Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, Ford all fall in premarket

By Geoffrey Smith 

Investing.com -- Stocks in focus in premarket trading on Friday 3rd February. Please refresh for updates. 

• Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) stock fell 1.5% after the iPhone maker reported its first quarterly sales drop in over three years, hurt by production problems in China at the end of 2022.
• Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) stock fell 3.4% after e-commerce giant warned that sales will slow and margins will fall at its cash cow, Cloud-hosting unit Amazon Web Services. Analysts looked for positives in its forecast of improved margins in e-commerce, despite a weak macroeconomic outlook.
• Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) stock fell 3.5% after the company reported a drop in revenue at Google, only the second time that’s ever happened. The numbers were hurt by the strong dollar and – as with Amazon and Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) earlier in the week – slower growth in Cloud hosting.
• Nordstrom Inc (NYSE:JWN) stock soared by more than 30% after the Wall Street Journal reported that activist investor Ryan Cohen is building a large stake in the high-end retailer. Citing people familiar with the matter, the paper said Cohen - famous for his bets on meme stocks like GameStop (NYSE:GME) - is aiming to enact changes to the company's board and slash costs.
• Ford Motor (NYSE:F) stock fell 6.6% after the carmaker said profit fell 20% short of expectations in the fourth quarter and also predicted a difficult year ahead.  A special dividend of 65c a share was cold comfort.
• Qualcomm (NASDAQ:QCOM) stock fell 3.0% after it said earnings and revenue will fall by more than consensus forecasts in the current quarter. The company is suffering like other chipmakers from falling demand for gadgets, especially cell phones.
• Regeneron (NASDAQ:REGN) stock rose 1.6%, earnings still beating expectations despite a 46% drop from a year earlier as sales of its COVID-19 drug dried up. Revenue was also hurt by the loss of government support for its blockbuster eye drug Eylea.
• LyondellBasell Industries (NYSE:LYB) stock fell 0.8% after the chemicals giant said “challenging market conditions are expected to persist through the first half of 2023.” The company also took a $90 million charge against inventory.