March 1, 2026
Lehigh Valley stocks have been mixed, with the big news the stumbles of Shift4.
OraSure showed some signs of life, PPL moved up and Air Products continues doing not much. That was all before the latest war in the Middle East started Saturday.
Shift4’s fourth-quarter earnings looked good, but the forecast disappointed some investors. The Upper Saucon Township-based payment-processing company was trading at $43.81 late Friday, down $13.56 from the closing price Wednesday. The stock is
Shift4 (NYSE:FOUR) is expanding geographically and into other businesses, Chief Executive Officer Taylor Lauber noted. He sounded a bit like founder and former CEO Jared Isaacman (now running NASA) in saying the market is not valuing the company correctly.
“As mentioned earlier, the global scale and reach of Shift4 has continued to improve over the past year, and our business is structurally better than any time in our history. We do not believe this is reflected in our valuation, which has seen compression along with many in the market,” Lauber said in the earnings statement.
OraSure (NASDAQ:OSUR) again reported a loss and a decline in revenue, but the stock popped a little after the fourth-quarter report. Perhaps the prospect of new products in the sexually transmitted disease (STD) market encouraged investors.
The Bethlehem-based maker of diagnostic kits finished the week at $3.15, moving the stock over $3 for the first time in months.
Air Products muddles along. The Upper Macungie Township-based maker of industrial gases finished the week at $275.67. It’s bumped up and down some over the past five years, but the long-term movement has been close to nil. New management has had about a year, but it’s a big company — market capitalization $61.4 billion — and change apparently is taking a lot of time.
Then there’s PPL Corp., perhaps not a real popular company right now between high heating bills and a potential increase in delivery, but the stock (NYSE:PPL) has been solid. The company also raised $1 billion recently in a sale of equity units and raised its dividend.
The Allentown-based utility, which has a regulated monopoly to provide electricity in the Lehigh Valley and other parts of Pennsylvania, finished the week at $38.98, just six cents short of its 52-week high.
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