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https://www.barrons.com/articles/newmont-newcrest-stock-price-mining-gold-copper-7c463378
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Fanatics Inc. will buy the U.S. operations of Australia’s PointsBet for about $150 million, in the company’s largest foray yet into sports betting.
PointsBet
PBH,
announced the deal Sunday night, specifying that the acquisition only applies to PointsBet’s U.S. assets, not its businesses in Australia and Canada. CNBC first reported the deal. Fanatics did not immediately reply to MarketWatch’s request for comment Sunday night.
PointsBet is an online sportsbook that launched in the U.S. in 2019, and operates in 15 states, including New Jersey, Iowa, Illinois and Colorado.
“Despite the strategic success building a valuable asset in the U.S., the costs of operating in a state-by-state environment, together with the requirement to build significant scale to compete against well capitalized operators, led us to explore a number of options,” PointsBet Chief Executive Sam Swanell said in a statement. “The sale of the U.S. Business to Fanatics Betting and Gaming delivers the most attractive risk-adjusted value outcome for shareholders compared to the risks and benefits of other options including the status quo.”
PointsBet shareholders are expected to vote on the sale at their annual meeting in late June.
The deal should increase pressure on U.S. sports-gambling companies such as DraftKings Inc.
DKNG,
and FanDuel. In late April, Fanatics launched sportsbook wagering for its customers in Ohio and Tennessee, and the Wall Street Journal reported at the time that the company pans to invest about $1 billion in its new sports-betting division.
In an interview, Fanatics CEO Michael Rubin told the Journal he wants Fanatics to be the world’s top sports-betting company within the next 10 years, and expects its betting operations to be profitable by 2025 or 2026.
In December, Florida-based Fanatics — which got its start in sports apparel and collectibles — closed a $700 million funding round, valuing it at about $31 billion, the Wall Street Journal reported. The privately held company is expected to eventually launch an IPO.
Last year, Fanatics acquired trading-card company Topps.
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This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. To order presentation-ready copies for distribution to your colleagues, clients or customers visit http://www.djreprints.com.
https://www.barrons.com/articles/first-solar-stock-buying-solar-tech-firm-evolar-da85f0b1
First Solar
stock rose sharply Friday as the company disclosed a deal it said would bolster its technological position in the solar energy space.
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Icahn Enterprises LP’s stock was trading down 0.7% Thursday, after short seller Hindenburg Research intensified his bearish bet on Carl Icahn’s investing arm, and said he’s now taking aim at its bonds.
Hindenburg, run by Nate Anderson, said the latest disclosures made Wednesday by IEP raised more questions about Icahn’s personal margin loans, or debt, from the company as well as portfolio losses at IEP. The short seller also said disclosures, intended to counter Hindenburg’s May 2 report, failed to address the issues raised.
The original report raised questions about asset valuations and Icahn’s own borrowing from the company using his units as collateral.
Hindenburg Research, which typically aims to profit from the decline in value of the shares of companies that it writes negative reports about, kicked off such a bet against Icahn Enterprise earlier this month but has now also set its sights on the company’s debt.
For more, see: Icahn calls Hindenburg short-seller report self-serving, as market value of his company’s stock plunges by $4 billion
“As noted in our earlier report, Icahn had not disclosed “basic metrics around his margin loans like loan to value (LTV), maintenance thresholds, principal amount, or interest rates.” This is still the case,” said Hindenburg.
IEP has not said why Icahn had borrowed against his holdings. The company didn’t respond to a request for comment on Thursday’s report.
On Wednesday, IEP disclosed a federal probe into its corporate governance and other issues. It is unclear if that investigation by the Southern District of New York is related to Hindenburg’s report and allegations, but the news put further pressure on the stock.
The bonds, which have been more active than usual since the first report, took another leg down on Thursday, as the attached charts from market-data company BondCliQ show, as Hindenburg said it has taken a short position in them.
The longest-dated bonds, the 4.375% notes that mature in February of 2029, were trading at around 75 cents on the dollar, as of midmorning.
Icahn owns 84% of IEP shares and disclosed in a 2022 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that he had pledged more than 181 million units, or 60% of his holdings, for margin loans.
On Wednesday, IEP
IEP,
said that pledge had increased to 202 million units, which Hindenburg estimates was valued at $6.5 billion as of Wednesday’s close, based on his calculations.
The battle between the iconic activist investor and the short seller has clobbered IEP’s stock, which has fallen 39% in the month to date at a cost of more than $6 billion of market cap.
Also read: What we know about Carl Icahn’s margin loan
IEP posted an unexpected loss on Wednesday of $270 million, or 75 cents per depositary unit, for the first quarter, after income of $323 million, or $1.06 a unit, in the year-earlier period. The FactSet consensus was for income of 19 cents.
Revenue fell to $2.758 billion from $2.968 billion a year ago, ahead of the $2.559 billion FactSet consensus. Analysts on its conference call didn’t pose any question of executives who briefly outlined the quarterly numbers.
The company on Wednesday also issued a rebuttal of the May 2 report from Hindenburg and said it would “take all appropriate steps to protect our unit holders and fight back.”
Icahn acknowledged that the investment segment has underperformed in recent years, which he blamed on its bearish view of the market and large net short position, which it has now scaled back.
IEP offers exposure to Icahn’s personal portfolio of public and private companies, including petroleum refineries, car-parts makers, food-packaging companies and real estate. Its unit holders are mostly individual investors, which means the market-cap loss prompted by the report has hurt those individual investors, said Icahn.
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Swedish Orphan Biovitrum AB SE:SOBI on Wednesday announced that it has entered into an agreement to acquire U.S.-based CTI BioPharma Corp. CTIC in a deal valued at $1.7 billion. The Stockholm-based drugmaker said it will offer $9.10 for each share of CTI, which focuses on blood-related cancers and rare diseases. The offer represents a premium of 88.8% over CTI’s the Tuesday closing price of $4.82 per share. “CTI represents a perfect fit for Sobi’s haematology franchise today, adding a powerful and highly differentiated new product that will make a significant difference for patients”, said Guido Oelkers, president and…
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Apple Inc. on Thursday revealed surprise growth in its iPhone business during the first three months of the year, overcoming a shortfall in Mac revenue as the company promised investors billions more in dividends and stock repurchases.
Apple shares
AAPL,
rose 2.5% in extended trading.
The company reported fiscal second-quarter revenue of $94.8 billion, down from $97.3 billion a year before, while analysts had been expecting $92.9 billion. Revenue for the iPhone category rose to $51.3 billion from $50.6 billion, with analysts surveyed by FactSet expecting a decline to $48.7 billion.
Chief Financial Officer Luca Maestri said on the earnings call that the iPhone growth was driven by “strong performance in emerging markets from South Asia and India to Latin America and the Middle East.”
The company recently opened its first two Apple stores in India, and Chief Executive Tim Cook noted opportunity in India.
“What I do see in India is a lot of people entering the middle class, and I’m hopeful that we can convince some number of them to buy an iPhone,” he said.
Apple logged net income of $24.2 billion, or $1.52 a share, compared with $25 billion, or $1.52 a share, in the year-prior quarter. Analysts were modeling $1.43 a share in earnings on average, according to FactSet.
Apple’s results arrived amid concern about the state of consumer-electronics spending, given worrisome third-party data points and cautious signals from players like Qualcomm Inc.
QCOM,
and DuPont de Nemours Inc.
DD,
See also: Qualcomm stock falls as backed up Apple iPhone inventory contributes to weak outlook
The company saw steep revenue declines in both the iPad and Mac categories. Sales of iPads fell to $6.7 billion from $7.6 billion a year ago and matched the FactSet consensus. Mac revenue sank to $7.2 billion from $10.4 billion, while analysts were looking for $7.8 billion.
The Mac segment was up against tough comparisons to a year-ago period that saw the “incredibly successful rollout of our M1 chips,” Cook noted. It’s “facing some macroeconomic and foreign exchange headwinds as well.”
Apple’s wearables, home and accessories category was essentially flat, with sales of $8.8 billion. The FactSet consensus called for $8.4 billion. The services segment showed growth, with revenue up to $20.9 billion from $19.8 billion, roughly in line with the FactSet consensus of $21.0 billion.
Maestri noted that “certain services offerings, such as digital advertising and mobile gaming, continue to be affected by the current macroeconomic environment,” though advertising, Apple Care and video set revenue records for the March quarter.
Executives shared some very big-picture views on recent financial-services initiatives, though without any financial specifics. Apple’s recently launched savings account, which has a 4.15% yield, has had an “incredible” initial response, while Apple Pay Later, a buy-now-pay-later product, has received “really good” feedback as well, they said.
Apple also announced Thursday that it was boosting its buyback program by $90 billion while upping its quarterly dividend by 4% to 24 cents a share. That compares to a $90 billion increase to the share-repurchase authorization and 5% dividend hike a year ago.
While Apple stopped giving traditional guidance at the start of the pandemic, Maestri said on the call that he expects June-quarter revenue growth to be similar to what was seen in the March quarter on a year-over-year basis, assuming a stable macroeconomic climate.
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Trading in shares of Icahn Enterprises LP was choppy Thursday amid the continued fallout from a short seller’s report that was critical of the investment arm of activist investor Carl Icahn.
The stock IEP was moving between gains and losses, but has lost 36% of its value and $6.5 billion of market cap this week in the wake of the report, which accused Icahn Enterprises of inflating its value. On Wednesday, the company said it is moving the release of first-quarter earnings to before market open on May 10. The earnings were…
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PacWest Bancorp PACW shares tumbled more than 50% in after-hours trading Wednesday, taking other bank stocks with it after a report that the company’s executives were weighing a possible sale.
The report, from Bloomberg News, adds to the concerns over the financial stability of regional banks, following the collapse in March of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank, and the sale of First Republic Bank to JPMorgan Chase & Co. JPM this week. PacWest’s shares have been diving this week in the wake of First Republic’s collapse….
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JPMorgan Chase has won the auction to take over fallen First Republic Bank, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. announced early Monday morning.
The deal will see America’s largest bank JPM assume all the deposits and “substantially all the assets” of First Republic FRC, which became the fourth U.S. bank to fail this year.
“Our government invited…
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JPMorgan Chase has won the auction to take over fallen First Republic Bank, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. announced early Monday morning.
The deal will see America’s largest bank JPM assume all the deposits and “substantially all the assets” of First Republic FRC.
The deal will see First Republic depositors — which include 11 leading…
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By Sarah Sloat
Deutsche Boerse SE said Thursday it would make a voluntary takeover offer for Danish software company SimCorp AS for a total 3.9 billion euros ($4.31 billion).
The all-cash offer of DKK735 ($108.86) per share represents a 38.9% premium over the closing price of DKK529, and a 45.3% premium over the three-month volume-weighted…
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A U.K. regulator made the surprising decision Wednesday to block Microsoft Corp.’s deal for Activision Blizzard Inc. in a further sign of resistance to the power of Big Tech.
The U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority announced Wednesday that it would prohibit the $69 billion deal as the merger could hurt competition in the nascent market for cloud gaming. The decision comes after the agency said in late March that it no longer thought the deal would threaten console gaming, which is a vastly larger and more established…
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UBS Group AG said Tuesday that earnings declined in the first quarter, hurt by litigation, but that the bank drew in billions in net new money at its global wealth-management business following the news of its acquisition of Credit Suisse Group AG.
The Swiss bank UBS CH:UBSG said its result was affected by $665 million in provisions related to U.S. residential mortgage-backed securities litigation.
UBS…
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Bed Bath & Beyond went from homeware powerhouse to the retail doghouse over the course of the last decade.
But its final push into Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection Sunday resulted from a mix of bad decisions and forces beyond its control, the company explained in a new court filing. In the 93-page document, Holly Etlin, chief restructuring officer and chief financial officer of Bed Bath & Beyond BBBY, tried to explain how things went so wrong. Here are the top five choices and moments that ultimately spelled the retailer’s…
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The chief executive of the high-end office-furniture company MillerKnoll has gone viral. And probably not in a manner she would prefer.
In a leaked Zoom call of a MillerKnoll staff town hall last month, CEO Andi Owen addressed concerns from employees about the company’s decision to withhold bonuses. It quickly descended into her lambasting staff for complaining about the move.
“Questions came through about, ‘How can we stay motivated if we’re not going to get a bonus?‘ ” she says in the meeting recording. Owen — tapped in 2021 by Fast Company as one of the most creative people in business and celebrated that same year in the New York Times for her navigation of the coronavirus pandemic and swing-state sociopolitics — tells employees of the Zeeland, Mich., company to focus on things the company can control, such as customer service.
From the archives (April 2021): Herman Miller and Knoll to merge in $1.8 billion deal that will create design leader as companies reimagine office
“Don’t ask about: What are we going to do if we don’t get a bonus?” she says, growing animated, even, apparently, agitated. “Get the damn $26 million. Spend your time and your effort thinking about the $26 million we need and not thinking about what you’re going to do if you don’t get a bonus. All right? Can I get some commitment for that? I would appreciate that.”
Though she didn’t specifically identify the significance of the $26 million figure, the company’s operating expenses rose by exactly that amount in its third quarter due to “voluntary and involuntary reductions in the company’s workforce and charges for the impairment of assets associated with the decision to cease operating fully as a stand-alone brand.”
MillerKnoll’s third-quarterly filing showed that the furniture maker — the product of a 2021 merger of the Herman Miller and Knoll brands, behind products such as the Eames lounge chair and the Saarinen Tulip table, respectively — expects lower sales in the fourth quarter after posting a decline in orders and sales margins in the three months ending March 4.
Owen recalls in the video that a past employer told her, “You can visit Pity City, but you can’t live there.”
“So, people, leave Pity City,” she continues, exclaiming: “Let’s get it done.”
“You have to be a psychopath to say this stuff to your employees when you are taking a massive bonus. Does she think they won’t find out?” asked one Twitter user.
“Plenty going on here but one of many things that leapt out to me was that mere moments after she went with the ‘be kind to people’ bit, she was yelling at workers,” another said.
The company said that the widely shared video clip had been taken out of context.
“Andi fiercely believes in this team and all we can accomplish together, and will not be dissuaded by a 90-second clip taken out of context and posted on social media,” a spokesman said in a statement.
Owen made $5 million last year. The company has yet to say how much she will make this year. The company this year has expensed $15.7 million in stock-based compensation.
MillerKnoll shares
MLKN,
have dropped 12% in 2023, compared with the 8% gain for the benchmark S&P 500
SPX,
Other MillerKnoll brands include Design Within Reach, acquired by Herman Miller a decade ago and recognized as having made the iconic midcentury designs of Charles and Ray Eames, Isamu Noguchi, George Nelson, and others available to a wider, if affluent, audience without engaging an interior designer; the Danish design brand Hay; and Holly Hunt.
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Snap Inc.’s initial public offering led to changes that barred the company and others like it from joining major stock indexes, but at least one major index provider has decided to drop those limitations after less than six years.
S&P Dow Jones Indices announced Monday afternoon that a 2017 rule barring companies with multiple share classes from joining indexes such as the S&P 500
SPX,
has been dropped. The move comes after the index manager consulted with “market participants” at the end of last year to discuss several potential changes to the policy.
Snap
SNAP,
was the poster child for the initial change, after the parent company of the Snapchat mobile app went public in 2017 by selling a class of shares with no voting rights. That unprecedented move ensured that co-founders Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy would retain absolute power over their company even while selling shares to the public.
Snap’s move was an acceleration of an approach used by a generation of Silicon Valley tech companies to ensure that founders retained control of their companies even while selling shares to the public. Companies such as Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc.
META,
and Google parent Alphabet Inc.
GOOGL,
GOOG,
used similar structures that provided their leaders with special shares that included increased voting rights, which Snap took further by offering no voting rights.
From 2017: Snap backlash, Facebook capitulation won’t stop founder-friendly stock structures
In response, FTSE Russell established rules about putting votes in the public’s hands while selling stock, and S&P Dow Jones Indices completely barred all companies that had multiple classes of stock from joining its core indexes. While FTSE Russell’s rule — which requires that at least 5% of votes rest in the hands of public investors — remains, S&P Dow Jones Indices will now drop its rule entirely, after roughly 80% of respondents voted in favor of a change in 2017.
There were other options besides completely dropping the rule. Participants in the consultation process were given several options and asked to rank them, including barring companies that only offer nonvoting stock to the public — such as Snap — or allowing companies that establish “sunset” provisions that would eventually revert all shares to equal voting rights.
Related: Investors want change, but founders like Mark Zuckerberg hold them off
Snap declined to comment Monday afternoon.
The change to allow all companies with multiple share classes to join the S&P Composite 1500 and its multiple component indexes is effective as of Monday, S&P Dow Jones Indices announced, though no changes were immediately made to any index. Tracking stocks will still not be eligible for inclusion, according to the announcement.
For more: As Snap melts down, its founders make sure to protect the people who matter — themselves
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U.S. stocks just touched their highest levels in two months. Yet, signs of a looming selloff are piling up, according to Jonathan Krinsky, chief technical strategist at BTIG.
The S&P 500
SPX,
and Russell 3000
RUA,
are both trading just shy of their highs from mid-February, but market breadth hasn’t recovered, as index gains over the past month have largely relied on megacap names like Microsoft Corp.
MSFT,
and Apple Inc.
AAPL,
helping to offset weakness in other areas of the market.
As of Friday, only 45% of Russell 3000 stocks were trading above their 200-day moving averages, according to data cited by Krinsky. By comparison, when the broad-market gauge was trading at its highest level of 2023 back in February, 70% of the individual stocks included in the index were trading above their 200-day moving average. Technical analysts use moving averages as a gauge of a stock or index’s momentum.
Lackluster breath is looking like more of an issue analysts say, especially now that the Nasdaq’s outperformance appears to be fading after leading markets higher since the start of the year.
Over the last two weeks, the Dow Jones Industrial Average
DJIA,
has outperformed the Nasdaq Composite
COMP,
by the widest margin since the two-week period ending Dec 30, according to FactSet data.
Krinsky cited exchange-traded funds that feature megacap technology names, including the iShares Expanded Tech-Software ETF
IGV,
the Communications Services Select Sector SPDR Fund ETF
XLC,
and Consumer Discretionary Select Sector SPDR Fund ETF
XLY,
as examples of emerging weakness in this critical sector of the market. Meanwhile, regional bank stocks, small-cap stocks and shares of retailers, all of which have lagged behind the market this year, look weak.
See: Are tech stocks becoming a haven again? ‘It is a mistake,’ say market analysts.
Krinsky summed up this dynamic thus: “The weak parts of the market remain weak, while the strong parts now appear vulnerable,” the BTIG analyst said in a Sunday note to clients.
Furthermore, “[i]n absolute and relative terms, the tech sector looks like a poor risk/reward to us here,” Krinsky added.
Low implied volatility is another issue for markets, Krinsky said. That can mean investors have gotten too complacent and markets may be heading for a selloff, analysts say.
The Cboe Volatility Index
VIX,
otherwise known as Wall Street’s “fear gauge,” finished Friday at its lowest end-of-day level since Jan. 4, according to Dow Jones Market Data. The Cboe S&P 500 9-Day Volatility Index, which tracks implied volatility over a shorter time horizon, has also fallen to January lows, FactSet data show.
Such low levels mean volatility could be poised to “mean revert,” Krinsky said, which may portend a selloff in the months ahead for the S&P 500, the most liquid and most closely watched gauge of U.S. stock-market performance.
Implied volatility gauges measure activity in option contracts linked to the S&P 500 to gauge how volatile traders expect markets to be over the coming days and weeks. Typically, implied volatility advances when U.S. stocks are falling.
The greenback has shown some signs of life in recent sessions, although the U.S. dollar remains well below the multi decade highs it reached back in September. That the buck bounced off its February lows late last week suggests that momentum could be skewed toward the upside for the dollar, Krinsky said, which could create more problems for stocks given the dollar’s tendency to weigh on markets during 2022.
The ICE U.S. Dollar Index
DXY,
a gauge of the dollar’s strength measured against a basket of rivals, was up 0.7% in recent trade at 102.22.
All of these factors support the notion that stocks could be headed for what Krinsky called the “reverse October playbook.”
Just as the S&P 500 bottomed following the hotter-than-expected September report on consumer-price inflation, the market’s monthslong rebound rally may have peaked following last week’s CPI report for March, which showed consumer prices rose a scant 0.1% last month, less than the 0.2% increase that had been forecast by economists polled by MarketWatch.
Not everybody agrees with this assessment. Marko Papic, chief strategist at Clocktower Group, cited market data going back to 1934 to show that U.S. stocks tend to rally after inflation peaks. Consumer-price inflation reached its highest level in more than four decades when the CPI headline number showed prices up 9.1% year-over-year in June.
U.S. stocks look set to decline for a second day in a row on Monday, with the S&P 500 off 0.3% at 4,126, while the Nasdaq Composite was down by 0.4% at 12,070, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average traded marginally lower at 33,881.
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Shares of Getty Images Holdings Inc. GETY got a 5.7% boost in premarket trading Tuesday, after activist investor Trillium Capital LLC urged the visual content creator to increase shareholder value by selling the company. Trillium, which said it owned “hundreds of thousand shares” of Getty stock and stock equivalents, said the company’s board has not acted on “obvious opportunities” to increase shareholder value, as the stock has tumbled since the Getty went public. After the $4.8 billion acquisition deal by special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) CC Neuberger Principal Holdings II closed on July 22, 2022, the stock…
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This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. To order presentation-ready copies for distribution to your colleagues, clients or customers visit http://www.djreprints.com.
https://www.barrons.com/articles/stock-market-movers-8b6c2e7b
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