Month: June 2020

Shares in Microchip Technology (MCHP) surged 7.4% after-hours on Tuesday, after the company boosted its guidance for net sales and earnings for the 2021 fiscal first quarter as Covid-19 disruptions ease.Microchip now expects consolidated net sales for the June quarter to be $1.247 billion – $1.326 billion, or between flat and down 6% sequentially. That’s versus prior guidance of $1.194 billion – $1.3 billion (down between 2% and 10%).GAAP earnings per share is now expected to be between $0.25 and $0.39 and non-GAAP earnings per share is expected to be between $1.35 and $1.53. The original guidance for GAAP earnings …read more […]

(Bloomberg) — Deutsche Lufthansa AG signaled the start of a company-wide revamp spanning job cuts to asset disposals to help repay its 9 billion-euro ($10 billion) bailout from the German government.Europe’s biggest airline will slash employee expenses and look at spinning off non-core units in an effort to reduce costs and bolster cash flow as the coronavirus crisis depresses revenue, it said in a statement Wednesday. The group had a 2.1 billion-euro net loss in the first quarter.“In view of the very slow recovery in demand, we must now take far-reaching restructuring measures to counteract this,” Chief Executive Officer Carsten …read more […]

(Bloomberg) — It’s the rise of the robots: Japan’s second-largest company is now a maker of industrial automation systems, highlighting the rising importance of a less visible sector to a nation long associated with consumer-facing brands.Keyence Corp., a maker of machine vision systems and sensors for factories, has jumped 19% this year to become Japan’s second-largest company by market value. At a valuation of over 11 trillion yen ($100 billion), it has overtaken telecommunications giants SoftBank Group Corp., and NTT Docomo Inc., which have jostled for the honor to sit behind Toyota Motor Corp. over most of the past decade.Keyence …read more […]

(Bloomberg) — The specter of negative prices is hanging over energy markets more than a month after oil’s unforgettable crash below zero.While crude has staged a rapid recovery after a deal by the biggest producers to curb a surplus, the $600 billion global gas market remains extraordinarily oversupplied. Traders and analysts say the worst may be yet to come as demand falls and storage nears capacity, creating the ideal conditions for negative prices in some parts of the world.It shows just how far the global energy industry is from recovering from a pandemic-fueled slide in demand and signals more pain …read more […]

(Bloomberg) — China’s success in luring foreigners into its domestic debt market, the world’s second largest, faces a new test in coming months as officials try to drum up interest in a record wave of bonds from local authorities.International funds now hold 8.6% of China’s central government bonds, several times more than the share just several years ago, and not terribly far from the 13% overseas stake in Japanese sovereigns. Inflows continued through the coronavirus crisis, and the U.S. trade war.Officials are hoping that interest might extend to local government notes, where foreign ownership is merely 0.01%. Issuance will climb …read more […]

Spot gold was unchanged at $1,727.65 per ounce by 0259 GMT, after declining 0.7% on Tuesday. U.S. gold futures fell 0.1% to $1,732.20. “There are a lot of investors who bought gold as a hedge for stocks, but stocks are going up and they don’t see value in that now,” said Stephen Innes, chief market strategist at financial services firm AxiCorp. …read more […]

Washington has imposed sanctions on Venezuela to starve President Nicolas Maduro of oil revenues – the OPEC nation’s main source of foreign income – and break his grip on power. The measures have reduced exports and deepened the country’s economic crisis but Maduro has held on, which U.S. officials say privately is a source of frustration for President Donald Trump. …read more […]

(Bloomberg) — Brent oil rose above $40 a barrel for the first time in almost three months on signs that OPEC+ producers are close to agreeing on a short extension of their historic deal to cut output.Futures in London climbed around 1% after closing at their highest level since March 6, the day the OPEC+ alliance broke down. Russia and several other nations in the group favor extending the production cuts that are set to ease from July by one month, according to people familiar with the situation. That’s within the range of Saudi Arabia’s call for a one to …read more […]

(Bloomberg) — For the longest time, the only way to get exposure to China’s real estate market, for mom and pop investors at least, was to buy a house.That’s all set to change with the advent of real estate investment trusts.China kicked off a REIT trial in late April that will initially focus around pooling capital to fund infrastructure projects like highways and airports. If successful, the program may be expanded to include traditional real estate, exposing individual investors to a market Goldman Sachs Group Inc. estimates could one day be worth as much as $3 trillion.For retail investors, it …read more […]