U.S. Stock Futures Rise Amid Cyprus Bailout Debate

By Sarah Jones 

U.S. stock-index futures rose, after yesterday’s biggest selloff in equities in almost a month, as Cyprus said it entered the final stages of talks with the troika to receive a bailout.

Nike (NKE) Inc. rallied 8.2 percent in premarket trading after the world’s largest sporting-goods company reported a rebound in profitability. Micron (MU) Technology Inc. jumped 6.4 percent in extended trading yesterday after revenue exceeded estimates. Titan Pharmaceuticals Inc. soared 47 percent in Frankfurt after advisers to U.S. regulators backed the company’s implant to treat drug addiction.

Standard & Poor’s 500 Index futures expiring in June added 0.3 percent to 1,543.3 at 7:39 a.m. in New York after the benchmark gauge lost 0.8 percent yesterday, its biggest decline since Feb. 25. Contracts on the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 42 points, or 0.3 percent, to 14,389 today.

Investors “have to take a step back and remind ourselves where we are at,” Alexander Friedman, chief investment officer at UBS AG, told Francine Lacqua on Bloomberg Television. “We actually have an improving global story. Cyprus is in the news and it’s in the headlines right now, but that will mislead us. The biggest driver of the global economy is the United States and it is doing quite well.”

Lawmakers in Cyprus began debating legislation to help unlock bailout funds needed to avoid a financial collapse. Government spokesman Christos Stylianides said talks with the European Central Bank, the European Commission and the International Monetary Fund were in the final stages.

Emergency Funding

The ECB has said it will cut emergency funds for Cypriot banks after March 25 unless it comes to an agreement with the so-called troika.

Euro-area finance ministers expect a proposal from Cyprus “as rapidly as possible” to raise the 5.8 billion euros ($7.5 billion) needed to trigger the emergency loans, they said in a statement late yesterday after a teleconference.

The S&P 500 (SPX) is headed for its second and the biggest weekly decline this year after uncertainty in Cyprus and a contraction in euro-area manufacturing reignited concern about the region’s debt crisis. The U.S. equity benchmark has still climbed 8.4 percent this year and rose within two points of its record set in 2007.

Nike rallied 8.2 percent to $58 in premarket trading in New York. The company said its gross margin widened for the first time in nine quarters as orders for the Nike brand in China climbed 3 percent, beating estimates for a decline of 4.3 percent, which would have been the third straight drop.

Micron Sales

Micron climbed 6.4 percent to $9.65 in early New York trading. The largest U.S. maker of memory chips reported a 3.4 percent increase in second-quarter sales to $2.08 billion amid a rebound in chip shipments. That beat the average analyst estimate of $1.91 billion. The stock fell 2.6 percent in regular trading yesterday.

Titan Pharmaceuticals soared 47 percent to $1.81 in Germany after advisers to U.S. regulators recommended the company’s experimental implant to treat addiction to heroin and prescription painkillers.

Titan’s clinical trial data on Probuphine support approval of the implant, a Food and Drug Administration advisory panel said yesterday in a 10-4 vote with one abstention. The agency will decide by April 30 whether to approve the treatment.

To contact the reporter on this story: Sarah Jones in London at sjones35@bloomberg.net

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