Diamonds and Dogs

12/15/16

Brighter skies for Athenahealth (ATHN). The cloud-based healthcare service provider jumped 23% after the company issued a better-than-expected outlook for 2017. Athenahealth is forecasting that its total annual revenue could grow by as much as 21% next year to $1.33 billion. That upbeat estimate exceeds the Street's high-end revenue forecast for the company by roughly $20 million. The big-picture issue is that the move toward digitized healthcare records and point-of-care systems -- which was originally incentivized by the Affordable Care Act as a cost-saving measure -- has apparently taken root in the U.S. healthcare system, transforming Athenahealth into one of the fastest-growing companies in the sector.

Yahoo (YHOO) can't get out of its own way. The search engine is down 6% on worries that Verizon will walk away or slash its $4.8 billion offer for the company's digital operations after another massive data breach was revealed. Yahoo revealed on Wednesday that information was stolen from more than 1 billion user accounts in 2013 after disclosing a separate hack in 2014 of some 500 million accounts in September. Verizon had said it would reevaluate the Yahoo deal after the first hack, and said the same Wednesday after the latest revelation.