Tag: Corporate/Industrial News

Sanofi Plans to Split Consumer-Healthcare, Pharma Businesses — Update

By Adria Calatayud

Sanofi plans to split its consumer-healtchare and pharmaceutical operations, making it the latest big drugmaker to sharpen its focus on prescription medicines by offloading adjacent businesses.

The French company outlined the plan on Friday as part of a strategic update that includes increased investment in its pipeline and a cost-savings program.

Sanofi said it is evaluating potential separations options, but believes that the most likely path would be through a capital markets transaction, by creating a listed entity headquartered in France. The split could take place in the fourth quarter of 2024 at the earliest, it said.

The move will allow Sanofi to increase its focus on innovative medicines and vaccines, the company said. The split will create two entities and will enable each to pursue its own strategy, it said.

Sanofi was one of the few big pharma companies that still housed innovative drugs and consumer-healthcare operations under the same roof.

Johnson & Johnson earlier this year spun off consumer-health business Kenvue, which owns brands such as Band-Aid and Tylenol, and GSK last year separated its Haleon consumer arm. Other pharma giants such as Novartis and Pfizer made similar moves in recent years.

The plan remains subject to market conditions and consultation with social partners. Sanofi’s consumer-healthcare business is present in 150 countries and employs more than 11,000 people, it said.

Write to Adria Calatayud at adria.calatayud@dowjones.com

Source link

October 26, 2023

Ford’s stock drops 4% after carmaker pulls guidance, EV unit loses $1.3 billion

Ford Motor Co.’s stock dropped 4% after hours Thursday after the carmaker reported lower-than-expected quarterly earnings and withdrew its guidance for the year, citing the pending agreement with the United Auto Workers.

Ford
F,
-1.65%
also reported an adjusted loss of $1.3 billion for its EV unit, which was wider than Wall Street expected, saying that customers interested in EVs are “unwilling” to pay the vehicles’ premium prices. The company paused billions of long-term investment in EVs due to that disconnect.

“Our business is never short of challenges, especially right now with the evolution of the EV market,” Chief Executive Jim Farley told analysts in a call following results.

Ford earned $1.2 billion, or 30 cents a share, in the third quarter, swinging from a loss of $827 million, or 21 cents a share, in the year-ago period.

Adjusted for one-time items, Ford earned 39 cents a share. Adjustments included a $2.7 billion impairment charge related to the investment in the shuttered, Ford-backed Argo AI driverless-car company.

Revenue rose 11% to $43.8 billion, the carmaker said.

Analysts polled by FactSet expected Ford to report adjusted earnings of 46 cents a share on sales of $43.94 billion.

Ford said that its EV business segment recorded an EBIT loss of $1.3 billion, thanks to “continued investment in next-generation EVs and challenging market dynamics.”

Many customers in North America interested in EVs are “unwilling to pay premiums for them,” which “sharply” flattens EV prices and profit, Ford said.

The carmaker said it was “poised to deliver profitability” within its previous EBIT guidance range of $11 billion to $12 billion before it decided to withdraw the year’s outlook pending the agreement with its workers.

The results come as striking employees at Ford are returning to work after the carmaker and the United Auto Workers reached a tentative agreement, which was announced late Wednesday.

The agreement is going through ratification steps, and negotiations between the union and General Motors Co.
GM,
-1.59%
and Stellantis NV
STLA,
-2.17%
are said to be “active.”

On the call with analysts, Farley said that once the deal is ratified, Ford will provide Wall Street “a deeper look at the contract and its impact on our business.”

Ford, GM and Stellantis each have had several factories and distribution centers offline due to the strike. GM and Stellantis are expected to follow with agreements of their own.

Ford was the first company to face walkouts at a key factory, as workers at Ford’s Kentucky pickup-truck plant walked out on Oct. 11.

GM earlier this week detailed some of the impacts of the strike, particularly through the end of the current quarter, and also withdrew its guidance.

See also: UAW strike moves to GM’s key SUV plant

Ford shares have underperformed the broader equity market, and are losing about 1.6% so far this year, which contrasts with gains of around 8% for the S&P 500 index
SPX.

The underperformance holds for the past three months, with Ford shares down 16% compared with the index’s 8% drop in the period.

The union said that the current four-year deal grants a 25% increase in base wages through April 2028. It will cumulatively raise the top wage at Ford by more than 30% to more than $40 an hour, and starting wages by 68% to over $28 an hour.

Source link

October 26, 2023
Amazon Stock Jumps on Earnings Beat. Cloud Results Were Good Enough.

Amazon shares rose in late trading Thursday after the company posted better-than-expected financial results for the September quarter.

[ad_2]
Source link

October 26, 2023
Intel cheers foundry wins, AI traction, and its stock is roaring after earnings

Intel Corp. shares were popping nearly 8% in Thursday’s extended session after the chip maker delivered a rosy forecast, while talking up new customers for its foundry business and traction related to artificial intelligence.

For the fourth quarter, Intel
INTC,
-0.94%
anticipates $14.6 billion to $15.6 billion in revenue, whereas analysts were looking for $14.4 billion. The company is also modeling 44 cents in adjusted earnings per share, while the FactSet consensus was for 33 cents.

“While the industry has seen some wallet share shifts between CPU and accelerators over the last several quarters, as well as some inventory burn in the server market, we see signs of normalization as we enter Q4,” Chief Executive Pat Gelsinger said on the earnings call.

Gelsinger expressed confidence about Intel’s positioning — and the future of central processing units — as AI becomes more dominant in the technology world.

“Training of these large models is interesting, but the deployment of those models, the inferencing use of those models is what we believe is truly spectacular for the future,” he said. “And…some of that will run on the accelerators, but a huge amount of that is going to run, right, on Xeons.”

He also shared that Intel now has three customers for its 18A foundry process technology that have made commitments. The company previously disclosed one customer made prepayments, but Gelsinger added Thursday that Intel has two other customers.

“The other thing that we saw this quarter, which was a little bit unexpected, was this huge surge in interest for AI customers and Intel’s advanced packaging technology,” he said.

Intel is in the midst of a big push to build a foundry business through which it would manufacture chips for other companies, though not all on Wall Street are sold yet on the move.

The company also delivered an upbeat third-quarter report, easily clearing Wall Street’s bar on profit and topping expectations on revenue as well.

The company reported net income of $297 million, or 7 cents a share, compared with $1.0 billion, or 25 cents a share, in the year-earlier period. On an adjusted basis, Intel earned 41 cents a share, down from 59 cents a share a year prior, while analysts were looking for 22 cents a share.

Revenue dropped to $14.2 billion from $15.3 billion, while the FactSet consensus called for $13.6 billion.

The company saw revenue from its personal-computer segment, known as client-computing, drop 3% to $7.9 billion, whereas analysts were looking for $7.3 billion. Data-center and AI revenue fell 10% to $3.8 billion, narrowly missing the FactSet consensus, which was $3.9 billion.

Intel recorded a 45.8% adjusted gross margin, compared with 39.8% in the second quarter. The company’s forecast had been for about 43%.

Intel shares have climbed 24% so far this year, as the Dow Jones Industrial Average
DJIA
has lost about 1%.

Source link

October 26, 2023
Hasbro’s stock is having its worst month since the 1980s as toys sales tumble

Shares of Hasbro Inc. got rocked Thursday, making investors suffer through the worst month in four decades, as a weakening toy market led the company to report disappointing third-quarter results.

Heading into 2023, the toy market was expected to be down in the low-single-digit percentage range for the year, but the market’s performance has been “more challenging that planned,” Chief Executive Chris Cocks said on the post-earnings conference call with analysts.

“We saw the category soften during [the third quarter] to negative 10%,” Cocks said, according to an AlphaSense transcript.

The stock
HAS,
-11.42%
fell 11.5% toward a seven-month low in afternoon trading and was headed for the biggest one-day selloff since it sank 18.7% on March 16, 2020.

It has fallen in 14 of the 19 trading days in October, to plunge 26.7% in the month to date. That puts it on track for the worst monthly performance since the record 43.1% selloff in October 1987, the month when “Black Monday” occurred.

Overall, third-quarter revenue fell 10.3% to $1.5 billion, to miss the FactSet consensus of $1.62 billion. The company’s consumer-products business, which includes toys, dropped 17.6% to $956.9 million, missing expectations of $1.1 billion.

Sales for Habro’s entertainment segment fell 41.9% to $122.9 million, below Wall Street projections of $127.8 million, but the company was able to blame that weakness on the effects of the writers and actors strikes on film and TV revenue.

It wasn’t all bad for Hasbro, however. Wizards of the Coast and digital-gaming revenue soared 39.6% to $423.6 million, well above expectations of $390.3 million, amid a more than doubling in digital- and licensed-gaming revenue behind “Baldur’s Gate III” from Larian Studios.

For 2023, the company now expects revenue to be down 13% to 15% from 2022, which is much worse than previous guidance for a decline of 3% to 6%. The current FactSet revenue consensus of $5.5 billion implies a 6.1% decline.

Hasbro also reported a net loss of $171.1 million, or $1.23 a share, after recording net income of $129.2 million, or 93 cents a share, in the same period a year ago. Excluding nonrecurring items, such as losses on assets held for sale, adjusted earnings per share rose to $1.64 from $1.42 but missed the FactSet consensus of $1.72.

CFRA analyst Zachary Warring cut his price target on Hasbro’s stock to $68 from $85 but reiterated his strong buy rating, as the new target implied 40% upside from current levels.

“Even though we were caught offside on this quarter’s results, we believe this is a multi-year opportunity to buy shares and expect digital gaming to continue momentum while consumer products has little downside,” Warring wrote in a note to clients.

Meanwhile, shares of Hasbro rival Mattel Inc.
MAT,
-7.63%
also dropped, down 7.1% toward a four-month low, even though the company’s third-quarter profit and sales beat expectations. That’s because strong sales of Barbie, Disney Princess and Disney Frozen dolls offset weakness in toys.

Mattel said it expects toy-industry sales to decline in the mid-single-digit percentage range for the year.

Mattel’s stock was down 15.2% in October, while the S&P 500
SPX
slipped 3.2%.

Source link

October 26, 2023
U.S. pending home sales stay near record low despite modest pickup in September

The numbers: U.S. pending home sales rebounded in September but remain near a record low as high mortgage rates and low inventory continue to hurt the real-estate sector.

Pending home sales rose 1.1% in September from the previous month, according to the monthly index released Thursday by the National Association of Realtors.

But pending home sales were still depressed on an annual basis due to the dearth of home listings. The September figure was the second-lowest reading since the NAR began tracking the data in 2001.

Transactions were down 11% from last year.

Nonetheless, the sales pace exceeded expectations on Wall Street. Economists were expecting pending home sales to fall 1.5% in September.

Pending home sales reflect transactions where the contract has been signed for the sale of an existing home, but the sale has not yet closed. Economists view it as an indicator of the direction of existing-home sales in subsequent months.

The NAR also released an updated forecast for existing-home sales on Thursday. The group expects sales to fall 17.5% in 2023 to a pace of 4.15 million, which will be the slowest pace since 2008. Yet due to low inventory, the median home price will increase by 0.1% in 2023, the NAR said, to $386,700.

The group expects home sales to rebound in 2024, rising 13.5% to a rate of 4.71 million. Home prices are expected to rise 0.7% next year, to $389,500.

The NAR also expects the 30-year mortgage rate to fall to 6.9% in 2023 and 6.3% in 2024. The 30-year was averaging 7.98% as of Wednesday, according to Mortgage News Daily.

Big picture: The U.S. housing market is dealing with problems on both the demand and supply sides, but the NAR seems confident that the sector will recover in the new year.

At present, not only are rates high enough to discourage home buyers, the lack of inventory is also making homes more expensive, which further spooks buyers. The NAR expects the pace of existing-home sales to fall to the slowest in 15 years, when the U.S. was in the midst of a recession caused by the subprime-lending crisis.

What the realtors said: “Because of home builders’ ability to create more inventory, new-home sales could be higher this year despite increasing mortgage rates,” NAR Chief Economist Lawrence Yun said. “This underscores the importance of increased inventory in helping to get the overall housing market moving.”

Market reaction: Stocks
DJIA

SPX
were mixed in early trading on Thursday. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note
BX:TMUBMUSD10Y
rose above 4.9%.

Source link

October 26, 2023

Danone 3Q Sales EUR6.91B

By Giulia Petroni

Danone raised its full-year sales growth guidance after recording a sequential improvement in volume/mix in sales in the third quarter.

The French producer of yoghurts, bottled water and infant-nutrition products said Thursday that it now expects like-for-like sales growth between 6% and 7% in 2023 from previous expectations of between 4% and 6%.

It also said it expects to return to a positive volume/mix territory before the end of the year, and confirmed it sees a moderate improvement in the recurring operating margin.

In the third quarter, Danone posted sales of 6.91 billion euros ($7.30 billion), down from EUR7.33 billion in the year earlier, partly due to the depreciation of the majority of currencies against the euro. On a like-for-like basis, sales grew 6.2%, with volume/mix at minus 0.3% from minus 2.3% in the second quarter.

Analysts had forecast sales of EUR6.90 billion and like-for-like growth of 4.7%, according to a company-compiled consensus.

“This quarter is the seventh consecutive quarter of delivery,” said Chief Executive Antoine de Saint-Affrique. “We continue to view our future with confidence, despite a challenging environment.”

Write to Giulia Petroni at giulia.petroni@wsj.com

Source link

October 25, 2023

WSJ News Exclusive | Xi Jinping Is Looking for Someone to Blame for China’s Property Bust

Updated Oct. 26, 2023 12:05 am ET

With China’s property bust threatening to sink the country’s economic recovery, Xi Jinping is looking for someone to blame.

After putting the billionaire founder of Evergrande, a heavily indebted property firm, under investigation for possible crimes, Beijing is expanding its probes to include bankers and financial institutions that facilitated developers’ risky behavior, people familiar with the matter say.

Copyright ©2023 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

Source link

October 25, 2023
Morgan Stanley names Ted Pick its next CEO

Morgan Stanley said late Wednesday that Co-President Edward “Ted” Pick will become its chief executive, effective Jan. 1.

Outgoing Chief Executive James Gorman will become executive chairman, Morgan Stanley said. Pick will also join the firm’s board of directors.

“The board has unanimously determined that Ted Pick is the right person to lead Morgan Stanley and build on the success the firm has achieved under James Gorman’s exceptional leadership,” the company said in a statement.

“Ted is a strategic leader with a strong track record of building and growing our client franchise, developing and retaining talent, allocating capital with sound risk management, and carrying forward our culture and values,” it said.

Gorman had announced his intention to step down in May, setting off a “Sucession”-like run for the top job at the investment bank.

Pick’s name had been among those in the running. The executive joined Morgan Stanley in 1990, and was promoted to managing director in 2002, according to his bio on the company’s website.

Gorman became CEO in January 2010, having joined the firm in 2006.

The lack of a clear successor at Morgan Stanley has weighed on its stock lately.

The shares are down 24% in the last three months, three times the losses for the S&P 500 index
SPX
in the same period. So far this year, Morgan Stanley shares are down 16%, contrasting with an advance of about 9% for the S&P.

Source link

October 25, 2023

Heineken 3Q Revenue Growth 2%

By Michael Susin

Heineken backed its full-year guidance after reporting a third-quarter revenue increase that was slightly below market expectations.

The Dutch brewer said adjusted net revenue before exceptional items and amortization–one of its preferred metrics–rose to 8.015 billion euros ($8.49 billion) in the quarter from EUR7.79 billion last year.

A company-compiled consensus forecast had seen net revenue before exceptional items and amortization at EUR8.11 billion.

The company backed its expectations for the full year of stable to mid-single digit organic growth in operating profit before exceptional items and amortization.

Write to Michael Susin at michael.susin@wsj.com

Source link

October 24, 2023

Meta’s Earnings Story Will Be a Good Ol’ Rebound in Ads

Oct 25, 2023, 1:00 am EDT

In recent quarters, Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been talking more about artificial intelligence and cost cutting, while focusing less and less on the company’s multibillion-dollar investment in the metaverse. Expect more of the same when the parent of Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Threads reports results after the close Wednesday.

Continue reading this article with a Barron’s subscription.

View Options

Source link

October 24, 2023
Louisiana Rep. Mike Johnson nominated for speaker by House Republicans

House Republicans on Tuesday night voted for Rep. Mike Johnson to become their latest nominee for speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, with the Louisiana congressman’s selection capping a tumultuous day in which Rep. Tom Emmer was briefly the nominee.

Johnson, vice chair of the House Republican Conference, picked up support in two rounds of voting and drew a majority votes in a third ballot, topping the number of votes cast for Rep. Byron Donalds of Florida. That’s according to posts on social media by Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York, who as chair of the conference is the No. 4 House Republican.

The GOP-run House wasn’t due to hold a floor vote on the speaker position on Tuesday night, but the chamber could do that Wednesday.

Analysts have been warning that the long process of picking a new speaker is preventing the Republican-run House from addressing crucial matters, such as supporting Israel and passing a budget to avoid a government shutdown next month that could rattle markets
SPX.

It has been three weeks since the historic ouster of former Speaker Kevin McCarthy, a California Republican.

The selection of Johnson marks the the fourth time that House GOP lawmakers have picked a speaker nominee this month. Emmer of Minnesota, the No. 3 House Republican, was nominated around mid-day Tuesday, beating out Johnson, but bowed out about four hours later after some colleagues and former President Donald Trump refused to support him.

Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio secured the nomination on Oct. 13, but was dropped as the nominee last Friday as GOP opposition to him grew over three rounds of voting on the House floor. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, a Louisiana Republican, was tapped for the post on Oct. 11 but ended his speaker bid a day later due to opposition from fellow Republicans.

McCarthy on Tuesday floated a plan that would reinstall him as speaker and set up Jordan as the assistant speaker, according to an NBC News report citing unnamed sources.

In the third ballot on Tuesday night, Johnson scored 128 votes, Donalds got 29 votes, and 44 lawmakers backed people who weren’t on the ballot, according to multiple published reports. Most of those Republicans supported McCarthy, while one supported Jordan.

Source link

October 24, 2023
Microsoft and Alphabet results show Wall Street only cares about AI

Microsoft Corp. and Alphabet Inc. both reported mostly strong results Tuesday, but the disparate reactions from investors showed that Wall Street only cares about artificial intelligence right now.

While Microsoft shares
MSFT,
+0.37%
rose 4% in after-hours trading following the company’s latest report, Alphabet shares
GOOG,
+1.61%

GOOGL,
+1.69%
dropped 6% as Wall Street got the sense that AI is manifesting differently in the companies’ cloud businesses.

Microsoft surprised investors with 28% constant-currency growth in its Azure cloud-computing business, above the company’s own forecast and the projection for 25.6% growth that analysts were modeling on average. While Microsoft continues to see “optimization” challenges as customers remain conscious about their spending, the company is also benefiting from AI tailwinds in the cloud.

Companies looking to beef up their AI offerings are often looking to add AI services for their customers through additional cloud services, so they don’t have to do as much internal development themselves. In addition, AI offerings ranging from chatbots to tools that can streamline the writing of reports require ever more computing power, and both Azure and Google Cloud are starting to offer new software applications to address those needs.

Microsoft Chief Executive Satya Nadella called AI a “unique and different” factor that was helping Azure trends. “Given our leadership position, we are seeing complete new project starts, which are AI projects,” he said in response to an analyst question about the sustainability of cloud growth rates.

In addition, Microsoft, which has invested heavily in ChatGPT-creator OpenAI, offers an Azure OpenAI service that more than 18,000 organizations are now using. Some of these customers are new to Azure.

Microsoft Chief Financial Officer Amy Hood forecast that Azure revenue growth should be around 26% in constant currency in the fiscal second quarter, driven by new workload trends and with the growing contributions from AI.

Investors seem less confident that Alphabet is seeing the same tailwinds in its Google Cloud business, especially as that segment showed its slowest quarterly growth since Google began breaking out results that way back in 2019. Cloud revenue of $8.4 billion, with growth of 22%, was $250 million shy of consensus estimates on Wall Street, according to Colin Sebastian, an analyst with Baird. That overshadowed an upbeat performance in the company’s advertising business.

When one analyst asked Alphabet executives about the deceleration in the revenue growth of its cloud business, Chief Executive Sundar Pichai was vague but said that customers are being selective of where they are spending their IT budgets.

“On cloud, what I would say is overall, we have definitely started seeing customers looking to optimize spend,” Pichai said. “We leaned into it to help customers, given some other challenges they were facing, and so that was a factor.”

Alphabet is seeing “a lot of interest in AI,” but it remains to be seen whether that’s contributing materially to its financial performance just yet.

“Google Cloud missed consensus revenue expectations (although in line with Baird) on slowing growth, and we believe consistent with the view that newer Gen-AI workloads will take time to move the needle,” Sebastian wrote in a note to clients.

Insider Intelligence senior analyst Max Willens added that Google Cloud is facing tough competition, and while the business seems to have traction with AI startups that “may bear fruit in the long run, it is not currently helping Google Cloud enough to satisfy investors.”

Wall Street clearly is looking to AI to fuel better growth rates and help offset sluggish macroeconomic trends. The poster child for that dynamic is Nvidia Corp.
NVDA,
+1.60%,
which is expected to single-handedly drive earnings growth for the information technology sector thanks to booming demand for its AI hardware.

Read: Big-tech results will decide ‘where we go from here’ amid investor caution. They would fall if it weren’t for this one company

Given economic pressures, it’s becoming obvious that companies without much of an AI story to contribute this quarter will continue to fall out of favor with investors.

Source link

October 24, 2023
Microsoft Tops Estimates, Powered by Cloud Business

Microsoft shares were trading higher after the company posted better-than-expected financial results for its September quarter, aided by better performance than expected from the company’s cloud computing business.

[ad_2]
Source link

October 24, 2023

Novartis Raises 2023 View

By Adria Calatayud

Novartis raised its full-year earnings guidance for the third time this year after it reported higher net profit and sales for the third quarter, boosted by strong sales of key drugs.

The Swiss pharmaceutical giant said Tuesday that it now expects core operating profit to grow this year by a percentage in the mid to high teens range. It had previously anticipated a growth rate from low double percentage digits to mid teens excluding Sandoz, the generics unit that was spun off earlier this month.

Novartis reiterated its expectation for net sales growth of a high single digit in 2023.

For the third quarter, the company made a net profit of $1.76 billion compared with $1.57 billion for the same period last year.

Net sales for the quarter grew to $11.78 billion from $10.49 billion.

“Our growth drivers, including Kesimpta, Entresto, Kisqali and Pluvicto, continue to perform well in the market,” Chief Executive Vas Narasimhan said.

Excluding exceptional items, core operating income from continuing operations was up 21% at $4.41 billion.

Write to Adria Calatayud at adria.calatayud@dowjones.com

Source link

October 23, 2023

Bitcoin rallies to almost 18-month high on ETF optimism

Bitcoin surged over 10% on Monday, briefly surpassing $34,500, on continued optimism that an exchange-traded fund investing directly in the cryptocurrency will soon be approved in the U.S.

The largest cryptocurrency
BTCUSD,
+6.59%
by market cap on Monday reached as high as $34,616, the loftiest level since May 2022, according to CoinDesk data, before falling to around $33,021 by Monday evening. Other major cryptocurrencies also rose, with ether up 5.8% over the past 24 hours to $1,763.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has repeatedly rejected bitcoin ETF applications in the past, citing risks of market manipulation. But crypto-industry participants are expecting that to change soon.

Read more: Bitcoin climbs above $30,000 for first time since August as hopes for ETF approval intensify

A U.S. Appeals court on Monday issued a mandate, putting into effect its ruling in August, which overturned the SEC’s rejection of Grayscale Investments’ application to convert its Bitcoin Trust product
GBTC
into an ETF. The final ruling on Monday confirmed Grayscale’s win in court.

Meanwhile, BlackRock’s proposed bitcoin ETF has been listed on the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation. While it doesn’t mean that the ETF is guaranteed to be approved, it shows another step closer for BlackRock to bring the fund to the market.

If bitcoin ETFs are approved, the crypto may see “historical price increases,” with a crypto bull market coming, according to Alex Adelman, chief executive and co-founder of Lolli. “Bitcoin ETFs will give institutional and retail investors new ways to gain exposure to bitcoin within established regulations,” Adelman said.

Source link

October 23, 2023
Chevron to Buy Hess for $53 Billion

Updated Oct. 23, 2023 5:58 am ET

Chevron said it would buy Hess in an all-stock deal worth $53 billion, in the latest sign of consolidation in an oil-and-gas industry flush with cash.

The U.S. energy giant said buying Hess would upgrade and diversify its portfolio, adding a large oil asset in Guyana and bolstering its U.S. shale operations. Chevron also highlighted the attraction of Hess’s assets in the Gulf of Mexico and its natural-gas business in Southeast Asia.

Copyright ©2023 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

Source link

October 23, 2023
UAW won’t expand auto workers strike

The United Auto Workers said Friday it has made progress in the negotiations with the Big Three carmakers, and didn’t announce any new plants that would expand its ongoing strike.

Nearly 34,000 workers at Ford Motor Co.
F,
+0.95%,
General Motors Co.
GM,
+1.13%
and Stellantis NV
STLA,
-0.37%
are on strike, with the most recent labor-movement expansion hitting Ford’s highly profitable Kentucky pickup truck factory earlier this month.

There was “serious movement” in negotiations at GM and Stellantis, UAW President Shawn Fain said Friday in an address to the membership.

“The bottom line is we’ve got cards left to play and they’ve money left to spend. That’s the hardest part of a strike. Right before a deal, is when there’s the most aggressive push for that last mile,” Fain said.

Earlier Friday, GM made new proposal to auto workers, reinstating cost-of-living adjustments and offering compounded raises of about 25% over four years.

Auto workers started the strike at the stroke of midnight Sept. 14, walking out at one plant each of GM, Ford, and Stellantis NV
STLA,
-0.37%.
The union expanded the labor action to more factories and facilities as the weeks went by.

Striking at all Big Three at once was a departure from the long-standing UAW tradition striking at one car company at a time, to save picket-line firepower and the strike fund.

During his address Friday, Fain vowed to intensify efforts to unionize at more auto plants.

“We are going to organize non-union auto companies like we’ve never organized before,” he said.

Tesla Inc.
TSLA,
-3.69%
has for years fended off efforts to unionize its factory in Fremont, Calif. Several foreign automakers have U.S. plants in the Southeast, where union traditions are not as the Midwest.

Source link

October 20, 2023
Pfizer gets FDA green light for new shot that can streamline teenagers’ vaccinations

Pfizer Inc.
PFE,
-1.73%
said Friday that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved the first five-in-one vaccine designed to protect teenagers and young adults against meningococcal disease.

The new Pfizer shot, Penbraya, protects against the five most common subgroups of meningococcal disease, a rare but serious and potentially fatal illness that most often affects babies and teenagers.

Penbraya “has the potential to protect more adolescents and young adults from this severe and unpredictable disease by providing the broadest meningococcal coverage in the fewest shots,” Annaliesa Anderson, Pfizer senior vice president and head of vaccine research and development, said in a statement.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention currently recommends that all 11- to 12-year-olds get a meningococcal vaccine protecting against four of the subgroups — A, C, W and Y — and get a booster dose of the same vaccine type at age 16. Teenagers and young adults age 16 to 23 may also get a meningococcal B vaccine, the CDC says, particularly if they’re at increased risk due to other health conditions.

The complex vaccination schedule has weighed on uptake of the meningococcal shots, and the COVID-19 pandemic may have compounded the problem, as many families missed routine appointments when vaccinations were due, researchers say. Among teenagers who were born in 2008 — who were due for their routine adolescent vaccinations as the pandemic was raging in 2020 — uptake of meningococcal and other recommended vaccines declined, according to CDC research. Only about 60% of the 17-year-olds surveyed by the CDC last year had received both recommended doses of the ACWY vaccine, and fewer than 30% had received at least one dose of the meningococcal B vaccine.

The new Pfizer shot combines components of a meningococcal group B vaccine and an ACWY vaccine.

A CDC immunization advisory committee is set to meet Oct. 25 to discuss recommendations for the use of Penbraya in teenagers and young adults, Pfizer said.

The green light for Penbraya gives Pfizer the edge in its race with GSK
GSK,
+0.54%,
which is also working on a five-in-one meningococcal shot. GSK earlier this year released positive late-stage clinical-trial results for that vaccine.

The FDA approval of Pfizer’s shot caps a rocky week for the pharmaceutical giant, which late last Friday cut $9 billion from its full-year revenue guidance due to reduced COVID sales expectations and announced a cost-cutting program designed to deliver savings of at least $3.5 billion. Pfizer executives said on a call with analysts Monday that development of combination respiratory vaccines, such as those that provide COVID and flu protection in one shot, remains a focus for the company, in part because they can help boost vaccine uptake.

Pfizer shares were down 1.7% Friday and have dropped 40% in the year to date, while the S&P 500
SPX
has gained 10%.

Source link

October 20, 2023