getty Images

The power needs of artificial intelligence and cloud computing are growing so large that individual data center campuses could soon use more electricity than some cities, and even entire U.S. states, according to companies developing the facilities.
The electricity consumption of data centers has exploded along with their increasingly critical role in the economy in the past 10 years, housing servers that power the applications businesses and consumers rely on for daily tasks.

Now, with the advent of artificial intelligence, data centers are growing so large that finding enough power to drive them and enough suitable land to house them will become increasingly difficult, the developers say. The facilities could increasingly demand a gigawatt or more of power — one billion watts — or about twice the residential electricity consumption of the Pittsburgh area last year.
Technology companies are in a “race of a lifetime to global dominance” in artificial intelligence, said Ali Fenn, president of Lancium, a company that secures land and power for data centers in Texas. “It’s frankly about national security and economic security,” she said. “They’re going to keep spending” because there’s no more profitable place to deploy capital.
Renewable energy alone won’t be sufficient to meet their power needs. Natural gas will have to play a role, developers say, which will slow progress toward meeting carbon dioxide emissions targets.
(See here for which stocks are helping to fix the nation’s power grid.)
Regardless of where the power comes from, data centers are now at a scale where they have started “tapping out against the existing utility infrastructure,” said Nat Sahlstrom, chief energy officer at Tract, a Denver-based company that secures land, infrastructure and power resources for such facilities.

And “the funnel of available of land in this country that’s industrial zone land that can fit the data center use case — it’s becoming more and more constrained,” said Sahlstrom, who previously led Amazon’s energy, water and sustainability teams.
Beyond Virginia
As land and power grow more limited, data centers are expanding into new markets outside the long-established global hub in northern Virginia, Sahlstrom said. The electric grid that serves Virginia is facing looming reliability problems. Power demand is expected to surge, while supply is falling due to the retirement of coal- and some natural gas-powered plants.
Tract, for example, has assembled more than 23,000 acres of land for data center development across the U.S., with large holdings in Maricopa County, Arizona — home to Phoenix — and Storey County, Nevada, near Reno.
Tract recently bought almost 2,100 acres in Buckeye, Arizona with plans to develop the land into one of the largest data center campuses in the country. The privately-held company is working with utilities to secure up to 1.8 gigawatts of power for the site to support as many as 40 individual data centers.
For context, a data center campus with peak demand of one gigawatt is roughly equivalent to the average annual consumption of about 700,000 homes, or a city of around 1.8 million people, according to a CNBC analysis using data from the Department of Energy and Census Bureau.

A data center campus that size would use more power in one year than retail electric sales in Alaska, Rhode Island or Vermont, according to Department of Energy data.
A gigawatt-size data center campus running at even the lower end of peak demand is still roughly comparable to about 330,000 households, or a city of more than 800,000 people — about the population of San Francisco.
The average size of individual data centers operated by the major tech companies is currently around 40 megawatts, but a growing pipeline of campuses of 250 megawatts or more is coming, according to data from the Boston Consulting Group.
The U.S. is expected see a growing number of data center campuses of 500 megawatts or more, equivalent to half a gigawatt, in the 2030s through mid-2040s, according to the BCG data. Facilities of that size are comparable to about 350,000 homes, according to CNBC’s analysis.
“Certainly the average size of the data centers is increasing at a rapid pace from now to 2030,” said Vivian Lee, managing director and partner at BCG.

Community impact

Texas has become an increasingly attractive market due to a less burdensome regulatory environment and abundant energy resources that are more easily tailored to specific sites, Sahlstrom said. “Texas is probably the world’s best experiment lab to deploy your own power solution,” the energy officer said.
Houston-based Lancium set up shop in 2017 with the idea of bringing large electric loads closer to abundant renewable energy resources in west and central Texas, said Fenn, the company’s president. Originally focused on cryptocurrency mining, Lancium later shifted its focus to providing power for artificial intelligence with the advent of ChatGPT in late 2022.

Today, Lancium has five data center campuses in various stages of development. A 1,000-acre campus in Abilene is expected to open in the first quarter of 2025 with 250 megawatts of power that will ramp up to 1.2 gigawatts in 2026.
The minimum power requirement for Lancium’s data center customers is now a gigawatt, and future plans involve scaling them up to between three and five gigawatts, Fenn said.
For data centers that size, developers have to ensure that electricity costs in neighboring communities don’t rise as a consequence and that grid reliability is maintained, Fenn said. Pairing such facilities with new power generation is crucial, she said.
“The data centers have to partner with utilities, the system operators, the communities, to really establish that these things are assets to the grid and not liabilities to the grid,” Fenn said. “Nobody’s going to keep approving” such developments if they push up residential and commercial electric rates.

Renewables not enough

Data center campuses run by publicly-traded Equinix are rising to several hundred megawatts from 100- to 200 megawatts, said Jon Lin, general manager for data center services at the company. Equinix is one of the largest data center operators in the world with 260 facilities spread across 72 metropolitan areas in the U.S. and abroad.
Developers prefer carbon-free renewable energy, but they also see solar and wind alone as unable to meet current demand due to their reliance on changing weather conditions.
Some of the most critical workloads for the world’s economy, such as financial exchanges, run at data centers operated by Equinix, Lin said. Equinix’s data centers are online more than 99% of the time and outages are out of the question, the executive said.
“The firmness of the power is still incredibly important for these data centers, and so doing that solely off of local renewables is candidly just not an option,” Lin said.
The major technology companies are some of the largest purchasers of renewable power in the U.S., but they are increasingly turning to nuclear in search of more reliable sources of electricity. Microsoft is supporting the restart of the Three Mile Island nuclear plant outside Harrisburg, Pennsylvania through a power purchase agreement. Amazon and Alphabet’s Google are investing in small nuclear reactors.

But building new nuclear reactors is expensive and fraught with delays. Two new reactors in Georgia recently came online years behind schedule and billions of dollars over budget.
In the short run, natural gas will fuel much of the power demanded by data centers, Lancium’s Fenn said. Gas is the main, short-term power source providing the reliability these facilities require, Boston Consulting Group’s Lee said.
Investments could be made in new gas generation that adds carbon capture and battery storage technology over time to mitigate the environmental impact, Lee said.
The industry hopes that gas demand will taper off as renewables expand, battery storage costs come down and AI helps data centers operate more efficiently, Fenn said. But in the near term, there’s no question that data center expansion is disrupting technology companies’ emissions targets, she said.
“Hopefully, it’s a short term side step,” Fenn said of stepped-up natural gas usage. “What I’m seeing amongst our data center partners, our hyperscale conversations, is we cannot let this have an adverse effect on the environmental goals.”
Note: CNBC analysis assumes a data center campus is continuously utilizing 85% of its peak demand of a gigawatt throughout the year, for a total consumption of 7.4 billion kilowatt-hours. Analysis uses national averages for household electricity consumption from EIA and household size from Census Bureau. More

The Biden administration’s new student loan repayment plan is tied up in legal battles. The result: millions of borrowers have had their monthly payments put on hold.
“Borrowers are frustrated about the delay toward forgiveness,” said higher education expert Mark Kantrowitz. “They feel like they’ve been waiting for Godot.”

Matthias Ritzmann | The Image Bank | Getty Images

With the Biden administration’s new student loan repayment plan is tied up in legal battles, millions of borrowers have had their monthly payments put on hold.
The break from the bills is likely a relief to the many federal student loan borrowers enrolled in the Saving on a Valuable Education plan, known as SAVE. But it may also be causing them anxiety over the fact that they won’t get credit on their timeline to debt forgiveness.

For example, those also enrolled in the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, who are entitled to loan cancellation after 10 years, have seen their journey toward that relief halted during the forbearance.
“Borrowers are frustrated about the delay toward forgiveness,” said higher education expert Mark Kantrowitz. “They feel like they’ve been waiting for Godot.”
Here’s what borrowers enrolled in SAVE should know about the delay to debt cancellation.

Delay could stretch on for months

In October, the U.S. Department of Education said that roughly 8 million federal student loan borrowers will remain in an interest-free forbearance while the courts decide the fate of the SAVE plan.
A federal court issued an injunction earlier this year preventing the Education Department from implementing parts of the SAVE plan, which the Biden administration had described as the most affordable repayment plan in history. Under SAVE’s terms, many people expected to see their monthly bills cut in half. 

The forbearance is supposed to help borrowers who were counting on those lower monthly bills. But unlike the Covid-era pause on federal student loan payments, this forbearance does not bring borrowers closer to debt forgiveness under an income-driven repayment plan or Public Service Loan Forgiveness.
Adding to borrowers’ annoyance is that “those enrolled in the SAVE Plan were not given the choice of forbearance,” said Elaine Rubin, director of corporate communications at Edvisors, which helps students navigate college costs and borrowing. If borrowers want to stay in SAVE, they can’t opt out of this pause.
Borrowers enrolled in PSLF are especially concerned, Kantrowitz said. That program requires borrowers to work in public service while they’re repaying their student loans.
“They have been working in a qualifying job, but aren’t making progress toward forgiveness,” he said. “Some borrowers are working a job they hate, but are sticking with it in the expectation of qualifying for forgiveness. Others are close to retirement and don’t want to have to work past their normal retirement age just to get the forgiveness.”

What borrowers can do

Despite the delay toward forgiveness, there are still a few good reasons for borrowers to stay enrolled in SAVE, experts say. During the forbearance, borrowers are excused from payments and interest on their debt does not accrue.
Keep in mind: Even if you make payments under SAVE during the forbearance, your loan servicer will just apply that money toward future payments owed once the pause ends, the Education Department says.
If you’re eager to be back on your way to debt cancellation, you have options.
You may be able switch into another income-driven repayment plan that is still available. Under that new plan, you may have to start making payments again. Yet if you earn under around $20,000 as a single person, your monthly payment could still be $0, and therefore you might not lose anything by switching, Kantrowitz said.
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Changing plans might be especially appealing to those who are very close to crossing the finish line to debt forgiveness and just want to see their balance wiped away, experts said. (You’ll likely be placed in a processing forbearance for a period while your loan servicer makes that switch. During that time, you will get credit toward forgiveness.)
The Education Department is also offering those who’ve been working in public service for 10 years the chance to “buy back” certain months in their payment history. This allows borrowers to make payments to cover previous months for which they didn’t get credit. But to be eligible for the option, the purchased months need to bring you to the 120 payments required for loan forgiveness.
“The buyback option might be eliminated under the Trump administration,” Kantrowitz said. “So, if you want to use it, you should use it now.” More

Dupes may just be the hottest gift of the season.
This year, 79% of shoppers said they would buy a dupe as a gift for their loved ones for the holidays, according to a recent report.
Here’s how to discern when it’s appropriate to buy someone a dupe and when it makes more sense to invest in a name-brand product instead, according to experts. 

Caiaimage/Paul Bradbury | Caiaimage | Getty Images

‘Tis the season for giving … dupes?
Buying a dupe — short for duplicates — rose to the top of this year’s holiday wish lists. A dupe gift is a gift that is a cheaper alternative to a more expensive, branded item. They were largely kept under the radar until recently because a “fake” was dubbed inferior to the real thing, but a lot has changed.

In some cases these brand imitators are now even preferred to their pricier counterparts.
More from Personal Finance:Here are the best ways to save money this holiday season28% of credit card users are still paying off last year’s holiday tabHoliday shoppers plan to spend more
This year, 79% of consumers said they would buy a dupe as a gift for their loved ones for the holidays, according to a survey of more than 1,000 shoppers by CouponCabin.
More than half — 51% — of those who the coupon site polled said dupes are better than the original.
Even when consumers can get the real thing, nearly 33% of adults intentionally purchased a dupe of a premium product at some point, a separate report by Morning Consult also found. The business intelligence company polled more than 2,000 adults in early October.

When is a dupe an appropriate gift? 

Before you buy a dupe, think about who you’re shopping for, experts say. 
For instance, some family members or friends might especially appreciate a dupe for what it is, said Ellyn Briggs, a brands analyst at Morning Consult. 
“It’s kind of a badge of honor for young people to get a dupe,” she said.
On the other hand, you risk disappointing someone if they have been asking for a specific product for a while, said Melanie Lowe, CouponCabin’s savings expert. 
If that is the case, consider the cost of the name-brand item and assess if it is within budget. The key is to know when to splurge or save, Lowe said.
“If you’re talking about a product that you’ll use daily … invest in the original,” Lowe said. “That purchase is usually worth it.”
Alternatively, “if it seems appropriate in the situation — if it is a more light-hearted gift — you can definitely go the dupe route,” she said. 

‘It’s a dupe for a reason’

While some shoppers take pride in buying dupes, roughly 86% of shoppers have been disappointed by their purchase of a dupe, CouponCabin found. 
“It’s a dupe for a reason,” said Lauren Beitelspacher, professor of marketing at Babson College. “We don’t know where it’s made, who is making it or the quality.”

“It’s not that all dupes are bad. But sometimes we are paying a premium because there is a quality difference — and we, as consumers, have to be more conscious of that,” Beitelspacher said.
If you want to shop for dupes, read and watch product reviews online to help determine the dupe’s quality — this is where social media can come in handy.
A majority, or 62%, of U.S. adults who use TikTok say they use the app for reviews or recommendations, according to a new study by the Pew Research Center. Others tap Instagram and Facebook for product research. 

Shopping secondhand this season

Consumers should make the same value considerations when buying secondhand, which has also become more popular, even for gifting.
Three in 4 shoppers said that giving secondhand gifts has become more accepted over the past year — notching a 7% increase from the year before, according to the 2024 OfferUp recommerce report. OfferUp, an online marketplace for buying and selling new and used items, polled 1,500 adults in July.
The majority, or 83%, of shoppers are also open to receiving secondhand gifts this holiday season, the report found.

Shoppers have increasingly turned to resale for a number of reasons, including value, sustainability and as a means to secure hard-to-find luxury items. Because secondhand shopping is considered eco-friendly, it’s also become more socially acceptable. OfferUp’s report credited Generation Z for driving a shift in mindset.
“The stigma around secondhand gifting is rapidly diminishing,” said Todd Dunlap, OfferUp’s CEO. 
However, the same buyer-beware mentality applies, cautioned Babson’s Beitelspacher, especially if you are ordering secondhand goods online. “You might not get what you want,” she said.

Don’t miss these insights from CNBC PRO More

NVIDIA founder, President and CEO Jensen Huang speaks about the future of artificial intelligence and its effect on energy consumption and production at the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 27, 2024.
Chip Somodevilla | Getty Images

Stocks @ Night is a daily newsletter delivered after hours, giving you a first look at tomorrow and last look at today. Sign up for free to receive it directly in your inbox.
Here’s what CNBC TV’s producers were watching as the Dow Industrials rose more than 460 points on Thursday, and what’s on the radar for the next session.

Nvidia

It was the stock story of the day, and CNBC TV will keep focusing on the move Friday. More CNBC.com users searched for this stock than any other ticker symbol even beating the ever-popular 10-year Treasury yield on Thursday.
Nvidia hit a new high Thursday morning, almost hitting the $153 mark. The stock ended the day off its high, closing up 0.5%.
CNBC TV “Squawk Box” anchor Becky Quick set the big theme of the session, noting that it seems hard for Nvidia to rally because expectations are so high. She recalled a similar solid earnings report three months ago, followed by a stock drop. Shares rallied 15% over the next three months. During the premarket, Quick interviewed analyst Ray Wang of Constellation Research, who said, “Nvidia is growing exponentially versus the rest of the S&P 500.”
With Thursday’s 0.5% gain, Nvidia is now up 196% in 2024. Shares have climbed 53% in six months and added 10% in November. 
Nvidia is the third top performer in the S&P so far this year. The top five winners in the index for 2024 are at the bottom of this note.
Nvidia is a core holding in Jim Cramer’s Charitable Trust. He last bought it on Aug. 31, 2022. It’s up 850% since then. 

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Nvidia in 2024

Bitcoin

It went below $97,000 on Thursday morning, then jumped back above that level. Throughout the day, bitcoin topped the $98,000 mark, crossed the $99,000 threshold for a new high and then came off that level. As of 7:34 p.m. ET, it was at around $98,400.
There is surely more to come in the seconds, minutes and hours after this note goes out. 

MicroStrategy

On Friday, co-founder Michael Saylor will be on “Squawk Box” in the 7 a.m. hour.
The stock was beat up from the feet up on Thursday after Citron Research put out a short report. By the way, the Securities and Exchange Commission charged Citron founder Andrew Left earlier this year, alleging that he misled investors on previous reports. 
MicroStrategy dropped 16% on Thursday.
The stock is up nearly 530% in 2024,
MicroStrategy used to be a software company, but it turned into a proxy for bitcoin. The company has bought billions of dollars’ worth of the cryptocurrency in the last several years.

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MicroStrategy in 2024

Fannie and Freddie

The two are up big since Donald Trump won the presidential election.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are government-sponsored mortgage companies.
There is speculation in the investing world that the new administration may try to privatize both entities. This would put them outside of government control.
Fannie Mae is up 130% since the election.
Freddie Mac is up 160% since the election.
Fannie Mae rose nearly 5% Thursday, while Freddie Mac gained 6%.

Amazon and Tesla, Bezos and Musk

Jeff Bezos has moved on from the day to day at the internet shopping giant but he remains executive chair of the board. He and Elon Musk, who seems to be focusing a lot on politics right now, wound up in a short online duel of tech billionaires.
On X, the social media platform, Musk accused Bezos of telling people to sell their Tesla and SpaceX holdings because he had believed Donald Trump was about to lose the election. There was no attribution.
A short time later, Jeff Bezos simply posted: “Nope. 100% not true.”
Musk a few hours later posted, “Well, then, I stand corrected” with one of those emojis where the face is laughing with tears.
Shares of Tesla are up 35% since the election. Amazon is down 0.5% in that period.

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Tesla and Amazon in 2024

Uber and Tesla, Khosrowshahi and Musk

Uber slipped after investor Brad Gerstner told Scott Wapner of CNBC’s “Halftime Report” that he was selling the stock. The stock ultimately closed marginally higher Thursday, up 0.06%.
Gerstner made the case that Tesla would be the big winner in autonomous driving, setting up a good battle in the still-emerging autonomous driving industry.
Uber is now down 6% since the election.
Uber’s CEO Dara Khosrowshahi has been critical of some of the President-elect Trump’s policies in the past.

S&P 500 leaders with about 25 trading days left in 2024

Vistra, the energy company, is at the top of the S&P so far this year, up 332%.
Palantir ranks second, up 257%.
Nvidia is third, up 196% year to date.
Axon Enterprises, manufacturers of the Taser, is up 144% in 2024.
Targa Resources is fifth, up nearly 140% this year.

Buckle before the bell

The retailer will issue quarterly results before the bell. It’s the only notable report we’ll see Friday.
The stock is up 13% over the past three months.
Buckle hit a high last week but is down 4.25% since then.
Buckle has about 450 locations in 42 states. This includes one shop at the East Towne Mall and another in the West Towne Mall — both are in Madison, Wisconsin. More