Two Lehigh Valley Stocks to Watch This Week: Air Products, Shift4 Hit 52-Week Highs, PPL Is Close, OraSure Muddles Along

— Jeff Ward, Lehigh Valley News Briefs

Air Products and Shift4 Payments both hit 52-week highs on Friday.

Air Products has drawn interest from activist investors, who buy into a company and then seek changes to increase value.

The shares (NYSE:APD) hit their 52-week high of $332.17 Friday before closing at $332.10. In early trading Monday, the shares are down slightly to $331.53.

The maker of industrial gases needs changes in leadership and strategy, the activists say.

Chief Executive Seifi Ghasemi sees Air Products as the leader of a global move to a clean-energy future where “green hydrogen” replaces fossil fuels. The activists appear to be more interested in the company’s traditional business. They are also concerned about succession plans: Ghasemi is 80.

Shift4 Payments has drawn positive attention from industry analysts, and seen its shares (NYSE:FOUR) rising steadily. The payment-processing company touched a 52-week high of $96.96 on Friday, closing at $95.71. It was up 25 cents to $95.96 in early trading Monday.

The closing price for power company PPL (NYSE:PPL) on Friday was $32.66, not far from its 52-week high of $33.39.

PPL has been in talks about adding power-thirsty data centers in its service area. Artificial Intelligence requires data centers, which require enormous amounts of electricity.

The above three New York Stock Exchange-traded companies all use Allentown as an address, but Air Products is in Upper Macungie Township, Shift4 is in Upper Saucon Township, and PPL is of course in downtown Allentown.

Local diagnostic-kit company OraSure (NASDAQ:OSUR) continues to muddle along. Its closing price Friday was $4.15. A year ago, it traded at $5.29.

So what is next for this little ($309.5 million market capitalization) company? Who knows?

At the current price, OraSure is trading at less than half of its 52-week high of $8.45. After some big government deals during the COVID-19 pandemic, not much new has come out of the former SolarCare Technologies.

— Disclosure: I own shares in Air Products and Shift4 as part of a buy-and-hold strategy. I do not day-trade or invest in derivatives.