For E-Commerce Logistics Firm Radial, Christmas Is Coming Early. Very Early.
E-commerce logistics specialist Radial Inc. is accelerating its forecasting process and taking other steps as it prepares for a potentially tumultuous holiday shipping season clouded by the impact of the Delta variant on consumer spending.
"There's just a lot of uncertainty right now," Radial Chief Operating Officer Laura Ritchey said. "We definitely believe that the volume will be bigger than last year, approximately 15% or so is what we're planning for."
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Companies Find It's a Good Time to Push Pension Obligations Off Balance Sheets
Finance chiefs are stepping up their efforts to move pension obligations off company balance sheets through annuity purchases and other financial tools, taking advantage of well-funded plans and a respite from the scramble over the past year to deal with the Covid-19 pandemic.
For years, sponsors of single-employer pension plans have purchased annuities from an insurer for all or some of their employees with vested benefits, thus shrinking a plan's assets and liabilities and simultaneously strengthening a company's balance sheet. Pension plans often fluctuate in size based on market volatility and interest-rate changes that can create unexpected difficulties for chief financial officers.
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Citadel to Redeem About $500 Million From Melvin Capital
Ken Griffin's Citadel LLC and Citadel partners are planning to redeem roughly $500 million of the $2 billion they put in Melvin Capital Management after Melvin got slammed by bad short bets on GameStop Corp. and other soaring stocks, said people familiar with the matter.
Citadel and Steven A. Cohen's Point72 Asset Management together invested $2.75 billion into Melvin's hedge fund on Jan. 25 as Melvin was hemorrhaging money. In return for the rare intra-month investments, the two firms received non-controlling revenue shares in Melvin for three years. The arrangement means they share in the management and performance fees Melvin collects from its clients over that time but don't get any control over Melvin or its investments.
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Steelmakers Grapple With How to Cut Carbon Emissions
A recent shipment of 24 metric tons of Swedish steel could mark the beginning of what the steel industry hopes is a new era: the cleanup of one of the world's dirtiest industries.
Big steelmakers in Europe and the U.S., like ArcelorMittal SA and Cleveland-Cliffs Inc., are intensifying efforts to curb carbon emissions, hoping to woo customers and fend off growing pressure from investors and governments. On Thursday, Sweden's SSAB AB shipped what it said was the world's first commercial shipment of steel made without fossil fuels to truck maker Volvo AB.
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Cruise Line Investors Are Boarding the Wrong Ships
Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings is doubling down on safety this year. Wall Street has taken the under on that bet.
The cruise line operator said this past week it is extending its guest vaccination requirement, which had been due to expire at the end of October, for all of its sailings through the end of the year. Because children under the age of 12 can't currently get a Covid-19 vaccine, Norwegian's policy means that these children aren't allowed on its ships for now.
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The World's Hottest Smartphone Brand Is Chinese-And It Isn't Huawei
HONG KONG-U.S. sanctions have pummeled Huawei Technologies Co.'s smartphone business. A different Chinese tech company is reaping the benefits.
Xiaomi Corp. has filled the gap left by Huawei in markets from Europe to Southeast Asia to China. It is doing so with a playbook familiar to many Chinese consumer brands: offering functional gadgets comparable to upscale rivals at prices that often undercut them.
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Pfizer Covid-19 Vaccine Expected to Get Full FDA Approval Next Week
The Food and Drug Administration is expected next week to grant full approval of the Covid-19 vaccine from Pfizer Inc. and partner BioNTech SE, according to people familiar with the planning, an action that could spur more vaccination requirements by employers and encourage more people who are hesitant to get vaccinated.
The two-dose shot was first cleared in December by the agency on an emergency use basis for people 16 years and older. The emergency designation allows for products to be distributed during public-health crises based on the best available evidence.
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Theranos's Elizabeth Holmes Tries Again to Keep Lab Failings From Jury
Lawyers for Theranos Inc. founder Elizabeth Holmes made a last-ditch effort to eliminate some evidence prosecutors can use ahead of the former CEO's highly anticipated criminal-fraud trial.
Ms. Holmes's lawyers argued Friday that U.S. District Judge Edward Davila should exclude from the trial seven news articles about Theranos and Ms. Holmes, limit testimony from doctors who had used Theranos's lab tests, and redact large portions of reports from government agencies that had penalized Theranos while it was in operation. They have made these requests repeatedly.
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California Ballot Measure That Classifies Uber, Lyft Drivers as Independent Ruled Unconstitutional
A California judge said the November ballot measure that allowed Uber Technologies Inc., Lyft Inc. and DoorDash Inc. to continue treating their drivers as independent contractors is unenforceable and unconstitutional.
The companies, which spent more than $200 million to pass Proposition 22 in November, said they would appeal the ruling.
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Nexstar Acquires The Hill in $130 Million Deal
The Hill, a political-news organization known for its inside-the-Beltway coverage, has been sold to Nexstar Media Group Inc. for $130 million, the companies said Friday.
The deal adds to Nexstar Media Group's news operations, including NewsNation, formerly WGN America, a national news and entertainment cable network reaching 75 million homes. The Irving, Texas, based Nexstar also owns 199 television stations, 120 local websites and a 31% ownership stake in TV Food Network. Nexstar expects the deal to immediately increase its operating results.
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Pelosi, Centrist Democrats in Standoff With Key Vote Ahead
WASHINGTON-Centrist House Democrats were locked in a weekend standoff with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) over when to vote on a roughly $1 trillion infrastructure bill, imperiling the chamber's ability to advance a sweeping segment of President Biden's agenda in votes expected early this week.
A group of nine centrist Democrats has been at an impasse with Mrs. Pelosi and liberal Democrats for more than a week over a strategy to tie together the infrastructure bill, already passed with bipartisan support in the Senate, and Mr. Biden's $3.5 trillion package of healthcare, education and climate provisions currently being crafted. That bill is expected to rely on just Democratic support under a process tied to the budget. To unlock that process, Mrs. Pelosi needs nearly all of her caucus on board for a procedural step planned for this week in the House.
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New Appetite for Mortgage Bonds That Sidestep Fannie and Freddie
Wall Street is diving back into the business of turning home loans into bonds, injecting new competition into a market long dominated by government-backed mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
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Glynn's Take: RBA Likely to Be Split on QE Tapering as Covid Rages On
SYDNEY-The Reserve Bank of Australia suspending plans to taper its government bond-buying program in September is now a 50/50 proposition, with the central bank already moving to pulp the upbeat economic forecasts it published just weeks ago.
The debate around the RBA's board table on Sept. 7 over the scheduled reduction in weekly government bond purchases is set to be vigorous as surging Covid-19 cases shutter key capitals, fueling recession fears.
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Transit Got Billions in Covid-19 Relief From Congress, but Deficits Still Loom
The bipartisan infrastructure bill approved by the Senate this month is the latest effort to inject federal money into public transit agencies. But all that money likely won't buy what transit really needs: more riders.
Unless ridership recovers from its pandemic-induced drop, agencies will again confront large budget deficits once the federal money runs out in three or four years, analysts say. That could mean service cuts and fare increases, according to transit agencies.
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Small-Cap Stocks May Be Pricier Than They Appear
At first blush, small-cap stocks look like a bargain. But dig deeper and the story gets more complicated.
One common way to gauge whether a stock is looking expensive is to divide its price by the company's earnings. By one measure, the Russell 2000 benchmark, whose members have an average market capitalization of about $3.3 billion, recently traded at about 19 times its past year's earnings, while the large-cap Russell 1000 index traded at 25 times-making the small-cap segment seem like a deal.
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What We Still Don't Know About the Fed's Bond-Buying Spree
Three vital issues for investors remain uncertain as the Federal Reserve moves toward tapering its bond buying. Will this quantitative tightening mean Treasury yields go up or down? Will stocks do better with rising or falling bond yields? And, a linked issue, is the stock-bond relationship that has held for the past three decades going into reverse?
Few people share my first uncertainty, because it seems so obvious that if the Fed buys fewer Treasurys, the price will drop and hence the yield rise. It is basic supply and demand, goes the response: Duh.
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Cryptocurrency Companies Are Leaving China in 'Great Mining Migration'
When China vowed to crack down on cryptocurrency mining early this summer, Nasdaq-listed Bit Digital Inc. ramped up efforts to get its more than 20,000 computers out of the country.
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08-23-21 0556ET
