Here are last week's Rockets and Duds from the stock market.
Boralex BLX 🚀🚀🚀
Sometimes the best way out of a renewable energy slump is to let someone with a trillion dollars in assets under management buy you out. Canada's Boralex, a wind and solar power producer, announced it was being acquired by Brookfield Asset Management and La Caisse. Shares surged about 30% over the week. The deal implies a $9 billion enterprise value. There's also a fun political subplot: Brookfield's former Vice Chair is now Canada's Prime Minister. Mark Carney, meet your regulatory file.
Circle Internet Group CRCL 🚫🚫🚫
Circle, issuer of the USDC stablecoin, had what its own stock chart recorded as its worst single day ever - down 20% on Tuesday after prospects that Congress was moving to ban passive yield on stablecoin balances. The stock had just finished a 170% run since early February as investors bet the regulatory environment would be a tailwind. It was, until it wasn't. To add insult to injury, rival Tether announced the same day it had hired a Big Four accounting firm for a full reserves audit - the one advantage Circle had always held over its competition.
Avis Budget Group CAR 🚀🚀
Nothing clarifies the value of a rental car company quite like a partial government shutdown that grinds TSA checkpoints to a crawl. Avis Budget rose about 48% on the week as chaos at US airports sent travellers reconsidering their plans and rental car search volumes surged. The thesis is simple: if you can't face the security line, you rent a CAR. With 21% of the float still sold short as of late-March and a heavily shorted stock suddenly catching a bid, there's a short squeeze angle layered on top. Analysts have not exactly been falling over themselves to upgrade this. The share price is still well below the company's all-time high of over $350 from 2021, when retail traders turned it into a meme stock for a long weekend.
MDA Space MDA 🚫🚫
MDA Space had a rough week, falling roughly 10% on Tuesday after NASA announced it was pausing the Gateway lunar space station program. Investors, apparently having not read the press release, assumed the worst for Canada's largest space technology company. MDA rushed out a statement clarifying that its Canadarm3 contract is with the Canadian Space Agency, not NASA, and that absolutely nothing had changed. The stock recovered some ground, but the week was still a dud overall. The irony is that MDA was having a genuinely tremendous year otherwise - up 68% since January and sitting on a $4 billion backlog. The market gave it a 10% penalty anyway just for being near the word "lunar." Guilt by proximity to a space program that didn't even affect them.
The Estée Lauder Companies EL 🚫🚫
Estée Lauder is already deep into a messy turnaround — the stock was down 24% year-to-date before this week even started. So naturally, management decided the best time to confirm merger talks with Spanish beauty house Puig was right now, mid-restructuring. Shares fell another 10% on Tuesday after the news dropped, as investors questioned the strategic fit, the potential dilution, and the general wisdom of trying to buy a $40 billion company when you're still trying to figure out your own business. The deal would combine brands like Clinique, MAC, and Le Labo with Puig's Charlotte Tilbury, Jean Paul Gaultier, and Rabanne. Sounds glamorous. The stock's reaction was anything but. Investors who bought EL five years ago are now sitting on about 25 cents of every dollar they put in. Still beautiful. Just expensive.
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