Bed Bath & Beyond Inc.’s Canadian division will shut down its stores under court protection after the company received an unusual lifeline earlier this week to save its U.S. operations from bankruptcy.
The troubled retailer filed its Canadian division for protection under the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act, Canada’s rough equivalent of chapter 11 bankruptcy. Bed Bath & Beyond has “reluctantly concluded” that even with the lifeline of its recent equity raise, there isn’t enough capital available both to restructure its U.S. business and bring the Canadian business to profitability, the company said in filings with an Ontario court.
New event management solution helps K-12 schools manage event reservation, approval, and preparation workflows.
Press Release –
Jan 31, 2023 08:30 EST
ATLANTA, January 31, 2023 (Newswire.com)
– Incident IQ is announcing a new addition to its award-winning K-12 workflow management platform at this year’s TCEA conference in San Antonio. The company is releasing iiQ Events—a product that streamlines the process of planning and executing school events. The new offering is part of Incident IQ’s commitment to providing K-12 building and maintenance teams with tools built for the unique support needs of today’s schools.
Managing a multitude of school and community events has long been a struggle for K-12 staff. From managing location availability and approving requests, to securing necessary equipment and final event preparation — coordinating school functions requires effort from many different support teams. iiQ Events manages these event workflows from start to finish, handling event requests and scheduling and preparation tasks, while keeping district staff in sync and key stakeholders informed.
Users can quickly find available locations based on event needs and submit data-rich reservation forms in seconds. iiQ Events prevents accidental double bookings and provides building staff with a detailed timeline of event activities—including set-up and breakdown times—so that no events run the risk of overlapping each other. Districts can choose from single or multi-stage approval workflows, allowing key decision-makers the ability to give the go-ahead on an upcoming event.
Once an event is approved, work orders can automatically be dispatched to relevant support teams to begin preparation, ensuring that all necessary equipment and personnel are on-hand for the big day.
Facility leaders are also provided with a detailed event calendar, which keeps track of upcoming district events. Users can create custom views, which display the events relevant to a specific individual or building team. Districts can also sync their event calendar with popular solutions such as Google Calendar and ArbiterSports, ensuring that events are visible and teams stay in sync.
“Facilities teams are the backbone of schools—not only do they coordinate and assist with special events, but they also accomplish the important tasks that keep district buildings running smoothly,” said Chris Burns, iiQ Facilities Product Manager. “iiQ Events optimizes workflows so facilities teams can stay coordinated and prepared for events, all while operating from the same platform that IT teams, teachers, and staff use regularly.”
Jun Kim, Director of Technology at Moore Public Schools in Moore, Oklahoma, explains how Incident IQ’s platform makes submitting requests easier on school staff, while streamlining operations across the district’s IT and maintenance teams. “I hear nothing but positives coming from our entire staff—Incident IQ has really streamlined our processes. iiQ Facilities and iiQ Ticketing use the same interface, so it’s a lot easier for our end users to put in tickets. The workflow and ease of use is phenomenal.”
The release of iiQ Events is part of the latest wave of enhancements for K-12 building and maintenance teams. iiQ Facilities, the work order solution for K-12 building teams, has been enhanced with new labor rate tracking to help support teams manage overtime and hourly rates, and improved parts and labor analytics that report labor and inventory costs.
Take a look for yourself—you can find Incident IQ at Booth #447 at TCEA from Monday, Jan. 30, through Thursday, Feb. 2. For more information about iiQ Events, visit IncidentIQ.com and register for the upcoming webinar, which will take users through iiQ Events in detail.
About Incident IQ
Incident IQ is the workflow management platform built exclusively for K-12 schools, featuring asset management, help ticketing, facilities maintenance solutions, and more. Millions of students and teachers in districts across 49 states rely on the Incident IQ platform to manage and deliver mission-critical services.
Bed Bath & Beyond Inc. has received a warning that it is not in compliance for continued Nasdaq listing because the company has not yet filed its Form 10-Q quarterly report with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
In an SEC filing Thursday, the troubled home-goods retailer said it had received the Nasdaq notice on Jan. 12. The notice has no immediate effect on the listing or trading of Bed Bath & Beyond’s BBBY, -4.09%
common stock on the Nasdaq COMP, +0.86%,
the filing said. “The Notice states that the Company has 60 calendar days from the date of the Notice, or March 13, 2023, to submit a plan to regain compliance with the Listing Rule,” Bed Bath & Beyond said in the filing.
In recent weeks, Apple Inc. has accelerated plans to shift some of its production outside China, long the dominant country in the supply chain that built the world’s most valuable company, say people involved in the discussions. It is telling suppliers to plan more actively for assembling Apple products elsewhere in Asia, particularly India and Vietnam, they say, and looking to reduce dependence on Taiwanese assemblers led by Foxconn Technology Group.
Turmoil at a place called iPhone City helped propel Apple’s shift. At the giant city-within-a-city in Zhengzhou, China, as many as 300,000 workers work at a factory run by Foxconn to make iPhones and other Apple products. At one point, it alone made about 85% of the Pro lineup of iPhones, according to market-research firm Counterpoint Research.
China’s zero-COVID strategy was back in the headlines on Monday, after the country announced its first COVID deaths in nearly six months, announced new restrictions in the capital Beijing and locked down the largest district in the southern manufacturing hub of Guangzhou.
Beijing residents were told not to travel between city districts, and large numbers of restaurants, shops, malls, office buildings and apartment blocks have been closed or isolated, the Associated Press reported. Local and international schools in urban districts of the city of 21 million have been moved online.
Beijing reported two more COVID-19-related deaths on Monday, a day after the city reported its first COVID-19 death since May. China’s COVID numbers are widely held to be massively undercounted.
In Guangzhou, public transit was suspended and residents are required to present a negative test if they want to leave their homes, according to a separate AP report.
The outbreak is testing China’s attempt to bring a more “targeted” approach to its zero-COVID policies while facing multiple outbreaks. China is the only major country in the world still trying to curb virus transmissions through strict lockdown measures and mass testing.
A group of Chinese doctors interviewed by the Financial Times said the country’s healthcare system is not ready to deal with a huge COVID outbreak that will inevitably follow any easing of strict measures to contain COVID-19.
“The medical system will probably be paralyzed when faced with mass cases,” one doctor in a public hospital in Wuhan, central China, where the pandemic started nearly three years ago, reportedly told the FT.
Chinese President Xi Jinping’s speech at China’s 20th Party Congress suggests the country’s economy is moving in a new direction. As for U.S. investors, they’ll likely be taking on more risk investing in China. WSJ’s Dion Rabouin explains. Illustration: Elizabeth Smelov
In the U.S., known cases of COVID were flat on Sunday with the daily average standing at 40,588, according to a New York Times tracker, up 1% from two weeks ago. Cases are currently rising in about half the states and falling in the rest, but some are seeing sharp spikes.
In Nebraska, for example, cases are up 153% from two weeks ago, followed by Arizona, where they are up 110%.
The daily average for hospitalizations was up 1% at 27,781, but Alaska is currently seeing a 50% spike, followed by Arizona where hospitalizations are up 51%.
On a brighter note, the daily average for deaths is down 10% to 286.
• Hong Kong leader John Lee tested positive for COVID-19 after meeting with other regional leaders at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Thailand, the city government said Monday, the AP reported. Lee tested negative throughout his four-day stay in Bangkok but his test upon his arrival at Hong Kong’s airport on Sunday night was positive, a government statement said. Lee is now in isolation and will work from home, according to a spokesperson of the Chief Executive’s Office. Other officials at his office who went to Thailand with Lee all tested negative.
• Oregon Gov. Kate Brown and her husband Dan Little have tested positive for COVID, after returning from Vietnam, Brown disclosed in a tweet. The pair were attending the Vietnam-United States Trade Forum.
• A Los Angeles couple who fled to Europe after being convicted of running a fraud ring that stole $18 million in COVID aid money was returned to the U.S. to face prison, the AP reported. Richard Ayvazyan and his wife, Marietta Terabelian, were extradited from the Balkan country of Montenegro, where they were living in a luxury seaside villa before their arrest in February. They arrived in Los Angeles on Thursday, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. While they were on the run last year, a court in Los Angeles sentenced Ayvazyan to 17 years in federal prison, and Terabelian to six years.
The U.S. leads the world with 98.3 million cases and 1,077,031 fatalities.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s tracker shows that 228.2 million people living in the U.S., equal to 68.7% of the total population, are fully vaccinated, meaning they have had their primary shots.
So far, just 35.3 million Americans have had the updated COVID booster that targets the original virus and the omicron variants, equal to 11.3% of the overall population.
China’s strict zero-COVID policy was making headlines Monday after Apple and iPhone manufacturer Foxconn said over the weekend that restrictions are crimping production and will delay shipments of the high-end iPhone 14.
“We continue to see strong demand for iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max models,” Apple AAPL, -0.82% announced in a Sunday evening press release. “However, we now expect lower iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max shipments than we previously anticipated and customers will experience longer wait times to receive their new products.”
Foxconn, meanwhile, which trades as Hon Hai Precision Industry Co. 2317, -0.50%,
lowered its fourth-quarter guidance and said anti-COVID measures were affecting some of its operations in Zhengzhou, China, as Dow Jones Newswires reported.
Foxconn said that the Henan provincial government had made it clear that it would fully support the company. Foxconn’s most advanced iPhone plant, located in the provincial capital of Zhengzhou, has been battling a COVID outbreak.
Foxconn said it is working with the government to halt the outbreak and resume production at full capacity as quickly as possible.
Workers at the world’s biggest assembly site for Apple’s iPhones walked out last week as Foxconn struggled to contain a COVID-19 outbreak. The chaos highlighted the tension between Beijing’s rigid pandemic controls and the need to keep production on track. Photo: Hangpai Xinyang/Associated Press
Investors have been closely watching China for signs that its government would start to lift the tough pandemic restrictions that have been in place for almost three years. The Wall Street Journal reported Monday that the country’s leaders are considering steps but have not yet set a timeline.
Chinese officials have become concerned about the costs of their zero-tolerance approach to COVID, which has resulted in lockdowns of cities and whole provinces, crushing business activity and confining hundreds of millions of people to their homes for weeks and sometimes months on end.
But they are weighing those concerns against the potential costs of reopening on public health and on support for the Communist Party. On Saturday, officials from China’s National Health Commission again reaffirmed their commitment to a firm zero-COVID strategy, which they described as essential to “protect people’s lives.”
Still, there are plans in Beijing to further cut the number of days incoming travelers must quarantine in hotels from 10 to seven, followed by three days of home monitoring, the paper reported, citing people involved in the discussions.
And officials have told retail businesses that they intend to reduce the frequency of PCR testing as soon as this month, partly because of the cost.
In the U.S., known cases of COVID and hospitalizations are climbing again for the first time in a few months.
The daily average for new cases stood at 39,954 on Sunday, according to a New York Times tracker, up 6% compared with two weeks ago. But cases are sharply higher in several states, led by Nevada, where they are up 96% from two weeks ago, followed by Tennessee, where they are up 69%; Louisiana, where they are up 68%; Utah, where they have climbed 61%; and New Mexico, where they are up 56%.
Cases are climbing in 30 states and in Washington, D.C.
The daily average for hospitalizations was up 2% to 27,419, while the daily average for deaths was down 11% to 320.
Physicians are reporting high numbers of respiratory illnesses like RSV and the flu earlier than the typical winter peak. WSJ’s Brianna Abbott explains what the early surge means for the winter months. Photo illustration: Kaitlyn Wang
The two variants accounted for 52.3% of all cases in the New York region, which includes New Jersey, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, up from 42.5% the previous week. That was more than the BA.5 omicron subvariant, which accounted for 24.9% of new cases in the New York area in the latest week.
The BA.5 omicron subvariant accounted for 39.2% of all U.S. cases, the data show.
BQ.1 and BQ.1.1 were still lumped in with BA.5 variant data as recently as three weeks ago, because at that time, their numbers were too small to break out. BQ.1 was first identified by researchers in early September and has been found in the U.K. and Germany, among other places.
• BioNTEch SE BNTX, +2.84%,
the German biotech that has partnered with Pfizer PFE, -0.53%
on a COVID vaccine, posted earnings early Monday, showing a roughly 50% drop in profit that sent its stock lower, despite beating consensus estimates. The Mainz-based company said it had invoiced about 300 million doses of its bivalent vaccine, which targets the omicron variant as well as the original virus. The company chalked up €564.5 million ($563.9 million) in direct COVID vaccine sales in the quarter, down from €1.351 billion a year ago. BioNTech raised the lower end of its full-year COVID vaccine revenue range to €16 billion to €17 billion, from a previous €13 billion to €17 billion.
• Thousands of runners took to the streets of the Chinese capital on Sunday for the return of Beijing’s annual marathon after a two-year hiatus, the Associated Press reported. However, the good news was offset by anger about another death related to COVID restrictions, this time of a 55-year-old woman in a sealed building. An investigation report released Sunday in Hohhot, the capital of China’s Inner Mongolia region, blamed property management and community staff for not acting quickly enough to prevent the death of the woman after being told she had suicidal tendencies.
• The U.S. flu season is off to an unusually fast start, contributing to an autumn mix of viruses that have patients filling hospitals’ and physicians’ waiting rooms, the AP reported separately. Reports of flu are already high in 17 states, and the hospitalization rate hasn’t been this high this early since the 2009 swine flu pandemic, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. So far, there have been an estimated 730 flu deaths, including at least two children. The winter flu season usually ramps up in December or January.
The U.S. leads the world with 97.7 million cases and 1,072,598 fatalities.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s tracker shows that 227.3 million people living in the U.S., equal to 68.5% of the total population, are fully vaccinated, meaning they have had their primary shots.
So far, just 26.3 million Americans have had the updated COVID booster that targets the original virus and the omicron variants, equal to 8.4% of the overall population.
Twitter Inc. is now owned by Elon Musk, with multiple media outlets reporting Thursday night that the long-anticipated sale had officially closed.
The Wall Street Journal, Washington Post and others reported, based on unnamed sources, that the top executives of Twitter TWTR, +0.66%
were fired and escorted from the building, including Chief Executive Parag Agrawal, Chief Financial Officer Ned Segal and Vijaya Gadde, head of legal policy, trust and safety.
Musk himself is expected to assume the role of interim CEO, though in the longer term may appoint someone else, Bloomberg reported early Friday, citing unnamed sources. Twitter did not respond to a request by the publication for comment.
The acquisition ends months of legal wrangling after Musk, the billionaire CEO of Tesla Inc. TSLA, +0.20%
and SpaceX and a frequent Twitter user, offered to buy Twitter in April. After reaching an agreement with Twitter’s board to buy the social media company for $44 billion, Musk tried to back out of the deal and Twitter sued him. He faced a Friday deadline to complete the deal or face trial.
In a tweet late Thursday night, Musk said only: “the bird is freed.”
Thursday morning, Musk signaled a deal was imminent when he tweeted a statement aimed at assuring advertisers, some of whom might be concerned about his plans for content moderation. Musk has said one of his motivations for buying the platform is related to complaints about censorship, mostly from people who have been banned because they have violated Twitter’s terms of service.
Twitter did not immediately return a request for comment late Thursday.
The Bloomberg report added that Musk also plans to end lifetime bans for users, meaning former President Donald Trump could return to Twitter, though it’s unclear how soon that could happen, the source said.
Twitter shares have rallied 26% over the past month, closing Thursday at $53.70, close to the $54.20 share price Musk agreed to pay in April.
Shares in London-listed fracking companies slumped on Wednesday after new U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said he would stick by his party’s manifesto pledge to ban the shale gas extraction process in Britain.
IGas Energy stock IGAS, -27.66%
dropped 28% and the equity of Egdon Resources EDR, -18.21%
slumped 11%. The shares of AJ Lucas AJL, +2.99%,
which owns nearly 50% of U.K. fracker Cuadrilla, are quoted on the Australian stock exchange, which was closed.
The fracking sector is tiny in the U.K. — the two U.K.-quoted companies have a combined valuation of less than £60 million — with few suitable sites for the process to be viable.
But the industry’s practices are highly controversial, with campaigners arguing it causes small earth tremors, pollutes water tables and is not compatible with lower carbon production targets.
The shares of IGas Energy had jumped around ninefold since the start of the year, getting an extra recent boost from previous Prime Minister Liz Truss’s decision to go against the Conservative Party’s wishes and allow fracking.
When it comes to nostalgia, McDonald’s customers sure are lovin’ it.
The burger chain brought back its Halloween pails on Tuesday, which haven’t been offered in the U.S. since 2016. The plastic trick-or-treat buckets decorated to look like a ghost, a goblin or a jack-o’-lantern (aka McBoo, McGoblin and McPunk’n, respectively) quickly began trending among real-time Google searches on Tuesday.
But the appetite for these Halloween buckets is nothing compared to the recent McDonald’s MCD, +1.10%
collaboration with streetwear company Cactus Plant Flea Market, which dished out a $12-$13 box (better known as the “adult Happy Meal”) that featured a food combo and a collectible figurine targeted toward the grownups who grew up on Happy Meals.
They sold out quickly, and now some enterprising fast food lovers are hawking the adult Happy Meal toys over online resale sites for thousands of dollars.
So what’s the appeal? Nostalgia, nostalgia, nostalgia. “Everyone remembers their first Happy Meal as a kid … and the can’t-sit-still feeling as you dug in to see what was inside,” McDonald’s wrote in a press release. “And now, we’re reimagining that experience in a whole new way — this time, for adults.”
The limited-edition Cactus Plant Flea Market Box at McDonald’s rolled out on Oct. 3, feeding the inner child of the average customer by offering a choice of a Big Mac or 10-piece chicken nuggets main dish, french fries and a soft drink, as well as one of four “toys” featuring redesigned McDonald’s mascots like the Grimace, the Hamburgler and Birdie, as well as a new “Cactus Buddy!” figure (yes, the exclamation point is part of his name.)
The Cactus Plant Flea Market boxes sold out in many places on the same day that they came out. Some McDonald’s employees took to Reddit and TikTok to share how much they were not lovin’ it — which was reminiscent of the hatred many Starbucks SBUX, +0.07%
employees felt toward the viral unicorn frappuccino in 2017.
And now, both the toys and the boxes have become near impossible to come by — unless you’re willing to cough up a lot of cash. A medium Cactus Plant Flea Market Box costs about $12, with large box closer to $13 — and one New Jersey mom noted that in her area, a Big Mac combo with fries and a drink runs under $10, so she spent $3 basically get the collectible toy.
But one eBay listing offering three of the collectible Cactus Plant Flea Market, still unwrapped and in their original packaging, is asking for a whopping $300,000.
The sold-out Cactus Plant Flea Market Boxes, aka McDonald’s “adult Happy Meals,” are popping up on resale sites for thousands of dollars.
The sold-out Cactus Plant Flea Market Boxes, aka McDonald’s “adult Happy Meals,” are popping up on resale sites for thousands of dollars.
Screenshot
But there are dozens of other listings for the individual toys and boxes on resale sites such as eBay and Facebook Marketplace in the much more palatable $10-$30 range, or bundles with all four collectible figurines running between $60-$70.
McDonald’s was not immediately available for comment, but a rep told Axios that, “The hype for the Cactus Plant Flea Market Box was so real that some of our restaurants have sold out of the limited-edition experience.” They added that, “We’re thrilled by the excitement we’re seeing.”
The official McDonald’s Twitter account has also been fielding queries from disappointed potential customers who haven’t been able to get their hands on any of the adult Happy Meals, apologizing that this was only a limited time offer.
Time will tell if more “adult Happy Meals” will be offered in the future. There’s clearly a customer base hungry for more.
This isn’t McDonald’s first viral sensation, of course. The fast food giant has also scored success with celebrity collaborations featuring K-Pop sensation BTS, or singing diva Mariah Carey — which also reportedly sold out.
Tesla Inc. Chief Executive Elon Musk now plans to close his proposed $44 billion deal for Twitter Inc., according to a Tuesday filing that arrived less than two weeks before a judge was scheduled to hear a case on the disputed acquisition.
Musk’s lawyers sent a letter to Twitter’s management team indicating that he was proposing to move forward with the original acquisition terms late Monday, and that letter was released as a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission Tuesday afternoon. A Twitter spokesperson later confirmed to MarketWatch that the company intended to proceed with the deal for $54.20 a share.
Twitter TWTR, +22.24%
shares jumped 22.2% to $52 in Tuesday’s session, after an hours-long trading halt that started after Bloomberg News first reported the move around noon Eastern time, suggesting a possible end to the legal saga between the two parties. The increase is the second best daily percentage gain on record for Twitter stock, behind only the 27.1% gain experienced when Musk disclosed his initial ownership stake in Twitter in April. Twitter was the best performing stock Tuesday in the S&P 500 index SPX, +3.06%,
and is now up 20.3% on the year.
The two sides have been locked in a legal battle for months, and a Delaware Chancery Court judge was expected to hear from both sides in a five-day trial slated to begin Oct. 17. The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday that the Delaware judge asked the two sides to come up with a plan by the end of the day that could bring about an end to the litigation.
“Musk could see the writing on the wall that he was going to lose the trial,” said Josh White, an assistant finance professor at Vanderbilt University, in an email to MarketWatch. “By doing this, he can save legal costs, time and ultimately losing in a very public trial.”
Musk agreed in April to buy Twitter in a deal that valued the company at roughly $44 billion, but he later said that he was terminating the deal. The Tesla TSLA, +2.90%
CEO cited concerns about bot activity on Twitter and said he believed the company’s management team wasn’t accurate in its public disclosures about the extent of spam activity on the platform.
White noted that text messages released in conjunction with the case showed that Musk was aware of Twitter’s bot issue before going forward with his original deal offer, and he doubted that Musk would be able to show that “something really changed” after that point.
“If he offered less than $54.20, Twitter might have proceeded with the trial, and he would be deposed,” White continued. “By offering the original price, he maximizes the chance that Twitter accepts and the trial ends. I expect Twitter’s board to accept the deal and for it to close rather quickly.”
Wedbush analyst Daniel Ives agreed that the Tesla leader’s latest move marked a “clear sign that Musk recognized heading into Delaware Court that the chances of winning vs. Twitter board was highly unlikely and this $44 billion deal was going to be completed one way or another,” he wrote in a note to clients. “Being forced to do the deal after a long and ugly court battle in Delaware was not an ideal scenario and instead accepting this path and moving forward with the deal will save a massive legal headache.”
Vanderbilt’s White noted that a deal at the original price would be a “big” win for Twitter shareholders.
“The stock price of Snap SNAP, +8.42%
and Twitter seemed to trade around the same price level before the offer,” he told MarketWatch. “Snap is now a ~$10 stock with a $17 billion market cap. So Twitter’s shareholders win by getting $54.20 rather than having the price drop to $10-20 per share.”
Additionally, he deemed Delaware business law another winner: “This deal shows that even the richest man in the world cannot overcome well-written contracts enforced in a neutral and fair way by the Delaware courts.”
Online secondhand-fashion marketplace Poshmark Inc. has agreed to be bought by South Korean internet company Naver in a $1.2 billion deal, the companies announced Monday, a move that executives said would help both brands expand internationally.
Shares of Poshmark POSH, -0.64%
jumped 11.8% in after-hours trading on the news.
Under the terms of the deal, Naver 035420, -8.79%
will acquire Poshmark’s outstanding shares for $17.90 in cash, representing a 15% upside to Poshmark’s Monday closing price of $15.57. The transaction is set to close by the first quarter of next year, pending Poshmark shareholders’ approval.
Poshmark went public in late 2020, pricing shares at $42 a share, and ended its first day of trading at more than $100 a share, but has never approached those heights again. It last traded for more than the acquisition price Naver has agreed to pay late last year.
In a statement, executives from both companies talked up the potential to combine Naver’s array of search, e-commerce, AI and social-media technology with Poshmark’s social and shopping platforms. Poshmark, the companies said, would also embark on a bigger international expansion strategy, including into other markets in Asia, in the “medium-term.”
They also talked about the potential for the combined company to save around $30 million annually within two years after the deal’s closing through “rationalization of public company costs” and higher operating leverage, along with the potential for more than 20% yearly sales growth by harnessing Naver’s advertising resources.
Naver, which runs large search and e-commerce platforms, said the move would broaden its e-commerce platform, bring younger users into the company’s fold and allow it to “capitalize on the global online fashion re-commerce and sustainable economy opportunity.”
“Naver’s leading technology in search, AI recommendation and e-commerce tools will help power the next phase of Poshmark’s global growth,” Choi Soo-Yeon, Naver’s chief executive, said in a statement, which also said that Naver hosted a large number of digital content creators in Korea.
Naver owns companies like Wattpad, a social-media platform, and runs Webtoon, a site for digital comics, along with a metaverse platform called Zepeto, and also has joint ownership of an internet service group in Japan. Naver said its online community in Korea consists of more than 36 million monthly users, who use its search engine and other services.
Poshmark Chief Executive Manish Chandra said the deal would also give Poshmark opportunities to grow.
“Longer term, as part of Naver, we will benefit from their financial resources, significant technology capabilities, and leading presence across Asia to expand our platform, elevate our product and user experiences, and enter new and large markets,” he said in the statement.
Naver said the acquisition would also help give it a bigger foothold in the U.S. And it said the deal would allow it to broaden the appeal of so-called live-stream shopping.
“Live-stream shopping is a key driver of e-commerce in China and Korea (and increasingly in the U.S.) today, allowing shoppers to buy products in real-time through live video broadcasts, enabling greater insights and more clarity around purchasing decisions,” the statement said.
Once the deal closes, Poshmark will be a standalone subsidiary of Naver, with the same management team, brand and headquarters in Redwood City, Calif., the companies revealed.
At the close of Monday’s trading, shares of Poshmark were down around 9% year-to-date. The S&P 500 index SPX, +2.59%,
by comparison, has slid 23% over that time.
Russian authorities are opening more military enlistment offices near Russia’s borders in an apparent effort to intercept some of the Russian men of fighting age who are trying to flee the country by land to avoid being called up to fight in Ukraine.
A new draft office opened at the Ozinki checkpoint in the Saratov region on Russia’s border with Kazakhstan, regional officials said Thursday. Another enlistment center was set to open at a crossing in the Astrakhan region, also on the border with Kazakhstan.
Earlier this week, makeshift Russian draft offices were set up near the Verkhny Lars border crossing into Georgia in southern Russia and near the Torfyanka checkpoint on Russia’s border with Finland. Russian officials said they would hand call-up notices to all eligible men who were trying to leave the country.
Over 194,000 Russian citizens have fled to neighboring Georgia, Kazakhstan and Finland — most often by car, bicycle or on foot — since Russian President Vladimir Putin last week announced a partial mobilization of reservists. In Russia, the vast majority of men under age 65 are registered as reservists.
The Kremlin has said it plans to call-up some 300,000 people, but Russian media reported that the number could be as high as 1.2 million, a claim that Russian officials have denied.
Russia’s Defense Ministry has promised to only draft those who have combat or service experience, but according to multiple media reports and human rights advocates, men who don’t fit the criteria are also being rounded up.
The official decree on mobilization, signed by Putin last week, is concise and vague, fueling fears of a broader draft.
In an apparent effort to calm the population, Putin told Russia’s Security Council on Thursday that mistakes had been made in the mobilization. He said that Russian men mistakenly called up for service should be sent back home, and that only reservists with proper training and specialties should be summoned to serve.
“It’s necessary to deal with each such case independently, but if there is a mistake, I repeat, it must be fixed. It’s necessary to bring back those who were drafted without proper reason,” Putin stressed.
The mass exodus of Russian men — alone or with their families or friends — began Sept. 21, shortly after Putin’s address to the nation, and continued all this week. Airline tickets to destinations abroad have sold out days in advance, even at unprecedentedly high prices.
Long lines of cars formed on roads leading to Russia’s borders. Russian authorities tried to stem the outflow by turning back some men at the borders, citing mobilization laws, or setting up draft offices at border checkpoints.
The bus stations in Samara and Tolyatti, two large Russian cities in the Samara region, on Thursday halted service to Uralsk, a border city in Kazakhstan.
Finland announced that it would ban Russian citizens with tourist visas from entering the country starting Friday. With the exception of Norway, which has only one border crossing with Russia, Finland has provided the last easily accessible land route to Europe for Russian holders of European Schengen-zone visas. The Nordic country has taken in tens of thousands of people fleeing the military call-up in recent days.
The leading US railroad contractor further expands national reach.
Press Release –
Apr 13, 2022
FORT WORTH, Texas, April 13, 2022 (Newswire.com)
– As the Nation’s leading provider of inspection, maintenance, repair and specialized construction services for industrial railroad infrastructure, American Track is proud to announce the acquisition of The Railroad Associates Corp (TRAC) in Boiling Springs, PA.
In 2021, DFW Capital Partners acquired American Track and has assisted with an aggressive strategy to grow the organization organically and through acquisition. Operating now from 10 full-service offices in strategically located markets, the Company provides mission-critical services for its customers that ensure the safety, compliance, operability and flexibility of onsite railway assets. American Track serves a wide range of industries, including manufacturing, petrochemical, mining, agricultural products, food and beverage, basic raw materials, ports and transload facilities across the U.S.
Thomas Lucario, Chief Executive Officer of American Track, commented: “TRAC has been a strong force in the railroad services industry, and we are happy to have them join the American Track family. With the addition of the TRAC team, American Track greatly enhances our service delivery capabilities, customer base and national reach.”
“We are excited to join the American Track organization,” stated Mike Kennedy, founder of TRAC. “We set out 22 years ago to build a great company, and joining American Track is the culmination of those efforts. We are happy to be a part of a team that delivers to rail service clients a shared commitment to strong customer service, quality workmanship and safety.” Dave Goretski, former COO of TRAC, added, “With our strong maintenance presence in the Northeast and nationwide presence on rail construction projects, TRAC brings new and increased solution-based service capabilities to an already strong, national organization.” As part of the combination, Dave will serve as the Chief Development Officer for American Track, while Mike will remain active with the organization and support in an advisory capacity. Dave, Mike and certain key TRAC employees also have joined in the management equity ownership of American Track.
TRAC was represented in the process by TM Capital www.tmcapital.com. Affiliates of DFW Capital Partners made an additional equity investment in the company, coupled with support from the existing American Track lender, PineBridge Investments.
About American Track
Headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas, American Track is the leading independent provider of turnkey railroad design, repair, maintenance, construction, and inspection services for critical rail infrastructure atindustrial, municipal, and logistics sites. American Track, www.AmericanTrack.com, is a portfolio company of DFW Capital Partners. www.dfwcapital.com
About The Railroad Associates Corp (TRAC)
Founded in 2000, TRAC is the final succession in a multi-generational rail services business owned by the Kennedy Family in eastern Pennsylvania. TRAC specializes in providing railroad design and construction services from concept to completion. Additionally, TRAC performs railroad maintenance and terminal services for industrial customers in the Northeast U.S. More information can be found at www.railroadtracusa.com.
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FORT WORTH, Texas, December 2, 2021 (Newswire.com)
– American Track, the Nation’s leading provider of inspection, maintenance, repair and specialized construction services for industrial railroad infrastructure, announced the closing on a recapitalization transaction led by DFW Capital Partners. Operating from nine branch offices in strategically located markets, the Company provides mission-critical services for its customers that ensure the safety, compliance, operability and flexibility of onsite railway assets. American Track serves a wide range of industries including manufacturing, petrochemical, mining, agricultural products, food and beverage, basic raw materials, ports and transload facilities across the US.
American Track has been partnered with Hilltop Private Capital since its formation through a consolidation of two family businesses in 2016. During this time, American Track has seen great success and has grown from three locations to nine, with multiple acquisitions included. Kate Lehman, Managing Partner for Hilltop Private Capital, stated, “We are proud to have partnered with management and the company founders to create the American Track platform and to provide the resources to execute our growth strategy. We thank our capital partners PNC Mezzanine Capital and Deerpath Capital Management for their support and wish the entire American Track team continued success as it moves forward.”
Thomas Lucario, Chief Executive Officer of American Track, commented: “Hilltop and PNC Mezzanine Capital have been excellent partners for American Track over the past five years and have led us to achieve exceptional growth. With that in mind, we are extremely excited about partnering with DFW Capital Partners as we move into our next stage of expansion into additional services and geographies. We are certain DFW will provide us with not only additional resources, but also the right leadership, perspective, and commitment to invest in our people, equipment and customers in the future.”
Keith Pennell, Managing Partner for DFW, added, “American Track represents a unique opportunity to back a very talented operating team and a market leading operating business in what remains a highly fragmented, specialized industry. We are excited to contribute some of our prior experiences in successfully scaling field service-oriented businesses to American Track, as well as supporting a more robust organic and add-on growth strategy.”
About American Track
Headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas, American Track provides railroad inspection engineering, repair and maintenance, construction services for critical rail infrastructure atindustrial, municipal, and logistics sites from various locations across the US. www.AmericanTrack.com
About Hilltop Private Capital
Hilltop is a private equity firm focused on providing flexible capital and operating resources to lower middle market companies at a growth or ownership inflection point. The firm is operated by experienced investors with a successful track record of supporting management teams to reach their strategic, operational, and financial goals. www.HilltopPrivateCapital.com
About PNC Mezzanine Capital
PNC Mezzanine Capital is a flexible junior capital provider with expertise supporting buyouts, recapitalizations, and consolidation strategies. PNC MC invests in companies operating in a wide range of industries, but has particular interest in Manufacturing, Value-Added Distribution, Business Services, and Consumer Services. Since 1989, PNC Mezzanine Capital has been a stable, thoughtful junior capital partner for private equity firms, independent sponsors, entrepreneurs, and management teams. PNC MC’s approach is to underwrite the long-term business strategy of their portfolio companies, allowing them to respond constructively to the opportunities and challenges of the changing business environment. As a result, PNC Mezzanine Capital has made 190 investments in 98 portfolio companies in support of 367 transactions. Investments are a combination of subordinated debt and equity between $10 million and $50 million in companies with strong management, proven business models, stable cash flows, and a clear plan for growth. www.pnc.com/mezzanine
About DFW Capital Partners
DFW Capital Partners is a private equity investment firm focused on lower middle-market companies. The firm concentrates on service companies catering to complex and regulated end markets, with an emphasis on healthcare and outsourced business and industrial support services. DFW has established a 20+ year track record of success in both building leading companies and recognizing attractive returns for its investors. DFW is headquartered in Teaneck, New Jersey, and maintains an office in Chevy Chase, Maryland. https://dfwcapital.com
