Meta, Bank of America, Affirm, AmEx, JetBlue, and More Stock Market Movers

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Stock futures were falling Thursday as minutes from the Federal Reserve’s meeting in June revealed that most central bank officials expected interest rates to be raised again this year.

These stocks were poised to make moves Thursday: 

Meta Platforms

(ticker: META) launched Threads, its rival to Twitter, on Wednesday evening, a day earlier than the release of the microblogging app had been expected. CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that more than 10 million people had registered for the app in just seven hours after it launched.

Shares of

Meta
,
the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, were rising 1.7% in premarket trading.

Bank of America

(BAC) said it would boost its quarterly dividend to 24 cents a share from 22 cents beginning in the third quarter. The bank had held off on making an announcement about its dividend last Friday, unlike most other large banks that raised their payouts following the Federal Reserve’s stress test.

Bank of America

said it was continuing its dialogue with the Federal Reserve to understand differences between the Fed’s stress test and the bank’s Dodd-Frank Act stress-test results. Shares of Bank of America fell 0.1% in premarket trading.

Sweetgreen

(SG) jumped 5.5% after the salad restaurant chain was upgraded to Buy from Neutral at BofA.

Affirm

(AFRM) declined 5.1% to $14.64 in premarket trading after shares of the buy-now-pay-later operator were downgraded to Underweight from Neutral at

Piper Sandler
.
The price target was left unchanged at $11.

Fidelity National Information Services

(FIS), the financial services technology company, said it signed a definitive agreement to sell a majority stake in its Worldpay Merchant Solutions business to private-equity funds managed by GTCR in a transaction valuing Worldpay at $18.5 billion. Shares gained 2.3% in premarket trading.

American Express

(AXP) fell 2% after shares of the credit-card giant were downgraded to Neutral from Outperform at Baird.

Keurig Dr Pepper

(KDP) rose 1.4% after the beverage company was upgraded to Overweight from Equal Weight at

Morgan Stanley
.

JetBlue Airways

(JBLU) was falling 1.3% after the airline terminated a joint venture with

American Airlines

(AAL) following a judge’s ruling against the partnership and said it would turn its focus to completing its $3.8 billion acquisition of

Spirit Airlines

(SAVE). American shares declined 0.8% in premarket trading. Spirit rose 2.4%.

Microsoft

(MSFT) gained 0.8% to $340.76 in premarket trading after the tech giant stock price target was raised to $415 from $335 at Morgan Stanley.

San Francisco-based jeans maker

Levi Strauss

(LEVI) is scheduled to report quarterly earnings after the stock market closes Thursday.

Write to Joe Woelfel at joseph.woelfel@barrons.com