Lehigh Valley Stocks to Watch This Week; Air Products, Shift4 and More

— Jeff Ward, Lehigh Valley News Briefs

Air Products has made big changes in management, and Shift4 needs a new chief executive.

Both are worth following this week.

Air Products has moved out Seifi Ghasemi, who was succeeded as chief executive by Eduardo Menezes. That change came after a proxy battle, led by activist investor Mantle Ridge.

Mantle Ridge and others questioned Ghasemi’s big moves into “green hydrogen,” or hydrogen made without generating carbon emissions.

Ghasemi contended that green hydrogen will replace fossil fuels in heavy industry and transport. Mantle Ridge and its cohorts wanted Air Products to focus on its industrial gas business.

So far, the Lehigh County-based company has not announced any big changes in strategy, spending, or whether it will pull the plug on any projects. As of Friday, Air Products (NYSE:APD) was trading at $316.12.

Shift4 (NYSE:FOUR) needs a new CEO, with founder Jared Isaacman nominated to take over NASA. Isaacman has been to space twice on private missions with Elon Musk’s SpaceX.

The company is holding its annual Investor Day and reporting fourth-quarter earnings tomorrow (Tuesday, Feb. 18) so perhaps some news will come out then.

Meanwhile, the shares last traded at $122.12, close to the 52-week high for the Upper Saucon Township-based payment processor.

PPL Corp. came out with earnings last week, but rather than go through all the numbers, let’s distill the results into market reaction: very little.

The most interesting item was about capital spending, where the Allentown-based utility boosted planned investment from 2025 through 2028 to $20 billion.

Demand for electricity is growing, and Artificial Intelligence and data centers require lots of power. Shares of PPL (NYSE:PPL) finished last week at $33.73.

Then there’s OraSure, the small medical diagnostic and sample-collection company in Bethlehem.

The shares (NASDAQ:OSUR) have been going nowhere for a long time. Fourth-quarter results are due Feb. 25. What the company can do internally to move the shares is a mystery, but perhaps some kind of deal with a larger firm could help OraSure.

The closing share price Friday was $3.93. The stock hasn’t done much since the end of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Thermo Fisher Scientific (NYSE:TMO) is based in Massachusetts but it has big operations here. The stock has been a dud for a long, long time. The closing price Friday was $531.85. Thermo Fisher makes laboratory and scientific equipment.

U.S. stock markets are closed Monday for the Presidents’ Day Holiday.

— Disclosure: I own shares in Air Products, PPL and Thermo Fisher (that last one to my regret).