Midday movers: Activision Blizzard, AT&T, Yelp and more

Investing.com -- U.S. stocks were rising in midday trading as investors prepared for this week's deluge of quarterly earnings reports.

Here are some of the biggest U.S. stock movers today:

• Activision Blizzard (NASDAQ:ATVI) stock rose 3.2% after Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT), up less than 0.1%, agreed to keep the mega-popular gaming franchise "Call of Duty" on Sony's (NYSE:SONY) PlayStation console, potentially overcoming a key hurdle facing Microsoft's $69 billion purchase of the video game manufacturer. The FT also reported that EU antitrust authorities will open an investigation next week into whether Microsoft is unfairly bundling its Teams video conferencing app with its Office service.

• Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) stock rose 1.8% after the EV manufacturer said on Sunday it had built its first Cybertruck, after two years of delays.

• Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) stock rose 1% after Morgan Stanley lifted its price target on the iPhone maker, keeping it as a "Top Pick", saying its India business could be worth $40B over the next 10 years.

• Yelp (NYSE:YELP) stock rose 10.6% after Goldman Sachs upgraded its stance on the business review site to ‘buy’ from ‘neutral’, citing a positive risk/reward basis and stable ad trends.

• United Airlines (NASDAQ:UAL) stock rose 0.5% after the carrier reached a labor agreement with its pilots that will give them a significant pay increase. These pilots turned down a deal last year that included more than 14.5% in cumulative wage increases and enhanced overtime and training pay.

• AT&T (NYSE:T) stock fell 5.9% after Citi downgraded its stance on the telecoms giant to ‘neutral’ from ‘buy’, citing possible risks from “legacy lead sheathed cable exposure.”

• Twilio (NYSE:TWLO) stock fell 1.2% after Piper Sandler cut the cloud computing company to ‘neutral’ from ‘overweight’, citing uncertainties in the macroeconomic environment and recent divestitures impacting future sales.

• PepsiCo (NASDAQ:PEP) stock fell 0.9% after Morgan Stanley downgraded the soft drinks company to ‘equal weight’ from ‘overweight,’ noting the stock is now fairly valued and it sees limited upside in the second half of the year.

-- Peter Nurse contributed to this report