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Housing market has hit ‘rock bottom,’ says Redfin CEO
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It’s been one year since a law earmarked a massive cash infusion for the Internal Revenue Service, and the tax agency says it’s making a return on the investment.
Now it has to sell that idea as the congressional budget process grinds on.
Wednesday…
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Johnson and Johnson
$40 billion exchange offer for shares in
Kenvue
is likely to generate strong interest from the healthcare company’s shareholders, resulting in participants being able to swap only a portion of their J&J stock.
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Investors were jolted by a stronger-than-expected retail sales report on Tuesday, which underscores the dual-edged sword now facing markets.
July’s 0.7% surge in retail sales is helping to bolster the view that a resilient U.S. economy can avoid a recession, despite more than a year of rate hikes by the Federal Reserve. However, the data also serves as another piece of information that some policy makers can use to support even more hikes in the final four months of this year, and left the benchmark 10-year Treasury yield…
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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/kenvue-jnj-stock-price-exchange-offer-e85c3c90
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Former President Donald Trump was criminally indicted by a grand jury in Georgia’s Fulton County on Monday night in connection with a probe into his efforts to overturn the state’s results in the 2020 presidential election.
The 41-count indictment against Trump and 18 of his associates, including Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani, then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and Trump adviser John Eastman, was handed to a judge in Atlanta around 9 p.m. Eastern after a daylong session by the Fulton County grand jury, and the details…
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Wall Street got busy Monday calculating the impact of a strike on the Big Three automakers amid increasingly fraught labor negotiations between union workers and companies, and a “greater likelihood” of a walkout next month.
Also on Monday, President Joe Biden weighed in, urging the United Auto Workers and Ford Motor Co.
F,
General Motors Co.
GM,
and Stellantis NV
STLA,
to “to work together to forge a fair agreement.”
Negotiations so far have been tense, and the contract expires in one month.
Citi analyst Itay Michaeli estimated that a strike at GM lasting about two weeks impacting roughly about 100,000 vehicles would result in an impact of around $1.3 billion before interest and taxes; a five-week one, impacting about 280,000 vehicles, would result in a $3.4 billion impact EBIT. That would be a similar hit as GM’s 2019 strike, he said.
Recent headlines are “pointing to increasingly challenging labor negotiations and a greater likelihood of a strike next month,” Michaeli said.
A longer stoppage would result in shrinking dealer inventory and possibly start to impact sales sometime during the second half of October.
For Ford, Michaeli calculated an impact of about $1.6 billion EBIT for a two-week strike affecting about 130,000 Ford vehicles, growing to $4 billion in the case of a five-week strike affecting 330,000 Ford cars and trucks. Like GM, sales would be hobbled roughly by mid-October in the case of a longer strike.
“For both companies, the exact volume impact will in part depend on the extent of any Canada/Mexico downtime, and to that, GM appears somewhat better positioned than Ford due to GM’s higher exposure to Mexico production (including for pickup trucks) and other supply-chain considerations,” the analyst said in his note Monday.
Both companies likely can keep their guidance intact in the case of a brief, one-week strike, but a strike beyond the two-week mark “likely triggers a [fiscal-year guidance] cut, though it would set 2024 up with reduced inventory and greater volume/price recovery prospects,” Michaeli said.
A big question is whether a strike targets one specific automaker, as it was the case with GM in 2019, or all three at the same time — with more industry volume loss but also potentially a shorter strike, Michaeli said.
“To that, Ford is generally viewed to be the least likely to be selected as a target,” he said.
Deutsche Bank analyst Emmanuel Rosner said in his note Monday that he estimates an impact on earnings of about $400 million to $500 million for every week of production for each automaker, for a total of about $1.4 billion.
GM’s 2019 strike lasted almost six weeks, with a loss of about $3.6 billion EBIT; GM North America lowered revenue estimates as nearly 300,000 fewer vehicles were delivered.
Extrapolating the same $13,000 per unit in EBIT hit, Ford, GM and Stellantis could see [$550 million, $480 million, and $400 million] in weekly profit impact, reaching that $1.4 billion-a-week estimate, Rosner said.
“In a bad-case scenario with 8 weeks of strike against all 3 automakers, which would bring the UAW strike fund to very low levels, this could cause $11.2 billion in lost profits for the [Detroit 3],” Rosner said. “While this is considerable, it would still be considerably less than the impact from the lifetime of the 4-year contract,” which would create “a permanent raise in the OEMs’ cost,” he said.
The analyst also quantified the cost of UAW’s demands, focusing on the union’s “higher-probability asks” such as converting temporary employees into full-time workers, the elimination of a tiered-wage system, and about 40% base wage increase over the four years of the life of the contract. He left out “unlikely” to be met demands around pensions and post-retirement healthcare benefits.
“Our analysis suggests accommodating these demands would likely constitute a large but not destructive headwind to OEMs’ earnings in year 1, with incremental costs stepping up even further in subsequent years,” Rosner said in the note.
If these demands are granted with cost-of-living raises on top, Rosner estimated costs to all three automakers around $3.6 billion in the first year of the contract, amounting to $23 billion in total for the four years, “with highest hit to Stellantis, followed by GM and then Ford.”
“Specifically, we estimate that the conversion of temporary employees to full-time workers would cost D3 a total of $1.4 billion, not yet factoring in wage increases, with the highest impact to Stellantis given the higher [percentage] of temporary employees used currently relative” to GM and Ford, the analyst said.
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By Joe Hoppe
Exor and Royal Philips jointly said that they have entered a relationship agreement, with Exor picking up a 15% stake in Philips for an undisclosed sum, but worth around 2.58 billion euros ($2.82 billion).
Investment company Exor, which holds stakes in a number of companies such as car makers Ferrari and Stellantis, said Monday that its investment is fully supportive of Dutch health-technology company Philips’ leadership, strategy and value creation potential, and gives it the ability to nominate one member to Philips’ supervisory board.
As of Friday’s closing, Philips had a market cap of around EUR17.18 billion.
Exor said it was committed to being a long-term minority investor, and while it doesn’t plan to buy more shares in Philips in the short-term, over time the agreement allows for Exor to increase its participation to a maximum limit of 20% of Philips’ outstanding share capital.
“Exor’s investment in Philips, their long-term outlook and increased focus on healthcare and technology, fit well with our strategy and substantial value creation potential,” Philips Chief Executive Roy Jakobs said.
Write to Joe Hoppe at joseph.hoppe@wsj.com
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A deepening confrontation between the U.S. and China is eroding trade ties between the world’s two largest economies, with goods from China accounting for the smallest percentage of U.S. imports in 20 years.
Copyright ©2023 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
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What’s going on with frozen fruit and vegetables?
Food prices rose 0.2% on the month in July after remaining unchanged in June, and they rose 4.9% on the year, while the cost of food at home rose 3.6% on the year, government data released Thursday showed. Prices of fresh fruits and vegetables rose just 1.2% year over year.
However, there were some big — even alarming — outliers: Frozen fruit and vegetable prices increased by 11.8% in July over last year, frozen vegetable prices rose 17.1% and frozen noncarbonated juice and drink prices rose 16.3%.
Those price rises are at odds with overall inflation figures. U.S. consumer prices rose to 3.2% in July from 3% in the prior month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said this week. It was the first increase in 13 months.
Why have the prices of frozen fruits and vegetables shot up over the past 12 months, while the cost of fresh fruits and vegetables has increased so little?
Climate change and extreme weather conditions — from heavy rainfall to drought, particularly in California — have led to big problems for farmers. This has been compounded by issues related to the war in Ukraine and an ongoing increase in the cost of labor, experts said.
As a result, a large proportion of the fruits and vegetables grown were destined to be sold as fresh produce — which led to a shortage of ingredients for frozen goods, said Brad Rubin, sector manager at Wells Fargo Agri-Food Institute. “Because of the late crop, lots of produce is being pushed to the fresh market to keep up with demand,” he said.
California has experienced some drastic weather conditions over the last 12 months. Some 78 trillion gallons of water fell in California during winter 2022 and early spring 2023, according to data from the National Weather Service, delaying planting. And all that snow and rain was followed by a months-long drought in the region.
What happens in California is felt by consumers across the country.
“California produces nearly half of U.S.-grown fruits, nuts and vegetables,” according to estimates from the Sciences College of Agriculture, Food & Environmental Sciences at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo. “California is the only state in the U.S. to export the following commodities: almonds, artichokes, dates, dried plums, figs, garlic, kiwifruit, olives, pistachios, raisins and walnuts,” it says.
The subsequent price rises hit ingredients like strawberries and raspberries especially hard, Rubin added. Inventories of frozen berries are “near five-year lows” after winter storms in Watsonville flooded agricultural fields, damaging and delaying the strawberry crop. Most of the strawberries in the U.S. are grown in California.
Frozen fruits and vegetables have a longer supply chain than fresh produce, which can make them more vulnerable to disruptions in inventory, experts say. Rising energy prices are also pushing up the cost of cold storage.
In addition to those issues, U.S. farmers are dealing with increased labor costs and fewer migrant workers, partly due to changes in government policies and the closure of borders during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a February 2023 report from the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.
“Immigration has traditionally provided an important contribution to the U.S. labor force,” the report said. “The flow of immigrants into the United States began to slow in 2017 due to various government policies, then declined further due to border closures in 2020-21 associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. This decline in immigration has had a notable effect on the share of immigrants in the U.S. labor force.”
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine also continues to affect agricultural production in the U.S., said Curt Covington, senior director of institutional business at AgAmerica Lending, a financial-services company providing agricultural loans. Because the war disrupted supplies of commodities like wheat and corn — also pushing up prices for those goods — farmers have been prioritizing planting those crops over vegetables.
“These escalating frozen-vegetable prices present a challenge for farmers as they grapple with increased production costs and labor pressures,” and that presents a long-term challenge for farmers, “potentially impacting their profitability,” Covington said.
All of these factors — from international supply chains to extreme weather conditions — will have an effect on the cost of frozen goods in U.S. supermarkets. Ultimately, experts said, consumers will end up paying the price.
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State regulators on Thursday opened the floodgates for more robotaxis on the streets of San Francisco.
After a contentious, seven-hour meeting, the California Public Utilities Commission — which oversees taxis and autonomous vehicles, among things — approved two resolutions to broadly expand driverless taxi service from Alphabet’s
GOOG,
GOOGL,
Waymo and GM’s
GM,
Cruise.
On a pair of 3-1 votes, regulators approved allowing Waymo and Cruise to offer fared driverless rides across San Francisco, at all hours of the day, with an unlimited number of vehicles.
While the driverless vehicles are already ubiquitous on city streets, San Francisco is now set to become the first U.S. city with two fleets of robotaxis that will be able to fully compete with taxis and ride-hailing services.
“Today’s permit marks the true beginning of our commercial operations in San Francisco,” Tekedra Mawakana, co-CEO of Waymo, said in a blog post. “We’re incredibly grateful for this vote of confidence from the CPUC, and to the communities and riders who have supported our service.”
Waymo said it expects “incredibly high demand,” and will be expanding its robotaxi service incrementally.
Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt said he was “thrilled” by the votes. “It’s a huge milestone for the AV industry, but even more importantly a signal to the country that CA prioritizes progress over our tragic status quo,” he tweeted.
The expansion was opposed by San Francisco city officials, who say autonomous-driving technology is not ready for prime time, and that the companies need to be more transparent in how they operate. On Wednesday, the city’s fire department released details of 55 incidents so far this year where driverless cars interfered in emergency scenes.
Read more: Driverless cars are driving San Francisco crazy — ‘They are not ready for prime time’
That’s just the tip of the iceberg: Jeffrey Tumlin, the head of San Francisco’s transportation agency, told MarketWatch in July that the city was seeing “up to 90 incidents per month … of varying degrees, some are minor, some are major obstructions.” Those included instances of autonomous cars stopping in the middle of traffic, crashes and other driving hazards.
While acknowledging the positives of driverless technology — which its advocates say is much safer than human drivers — Tumlin said the city would like a more gradual expansion of autonomous cars, with limitations, like the next level of a “learner’s permit.”
Regulation of autonomous vehicles, however, is up to the state.
PUC Commissioner Genevieve Shiroma was the sole dissenter on Thursday’s votes, which were absent one member. She told the hearing that there was no rush to make a decision, and advocated delaying the vote again. She noted that Cruise and Waymo claim to have maintained a good safety record, but that there were discrepancies about the data submitted to regulators. “Passengers should not be endangered, first responders should not be prevented from doing their jobs,” she said.
Alice Reynolds, the president of the CPUC, argued that this was an incremental approval, echoing comments by Commissioner John Reynolds, a former managing counsel at Cruise who did not recuse himself from voting, that the California DMV has already given the companies a permit to operate.
“We do expect the autonomous-vehicle companies to engage with first responders,” Reynolds said. “In the meantime the resolutions before us to meet our requirements.”
Teamsters vice president Peter Finn blasted the decision, saying it was “irresponsible and shows a complete disregard for public safety.”
“Public safety decisions should not be made by regulatory bodies that are in the pocket of Big Tech,” Finn said in a statement, adding that the Teamsters support pending state legislation that would require a trained human operator in autonomous vehicles weighing over 10,000 pounds, which would include most trucks.
A number of companies have autonomous cars driving on San Francisco streets, but only Cruise and Waymo had been approved for taxi service, with limitations. Earlier this week, the two companies disclosed how many driverless vehicles they operate in San Francisco: Cruise runs 100 vehicles during the day and 300 at night, while Waymo has 250 robotaxis operating.
That number could soon grow significantly.
Cruise’s Vogt said in an earnings call last month that Cruise could add “several thousand” robotaxis to San Francisco in an effort to create a disruptive service resembling Uber.
Therese Poletti contributed to this report.
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The market for lidar, a key technology for self-driving cars, is maturing, making it possible for investors to start to differentiate between the companies and their stocks.
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