The earnings season three months ago raised one key question for corporate America: Did companies have the pricing power to respond to rising freight and commodity costs by raising their own prices? This quarter’s earnings season is providing an answer: Yes. So companies are going to raise prices. That aims to protect their profit margins. At whose expense? The whole ...
Read More »Kraft Heinz’s Buffett glow may be fading
Kraft Heinz Co. represents all that is wrong with aspects of corporate America. So why does Warren Buffett like the stock? The US markets and economy may be holding up, but there’s a corner of the business world with an unsettling combination of factors: few growth opportunities, resistance to new customer trends, ruthless cost-cutting to make up for revenue shortfalls, ...
Read More »Treasury’s big, backward and bold idea for taxes
The Treasury Department is apparently looking into using its regulatory power to change the way taxes on capital gains are assessed. The idea is to confine the taxes to real, inflation-adjusted gains, not nominal gains, as now. There’s a particle of sense in this notion, but it’s buried miles deep in bad faith and bad economics. The change would amount ...
Read More »Honey, I shrunk $1trn Apple’s profit margins
Apple Inc has been a profit geyser well before it was valued at the $1 trillion milestone the company reached . Even Warren Buffett is impressed. “It is an unbelievable company,†the legendary investor and Apple stockholder said in May as he marveled that Apple earns almost twice as much as the second-most profitable company in the US. Buffett is ...
Read More »Japan Inc needs to start paying for performance
Almost three decades ago, the Texan oilman T. Boone Pickens attempted to charge into a Japanese boardroom. He had accumulated around one-third of the company – worth almost $1 billion at the time – yet a seat at the table eluded him. There was nothing to force the directors to accept him. Japan Inc has come a long way since ...
Read More »Cars keep getting better, making disruption harder
Tesla Inc announced its second-quarter results. Those results, along with Elon Musk’s apologies to analysts for his rudeness three months earlier, pushed its stock price up and 2025 bond yields down. During the earnings call, Musk and his colleagues said “improve†or “improvements†14 times in describing everything from Tesla’s production lines to its in-car computing to its gross margins. ...
Read More »British Airways owner IAG hurt by ‘strikes’, US fare drop
Bloomberg British Airways owner IAG SA’s peak summer season is being spoiled by a combination of air traffic control strikes, exchange-rate swings and a dip in fares on key US routes. IAG shares fell the most in five months on August 3 after walkouts by French controllers pushed its Vueling arm to a wider second-quarter loss following a spate of ...
Read More »Second-hand Airbus superjumbo bumped to discount sector
Bloomberg A second-hand Airbus SE superjumbo will fly for Norwegian Air Shuttle ASA later this month, giving a model once seen as the epitome of luxury a first taste of discount travel. The A380 has been drafted in to operate between London Gatwick airport and New York’s John F. Kennedy hub after the grounding of some of Norwegian’s own Boeing ...
Read More »Kellogg struggles to grow in US business even as earnings beat
Bloomberg Kellogg Co.’s home market remains a challenge. The company posted second-quarter sales and profit that topped analysts’ estimates and raised its revenue forecast for the year. But struggles to ignite growth in its US cereal and snacks businesses damped investor enthusiasm. The shares fell as much as percent 3.8 percent to $66.79, the biggest intraday decline in three months. ...
Read More »Synchrony’s Walmart loss puts Sam’s Club renewal in focus
Bloomberg Synchrony Financial lost out to Capital One Financial Corp. for a credit-card contract with retail giant Walmart Inc. Now, the company is poised to defend its turf for a Walmart subsidiary. Capital One is interested in examining the Sam’s Club portfolio currently held by Synchrony, according to people familiar with the situation, who asked not to be identified because ...
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