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Market News May 9, 2018 / 1:12 PM / Updated 11 minutes ago BRIEF-CME Group - Board Approved Amended Employment Agreement With Terrence Duffy, CEO, Extending Current Term To Dec 31, 2022 Reuters Staff 1 Min Read
May 9 (Reuters) - CME Group Inc:
* CME GROUP - BOARD APPROVED AMENDED EMPLOYMENT AGREEMENT WITH TERRENCE DUFFY, CHAIRMAN AND CEO, EXTENDING CURRENT TERM TO DEC 31, 2022 Source text: ( bit.ly/2FYfQE8 ) Further company coverage: ([email protected]) | ashraq/financial-news-articles | https://www.reuters.com/article/brief-cme-group-board-approved-amended-e/brief-cme-group-board-approved-amended-employment-agreement-with-terrence-duffy-ceo-extending-current-term-to-dec-31-2022-idUSFWN1SG1E3 |
May 14, 2018 / 8:54 AM / in 27 minutes UK's Mothercare to detail major restructuring, equity raise on Thursday Reuters Staff 1 Min Read
LONDON, May 14 (Reuters) - Mothercare, the struggling British mother and baby products retailer, said on Monday it was finalising a “comprehensive restructuring” of its business that would involve new debt facilities and an equity fund raising.
The firm, which has been hit hard by intense competition from supermarket groups and online retailers in its main UK market, said details of its plan would be announced on Thursday along with results for the 2017-18 year.
Its statement followed a report in The Telegraph newspaper which said Mothercare was expected to unveil plans for a company voluntary arrangement (CVA) that would enable it to shut stores and secure rent reductions on others.
Shares in the group were down 7 percent on Monday. (Reporting by James Davey; editing by Kate Holton) | ashraq/financial-news-articles | https://www.reuters.com/article/mothercare-restructuring/uks-mothercare-to-detail-major-restructuring-equity-raise-on-thursday-idUSL5N1SL2GY |
(adds analyst comment; updates share movement)
By Arjun Panchadar and Sonam Rai
May 8 (Reuters) - Shares of Twenty-First Century Fox Inc rose as much as 3.4 percent on Tuesday after Reuters reported that cable operator Comcast Corp was preparing an all-cash bid to rival a deal agreed late last year with Walt Disney Co.
Comcast, the world’s biggest entertainment company, is asking investment banks to increase a bridge financing facility by as much as $60 billion so it can make an offer for Fox’s media assets, three people familiar with the matter said on Monday.
Disney in December had offered to buy film, television and international businesses from Fox for $52.4 billion in stock to beef up its offering against streaming rivals Netflix Inc and Amazon.com Inc.
A handful of notes from Wall Street analysts said Comcast’s involvement was likely to push Disney to raise its existing offer.
Disney shares fell 1 percent in morning trade in New York, while Comcast’s dipped 3.5 percent to $31.25.
“It is reasonable to expect Disney to counter any potential offer while also changing the composition of its current all-stock offer,” Jefferies analyst Scott Goldman said.
“Comcast and Disney are likely to view this as the last remaining transformational deal in media.”
He also pointed to the huge increase in Comcast’s debt the acquisition of both Fox and British pay-TV group Sky for almost $100 billion in total would generate.
“Investors have considered such a move ever since Comcast inserted itself in the race for control of Sky,” Jefferies’ Goldman said.
“However, investors likely have not contemplated an all-cash bid, which would take pro forma leverage to around 4.5 times, including synergies, intensifying the balance sheet debate.”
Comcast stepped up its push to buy UK-based Sky on Tuesday, keen to prove that it will face fewer regulatory hurdles in its $31 billion pursuit of Sky compared to Fox.
Fox is in the final stages of a bid to buy the 61 percent of the UK broadcaster it does not already own but at 10.75 pounds a share compared with Comcast’s 12.50 pounds has so far made the lower offer.
Shares of Fox were last up 2.2 percent at $38.86.
“Assuming Fox continues to pursue a deal with Disney, Fox will need to raise its bid for Sky from its current level ... in order to win control,” UBS analysts wrote in a note to clients. (Reporting by Arjun Panchadar and Sonam Rai in Bengaluru; editing by Patrick Graham)
| ashraq/financial-news-articles | https://www.reuters.com/article/fox-ma-comcast/update-1-fox-shares-rise-3-pct-on-potential-comcast-offer-idUSL3N1SF5CC |
ANKARA (Reuters) - A Turkish court rejected an appeal on Monday by the pro-Kurdish opposition for the release of their jailed former leader and presidential candidate, the party said, a month before snap parliamentary and presidential elections.
Selahattin Demirtas, who has been in jail for a year and a half on security charges and faces a jail sentence of up to 142 years if convicted, was nominated by his Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) as a presidential candidate earlier this month.
Last week, the HDP applied for Demirtas to be released before next month’s snap election, saying his detention jeopardized voter freedom.
Turkey’s High Electoral Board has approved his candidacy and Demirtas is running his presidential campaign from behind bars.
“We condemn this lawless decision which prevents an equal and fair election. Every day that Demirtas, the candidate of millions, is not with his voters will cast a shadow on the June 24 elections and put into question its legitimacy,” the HDP said on Twitter.
A former human rights lawyer, Demirtas is one of Turkey’s best-known politicians, winning votes beyond his core Kurdish constituency in 2015 elections. Prosecutors charge that he and hundreds of other detained HDP members are tied to the militant Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). The HDP denies the charge.
The HDP commands only about 10 to 12 percent support, but Demirtas is still likely to draw significant backing in a first- round presidential vote against President Tayyip Erdogan and other candidates, while also boosting the prospects of his party entering parliament.
Erdogan last month called snap parliamentary and presidential elections for June 24, more than a year early, to switch to a powerful executive presidency narrowly approved in a referendum last year and championed by the president.
On Monday, parties entering parliamentary elections submitted their lists of potential lawmakers. Under the new system, ministers cannot be lawmakers, meaning names on the lists will only enter a cabinet if they resign their parliamentary posts.
While Erdogan’s ruling AK Party has nominated almost all incumbent ministers as lawmakers, Turkey’s top economy team, including Deputy Prime Minister Mehmet Simsek, Finance Minister Naci Agbal and Economy Minister Nihat Zeybekci, have been left off the list.
The HDP nominated Ahmet Sik, a prominent journalist and author who was sentenced to 7 1/2 years in prison over terrorism charges last month, and Baris Atay, an actor and outspoken critic of Erdogan’s policies.
Reporting by Tuvan Gumrukcu and Gulsen Solaker; Editing by Peter Graff
| ashraq/financial-news-articles | https://www.reuters.com/article/us-turkey-election-security/turkish-court-rejects-appeal-for-release-of-jailed-pro-kurdish-candidate-party-idUSKCN1IM235 |
WASHINGTON—President Donald Trump could decline a possible subpoena from special counsel Robert Mueller to avoid committing perjury by testifying under oath, said Rudy Giuliani, who recently joined the president’s defense team.
“We don’t have to” comply with a possible subpoena for Mr. Trump, Mr. Giuliani said during an appearance Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.” “I’m gonna walk him into a prosecution for perjury, like Martha Stewart did?” Mr. Giuliani also left open the possibility the president could invoke his Fifth Amendment... | ashraq/financial-news-articles | https://www.wsj.com/articles/giuliani-says-trump-doesnt-have-to-comply-with-mueller-subpoena-could-invoke-fifth-amendment-1525621792 |
MANAGUA (Reuters) - Nicaragua’s main business lobby on Wednesday urged President Daniel Ortega to hold early elections to steer the country out of weeks of deadly protests that have seriously undermined the former Marxist guerrilla leader’s long hold on power.
Nicaragua's President Daniel Ortega speaks, as Vice-President Rosario Murillo listens during first round of dialogue after a series of violent protests against his government in Managua, Nicaragua May 16,2018.REUTERS/Oswaldo Rivas In a letter to Ortega published on Twitter, business association COSEP urged the 72-year-old president to bring forward the next vote at a date to be agreed between the government and representatives of civic society.
“Given the magnitude of this crisis, we urge you to undertake every effort in your power to find a peaceful solution before we find ourselves immersed in an even more tragic situation,” the letter said.
The next presidential election is scheduled for 2021.
Proposed changes to Nicaragua’s social security system last month triggered student-led protests, and indignation at a violent crackdown in which dozens of people have been killed and over 800 injured has become a daily challenge to Ortega’s rule.
Ortega told supporters that Nicaragua “is not private property” in response to the COSEP demand, according to local newspaper La Prensa.
A Cold War antagonist of the United States who served a single term as president during the 1980s, Ortega returned to power in 2007. He was re-elected by a landslide for a third consecutive term in 2016 with his wife as vice president.
The Organization of American States last week called for early elections, but Ortega has not acceded.
Writing by Mexico City Newsroom; Editing by Leslie Adler
| ashraq/financial-news-articles | https://in.reuters.com/article/nicaragua-protests/nicaragua-business-lobby-urges-ortega-to-hold-early-elections-idINKCN1IW03O |
April 30 (Reuters) - VENTURE INC SA:
* REPORTED ON SUNDAY FY NET PROFIT OF 1.5 MILLION ZLOTYS VERSUS 1.1 MILLION ZLOTYS YEAR AGO
* FY REVENUE 7.4 MILLION ZLOTYS VERSUS 4.2 MILLION ZLOTYS YEAR AGO
Source text for Eikon:
Further company coverage: (Gdynia Newsroom)
| ashraq/financial-news-articles | https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSL8N1S70M6 |
May 2 (Reuters) - Wuxi Taiji Industry Co Ltd:
* SAYS CONTROLLING SHAREHOLDER PLANS TO SELL 6.17 PERCENT STAKE IN THE COMPANY Source text in Chinese: bit.ly/2rgbvb3 Further company coverage: (Reporting by Hong Kong newsroom)
| ashraq/financial-news-articles | https://www.reuters.com/article/brief-wuxi-taiji-industrys-controlling-s/brief-wuxi-taiji-industrys-controlling-shareholder-plans-to-sell-6-17-pct-stake-in-the-company-idUSH9N1S4034 |
PHOENIX, Cavco Industries, Inc. (Nasdaq:CVCO) will release earnings for the fourth quarter and fiscal year ended March 31, 2018 on Tuesday, May 29, 2018 after the close of market. Senior management will discuss the results in a live webcast the following day, Wednesday, May 30, 2018 at 11:00 AM Eastern Time.
Date: May 30, 2018
Time: 11:00 AM ET
Listen via Internet: http://www.cavco.com under the Investor Relations link
If you are unable to participate during the live webcast, the call will be available for 90 days on http://www.cavco.com under the Investor Relations link.
Click here to schedule this webcast into MS-Outlook calendar (click open when prompted)
Cavco Industries, Inc., headquartered in Phoenix, Arizona, designs and produces factory-built housing products primarily distributed through a network of independent and Company-owned retailers. The Company is one of the largest producers of manufactured homes in the United States, based on reported wholesale shipments, marketed under a variety of brand names including Cavco Homes, Fleetwood Homes, Palm Harbor Homes, Fairmont Homes, Friendship Homes, Chariot Eagle and Lexington Homes. The Company is also a leading producer of park model RVs, vacation cabins and systems-built commercial structures, as well as modular homes built primarily under the Nationwide Homes brand. Cavco’s mortgage subsidiary, CountryPlace Mortgage, is an approved Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac seller/servicer, a Ginnie Mae mortgage-backed securities issuer that offers conforming mortgages, non-conforming mortgages and home-only loans to purchasers of factory-built homes. Its insurance subsidiary, Standard Casualty, provides property and casualty insurance primarily to owners of manufactured homes.
Dan Urness CFO and Treasurer [email protected] Phone: 602-256-6263 On the Internet: www.cavco.com
Source:Cavco Industries, Inc. | ashraq/financial-news-articles | http://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/22/globe-newswire-webcast-alert-cavco-industries-inc-announces-fiscal-2018-fourth-quarter-and-year-end-earnings-release-and-conference-call.html |
Total Votes:
Not a Scientific Survey. Results may not total 100% due to rounding.
However, Stovall doesn't share that sentiment in his note: "A Peak Is No Reason To Panic."
"EPS [earnings per share] growth for Q1 2018 is nearly 600 basis points higher than end-of-quarter estimates, but history implies that a peak in EPS growth does not translate to panic that this bull will soon come to a screeching halt," Stovall wrote. "Indeed in more than 70% of observations since WWII, the S&P 500 rose in price nine months after a peak in 12-month GAAP EPS growth."
Despite a maturing bull market, Stovall contends the odds are against a pivot into bear territory even if another deep sell-off wipes out more value.
"Essentially, what we're saying is stay the course. This correction might not be over quite yet, but we don't see it morphing into a new bear market," he said.
Stovall's forecast calls for the S&P 500 to end 2018 at 2,900, an 8 percent rise from current levels. He expects most of the year's gains to happen later in the year, citing uncertainty related to the November midterm elections.
"I call myself a bull with a lower case 'b,'" Stovall said. Stephanie Landsman Producer, CNBC’s "Fast Money" Related Securities | ashraq/financial-news-articles | https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/09/a-peak-is-no-reason-to-panic-cfras-stovall-sees-strange-dynamic.html |
May 20, 2018 / 5:52 PM / Updated 2 hours ago U.S. tops Canada 4-1 for bronze at world championship Reuters Staff 2 Min Read
New York Rangers left wing Chris Kreider scored two goals as the United States beat Canada 4-1 to win bronze at the world championship at Herning, Denmark on Sunday. Ice Hockey - 2018 IIHF World Championships - Bronze Medal Match - USA v Canada - Royal Arena - Copenhagen, Denmark - May 20, 2018 - Patrick Kane of the U.S. shakes hands with Marc-Edouard Vlasic of Canada after the match. REUTERS/David W Cerny
The U.S. squad had reeled off six straight wins to start the tournament, but a 6-0 loss to Sweden on Saturday relegated them to the consolation game. Canada lost to Finland and the U.S. in group play, but saw its hopes end in a 3-2 loss to Switzerland in the semifinals.
Kreider opened the scoring with a goal in the second period and added an empty-netter late in the third period. Ice Hockey - 2018 IIHF World Championships - Bronze Medal Match - USA v Canada - Royal Arena - Copenhagen, Denmark - May 20, 2018 - Chris Kreider of the U.S. celebrates after scoring. REUTERS/David W Cerny
After Kreider got the U.S. on the board, Marc-Edouard Vlasic tied it up with a shot that slipped through New Jersey Devils goalie Keith Kinkaid’s pads late in the second period. Slideshow (9 Images)
The teams remained tied until Nashville Predators center Nick Bonino scored the game-winner on a rebound of Patrick Kane shot with under seven minutes to go in regulation.
Anders Lee and Kreider then added empty-net goals in the final three minutes after Canada lifted goalie Curtis McElhinney for an extra skater.
Canada had won gold in 2015 and 2016, before settling for silver in 2017 and was considered a favorite heading into the tournament.
Sweden and Switzerland play for the gold in the title game later Sunday.
—Field Level Media | ashraq/financial-news-articles | https://www.reuters.com/article/us-icehockey-nhl-world-championship/u-s-tops-canada-4-1-for-bronze-at-world-championship-idUSKCN1IL0PZ |
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Around 60 babies a day are being born in vast refugee camps in Bangladesh, sheltering hundreds of thousands of mainly Rohingya Muslims who have fled Myanmar, the United Nations children’s agency UNICEF said on Wednesday.
Rohingya refugee children fly improvised kites at the Kutupalong refugee camp near Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh December 10, 2017. REUTERS/Damir Sagolj Nearly 700,000 Rohingya fled to Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh in the past nine months after a Myanmar military crackdown that the United Nations, United States and Britain have denounced as ethnic cleansing. Myanmar has denied that any ethnic cleansing occurred.
UNICEF said in a statement that since the crisis began more than 16,000 babies had been born in the camps, of which only about 3,000 were delivered in health facilities.
“Around 60 babies a day are taking their first breath in appalling conditions, away from home, to mothers who have survived displacement, violence, trauma and, at times, rape,” said Edouard Beigbeder, UNICEF’s Representative in Bangladesh.
U.N. Security Council envoys visited the refugee camps in April.
“It is impossible to know the true number of babies who have been or will be born as a result of sexual violence,” Beigbeder said. “It is vital that each and every new and expectant mother and every new-born receive all the help and support they need.”
Rohingya insurgent attacks on security posts in Myanmar’s Rakhine state last August sparked a military operation that Myanmar has said was legitimate. Last November, Myanmar’s military released a report in which it denied all accusations of rape by security forces.
A senior Bangladesh health ministry official, who declined to be named due to sensitivity of the matter, said last week that so far 18,300 pregnant women had been identified in the camps and the rough total estimate was around 25,000.
In March the United Nations launched an appeal for $951 million to help the Rohingya refugees for the rest of the year, but it is less than 20 percent funded.
Reporting by Michelle Nichols
| ashraq/financial-news-articles | https://www.reuters.com/article/us-myanmar-rohingya-bangladesh-un/in-bangladesh-some-60-babies-a-day-born-in-rohingya-camps-u-n-idUSKCN1II00Q |
May 7 (Reuters) - Trimble Inc:
* TRIMBLE REPORTS FIRST QUARTER 2018 RESULTS * Q1 NON-GAAP EARNINGS PER SHARE $0.44
* Q1 GAAP EARNINGS PER SHARE $0.23 * Q1 REVENUE $742.2 MILLION VERSUS I/B/E/S VIEW $725.3 MILLION
* SEES Q2 2018 NON-GAAP EARNINGS PER SHARE $0.42 TO $0.46
* SEES Q2 2018 REVENUE $755 MILLION TO $785 MILLION * Q1 EARNINGS PER SHARE VIEW $0.40 — THOMSON REUTERS I/B/E/S
* Q2 EARNINGS PER SHARE VIEW $0.45, REVENUE VIEW $761.3 MILLION — THOMSON REUTERS I/B/E/S Source text for Eikon:
Our | ashraq/financial-news-articles | https://www.reuters.com/article/brief-trimble-q1-gaap-earnings-per-share/brief-trimble-q1-gaap-earnings-per-share-0-23-idUSASC0A06P |
'This budget is about creating an even stronger economy': Australia's treasurer 7 Hours Ago Scott Morrison, the treasurer of Australia, says the government will continue making decisions that aim for growth. | ashraq/financial-news-articles | https://www.cnbc.com/video/2018/05/08/this-budget-is-about-creating-an-even-stronger-economy-australias-treasurer.html |
GENEVA (Reuters) - India and the European Union have given the World Trade Organization lists of the U.S. products that could incur high tariffs in retaliation for U.S. President Donald Trump’s global tariffs on steel and aluminium, WTO filings showed on Friday.
A World Trade Organization (WTO) logo is pictured on their headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, June 3, 2016. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse The EU said Trump’s steel tariffs could cost $1.5 billion and aluminium tariffs a further $100 million, and listed rice, cranberries, bourbon, corn, peanut butter, and steel products among the U.S. goods that it might target for retaliation.
India said it was facing additional U.S. tariffs of $31 million on aluminium and $134 million on steel, and listed U.S. exports of soya oil, palmolein and cashew nuts among its potential targets for retaliatory tariffs.
One trade official described the lists of retaliatory tariffs as “loading a gun”, making it plain to U.S. exporters that pain might be on the way.
India said its tariffs would come into effect by June 21, unless and until the United States removed its tariffs.
The EU said some retaliation could be applied from June 20.
Trump’s tariffs, 25 percent on steel and 10 percent on aluminium, came into force in March to strong opposition as many see the measures as unjustified and populist.
There were also objections that the tariffs would have little impact on China, widely seen to be the cause of oversupply in the market.
Trump justified the tariffs by claiming they were for U.S. national security, in a bid to protect them from any legal challenge at the WTO, causing further controversy.
Rather than challenging the U.S. tariffs directly, the EU and India, like China, South Korea and Russia, told the United States that they regarded Trump’s tariffs as “safeguards” under the WTO rules, which means U.S. trading partners are entitled to compensation for loss of trade.
The United States disagrees.
Reporting by Tom Miles; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky
| ashraq/financial-news-articles | https://in.reuters.com/article/usa-trade-eu-india/india-and-eu-give-wto-lists-of-u-s-goods-for-potential-tariff-retaliation-idINKCN1IJ28E |
1 COMMENTS Advertising-technology company Videology has filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, with a deal to sell its assets to Amobee, the ad-tech division of Singapore-based telecommunications company Singtel.
Amobee will be the “stalking horse,” or lead bidder, which is designed to set a floor price to encourage other potential bidders to submit higher offers, Videology said in a statement Thursday, confirming an earlier report in The Wall Street Journal. Amobee has agreed to pay for about $45 million for Videology’s assets, according to people familiar with the matter.
Videology filed for chapter 11 in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware on Thursday. The filing states Videology has estimated liabilities of more than $100 million. The filing lists the company’s assets at $86.5 million.
GroupM, the media-buying arm of WPP PLC, was listed as the creditor with the largest unsecured claim against Videology. Across various divisions, GroupM is owed more than $35 million by Videology, according to the filing. GroupM also holds approximately 3% of Videology’s shares.
In a statement, Videology’s founder and chief executive, Scott Ferber, said the transaction “represents the best path forward for Videology and is in the best interests of all our stakeholders.”
Singtel and Amobee declined to comment.
Videology secured significant funding several years ago thanks to its narrow focus on video advertising and its early bet that TV advertising would become more digital and data-driven. But since then, the company has struggled to maintain revenue growth.
Ad-tech companies, once a hot attraction for investors, have been beset with increasing turbulence in recent years in a digital advertising market dominated by Google and Facebook . Some of the recent deals in the industry reflect those changing fortunes. Notably, Rocket Fuel, a public ad-tech company once valued at $2 billion, sold last year to rival Sizmek for $125.5 million.
Videology last raised equity in 2013, funding that valued the closely held company at $300 million, according to a person familiar with the matter. The company raised total venture funding of more than $130 million and took out an $80 million credit facility with FastPay and Tennenbaum Capital last year. The company’s investors include Comcast Corp. and venture capital firms New Enterprise Associates and Valhalla Partners, according to the bankruptcy filing.
Videology was founded in 2007 by Mr. Ferber, an ad-tech veteran who co-founded and sold an early online ad company, Advertising.com, to AOL for $435 million in 2004.
Videology creates software that enables advertisers and publishers to use data to place and measure their video ads on digital platforms and television. The company originally ran an ad network model, facilitating advertisers wanting to buy video ads across a range of websites and taking a percentage of their media spend. But that model has fallen out of favor with many large ad-buyers and publishers in recent years.
In 2015, Videology shifted to focus more on what it calls the “advanced television” space, charging a recurring fixed fee to help media companies sell TV and premium online video ads using granular data targeting .
But growth in its advanced TV business hasn’t made up for declines in Videology’s legacy, digital-only business. A person familiar with the matter said Videology’s 2017 revenue was slightly lower than the 2013 level.
“The industry is only in the early-stages of the TV and video transformation that we were built to power, and it will take resources, capital and time to help transform a market as large as TV,” Mr. Ferber said in the statement.
Amobee was acquired by Singtel in 2012 and became the telecommunications company’s digital advertising division. It has been steadily amassing a stack of ad-tech companies as it looks to bolster its offering to advertisers. Last year, it acquired Turn, a U.S.-based firm specializing in ad-buying and analytics software, in a deal valued at $310 million .
Videology would help Amobee expand its client and technology footprint. An acquisition would be subject to court approval.
Write to Lara O’Reilly at lara.o'[email protected] | ashraq/financial-news-articles | https://www.wsj.com/articles/ad-tech-company-videology-prepares-bankruptcy-filing-lines-up-buyer-1525953720 |
A federal judge on Friday dismissed a lawsuit filed by former Fox News on-air personality Andrea Tantaros that alleged surveillance by the cable news channel after she said its top executive sexually harassed her.
In his ruling, Judge George B. Daniels of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York said Ms. Tantaros’s complaint was based “primarily on speculation and conjecture.”
She... | ashraq/financial-news-articles | https://www.wsj.com/articles/judge-dismisses-surveillance-lawsuit-filed-by-former-fox-news-host-1526695794 |
May 16, 2018 / 5:16 PM / in 6 minutes Bye bye 'beer bike'? Amsterdam determined to tame tourism Toby Sterling 3 Min Read
AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Amsterdam unveiled plans on Wednesday to rein in tourism, reflecting the dissatisfaction of many residents who feel the city’s ancient center has been overrun. FILE PHOTO: Cyclists ride on a bridge in central Amsterdam, Netherlands, December 1, 2017. REUTERS/Yves Herman/File Photo
The leading Green-Left and other parties negotiating a new municipal government after a local election in March vowed to return “Balance to the City”, in a document of that name seen by Reuters that amounts to part of a governing pact.
“The positive sides of tourism such as employment and city revenues are being more and more overshadowed by the negative consequences” including trash and noise pollution, the document said.
Changes the document outlines include curtailing “amusement transportation” such as multi-person “beer bikes”, cracking down on alcohol use in boats on the canals, further restricting AirBnB and other home rentals, and a large tax hike. FILE PHOTO: Tourists pose for photos outside the Rijksmuseum in central Amsterdam, Netherlands, December 1, 2017. REUTERS/Yves Herman/File Photo
The plans announced on Wednesday also include creating an inventory of all commercial beds in the city, to try to cap various sectors such as those on cruise ships and in hotels.
With a population of around 800,000, the city expects 18 million tourists in 2018, an increase of 20 percent from 2016 levels, many drawn by an edgy atmosphere generated by readily available soft drugs and the “red light” sex zone. FILE PHOTO: Dam Square is pictured in this aerial shot of Amsterdam, Netherlands, June 14, 2017. REUTERS/Cris Toala Olivares/File Photo
Anti-tourist and anti-expatriate sentiment have been steadily on the rise in Amsterdam, as both are blamed in part for helping drive housing prices increasingly out of the reach of ordinary Dutch people.
The average apartment in Amsterdam cost 407,000 euros ($475,000) in 2017, an increase of around 12 percent from 2016 levels, according to national real estate association NVM.
The change of emphasis has already started from national government over the past years, to try to dissuade visitors from the more earthy pastimes the city is famous for.
Advertising campaigns have focused on the city’s canals, the Anne Frank House, the museums packed with Van Gogh and Rembrandt’s greatest works.
Legislators have helped the re-branding by shutting a third of the city’s brothels in 2008 and starting a program to close marijuana cafes near schools in 2011.
“Amsterdam is a city to live and work in - it’s only a tourist destination in the second place,” the municipal document said.
($1 = 0.8489 euros) | ashraq/financial-news-articles | https://www.reuters.com/article/us-netherlands-tourism-amsterdam/bye-bye-beer-bike-amsterdam-determined-to-tame-tourism-idUSKCN1IH2GQ |
YORK, Pa., May 08, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The York Water Company's (NASDAQ:YORW) President, Jeffrey R. Hines, announced today the Company's financial results for the first quarter of 2018.
President Hines reported that first quarter operating revenues of $11,644,000 increased $354,000, and net income of $2,594,000 increased $13,000 compared to the first quarter of 2017. Increased revenues were primarily due to utilization of the Distribution System Improvement Charge (DSIC). DSIC is a Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission (PPUC) allowed charge that water utilities collect from customers for the replacement of aging infrastructure. Growth in the water customer base also added to revenues. A decrease in per capita consumption reduced the impact of the new customers. In addition, the Company reduced revenue due to the likelihood the PPUC would require the Company to return in rates the reduction in the tax rate from the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017. The PPUC is still gathering information before it provides authoritative guidance on this matter. The increased income was partially offset by higher operation and maintenance expenses and depreciation. Income taxes decreased due to the tax rate reduction under the 2017 Tax Act offset by a lower volume of asset improvements eligible for the tax deduction under the IRS tangible property regulations. Basic and Diluted Earnings per share for the three-month period were $0.20 in both the 2018 and 2017 periods.
During the first three months of 2018, the Company invested $3.0 million in construction expenditures for the completion of an additional raw water pumping station, as well as various replacements and improvements to infrastructure. The Company estimates it will invest an additional $19.5 million in 2018, excluding acquisitions, for additional main extensions, dam improvements, expansion of a wastewater treatment plant, and routine improvements to its pipes, service lines, and other facilities to ensure a safe, adequate, and reliable supply of drinking water and to maintain proper handling and disposal of wastewater for the Company’s growing customer base.
Three Months Ended
March 31
In 000's (except per share ) 2018 2017 Operating Revenues $11,644 $11,290 Net Income $2,594 $2,581 Average Number of Common Shares Outstanding 12,877 12,852 Basic and Diluted Earnings per Common Share $0.20 $0.20 Dividends Declared Per Common Share $0.1666 $0.1602 This news release may contain forward-looking statements regarding the Company’s operational and financial expectations. These statements are based on currently available information and are subject to risks, uncertainties, and other events which could cause the Company’s actual results to be materially different from the results described in this statement. The Company undertakes no duty to update any forward-looking statement.
Contact: Jeffrey R. Hines, President [email protected] or Matthew E. Poff, Chief Financial Officer [email protected] Phone: 717-845-3601
Source:The York Water Company | ashraq/financial-news-articles | http://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/08/globe-newswire-york-water-company-reports-three-months-earnings.html |
May 4 (Reuters) - Ping An Insurance Group Co Of China Ltd :
* HK STOCK EXCHANGE GRANTED APPROVAL FOR LISTING AND PERMISSION TO DEAL IN, SHARES OF PING AN GOOD DOCTOR ON MAIN BOARD
* FINAL OFFER PRICE OF SHARES OF PING AN GOOD DOCTOR ISSUED UNDER ITS GLOBAL OFFERING IS HK$54.80 PER SHARE
* DEALINGS IN SHARES OF PING AN GOOD DOCTOR ON STOCK EXCHANGE COMMENCED ON MAY 4, 2018
* NET PROCEEDS FROM GLOBAL OFFERING TO BE RECEIVED BY PING AN GOOD DOCTOR ESTIMATED TO BE HK$8,564.0 MILLION Source text for Eikon: Further company coverage:
| ashraq/financial-news-articles | https://www.reuters.com/article/brief-ping-an-insurance-group-says-hk-st/brief-ping-an-insurance-group-says-hk-stock-exchange-approves-listing-of-ping-an-good-doctor-idUSFWN1SB0FE |
Linebacker Shea McClellin is ready to retire from the NFL and coach high school football at age 28 if the phone doesn’t ring soon.
Dec 12, 2016; Foxborough, MA, USA; Baltimore Ravens running back Kenneth Dixon (30) is tackled for a safety by New England Patriots strong safety Patrick Chung (23), defensive tackle Malcom Brown (90), outside linebacker Shea McClellin (58), and outside linebacker Elandon Roberts (52) during the first half at Gillette Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Bob DeChiara-USA TODAY Sports McClellin, a former first-round pick out of Boise State, told ESPN he did not officially retire from the NFL but is leaning that direction due to the cumulative effect of five documented concussions.
McClellin accepted a position at Mountain View High School in Meridian, Idaho, where he plans to coach linebackers.
“It’s difficult whenever you get an injury that holds you out, when you kind of feel like you’re good and then find out you’re not. It’s always tough,” he said. “I think it was just over time, it wasn’t just one thing. I’ve had five documented concussions, and probably more than that which aren’t documented. It was just residual effects that I couldn’t overcome, which is unfortunate. But sometimes that’s the way it plays out and you just have to deal with it.”
McClellin did not play in 2017 after starting the season on injured reserve. He attempted to return and practiced for two weeks but was never activated. The Patriots released McClellin in March with one year remaining on his contract.
“I’m still staying ready, still working out. I’ve learned to never say never, there’s always a chance that I could still play again, but for now all my focus is on coaching high school,” McClellin said.
The Chicago Bears drafted McClellin in the first round of the 2012 draft. The 19th overall pick joined the Patriots in 2016 and played in 17 total games, playoffs included, on the Super Bowl championship defense.
—Field Level Media
| ashraq/financial-news-articles | https://www.reuters.com/article/us-football-nfl-nep-mcclellin/linebacker-mcclellin-prepared-to-retire-due-to-concussions-idUSKCN1IU24D |
PETALUMA, Calif., May 01, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Enphase Energy, Inc. (NASDAQ:ENPH), a global energy technology company and the world’s leading supplier of solar microinverters, announced today financial results for the first quarter of 2018, which included the summary below from its President and CEO, Badri Kothandaraman. Highlights for the quarter included:
Revenue of $70.0 million, at the higher end of guidance GAAP gross margin of 26.2%; non-GAAP gross margin of 26.5% GAAP operating loss of $2.5 million; non-GAAP operating income of $0.9 million GAAP EPS of $(0.06); non-GAAP EPS of $(0.01) Ending cash balance of $53.3 million
Revenue and earnings for the first quarter are given below, compared with those of the prior quarter and the year ago quarter:
(In thousands, except per share data)
GAAP Non-GAAP Q1 2018 Q4 2017 Q1 2017 Q1 2018 Q4 2017 Q1 2017 Revenue $ 69,972 $ 79,674 $ 54,751 $ 69,972 $ 79,674 $ 54,751 Gross margin 26.2 % 23.8 % 12.9 % 26.5 % 24.2% 13.3 % Operating income (loss) $ (2,475 ) $ (2,133 ) $ (22,095 ) $ 861 $ 1,307 $ (12,918 ) Net income (loss) $ (5,128 ) $ (2,940 ) $ (23,305 ) $ (1,255 ) $ 683 $ (13,615 ) Basic EPS $ (0.06 ) $ (0.03 ) $ (0.30 ) $ (0.01 ) $ 0.01 $ (0.18 ) Our first quarter revenue was $70.0 million, a decrease of 12% sequentially from $79.7 million, and an increase of 28% year-over-year. We shipped 180 megawatts DC, or 611,000 microinverters. Our non-GAAP gross margin was 26.5%, an increase of 230 basis points from 24.2% in the prior quarter. The increase was primarily due to pricing management, supply chain optimization and IQ platform transition. Our non-GAAP operating e xpenses were $17.7 million, a decrease of 2% compared to the prior quarter. We are very pleased to report non- GAAP operating income of $0.9 million, our second consecutive quarter of non-GAAP operating income. Non-GAAP net loss was $1.3 million, which resulted in basic and diluted earnings per share of $(0.01).
We exited the quarter with $53.3 million in cash. Inventory was $18.5 million in the first quarter, compared to $26.0 million in the fourth quarter and $33.8 million in the first quarter of 2017.
In summary, we are pleased with our continued progress towards our 30-20-10 operating model, which we expect to achieve in the fourth quarter of 2018.
BUSINESS HIGHLIGHTS
+ Enphase started shipping IQ 7 to customers in the U.S. during the first quarter of 2018, and recently started shipping IQ 7 to customers in the U.K. IQ 7, with its worldwide SKU, will be phased into worldwide markets throughout 2018.
+ Enphase received the Dutch Solar Innovation Award 2018 in recognition of its seventh-generation IQ™ microinverters for the Enphase Home Energy Solution with IQ™. According to the award jury, the microinverters will make an important contribution to the increased quality of solar power systems installed in the Netherlands.
+ Enphase announced that Enphase Energized™ AC Modules (ACM) from its ACM partners have been installed by over 180 of its solar installation partners in the U.S. just five months after availability. Leading solar module manufacturers have announced partnerships with Enphase to develop AC Modules.
+ Enphase recently announced that it has renewed its commitment to support low-income solar in partnership with GRID Alternatives, the nation's largest nonprofit solar installer. Through donations of its microinverters, Enphase will help GRID Alternatives provide rooftop solar installations and hands-on job training in low-income communities across the United States.
+ On April 16, 2018, Enphase announced the introduction of Enphase IQ™ microinverters across India for the Enphase Microinverter System with IQ™. The IQ family of microinverters supports modules up to 440 Wp, as well as 60- and 72-cell modules.
+ On April 23, 2018, Enphase announced a strategic partnership with Solaria Corporation for the development of an Enphase Energized™ AC Module, the Solaria PowerXT®-AC, integrating our IQ 7+ Microinverters with Solaria’s high-output PowerXT® 355W (60-cell equivalent) modules. The PowerXT®-AC is expected to be available in the U.S. starting in June 2018.
SECOND QUARTER 2018 FINANCIAL OUTLOOK
For the second quarter of 2018, Enphase estimates both GAAP and non-GAAP financial results as follows:
Revenue to be within a range of $72 million to $80 million GAAP and non-GAAP gross margin to be within a range of 26% to 29% Non-GAAP operating expense to be within a range of $17.5 million to $18.5 million GAAP operating expense to be within a range of $19.5 million to $20.5 million, including an estimated $2.0 million of stock-based compensation expense.
Follow Enphase Online
Read the Enphase blog . Follow @Enphase on Twitter . Visit us on Facebook and LinkedIn . Watch Enphase videos on YouTube .
Use of Non-GAAP Financial Measures
The Company has presented certain non-GAAP financial measures in this press release. To view a description of non-GAAP financial measures used and the non-GAAP reconciliation schedule for the periods presented click here .
Conference Call Information
Enphase Energy will host a conference call for analysts and investors to discuss its first quarter 2018 results and second quarter 2018 business outlook today at 4:30 p.m. Eastern Time (1:30 p.m. Pacific Time). The call is open to the public by dialing (877) 644-1284; participant passcode 8795709. A live webcast of the conference call will also be accessible from the “Investor Relations” section of the Company's website at investor.enphase.com . Following the webcast, an archived version will be available on the website for 30 days. In addition, an audio replay of the conference call will be available by calling (855) 859-2056; participant pass code 8795709, beginning approximately one hour after the call.
Forward-Looking Statements
This press release contains , including statements related to Enphase Energy’s expected future financial performance, and the expected timing of product introductions. These are based on the Company’s current expectations and inherently involve significant risks and uncertainties. Enphase Energy’s actual results and the timing of events could differ materially from those anticipated in such as a result of certain risks and uncertainties including those risks described in more detail in the Company’s most recent and other documents on file with the SEC and available on the SEC’s website at www.sec.gov . Enphase Energy undertakes no duty or obligation to update any contained in this release as a result of new information, future events or changes in its expectations, except as required by law.
A copy of this press release can be found on the investor relations page of Enphase Energy's website at investor.enphase.com .
About Enphase Energy, Inc.
Enphase Energy, a global energy technology company, delivers smart, easy-to-use solutions that connect solar generation, storage and management on one intelligent platform. The Company revolutionized solar with its microinverter technology and produces the world’s only truly integrated solar plus storage solution. Enphase has shipped approximately 17 million microinverters, and more than 760,000 Enphase systems have been deployed in over 110 countries. For more information, visit www.enphase.com .
Enphase Energy®, the Enphase logo and other trademarks or service names are the trademarks of Enphase Energy, Inc.
Contact:
Christina Carrabino
Enphase Energy, Inc.
Investor Relations
[email protected]
+1-707-763-4784 x7294
ENPHASE ENERGY, INC. CONDENSED CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF OPERATIONS (In thousands, except per share data) (Unaudited) Three Months Ended March 31, 2018 2017 Net revenues $ 69,972 $ 54,751 Cost of revenues 51,657 47,703 Gross profit 18,315 7,048 Operating expenses: Research and development 7,620 9,605 Sales and marketing 6,227 6,458 General and administrative 6,943 5,833 Restructuring charges — 7,247 Total operating expenses 20,790 29,143 Loss from operations (2,475 ) (22,095 ) Other income (expense), net: Interest expense (2,292 ) (2,139 ) Other income (expense) (126 ) 1,060 Total other expense, net (2,418 ) (1,079 ) Loss before income taxes (4,893 ) (23,174 ) Provision for income taxes (235 ) (131 ) Net loss $ (5,128 ) $ (23,305 ) Net loss per share: Basic and diluted $ (0.06 ) $ (0.30 ) Shares used in per share calculation: Basic and diluted 91,422 76,651
ENPHASE ENERGY, INC. CONDENSED CONSOLIDATED BALANCE SHEETS (In thousands) (Unaudited) March 31,
2018 December 31,
2017 ASSETS Current assets: Cash and cash equivalents $ 53,255 $ 29,144 Accounts receivable 55,622 65,346 Inventory 18,541 25,999 Prepaid expenses and other 20,435 9,957 147,853 130,446 Property and equipment, net 24,926 26,483 Goodwill 3,664 3,664 Intangibles, net 439 515 Other assets 35,236 8,039 Total assets $ 212,118 $ 169,147 LIABILITIES AND STOCKHOLDERS’ EQUITY Current liabilities: Accounts payable $ 14,087 $ 28,747 Accrued liabilities 37,922 29,874 Deferred revenues 37,408 15,691 Debt, current 14,268 17,429 103,685 91,741 Deferred revenues, noncurrent 78,265 29,941 Warranty obligations, noncurrent 22,926 22,389 Other liabilities 1,934 1,880 Debt, noncurrent 36,459 32,322 Total liabilities 243,269 178,273 Total stockholders’ deficit (31,151 ) (9,126 ) Total liabilities and stockholders’ deficit $ 212,118 $ 169,147
ENPHASE ENERGY, INC. CONDENSED CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF CASH FLOWS (In thousands) (Unaudited) Three Months Ended March 31, 2018 2017 Cash flows from operating activities: Net loss $ (5,128 ) $ (23,305 ) Adjustments to reconcile net loss to net cash provided by (used in) operating activities: Depreciation and amortization 2,276 2,328 Provision for doubtful accounts 600 142 Asset impairment and restructuring — 1,920 Amortization of debt issuance costs 537 945 Stock-based compensation 1,571 1,929 Changes in operating assets and liabilities: Accounts receivable 9,125 11,975 Inventory 7,457 (1,848 ) Prepaid expenses and other assets (1,039 ) (3,114 ) Accounts payable, accrued and other liabilities (11,992 ) (17,458 ) Warranty obligations 1,134 580 Deferred revenues (1,180 ) 1,395 Net cash provided by (used in) operating activities 3,361 (24,511 ) Cash flows from investing activities: Purchases of property and equipment (1,043 ) (3,466 ) Net cash used in investing activities (1,043 ) (3,466 ) Cash flows from financing activities: Proceeds from issuance of common stock, net of issuance costs 19,923 26,522 Proceeds from debt 2,309 24,162 Principal payments on term debt (771 ) — Payments under revolving credit facility — (10,100 ) Proceeds from issuance of common stock under employee stock plans 269 2 Net cash provided by financing activities 21,730 40,586 Effect of exchange rate changes on cash 63 (418 ) Net increase in cash and cash equivalents 24,111 12,191 Cash and cash equivalents—Beginning of period 29,144 17,764 Cash and cash equivalents—End of period $ 53,255 $ 29,955
ENPHASE ENERGY, INC. RECONCILIATION OF NON-GAAP FINANCIAL MEASURES (In thousands, except per share data) (Unaudited) Three Months Ended
March 31, 2018 2017 Gross profit (GAAP) $ 18,315 $ 7,048 Stock-based compensation 198 239 Gross profit (Non-GAAP) $ 18,513 $ 7,287 Gross margin (GAAP) 26.2 % 12.9 % Stock-based compensation 0.3 % 0.4 % Gross margin (Non-GAAP) 26.5 % 13.3 % Operating expenses (GAAP) $ 20,790 $ 29,143 Stock-based compensation (1) (1,373 ) (1,691 ) Restructuring charges — (7,247 ) Reserve for non-recurring legal matter (1,765 ) — Operating expenses (Non-GAAP) $ 17,652 $ 20,205 (1) Includes stock-based compensation as follows: Research and development $ 618 $ 752 Sales and marketing 361 378 General and administrative 394 561 Total $ 1,373 $ 1,691 Loss from operations (GAAP) $ (2,475 ) $ (22,095 ) Stock-based compensation 1,571 1,930 Restructuring charges — 7,247 Reserve for non-recurring legal matter 1,765 — Income (loss) from operations (Non-GAAP) $ 861 $ (12,918 ) Net loss (GAAP) $ (5,128 ) $ (23,305 ) Stock-based compensation 1,571 1,930 Restructuring, asset impairments and other charges — 7,247 Reserve for non-recurring legal matter 1,765 — Non-cash interest expense 537 513 Net loss (Non-GAAP) $ (1,255 ) $ (13,615 ) Net loss per share (GAAP) $ (0.06 ) $ (0.30 ) Stock-based compensation 0.02 0.02 Restructuring, asset impairments and other charges — 0.09 Reserve for non-recurring legal matter 0.02 — Non-cash interest expense 0.01 0.01 Net loss per share (Non-GAAP) $ (0.01 ) $ (0.18 ) Shares used in per share calculation GAAP and Non-GAAP 91,422 76,651
Source:Enphase Energy, Inc. | ashraq/financial-news-articles | http://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/01/globe-newswire-enphase-energy-reports-continued-gross-margin-expansion-in-the-first-quarter-of-2018.html |
May 2 (Reuters) - Alpha and Omega Semiconductor Ltd :
* ALPHA AND OMEGA SEMICONDUCTOR REPORTS FINANCIAL RESULTS FOR THE FISCAL THIRD QUARTER OF 2018 ENDED MARCH 31, 2018
* ALPHA AND OMEGA SEMICONDUCTOR LTD - QTRLY SHR $0.07
* ALPHA AND OMEGA SEMICONDUCTOR LTD - QTRLY ADJ SHR $0.23
* ALPHA AND OMEGA SEMICONDUCTOR LTD - QTRLY REVENUE $102.9 MLN VS $93.3 MLN Source text for Eikon: Further company coverage:
| ashraq/financial-news-articles | https://www.reuters.com/article/brief-alpha-and-omega-semiconductor-repo/brief-alpha-and-omega-semiconductor-reports-qtrly-adj-shr-0-23-idUSASC09Z3V |
May 3 (Reuters) - Quantum Foods Holdings Ltd:
* QUANTUM FOODS HOLDINGS LTD - EXPECTS HY HEADLINE EARNINGS PER SHARE OF BETWEEN 81.3 CENTS AND 83.7 CENTS Source text for Eikon:
Our | ashraq/financial-news-articles | https://www.reuters.com/article/brief-quantum-foods-holdings-says-expect/brief-quantum-foods-holdings-says-expects-hy-heps-between-81-3-cents-and-83-7-cents-idUSFWN1SA0HB |
BERLIN/FRANKFURT, May 28 (Reuters) - Germany’s Transport Ministry grilled Daimler Chief Executive Dieter Zetsche on Monday over how many Mercedes-Benz vans and cars need to be fixed to meet emissions rules.
The luxury carmaker was summoned to a closed-door meeting to discuss a regulatory probe of software devices found by Germany’s KBA motor vehicle authority.
Daimler was last week ordered to recall Vito vans fitted with 1.6 litre engines because they breached emissions regulations. The inquiry follows the high-profile Volkswagen emissions test cheating scandal.
“We will have an in depth exchange about highly complex technical questions with the aim of examining how many models are impacted,” German Transport Minister Andreas Scheuer said, adding that Daimler has been given until June 15 to come up with a solution to resolve the emissions issues on the Vito.
“At a further meeting in 14 days, concrete results will be on the table,” Scheuer added in a statement.
Asked how the meeting went, Zetsche told Reuters: “It was a good discussion. We will see each other again in 14 days.”
Germany’s transport ministry said the Vito had been equipped with a software device which manipulated the SCR emissions filtering function, leading to higher nitrogen oxide emissions.
Bild am Sonntag, without citing sources, said regulators are probing around 40,000 Mercedes-Benz Vito vans and 80,000 C-Class models for possible illicit software that allowed the vehicles to emit excess pollution without detection.
Daimler has said it will appeal against KBA’s decision to classify the software as illegal, and contest KBA’s findings in court if necessary, although it said it was cooperating fully.
European carmakers have invested heavily in diesel engines, which produce less carbon dioxide but more of other pollutants blamed for causing respiratory disease than petrol engines.
German cities are entitled to ban older diesel vehicles from streets with immediate effect to bring air pollution levels in line with European Union rules. (Reporting by Edward Taylor in Frankfurt and Gabi Sajonz Editing by Alexander Smith)
| ashraq/financial-news-articles | https://www.reuters.com/article/daimler-emissions/germany-grills-daimler-boss-over-extent-of-vito-van-emissions-fix-idUSL5N1SZ1K4 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that, after he announced the United States would be withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal and imposing new sanctions, Iran would either negotiate or “something will happen.”
It was not immediately clear what actions he was suggesting would take place.
Reporting by James Oliphant; Writing by Makini Brice; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama
| ashraq/financial-news-articles | https://www.reuters.com/article/us-iran-nuclear-trump/trump-says-iran-will-negotiate-or-something-will-happen-idUSKBN1IA2NH |
PHILADELPHIA and NEW YORK, April 30, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Cohen & Company Inc. (NYSE American:COHN) will release its financial results for the first quarter 2018 on Wednesday, May 2, 2018. The Company will host a conference call at 10:00 a.m. Eastern Time (ET) that morning to discuss these results.
The conference call will be available via webcast. Interested parties can access the webcast by clicking the webcast link on the Company’s homepage at www.cohenandcompany.com . Those wishing to listen to the conference call with operator assistance can dial (877) 686-9573 (domestic) or (706) 643-6983 (international), with participant pass code 3489357, or request the Cohen & Company earnings call. A replay of the call will be available for two weeks following the call by dialing (800) 585-8367 (domestic) or (404) 537-3406 (international), participant pass code 3489357.
About Cohen & Company
Cohen & Company is a financial services company specializing in fixed income markets. It was founded in 1999 as an investment firm focused on small-cap banking institutions but has grown to provide an expanding range of capital markets and asset management services. Cohen & Company’s operating segments are Capital Markets, Asset Management, and Principal Investing. The Capital Markets segment consists of fixed income sales, trading, and matched book repo financing as well as new issue placements in corporate and securitized products and advisory services, operating primarily through the Company’s subsidiaries, J.V.B. Financial Group, LLC in the United States and Cohen & Company Financial Limited in Europe. The Asset Management segment manages assets through collateralized debt obligations, managed accounts, and investment funds. As of March 31, 2018, Cohen & Company managed approximately $3.4 billion in fixed income assets in a variety of asset classes including US and European trust preferred securities, subordinated debt, and corporate loans. As of March 31, 2018, 88.6% of the Company’s assets under management were in collateralized debt obligations that Cohen & Company manages, which were all securitized prior to 2008. The Principal Investing segment has historically been comprised of investments in Cohen & Company sponsored investment vehicles but has changed to include investments in certain non-sponsored vehicles. For more information, please visit www.cohenandcompany.com .
Contact: Investors - Media - Cohen & Company Inc. Joele Frank, Wilkinson Brimmer Katcher Joseph W. Pooler, Jr. Jim Golden or Andrew Squire Executive Vice President and 212-355-4449 Chief Financial Officer [email protected] or [email protected] 215-701-8952 [email protected]
Source:Cohen & Company Inc. | ashraq/financial-news-articles | http://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/30/globe-newswire-cohen-company-sets-release-date-for-first-quarter-2018-financial-results.html |
LONDON (Reuters) - Any witness to Francoise Durr’s French Open triumph in 1967 cannot fail to have been mesmerized by her snaking, sliced backhand with which she cut opponents to shreds.
Chris Evert’s pinpoint forehand, struck without spin, her non-playing hand held palm aloft, was another iconic shot which guided its proponent to seven Roland Garros singles crowns.
Yannick Noah’s athletic, net-charging game lives long in French hearts after he used it to win his home slam in 1983, while the vanquished finalist that day, Mats Wilander, won three French titles with a crafty game built on obdurate defense and smart counter-punching.
All four players excelled with differing styles. But they are styles that would be unlikely to reap rewards in today’s power-trumps-all era, where technological equipment advancements and bigger, stronger athletes have arguably wiped much of the artistry out of the arena.
It takes a brave, or foolish, pundit to look beyond Rafa Nadal for this year’s men’s champion, such is the Spaniard’s power which has exerted a stranglehold over all claycourt opponents.
Wilander himself has seen the changes since the days when a counter-puncher could prevail.
“I think that on clay you now have to be tactically more aggressive than at the other three slams,” the Swede told Reuters. “You have to control the point. You don’t need to be hitting winners, but you have to dictate the rallies.
“You have to go hard and be in control because you cannot defend your way to the French Open. One or two matches maybe. It has completely changed tactically because there has been absolutely no change in the court surface, unlike the other slams.”
Evert won seven French crowns between 1974 and 1986, and agrees that today there is little room for a variety of styles.
“I think that obviously in the past there were two styles,” she told Reuters. “When I came through on the scene in the 1970s it was serve and volleyers and European claycourt players.
“And now I think with the evolution of the rackets, the game, the athleticism it’s more of a powerful game,” said the American who works for ESPN as an analyst.
AGGRESSIVE STYLE Evert said an aggressive weapon was a must these days, to stand any chance.
“I think that you still have to have the intangibles, like patience, hit more balls into the court, move and slide well, that’s the same as 20 years ago, but you have to have the added element of power,” she said.
“Now you have to dictate the point. The player who controls and dictates the point, 75 to 80 percent of the time they will win the point. That’s the new face of it now.
“In my day you could counter-punch, a great counter-puncher could win the French. It is different right now and I think Nadal is the outlier in all of this because he still plays a claycourt game.
“He generates so much height and spin on the ball and there are very few players around like him any more.”
The women’s game has undergone a similar change, says 2000 champion Mary Pierce, France’s last champion.
“It seems that the game has changed in the way that it’s played as far as the girls are mostly playing from the baseline, hitting the ball hard,” Pierce told Reuters.
“They’re good athletes nowadays and with the rackets and the string technology that’s improved, they’re hitting the ball harder so the play is going faster. Not as much as you saw in the past of serve and volley, chip and charge and one-handed backhands and moves like that.”
Reporting by Ossian Shine, additional reporting by Martyn Herman; Editing by Christian Radnedge
| ashraq/financial-news-articles | https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tennis-frenchopen-styles/tennis-plenty-of-elan-but-only-one-style-suits-in-paris-idUSKCN1IQ1EJ |
Facebook has been getting hassled a lot by conservatives recently, mostly over its alleged bias against them, but here comes an attack from the left.
As reported by Axios , left-wing groups such as Demand Progress, SumOfUs and MoveOn are participating in a movement called Freedom From Facebook , which will launch a “six figure digital ad offensive” on Monday. The coalition also includes anti-monopoly organizations such as Citizens Against Monopoly and the Open Markets Institute.
Freedom from Facebook’s chief demands The group’s chief demand is that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) should break up Facebook, splitting off subsidiaries such as Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger in order to boost competition in the social networking sector. The organization also want stronger privacy protections and the “freedom to communicate across networks.”
Tell the @FTC that it is time to break up Facebook’s monopoly. Make Facebook safe for democracy and sign the petition: https://t.co/5ZryFuhdKF
— Freedom From Facebook (@FacebookBreakup) May 20, 2018
According to Axios, the coalition’s ads will carry messages such as “Facebook keeps violating your privacy. Break it up,” and “Mark Zuckerberg has a scary amount of power. We need to take it back.” And yes, the ads will run on Facebook and on Instagram.
Social media murkiness It is difficult to gauge monopolistic behavior in the social networking sector. For one thing, people use multiple platforms at once. As a Facebook spokesman told Axios, “the average person uses eight different apps to communicate and stay connected.”
The definition of a social network is also fuzzy these days, potentially ranging from obvious candidates such as Facebook to messaging platforms such as WhatsApp and video platforms such as Alphabet’s YouTube.
Facebook’s ‘scary’ power However, Facebook’s power in the sector is, whatever the definition, immense . Globally, Facebook itself has 2.1 billion active monthly users, WhatsApp hit 1.5 billion earlier this year. Last September, Facebook Messenger had 1.3 billion and Instagram had 800 million monthly active users.
“Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg have amassed a scary amount of power,” the Freedom From Facebook coalition says on its website. “Facebook unilaterally decides the news that billions of people around the world see every day. It buys up or bankrupts potential competitors to protect its monopoly, killing innovation and choice. It tracks us almost everywhere we go on the web and, through our smartphones, even where we go in the real world.”
“It uses this intimate data hoard to figure out how to addict us and our children to its services. And then Facebook serves up everything about us to its true customers—virtually anyone willing to pay for the ability to convince us to buy, do, or believe something.”
A test for the FTC In the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, the FTC is currently investigating Facebook to see if it broke a 2011 consent agreement over user privacy.
The probe will be an early test for new FTC chair Joe Simons, a Republican appointed by President Donald Trump. Simons is apparently seen as tougher than his predecessor, Maureen Ohlhausen, when it comes to scrutinizing tech platforms for antitrust infractions. | ashraq/financial-news-articles | http://fortune.com/2018/05/21/facebook-monopoly-breakup-progressive-campaign-ftc/ |
NORWALK, Conn., May 29, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Diageo North America has announced that Lavanya Chandrashekar is to be appointed its Chief Financial Officer, effective July 1, 2018, reporting to Deirdre Mahlan, President Diageo North America. Chandrashekar joins from Mondelēz International, Inc.
"Lavanya is a highly strategic leader with a passion for developing people and teams," said Deirdre Mahlan, President, Diageo North America. "She has built an extensive career supporting global organizations while delivering outstanding results and driving transformational change. I very much look forward to welcoming her to Diageo and partnering together on delivering our performance ambitions."
Her more than 20-year career has taken her to Asia, North America, Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) and most recently she has held regional CFO roles in both EMEA and North America.
About Diageo
Diageo is a global leader in beverage alcohol with an outstanding collection of brands including Johnnie Walker, Crown Royal, Bulleit and Buchanan's whiskies, Smirnoff, Cîroc and Ketel One vodkas, Captain Morgan, Baileys, Don Julio, Tanqueray and Guinness.
Diageo is listed on both the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE: DEO) and the London Stock Exchange (LSE: DGE) and our products are sold in more than 180 countries around the world. For more information about Diageo, our people, our brands, and performance, visit us at www.diageo.com . Visit Diageo's global responsible drinking resource, www.DRINKiQ.com , for information, initiatives, and ways to share best practice. Follow us on Twitter for news and information about Diageo North America: @Diageo_NA.
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Andrew Turner, Diageo
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SOURCE Diageo North America | ashraq/financial-news-articles | http://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/29/pr-newswire-lavanya-chandrashekar-to-join-diageo-north-america-as-cfo.html |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The move of the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, coupled with the killings of dozens of Palestinian protesters on Monday, makes the odds of a U.S.-brokered peace even more remote, analysts said.
People take pictures of the U.S. and Israeli national flags as projected on a part of the walls surrounding Jerusalem's Old City, Israel May 14, 2018. REUTERS/Ammar Awad “Somewhere between zero and none,” Martin Indyk, a former U.S. special envoy for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations in the Obama administration, said of the chances President Donald Trump might bring the two sides together and broker what he has called the “ultimate deal.”
Israeli troops fatally shot dozens of Palestinian demonstrators on the Gaza border on Monday as the U.S. Embassy formally moved to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv. The embassy move fulfilled a Trump campaign promise but infuriated Palestinians and drew criticism that Washington had undercut its own peace efforts.
Palestinian Health Ministry officials said 58 protesters were killed and 2,700 injured by live gunfire, tear gas or other means. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel was acting in self-defense against the coastal enclave’s ruling Hamas group.
“It’s hard to see how any Palestinian leader could go back to an American-sponsored peace process” given the embassy move and the Gaza killings, said Khaled Elgindy, a former adviser to the Palestinian leadership now at Washington’s Brookings Institution think tank.
“If and when the administration puts forward a peace plan, it is most likely DOA (dead on arrival),” he added, saying Trump had done nothing to calm matters. “At a minimum, that would require urging the Israelis to stop using lethal force against unarmed protesters.”
BLAMING HAMAS Rather than calling for restraint by Israel, as both France and Britain did, the United States blamed Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist group.
“Hamas is intentionally and cynically provoking this response,” White House spokesman Raj Shah told reporters, adding the United States did not believe the opening of the embassy or the latest violence would affect its peace plan.
Hamas denied instigating the violence.
Trump has argued that by recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of America’s close ally, he had “taken Jerusalem, the toughest part of the negotiation, off the table” and formalized realities on the ground.
Israel regards all of the city, including the eastern sector it captured in the 1967 Middle East war and annexed in a move that is not recognized internationally, as its “eternal and indivisible capital.”
Palestinian demonstrators run for cover during a protest against U.S. embassy move to Jerusalem and ahead of the 70th anniversary of Nakba, at the Israel-Gaza border in the southern Gaza Strip May 14, 2018. REUTERS/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa Most countries say Jerusalem’s status should be determined in a final peace settlement and that moving their embassies now would prejudge any such deal. The Trump administration has said the embassy move does not aim to prejudge Jerusalem’s final borders.
But Senator Tim Kaine, the 2016 Democratic vice presidential nominee, told Reuters that “most in the region view the U.S.’s position as we’re no longer interested in playing the role to broker peace, and that just compounds a lot of despair and it’s tragic.”
Dan Kurtzer, a former U.S. ambassador to Israel and Egypt who now teaches at Princeton University, suggested Trump’s administration could regain some credibility among the Palestinians if it were to pledge to open a U.S. embassy in East Jerusalem, which the Palestinians want as their capital, when a Palestinian state came into being.
“If he says that, then the U.S. is back in business,” he said. “What is the likelihood of that? ... Pretty meager.”
Washington’s regional allies have publicly expressed dismay about the embassy move, but they share a determination with Washington to thwart what they view as Iran’s expansionism in the region. They also count on the United States for their security.
WIDE SKEPTICISM “It’s not just that it’s provoked violence or that it’s made the United States look like the biased broker instead of the honest broker,” Indyk said of the embassy move, “but it also has set the process back in a way that all this loose talk about how it’s going to advance peace is ludicrous.”
Trump administration officials have said their peace plan, whose chief architects are the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and Middle East envoy Jason Greenblatt, is nearly complete.
“The peace plan will be brought forward at the appropriate time. It can be evaluated on its merits,” said Shah, the White House spokesman.
But it had drawn widespread skepticism even before the latest developments. The Palestinians have boycotted the process since Trump’s Jerusalem announcement in December.
Indyk said the decision “hasn’t advanced peace at all.
“The idea that ... it’s going to convince the Palestinians that now they should come back to the table is a fundamental misrepresentation of what they’ve done,” he added. “They’ve driven the Palestinians away from the table and given them the excuse not to come back.”
Reporting by Arshad Mohammed and Matt Spetalnick; Additional reporting by Steve Holland; Editing by Yara Bayoumy and and Peter Cooney
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© 2018 Reuters. All Rights Reserved. | ashraq/financial-news-articles | https://www.reuters.com/article/us-israel-usa-peace/elusive-peace-grows-more-remote-with-u-s-jerusalem-embassy-move-violence-idUSKCN1IF33U |
DHS chief gets grilled on separating families Tuesday, May 15, 2018 - 01:52
Senator Kamala Harris grilled Department of Homeland Security chief Kirstjen Nielsen on the separation of immigrant mothers from their children when they're apprehended for entering the U.S. illegally. Rough Cut (no
Senator Kamala Harris grilled Department of Homeland Security chief Kirstjen Nielsen on the separation of immigrant mothers from their children when they're apprehended for entering the U.S. illegally. Rough Cut (no //reut.rs/2rJQ3us | ashraq/financial-news-articles | https://www.reuters.com/video/2018/05/15/dhs-chief-gets-grilled-on-separating-fam?videoId=427239055 |
(Reuters) - India’s Ambuja Cements Ltd, part of global conglomerate LafargeHolcim Ltd, posted a 10.2 percent rise in its first-quarter profit, underpinned by higher cement sales volumes.
Workers unload cement bags from a truck near the construction site of residential buildings in New Delhi, March 10, 2016. REUTERS/Anindito Mukherjee/Files Standalone net profit rose to 2.72 billion rupees ($40.68 million) in the quarter ended March 31, from 2.47 billion rupees a year earlier, Ambuja said on Friday.
Analysts on average expected the company to post a profit of 2.97 billion rupees, according to Thomson Reuters data.
Revenue from operations fell 2.1 percent to 28.63 billion rupees.
Cement sales volume were 3.3 percent higher for the quarter.
($1 = 66.8650 Indian rupees)
Reporting by Tanvi Mehta in Bengaluru
| ashraq/financial-news-articles | https://in.reuters.com/article/ambuja-cements-results/ambuja-cements-q1-profit-rises-10-percent-misses-estimates-idINKBN1I50XL |
OMAHA, Neb., April 30, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Valmont Industries, Inc. (NYSE: VMI), a leading global provider of engineered products and services for infrastructure development and irrigation equipment and services for agriculture, today announced that it has completed the previously announced sale of Donhad Pty. Ltd., its Australian mining consumables business, to Moly-Cop, a portfolio company of American Industrial Partners, effective April 30, 2018. The Company received approximately AUD $80 million (USD $60.3 million) of net cash proceeds, subject to certain post-closing adjustments.
The estimated, after-tax impact of the transaction is not expected to have a material effect on fiscal 2018 results. As previously communicated, the Company's current 2018 GAAP and adjusted EPS guidance excludes the effects of the transaction.
Fiscal 2018 GAAP EPS will be updated to reflect the non-cash income statement impacts, which will be determined post-closing and detailed in the Company's second quarter results, to be reported on July 23, 2018.
Valmont is a global leader, designing and manufacturing highly engineered products that support global infrastructure development and agricultural productivity. Its products for infrastructure serve highway, transportation, wireless communication, electric transmission, and industrial construction and energy markets. Its irrigation equipment and services for large-scale agriculture improves farm productivity while conserving fresh water resources. In addition, Valmont provides coatings services that protect against corrosion and improve the service lives of steel and other metal products.
This release contains forward-looking statements, within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements are based on assumptions that management has made in light of experience in the industries in which Valmont operates, as well as management's perceptions of historical trends, current conditions, expected future developments and other factors believed to be appropriate under the circumstances. As you read and consider this release, you should understand that these statements are not guarantees of performance or results. They involve risks, uncertainties (some of which are beyond Valmont's control) and assumptions. Although management believes that these forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, you should be aware that many factors could affect Valmont's actual financial results and cause them to differ materially from those anticipated in the forward-looking statements. These factors include among other things, risk factors described from time to time in Valmont's reports to the Securities and Exchange Commission, as well as future economic and market circumstances, industry conditions, company performance and financial results, operating efficiencies, availability and price of raw material, availability and market acceptance of new products, product pricing, domestic and international competitive environments, and actions and policy changes of domestic and foreign governments. The Company cautions that any forward-looking statement included in this press release is made as of the date of this press release and the Company does not undertake to update any forward-looking statement.
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SOURCE Valmont Industries, Inc. | ashraq/financial-news-articles | http://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/30/pr-newswire-valmont-completes-divestiture-of-donhad-pty-ltd.html |
Loup Ventures' Gene Munster: Why Apple is a service company 45 Mins Ago Gene Munster, Loup Ventures, gives his views on Apple becoming a service company isntead of a product company. | ashraq/financial-news-articles | https://www.cnbc.com/video/2018/05/17/loup-ventures-gene-munster-why-apple-is-a-service-company.html |
VANCOUVER, British Columbia, MAG Silver Corp. (TSX:MAG) (NYSE AMERICAN:MAG) (“MAG” or the “Company”) announces the Company’s unaudited financial results for the three months ended March 31, 2018. For details of the March 31, 2018 unaudited condensed interim consolidated Financial Statements and Management's Discussion and Analysis, please see the Company’s filings on SEDAR ( www.sedar.com ) or on EDGAR ( www.sec.gov ).
All amounts herein are reported in $000s of United States dollars (“US$”) unless otherwise specified.
2018 FIRST QUARTER HIGHLIGHTS
A National Instrument 43-101 Amended and Restated Technical Report documenting the updated Minera Juanicipio Mineral Resource and associated preliminary economic assessment (the “2017 PEA”) was filed on SEDAR in January 2018.
Base Case (1) highlights (Juanicipio Project 100% basis) as follows: Low AISC of $5.02/ounce (“oz”) of silver over an initial 19 years of mine-life; Process plant ramp up to a throughput rate of 1.4 million tonnes/year (4,000 tpd); Payable production of 183 million oz of silver over life of mine, and on a silver equivalent basis 352 million oz (1) ; Base case pre-tax IRR 64.5%; after tax IRR 44.5%; Base case pre-tax Net Present Value (“NPV”) at a 5% discount rate of $1.86 billion; after tax NPV of $1.14 billion; Initial capital costs on 100 % basis as of January 1, 2018 of $360 million (“M”) (MAG’s 44% $158.4 M); Accelerated early silver flow gives less than a 2-year payback from plant startup.
(1) Base Case metal prices of $17.90/oz for silver; $1250/oz for gold; $0.95/pound (“lb”) for lead and $1.00/lb for zinc. Projected Silver Equivalent calculated using the Base Case metal recoveries and Base Case metal prices.
Underground work on the project has intensified resulting in the highest development rate to date achieved in the quarter ended March 31, 2018.
Advanced draft of an independent feasibility study prepared by AMC currently under review by both partners and completion expected in the 2 nd quarter of 2018.
Formal Minera Juanicipio and respective Joint Venture partner Board approvals expected upon completion of the feasibility study.
Exploration drilling now utilizing directional drilling to infill and expand the Deep Zone (assays pending).
Company is well funded with cash and cash equivalents totaling $152,692 as at March 31, 2018.
George Paspalas, President and CEO, commented, “The Juanicipio Project progresses well, with development rates increasing significantly last year and continuing into 2018. With the advanced draft joint venture feasibility study in hand, we look forward to its finalization and formal project approval. On the exploration front, the use of directional drilling is proving to be very beneficial with target accuracy improving at depth as we infill and expand the Deep Zone, while other ‘greenfield’ exploration targets have been identified, together with Fresnillo, on the Joint Venture Property.”
Juanicipio Project Update
Underground development continues at increased development rates, with emphasis on: the ramp twinning; the continuation of the three internal ramps at depth designed to provide additional stope access within the mine; the development of the conveyor to surface ramp; and the excavation of the underground crusher chamber. Exploration drilling currently continues under the 20,000-metre program approved in 2017, with five drill rigs on site, four drilling from surface and one from underground (all assays pending). Directional drilling is now being utilized to infill and expand the Deep Zone, which remains open to depth and laterally along its entire strike length to the Joint Venture boundary in both directions. This specialized equipment enables drilling a series of precisely aimed and angled deflection holes off of a single “mother hole” drilled to 800-1,000 metres of depth. This method of more efficient drilling results in fewer lost holes, dramatically improves the precision of deep drilling and provides for significantly improved accuracy in grid drilling on the 100 x 100 metre pattern required for Indicated Resource definition.
An independent feasibility study is required by the Minera Juanicipio Shareholders’ Agreement in order to make a formal production decision on the project. AMC Mining Consultants (Canada) Ltd. was therefore commissioned by Minera Juanicipio in 2017 to prepare the feasibility study and its completion is expected in the second quarter of 2018. An advanced draft is currently under review by both partners. By regulatory definition, a feasibility study cannot include Inferred Mineral Resources in the mine plan. The feasibility study is therefore only based on Minera Juanicipio’s Indicated Mineral Resources and will also include more detailed engineering. These factors may lead to changes in the project’s scope as compared to that in the 2017 PEA. Without Inferred Mineral Resources in the mine plan, the feasibility study will reflect a shorter mine life than envisioned in the 2017 PEA and the study is expected to contain an incremental increase in the estimated initial capital cost. With these and other possible scope changes, the project’s modeled economics are expected to decrease as compared to those in the 2017 PEA.
Upon completion of the feasibility study, Minera Juanicipio is expected to present the study to both its Board and the respective Joint Venture partner Boards for formal development approval. Although there is no certainty a production decision will be made, Fresnillo has publicly advised that it expects Minera Juanicipio to be in production by the first half of 2020, which is consistent with the timeline to production in the 2017 PEA.
FINANCIAL RESULTS – THREE MONTHS ENDED MARCH 31, 2018
As at March 31, 2018, the Company had working capital of $152,864 (March 31, 2017: $133,638) including cash and cash equivalents of $152,692 (March 31, 2017: $132,422 cash, cash equivalents and term deposits). The Company currently has no debt and believes it has sufficient working capital to maintain all of its properties and currently planned programs for a period in excess of the next year. The Company makes cash advances to Minera Juanicipio as 'cash called' by the operator, Fresnillo, based on approved joint venture budgets. In the quarter ended March 31, 2018, the Company funded advances to Minera Juanicipio, which combined with MAG's Juanicipio expenditures on its own account, totaled $5,767 (March 31, 2017: $4,378).
The Company’s net income for the three months ended March 31, 2018 was $183 or $0.002/share compared to a net loss of $312 (or $(0.004)/share) in the comparable prior period. The income in the current quarter is primarily because of a significant deferred tax recovery of $1,198 (March 31, 2017: $589) related to the impact of foreign exchange on Mexican tax attributes (resulting from the Peso strengthening against the $US in period). The deferred tax recovery is a non-cash item and will only be realized once the Company’s exploration properties are developed and in production.
In other income and expenses for the quarter ended March 31, 2018, the Company earned interest income on its cash and cash equivalents of $682 (March 31, 2017: $362). The Company also recorded an unrealized loss of $470 (March 31, 2017: $20) on warrants held and designated as fair value through profit and loss.
Qualified Person - Unless otherwise specifically noted herein, all scientific or technical information in this news release, including assay results and reserve estimates, if applicable, is based upon information prepared by or under the supervision of, or has been approved by Dr. Peter Megaw, Ph.D., C.P.G., a certified professional geologist who is a “Qualified Person” for purposes of National Instrument 43-101, Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects (“National Instrument 43-101” or “NI 43-101”). Dr. Megaw is not independent as he is an officer and a paid consultant of the Company (see Related Party Transactions below).
About MAG Silver Corp. ( www.magsilver.com )
MAG Silver Corp. is a Canadian exploration and development company focused on becoming a top-tier primary silver mining company, by exploring and advancing high-grade, district scale, silver-dominant projects in the Americas. Our principal focus and asset is the Juanicipio Property (44%), being developed in partnership with Fresnillo Plc (56%) and is located in the Fresnillo Silver District in Mexico, the world’s premier silver mining camp. We are presently developing the underground infrastructure on the property, under the operational expertise of our joint venture partner, Fresnillo plc, to support an expected 4,000 tonnes per day mining operation. As well, we have an expanded exploration program in place investigating other highly prospective targets across the property. In addition, we continue to work on regaining surface access to our 100% owned Cinco de Mayo property in Mexico while we seek other high grade, district scale opportunities.
On behalf of the Board of
MAG SILVER CORP.
"Larry Taddei"
Chief Financial Officer
For further information on behalf of MAG Silver Corp.
Contact Michael J. Curlook, VP Investor Relations and Communications
Website:
Phone:
Toll free: www.magsilver.com
(604) 630-1399
(866) 630-1399 Email:
Fax: [email protected]
(604) 681-0894 Neither the Toronto Stock Exchange nor the NYSE American have reviewed or accepted responsibility for the accuracy or adequacy of this press release, which has been prepared by management.
This release includes certain statements that may be deemed to be “forward-looking statements” within the meaning of the US Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and applicable Canadian Securities laws. All statements in this release, other than statements of historical facts are forward looking statements, including the anticipated time and capital schedule to production; estimated project economics, including but not limited to, mill recoveries, payable metals produced, production rates, payback time, capital and operating and other costs, IRR and mine plan; expected upside from additional exploration; expected capital requirements; and other future events or developments. Forward-looking statements are often, but not always, identified by the use of words such as "seek", "anticipate", "plan", "continue", "estimate", "expect", "may", "will", "project", "predict", "potential", "targeting", "intend", "could", "might", "should", "believe" and similar expressions. These statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results or events to differ materially from those anticipated in such forward-looking statements. Although MAG believes the expectations expressed in such forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, such statements are not guarantees of future performance and actual results or developments may differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, changes in commodities prices; changes in expected mineral production performance; unexpected increases in capital costs; exploitation and exploration results; continued availability of capital and financing; differing results and recommendations in the Feasibility Study; and general economic, market or business conditions. In addition, forward-looking statements are subject to various risks, including but not limited to operational risk; political risk; currency risk; capital cost inflation risk; that data is incomplete or inaccurate; the limitations and assumptions within drilling, engineering and socio-economic studies relied upon in preparing the PEA; and market risks. The reader is referred to the Company’s filings with the SEC and Canadian securities regulators for disclosure regarding these and other risk factors. There is no certainty that any forward-looking statement will come to pass and investors should not place undue reliance upon forward-looking statements. The Company does not undertake to provide updates to any of the forward-looking statements in this release, except as required by law.
This news release presents certain financial performance measures, including all in sustaining costs (AISC), cash cost and total cash cost that are not recognized measures under IFRS. This data may not be comparable to data presented by other silver producers. The Company believes that these generally accepted industry measures are realistic indicators of operating performance and are useful in allowing comparisons between periods. Non-GAAP financial performance measures should be considered together with other data prepared in accordance with IFRS. This news release contains non-GAAP financial performance measure information for a project under development incorporating information that will vary over time as the project is developed and mined. It is therefore not practicable to reconcile these forward-looking non-GAAP financial performance measures.
Cautionary Note to Investors Concerning Estimates of Indicated Resources
This press release uses the term "Indicated Resources". MAG advises investors that although this term is recognized and required by Canadian regulations (under National Instrument 43-101 - Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects), the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission does not recognize this term. Investors are cautioned not to assume that any part or all of mineral deposits in this category will ever be converted into reserves.
Cautionary Note to Investors Concerning Estimates of Inferred Resources
This press release uses the term "Inferred Resources". MAG advises investors that although this term is recognized and required by Canadian regulations (under National Instrument 43-101 Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects), the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission does not recognize this term. Investors are cautioned not to assume that any part or all of the mineral deposits in this category will ever be converted into reserves. In addition, "Inferred Resources" have a great amount of uncertainty as to their existence, and economic and legal feasibility. It cannot be assumed that all or any part of an Inferred Mineral Resource will ever be upgraded to a higher category. Under Canadian rules, estimates of Inferred Mineral Resources may not form the basis of feasibility or pre-feasibility studies, or economic studies except for Preliminary Assessment as defined under Canadian National Instrument 43-101. Investors are cautioned not to assume that part or all of an Inferred Resource exists, or is economically or legally mineable.
Please Note:
Investors are urged to consider closely the disclosures in MAG's annual and quarterly reports and other public filings, accessible through the Internet at www.sedar.com and www.sec.gov/edgar/searchedgar/companysearch.html .
Source:MAG Silver Corp. | ashraq/financial-news-articles | http://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/15/globe-newswire-mag-silver-reports-first-quarter-financial-results.html |
LONDON, May 11 (Reuters) - Britain’s nuclear regulator said on Friday it will prosecute nuclear reprocessing plant operator Sellafield Ltd over an incident in February in which an employee was contaminated.
It will prosecute under the health and safety at work act over the incident, which occurred at a facility handling special nuclear materials, the regulator said.
“For legal reasons we are unable to comment further on the details of the case which is now the subject of active court proceedings,” the Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) said in a statement.
Sellafield Ltd manages Britain’s nuclear reprocessing plant in Cumbria, northwest England.
Reporting by Susanna Twidale; editing by Jason Neely
| ashraq/financial-news-articles | https://www.reuters.com/article/britain-nuclear-sellafield/uks-sellafield-to-be-prosecuted-over-employee-contamination-idUSL8N1SI285 |
May 22, 2018 / 1:26 AM / Updated an hour ago Asian shares stumble as dollar strengthens, oil surges Swati Pandey 4 Min Read
SYDNEY (Reuters) - Asian shares skidded on Tuesday as a strong dollar sapped demand for emerging market assets while surging oil prices stoked concerns about a flare-up in inflation and faster U.S. interest rate increases. Market prices are reflected in a glass window at the Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE) in Tokyo, Japan, February 6, 2018. REUTERS/Toru Hanai
Japan’s Nikkei was mostly flat while Australian shares fell 0.9 percent. Chinese shares opened in the red with the blue-chip CSI300 off 0.7 percent.
Liquidity was relatively thin due to holidays in South Korea and Hong Kong.
MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan was just a shade higher at 568.4 points, but well below an all-time peak of 617.12 hit in January.
“We are seeing U.S. dollar strength and that is causing money to flow out from emerging markets to the U.S. There is some sort of risk aversion going on,” said Yoshinori Shigemi, global market strategist at JPMorgan Asset Management.
“People are cautious about taking exposure in emerging markets.”
Those concerns offset the boost to sentiment from overnight gains on Wall Street over the apparent reconciliation between the United States and China over import duties.
Analysts said investors in the region were worried about the growth outlook, with the U.S. Federal Reserve staying on its policy tightening path.
“Stocks have rallied several times on the belief that trade tensions were easing, only to fall back down as investors took the opposite view,” said James McGlew, executive director of stockbroking at Perth-based Argonaut.
“While the global economy remains robust and first-quarter earnings have been strong, stock markets have mostly traded sideways this year because many investors have started to fear that the pace of the expansion has already peaked.”
The MSCI ex-Japan index is flat so far this year after a super-charged 33.5 percent gain in 2017.
JPMorgan’s Shigemi said investors will now turn their focus to the next Fed meeting on June 13 where it is widely expected to raise rates for a second time this year.
A total of three hikes is almost fully priced-in by the market for 2018 although some investors expect the Fed to be more aggressive.
It was the fear of higher inflation and thus faster Fed rate rises that caused a bond market rout earlier this year, sending yields sharply higher and triggering a share market sell-off.
The dollar hovered near five-month highs against a basket of currencies, boosted by the U.S.-China trade optimism.
The dollar index was last down 0.1 percent at 93.56 from Monday’s top of 94.058.
The euro held at $1.1782, within spitting distance of a more than six-month trough of $1.1715 touched on Monday amid continued political uncertainty in Italy.
Italy’s far-right League and the 5-Star Movement agreed on a candidate to lead their planned coalition government and to implement spending plans seen by some investors as threatening the sustainability of the country’s debt pile.
The Japanese yen steadied near four-month lows at 110.99 per dollar, while sterling eased slightly to $1.3428 ahead of key data that could determine whether the Bank of England raises rates in 2018.
Elsewhere, oil prices soared to their highest since 2014 after Venezuela’s presidential election heightened worries that the country’s oil output could fall further.
The market is also weighing the possibility of additional U.S. sanctions on the country.
U.S. crude added 24 to $72.48 per barrel and Brent rose 17 cents to $79.33.
The combination of higher oil and conciliatory actions on the US-China trade front boosted the Australian dollar, a liquid proxy for risk, to a one-month peak.
As the dollar strengthened, gold prices eased to stay near the lowest since late December at $1,290.5. Editing by Sam Holmes & Shri Navaratnam | ashraq/financial-news-articles | https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-global-markets/dollar-holds-near-four-month-highs-oil-near-multi-year-top-idUKKCN1IN054 |
DUBLIN (AP) — In homes and pubs, on leaflets and lampposts, debate is raging in Ireland over whether to lift the country's decades-old ban on abortion. Pro-repeal banners declare: "Her choice: vote yes." Anti-abortion placards warn against a "license to kill."
Online, the argument is just as charged — and more shadowy, as unregulated ads of uncertain origin battle to sway voters before Friday's referendum, which could give Irish women the right to end their pregnancies for the first time.
The highly charged campaign took a twist this month when Facebook and Google moved to restrict or remove ads relating to the abortion vote. It is the latest response to global concern about social media's role in influencing political campaigns, from the U.S. presidential race to Brexit.
"We shouldn't be naive in thinking Ireland would be immune from all these worldwide trends," said lawmaker James Lawless, technology spokesman for the opposition Fianna Fail party.
"Because of the complete lack of any regulation on social media campaigning in Ireland, somebody at the moment can throw any amount of money, from anywhere in the world, with any message — and there's nothing anybody can do about it."
The role of online ads in elections is under scrutiny following revelations that Russian groups bought ads on platforms such as Google and Facebook to try to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential race. Many of the ads were designed to sow confusion, anger and discord among Americans through messages on hot-button topics.
Few subjects are more emotive than abortion, especially in largely Roman Catholic Ireland. Despite the country's growing diversity and liberalism — voters legalized gay marriage in a 2015 referendum — the result is expected to be close. The campaign is being watched, and sometimes influenced, by anti-abortion groups in the U.S. and elsewhere.
Voters are being asked whether they want to keep or repeal the eighth amendment to Ireland's constitution, added in 1983, which commits authorities to defend equally the right to life of a mother and an unborn child. Abortion is legal only in rare cases when the woman's life is in danger, and several thousand Irish women travel each year to terminate pregnancies in neighboring Britain.
Prime Minister Leo Varadkar's center-right government backs lifting the ban and allowing abortion on request up to 12 weeks of pregnancy.
Ireland is no stranger to referendums — this is its fifth in five years — and the country's electoral laws regulate traditional forms of campaigning. Radio and television ads are banned completely, and foreign political donations are outlawed. But the 20-year-old electoral rules don't cover social-media advertising, and there is no limit on campaign spending.
"It's a complete Wild, Wild West," said Craig Dwyer of the Transparent Referendum Initiative, a volunteer group set up to collect information on the ads being used to target Irish Facebook users. "When we started collecting this information there was absolutely zero regulation."
The group has compiled and analyzed almost 900 Facebook ads connected to the referendum. Many were placed by registered lobby groups, and most came from inside Ireland. But several dozen were either untraceable or from overseas, including some that have been linked to U.S.-based anti-abortion organizations.
Several pages, with names like "Just the Facts About the 8th Amendment" and "Undecided on the 8th," claimed to give neutral information but had a clear anti-abortion agenda.
Such pages can be used to identify undecided voters, who can then be targeted with tailored ads — a practice that has been under scrutiny since revelations that political consultancy Cambridge Analytica harvested Facebook users' data to micro-target select groups during the U.S. presidential race.
Concern about the impact of online ads led Facebook to announce May 8 that it would no longer accept referendum-related advertisements from outside Ireland in order to "ensure a free, fair and transparent vote."
A day later, Google went even further, halting all referendum advertising as part of efforts to protect "election integrity." The company said it was aware of "concerns" around the issue but declined to say what prompted the decision.
Research by the Transparent Referendum Initiative and University College Dublin found "some indications of large-scale spending on unregulated Google and YouTube ads" before Google's ban.
Google's decision infuriated anti-abortion campaign Save the Eighth, which was about to launch a series of YouTube ads when Google, which owns the video-sharing site, pulled the plug.
Spokesman John McGuirk accused the Mountain View, California-based search giant of "direct foreign interference in a referendum campaign."
"You have a multinational corporation essentially saying that this country's democracy is compromised, and they have provided no evidence for that whatsoever," he said.
McGuirk dismisses the role of overseas ads in the referendum, saying most were "small, amateurish ads basically made by John and Mary in New Jersey telling Irish people to pray the rosary for a 'no' vote. They weren't helping us in the first place."
McGuirk sees allegations of shady social-media advertising as an attempt to undermine the "no" campaign because it was winning the online war. As with the Trump and pro-Brexit campaigns, Save the Eighth paints itself as an underdog, battling what it sees as pro-repeal bias among mainstream media and politicians.
The "yes" campaign insists it was equally disadvantaged by the Google ban.
"We had a Google strategy that was in place, we were spending money," said Peter Tanham, head of digital for Together For Yes. "We had to spend a day readjusting our plans."
Both sides agree that tech firms should not be the ones making important decisions about Ireland's democracy. Lawless has introduced a bill to parliament that would require all online advertisers to disclose the publishers and sponsors behind ads.
"We should not be looking to boardrooms in Silicon Valley to see how our elections should be governed," he said.
The lawmaker's bill may become law later this year, too late to influence Friday's vote. Polls suggest the "yes" side has a lead, but it may be narrowing — and almost one in five voters say they are undecided.
While both sides say online ads are an important part of their strategy, many feel the argument will be won the old-fashioned way: through personal contact, one voter at a time.
"It was a blow when Google said they weren't going to play more ads," said Siobhan McAteer, a 25-year-old "no" campaigner distributing leaflets on a Dublin street. "It was a bit upsetting, but the momentum is in the streets. It's our campaigners talking to people on the streets."
A previous version of this story corrected the first name of the Save the Eighth spokesman to John, not James.
Follow Jill Lawless on Twitter at http://Twitter.com/JillLawless | ashraq/financial-news-articles | https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/21/the-associated-press-social-media-under-microscope-in-emotive-irish-abortion-vote.html |
May 14, 2018 / 4:12 PM / in 32 minutes UPDATE 1-Swiss biotech Polyphor prices IPO at 38 Sfr per share Reuters Staff
(Adds detail, background)
By Oliver Hirt
ZURICH, May 14 (Reuters) - Swiss biotech company Polyphor will raise 165 million Swiss francs ($165.4 million), including an over-allotment option, after pricing shares in its initial public offering at 38 Swiss francs each, the top end of the indicated range, sources told Reuters on Monday.
The company is due to make its debut on the Swiss stock exchange on Tuesday in an all-primary share offering, the latest in a raft of flotations in Switzerland this year.
Polyphor had said on Friday it was increasing the size of its IPO, citing strong demand for its shares.
It lifted the upsize option from 40 million francs to 55 million francs last week, meaning total proceeds raised would increase to 165 million francs from the previously targeted 150 million francs.
The price range for its shares was narrowed to 35 to 38 per share from an initial range of 30 to 40 francs each.
A spokesman for the company declined to comment on the IPO results.
Polyphor has said it would use the funds to develop Murepavadin, a drug to treat a deadly strain of pneumonia.
The market for Murepavadin is worth up to $3 billion, Polyphor has said.
UBS AG and Deutsche Bank AG acted as joint global coordinators and joint bookrunners and Zuercher Kantonalbank and Cantor Fitzgerald as co-lead managers.
A series of flotations in Switzerland this year has provided the bourse with new entrants.
Ceva Logistics made its debut in May following IPOs by sensor maker Sensiron, medical devices maker Medartis and a listing by social network group ASMALLWORLD in March.
But Chinese conglomerate HNA Group shelved plans to float airline caterer Gategroup and ground services and cargo handling unit Swissport, citing turbulent markets. $1 = 0.9976 Swiss francs Writing by John Revill, Editing by Michael Shields | ashraq/financial-news-articles | https://www.reuters.com/article/polyphor-ipo/update-1-swiss-biotech-polyphor-prices-ipo-at-38-sfr-per-share-idUSL5N1SL6KC |
Founder: Ryan Finley
CEO: Zander Lurie
Launched: 1999
Headquarters: San Mateo, California
Funding: $1.5 billion
Valuation: $2 billion (PitchBook)
Key technologies: Machine learning, software-defined security
Disrupting: Surveys, software
George Kavallines | CNBC If you want to know what your customers, students, donors or any other constituent is thinking, SurveyMonkey, the online survey platform, is the place to go. Nearly all the Fortune 500, private companies, nonprofits, small businesses and the media use the San Mateo, California-based company to send out surveys in order to gather quick feedback on a product, service or issue. SurveyMonkey is responsible for more than 3 million online survey responses every day and last year added AT&T, Bristol-Myers Squibb and Salesforce as customers.
Read More: FULL LIST: 2018 DISRUPTOR 50
The company's surveys helped Americans voice their opinions during the contentious presidential election, and it is now working with media companies Vanity Fair and the Skimm on a project called Millennial Takeover 2018. Each month, they will capture the opinions of millennial women on issues such as what matters to them at the polls, what they look for in political candidates and what's driving young women to enter politics in greater numbers.
The company is a bit of an elder statesman in Silicon Valley, having been started in 1999 by Ryan Finley, a computer science graduate from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Zander Lurie joined as CEO in 2016 after the sudden death of longtime chief David Goldberg, husband of Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg. Over the years, SurveyMonkey has raised more than $1 billion from investors, such as T. Rowe Price, Spectrum and Tiger Global Management. The company, with about 750 employees, does more than $200 million in revenue and is profitable. Recode reported earlier this year that SurveyMonkey is expected to go public sometime in late 2018.
‹ A look back at the CNBC Disruptor 50: 6 years, 167 companies How we chose the 2018 CNBC Disruptor 50 innovators ›
| ashraq/financial-news-articles | https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/22/surveymonkey-2018-disruptor-50.html |
Thousands turn out in Hollywood for boy band NSYNC 12:39am BST - 01:26
Years after going on a hiatus, boyband NSYNC reunite to be awarded a star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame. Rough Cut - no reporter narration.
Years after going on a hiatus, boyband NSYNC reunite to be awarded a star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame. Rough Cut - no reporter narration. //reut.rs/2rbM0Hf | ashraq/financial-news-articles | https://uk.reuters.com/video/2018/04/30/thousands-turn-out-in-hollywood-for-boy?videoId=422764130 |
ANNAPOLIS JUNCTION, MD, May 03, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) --
Achieved net income per diluted share of $0.22 from continuing operations, and adjusted net income per share of $0.48 versus $0.39 in the prior year Grew sales 20% or 5% excluding acquisitions and FX Completed the acquisition of the Sandvik welding wire business Improved full year adjusted net income per share outlook
Colfax Corporation (NYSE: CFX), a leading diversified industrial technology company, today announced its financial results for the first quarter of 2018.
The Company reported first quarter 2018 net income of $25 million or $0.20 per diluted share compared to $39 million, or $0.31 per diluted share in the prior year quarter. Income from continuing operations was $27 million or $0.22 per diluted share, including a $15 million loss on short term investments and $8 million of restructuring charges. Adjusted net income in the first quarter was $60 million, or $0.48 per share compared to $48 million or $0.39 per share for the same prior year period. Results include a $0.03 gain from a facility sale.
First quarter 2018 net sales of $881 million grew 20.1% versus the comparable period of 2017, including the impact of acquisitions and foreign currency translation effects (FX). Excluding acquisitions and FX, Fabrication Technology segment sales grew 6.4%, and Air & Gas Handling segment sales increased 2.4%. First quarter 2018 Air & Gas Handling orders decreased 2.5% to $327 million compared to the prior year period. Excluding acquisitions and FX, orders decreased 24.9%. Air & Gas Handling finished the quarter with backlog of $889.5 million compared to $867.2 million at the same time in 2017.
“We delivered another quarter of organic sales growth this quarter, led by solid performance in our Fabrication Technology business,” said Matthew Trerotola, President and Chief Executive Officer. “Market demand continues to strengthen in most of this segment’s global markets, and we are using CBS to drive further productivity improvements and advance a range of growth initiatives. This segment’s margins sequentially improved and were in-line with our expectations for full-year improvement. Our Air & Gas Handling business achieved another quarter of general industrial order growth while continuing to execute restructuring projects to address lower demand for power market applications.”
During the first quarter, the Company completed its acquisition of the welding wire operations of Sandvik Materials Technology into its Fabrication Technology segment. Sandvik is a leading provider of stainless steel and nickel alloy filler metal and extends Colfax’s portfolio in the faster-growing specialty filler metal segment.
“Colfax is well-positioned to achieve expectations for earnings growth of at least 18% in 2018,” said Mr. Trerotola. “We continue to expect overall organic sales growth supported by our faster-growing Fabrication Technology business and improving Air & Gas Handling market conditions later in the year. Restructuring actions are on target to deliver at least $25 million of savings in 2018, and we have a clear path to margin improvement. Recently-completed acquisitions are performing well and building momentum, and our pipeline of opportunities remains full.”
Reflecting first quarter performance, Colfax increased its adjusted earnings per share outlook for the year from $2.00-$2.15 to $2.05-$2.20.
Conference Call and Webcast
Colfax will host a conference call to provide details about its results today at 8:00 a.m. Eastern. The call will be open to the public through +1-877-303-7908 (U.S. callers) or +1-678-373-0875 (international callers) and referencing the conference ID number 6599567 or through webcast via Colfax’s website at www.colfaxcorp.com under the “Investors” section. Access to a supplemental slide presentation can also be found at the Colfax website under the same heading. Both the audio of this call and the slide presentation will be archived on the website later today and will be available until the next quarterly call.
About Colfax Corporation
Colfax Corporation is a leading diversified industrial technology company that provides air & gas handling and fabrication technology products and services to customers around the world principally under the Howden and ESAB brands. Colfax believes that its brands are among the most highly recognized in each of the markets that it serves. The Company uses its Colfax Business System (CBS), a comprehensive set of tools, processes and values, to create superior value for customers, shareholders and associates. Colfax is traded on the NYSE under the ticker “CFX.” Additional information about Colfax is available at www.colfaxcorp.com .
Non-GAAP Financial Measures and Other Adjustments
Colfax has provided in this press release financial information that has not been prepared in accordance with GAAP. These non-GAAP financial measures are adjusted net income, adjusted net income per share, projected adjusted net income per share, adjusted operating income, organic sales growth, and organic order decline. Adjusted operating income excludes Restructuring and other related items, gain or loss on short term investments, Goodwill and intangible asset impairment charge and Pension settlement loss. Adjusted net income, adjusted net income per share and projected adjusted net income per share exclude Restructuring and other related charges, gain or loss on short term investments, Goodwill and intangible asset impairment charge, Pension settlement loss, acquisition-related intangibles amortization, and other non-cash acquisition related charges. The effective tax rates used to calculate adjusted net income and adjusted net income per share was 21.1% for the first quarter ended March 30, 2018. The effective tax rates used to calculate adjusted net income and adjusted net income per share was 26.0% for the first quarter ended March 31, 2017. Organic sales growth and organic order decline exclude the impact of acquisitions and foreign exchange rate fluctuations. These non-GAAP financial measures assist Colfax management in comparing its operating performance over time because certain items may obscure underlying business trends and make comparisons of long-term performance difficult, as they are of a nature and/or size that occur with inconsistent frequency or relate to discrete restructuring plans that are fundamentally different from the ongoing productivity improvements of the Company. Colfax management also believes that presenting these measures allows investors to view its performance using the same measures that the Company uses in evaluating its financial and business performance and trends.
Non-GAAP financial measures should not be considered in isolation from, or as a substitute for, financial information calculated in accordance with GAAP. Investors are encouraged to review the reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures to their most directly comparable GAAP financial measures. A reconciliation of non-GAAP financial measures presented above to GAAP results has been provided in the financial tables included in this press release.
CAUTIONARY NOTE CONCERNING FORWARD LOOKING STATEMENTS
This press release may contain forward-looking statements, including forward-looking statements within the meaning of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, statements concerning Colfax’s plans, objectives, expectations and intentions and other statements that are not historical or current fact. Forward-looking statements are based on Colfax’s current expectations and involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied in such forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause Colfax’s results to differ materially from current expectations include, but are not limited to factors detailed in Colfax’s reports filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission including its 2017 Annual Report on Form 10-K under the caption “Risk Factors.” In addition, these statements are based on a number of assumptions that are subject to change. This press release speaks only as of the date hereof. Colfax disclaims any duty to update the information herein.
The term “Colfax” in reference to the activities described in this press release may mean one or more of Colfax’s global operating subsidiaries and/or their internal business divisions and does not necessarily indicate activities engaged in by Colfax Corporation.
Colfax Corporation
Condensed Consolidated Statements of Income
Dollars in thousands, except per share data
(Unaudited)
Three Months Ended March 30, 2018 March 31, 2017 Net sales $ 880,925 $ 733,630 Cost of sales 610,305 493,801 Gross profit 270,620 239,829 Selling, general and administrative expense 200,519 174,833 Restructuring and other related charges 7,929 4,773 Operating income 62,172 60,223 Interest expense 9,588 9,254 Loss on short term investments 14,719 — Income from continuing operations before income taxes 37,865 50,969 Provision for income taxes 5,986 12,578 Net income from continuing operations 31,879 38,391 (Loss) income from discontinued operations, net of taxes (2,837) 3,096 Net income 29,042 41,487 Less: income attributable to noncontrolling interest, net of taxes 4,507 2,945 Net income attributable to Colfax Corporation 24,535 38,542 Net income (loss) per share - basic and diluted Continuing operations $ 0.22 $ 0.29 Discontinued operations $ (0.02) $ 0.02 Consolidated operations $ 0.20 $ 0.31
Colfax Corporation
Reconciliation of GAAP to Non-GAAP Financial Measures
Amounts in thousands, except per share data
(Unaudited)
Three Months Ended March 30, 2018 March 31, 2017 Adjusted Net Income and Adjusted Net Income Per Share Net income from continuing operations attributable to Colfax Corporation (1)
$ 27,372 $ 35,446 Restructuring and other related charges- pretax 7,929 4,773 Acquisition-related amortization and other non-cash charges- pretax (2) 20,681 13,394 Loss on short term investments- pretax 14,719 — Tax adjustment (3) (11,157) (5,398) Adjusted net income from continuing operations $ 59,544 $ 48,215 Adjusted net income margin from continuing operations 6.8 % 6.6 % Weighted-average shares outstanding- diluted 124,081 123,795 Adjusted net income per share continuing operations $ 0.48 $ 0.39 Net income per share- diluted from continuing operations (GAAP) $ 0.22 $ 0.29
Updated Guidance Previous Guidance Low High Low High 2018 Earnings Per Share Projected net income per share continuing operations (GAAP)- diluted $ 1.22 $ 1.37 $ 1.36 $ 1.51 Restructuring and other related charges- pretax 0.31 0.31 0.28 0.28 Acquisition-related amortization and other non-cash charges- pretax (2) 0.60 0.60 0.56 0.56 Loss on short term investments- pretax 0.12 0.12 — — Tax adjustment (3) (0.20) (0.20) (0.20) (0.20) Projected adjusted net income per share $ 2.05 $ 2.20 $ 2.00 $ 2.15
(1) Net income from continuing operations attributable to Colfax Corporation for the respective periods is calculated using Net income from continuing operations less the income attributable to noncontrolling interest, net of taxes.
(2) Includes amortization of acquired intangibles and fair value charges on acquired inventory.
(3) The effective tax rates used to calculate adjusted net income and adjusted net income per share for the three months ended March 30, 2018 and March 31, 2017, respectively, was 21.1% and 26.0%. The estimated effective tax rate for adjusted net income and adjusted net income per share for the year ended December 31, 2018 is 23-24%.
Colfax Corporation
Reconciliation of GAAP to Non-GAAP Financial Measures
Dollars in thousands
(Unaudited)
Three Months Ended March 30, 2018 March 31, 2017 Continuing Operations
Operating income $ 62,172 $ 60,223 Operating income margin 7.1 % 8.2 % Restructuring and other related charges 7,929 4,773 Adjusted operating income $ 70,101 $ 64,996 Adjusted operating income margin 8.0 % 8.9 %
Colfax Corporation
Change in Sales, Orders and Backlog
Dollars in millions
(Unaudited)
Air and Gas Handling Net Sales Orders Backlog at Period End $ % $ % $ % As of and for the three months ended March 31, 2017 $ 733.6 $ 335.6 $ 867.2 Components of Change: Existing businesses (1) 36.1 4.9 % (83.5) (24.9 )% (149.1) (17.2) % Acquisitions (2) 68.8 9.4 % 46.6 13.9 % 101.9 11.8 % Foreign currency translation 42.4 5.8 % 28.4 8.5 % 69.5 8.0 % 147.3 20.1 % (8.5) (2.5 )% 22.3 2.6 % As of and for the three months ended March 30, 2018 $ 880.9 $ 327.1 $ 889.5 | ashraq/financial-news-articles | http://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/03/globe-newswire-colfax-reports-first-quarter-2018-results.html |
By Jennifer Calfas 3:54 PM EDT
A venture capital firm aimed at promoting underrepresented founders such as people of color, women, and members of the LGBTQ community launched a new $36 million fund that will invest in black female founders.
The new funding will be invested in black female founders $1 million at a time, the venture capital fund’s founder and managing partner Arlan Hamilton announced at the United State of Women 2018 Summit in Los Angeles, Calif., on Saturday.
In 2017, female founders received just 2.2% of the $85 billion invested by venture capitalists, according to data published earlier this year . That percentage is even less for women of color, who earn less than 1% of the total funding each year on average, as Fortune has previously reported . The rumors are true. Today at #USOW2018 I announced that my venture capital firm @Backstage_Cap has launched a $36m fund that will invest in Black women founders $1mill at a time. Thank you to the Backstage Crew, headliners, LPs, mentors & network for making this moment possible. pic.twitter.com/yT1SMQOFAR
“They’re calling it a ‘diversity fund,'” Hamilton tweeted Sunday. “I’m calling it an IT’S ABOUT DAMN TIME fund.” They're calling it a "diversity fund." I'm calling it an IT'S ABOUT DAMN TIME fund.
— Arlan 👊🏾 (@ArlanWasHere) May 6, 2018
Backstage Capital received its first check from a partner in late 2015 and has since invested in dozens of startups created by underrepresented founders.
“We felt like a lot of these people and companies were being overlooked, undervalued, and underestimated,” Hamilton told Fortune in January. “With a little bit of leveling the playing field, we believe that these people are equipped to handle an erratic market and the various ups and downs in the startup world.”
A representative from Backstage Capital and Hamilton did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fortune .
A number of other venture capital firms have aimed to primarily fund underrepresented groups, including Aspect Ventures , the female-focused firm founded in 2014, and the newer T he Helm , which invests in female founders and entrepreneurs. SPONSORED FINANCIAL CONTENT | ashraq/financial-news-articles | http://fortune.com/2018/05/06/backstage-capital-black-female-founders-arlan-hamilton/ |
May 3 (Reuters) - HERIGE SA:
* Q1 REVENUE EUR 140.2 MILLION VERSUS EUR 130.8 MILLION (IFRS 5) YEAR AGO
* EXPECTS TO CAPITALIZE ON A CONTINUED RECOVERY IN THE CONSTRUCTION SECTOR IN 2018
* IN MID-TERM, TO FOCUS ON PROFITABLE AND LASTING GROWTH WITH INDUSTRIAL INVESTMENT PROGRAM
* IN MID-TERM, 70% OF ALL INVESTMENT TO BE DEVOTED TO CONCRETE AND INDUSTRIAL JOINERY Source text for Eikon: (Gdynia Newsroom)
Our | ashraq/financial-news-articles | https://www.reuters.com/article/brief-herige-q1-revenue-up-at-1402-milli/brief-herige-q1-revenue-up-at-140-2-million-euros-idUSFWN1SA186 |
PARIS, May 24 (Reuters) - Compagnie des Alpes reported a rise in first-half profits on Thursday, helped by higher sales at its ski resorts and theme parks operations.
Compagnie des Alpes (CDA) operates 11 ski resorts in France and 13 leisure parks in Europe, including Parc Asterix and the Grevin wax museum in Paris. It wants to expand abroad, notably in high-growth markets such as China, and has been looking for partners to help with this expansion.
Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) rose 6.7 percent to 169.8 million euros ($199.35 million) in the six months to March 31.
The company’s fiscal year runs from October to September.
The ski business, which makes the bulk of group sales, suffered during the first two weeks of April due to a late school holiday calendar and a transport strike in France but went on to recover somewhat for the end of the ski season.
As a result, the group expects growth in sales for the ski division to be slightly higher than 2 percent for full year 2017/18.
Figures for 2016/17 were restated to notably reflect the reclassification of the Grevin Prague and Grevin Seoul museums as discontinued businesses.
$1 = 0.8518 euros Reporting by Dominique Vidalon, Editing by Ingrid Melander
| ashraq/financial-news-articles | https://www.reuters.com/article/cie-des-alpes-results/ski-resort-operator-compagnie-des-alpes-h1-profits-rise-idUSP6N1OE00Y |
U.S. trade delegation heads to Beijing for talks 10:38am BST - 01:33
As U.S. President Donald Trump's trade delegation prepares for negotiations in Beijing this week, Trump's chief trade negotiator said on Tuesday he was not looking to negotiate changes to China's state-driven economic system but would seek to expose it to more foreign competition. ▲ Hide Transcript ▶ View Transcript
As U.S. President Donald Trump's trade delegation prepares for negotiations in Beijing this week, Trump's chief trade negotiator said on Tuesday he was not looking to negotiate changes to China's state-driven economic system but would seek to expose it to more foreign competition. Press CTRL+C (Windows), CMD+C (Mac), or long-press the URL below on your mobile device to copy the code https://uk.reuters.com/video/2018/05/02/us-trade-delegation-heads-to-beijing-for?videoId=423176160&videoChannel=13422 | ashraq/financial-news-articles | https://uk.reuters.com/video/2018/05/02/us-trade-delegation-heads-to-beijing-for?videoId=423176160 |
May 3 (Reuters) - Platform Specialty Products Corp:
* ORATION ANNOUNCES FIRST QUARTER OF 2018 FINANCIAL RESULTS
* Q1 SALES $964 MILLION VERSUS I/B/E/S VIEW $907.6 MILLION * Q1 EARNINGS PER SHARE VIEW $0.20 — THOMSON REUTERS I/B/E/S
* REAFFIRMING FULL YEAR 2018 ADJUSTED EBITDA GUIDANCE OF $870 MILLION TO $900 MILLION
* SEPARATION PLAN ON TRACK FOR 2018 Source text for Eikon:
Our | ashraq/financial-news-articles | https://www.reuters.com/article/brief-platform-specialty-products-report/brief-platform-specialty-products-reports-q1-adjusted-earnings-per-share-0-21-idUSASC09ZH0 |
May 8 (Reuters) - Otelco Inc:
* QTRLY DILUTED NET INCOME PER SHARE $0.58 * OTELCO - IN ADDITION TO SCHEDULED PRINCIPAL PAYMENT FOR Q2 , CO SEES MAKING VOLUNTARY PREPAYMENT TO COBANK TO CONTINUE TO REDUCE LONG-TERM DEBT Source text for Eikon: Further company coverage:
| ashraq/financial-news-articles | https://www.reuters.com/article/brief-otelco-reports-q1-revenue-167-mln/brief-otelco-reports-q1-revenue-16-7-mln-idUSASC0A0S2 |
May 2, 2018 / 5:16 PM / Updated 18 minutes ago U.S. considering restrictions on Chinese telecoms companies: WSJ Reuters Staff 1 Min Read
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Trump administration is considering executive action to restrict some Chinese companies’ ability to sell telecommunications equipment in the United States, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday. FILE PHOTO: The Huawei logo is seen during the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, February 26, 2018. REUTERS/Yves Herman
The move, which if implemented would likely affect Huawei Technologies Co Ltd [HWT.UL] and ZTE Corp, two of the world’s major telecommunications equipment manufacturers, was based on national security concerns, the Journal said, citing several people familiar with the matter.
The White House fid not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment. Reporting by Tim Ahmann; Writing by Mohammad Zargham; Editing by David Alexander | ashraq/financial-news-articles | https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-usa-china-telecoms/u-s-considering-restrictions-on-chinese-telecoms-companies-wsj-idUKKBN1I32GF |
May 23 (Reuters) - Southwest Georgia Financial Corp:
* ORATION INCREASES QUARTERLY CASH DIVIDEND 9% * INCREASES QUARTERLY CASH DIVIDEND BY 9 PERCENT TO $0.12PER SHARE Source text for Eikon: Further company coverage:
| ashraq/financial-news-articles | https://www.reuters.com/article/brief-southwest-georgia-financial-increa/brief-southwest-georgia-financial-increases-quarterly-cash-dividend-9-pct-idUSASC0A3GK |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV Chief Executive Sergio Marchionne said on Friday proposed changes to automotive rules by the U.S. government may prompt the Italian-American automaker to shift exports of the company’s Mexican-made vehicles.
FILE PHOTO: Sergio Marchionne, CEO, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, speaks with journalists at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit, Michigan, U.S., January 15, 2018. REUTERS/Rebecca Cook/File Photo Marchionne told Reuters that changes planned for automotive rules under the North American Free Trade Agreement by the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump were “directionally” correct but “we’re not done.”
The revised agreement would not threaten the automaker’s Mexican production, he said.
“I think we have to redirect the Mexican production to a global market,” Marchionne said. “I think there are things we can do but it’s part of a longer-term plan.”
Ahead of an industry meeting with Trump and 10 major automakers, Marchionne said he supported White House efforts to revise vehicle fuel-efficiency rules to account for a shift in buying habits towards larger vehicles, and hoped for an “agreed way forward.”
EPA chief Scott Pruitt has said standards on model year 2022 to 2025 vehicles should be revised, reversing a decision on tighter standards by the Obama administration in January 2017.
But environmental and health advocates say emissions standards should remain stricter, citing the risks to health, the environment and climate from looser emissions regulations. Seventeen U.S. states have mounted a legal challenge to the Trump administration’s decision to revise emission and fuel-efficiency rules.
Marchionne was “fully supportive” of Trump’s efforts “to try to get this reexamined in view of the changing circumstances,” he said in one of two brief interviews.
He said he still hoped the administration could reach a deal with California to maintain nationwide emissions standards.
Trump is “probably the most consummate deal maker I’ve seen in a long, long time,” said Marchionne, while characterizing the Obama administration’s effort to “short-circuit” a review of whether standards through 2025 were appropriate as “improper.”
He said the industry would continue to improve vehicle efficiency and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, no matter how the rules change.
“We shouldn’t become, sort of, poster children of a cause here,” Marchionne said.
Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Bernadette Baum
| ashraq/financial-news-articles | https://www.reuters.com/article/us-autos-trump-fiat-chrysler/fiat-chrysler-ceo-hopes-agreed-way-forward-can-be-found-on-fuel-rules-idUSKBN1IC1RK |
May 8, 2018 / 11:45 PM / Updated 12 hours ago Jazz Pharmaceuticals to settle U.S. probe for $57 million Nate Raymond 2 Min Read
BOSTON (Reuters) - Jazz Pharmaceuticals Plc said on Tuesday it had agreed to pay $57 million to resolve a U.S. probe into its financial support of charities that offer assistance to Medicare patients seeking help to cover out-of-pocket drug costs.
The drugmaker said in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that it reached an agreement in principle with the U.S. Justice Department to pay the sum as part of a civil settlement.
Jazz, which produces the expensive narcolepsy drug Xyrem, said in the filing it could not guarantee its efforts to reach a final settlement would be successful.
The drugmaker has a program aimed at ensuring its compliance with applicable legal and regulatory requirements for pharmaceutical companies, including requirements relating to support of organizations providing financial assistance to Medicare patients, Jazz told Reuters in an emailed statement.
The company is among more than a dozen pharmaceutical manufacturers that have disclosed receiving subpoenas seeking for information related to their support of patient-assistance charities.
Drug companies are prohibited from subsidizing co-payments for patients enrolled in the Medicare government healthcare program for the elderly. But companies may donate to nonprofits providing co-pay assistance as long as they are independent.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Massachusetts has been leading the industry-wide investigation.
In December, it announced a $210 million settlement with United Therapeutics Corp to resolve claims it used a charity as a conduit to illegally cover Medicare patients’ out-of-pocket costs in order to eliminate price sensitivity and boost sales. Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; additional reporting by Kanishka Singh in Bengaluru Editing by Sandra Maler and Peter Cooney | ashraq/financial-news-articles | https://www.reuters.com/article/us-jazz-phrmt-settlement/jazz-pharmaceuticals-to-settle-u-s-probe-for-57-million-idUSKBN1I93IK |
LONDON (Reuters) - Running the numbers on foreign exchange reserves and general exposure to the dollar throws up some of the reasons why Turkey and Argentina have been at the heart of the recent emerging market sell-off.
FILE PHOTO: Turkish Lira banknotes are seen in this October 10, 2017 picture illustration. REUTERS/Murad Sezer/Illustration Economists have been quick to pin the blame on problematic politics, high deficits and even higher inflation, but as these graphics show, there are many other issues below the surface.
Turkey’s currency reserves compared with debt payments due in the coming year already looked small versus most of its peers, according to Bank of America Merrill Lynch analysis.
As a ratio, those reserves were already under 90 percent of the country’s 2018 maturing debt, which in the simplest terms means that without access to borrowing markets or generating extra reserves, it would in theory default.
Argentina’s figure is probably close to that too now having sold $8 billion of its reserves since the start of March in its failed bid to stop a 25 percent fall in the value of the peso.
Malaysia and Ukraine’s figure aren’t stellar either, but are at least still above the 100 percent threshold deemed to be the safe minimum.
“The bottom line is that everybody except Turkey has good reserves,” said BAML’s David Hauner, adding that capital flows where now the key thing for under pressure emerging markets.
To view a graphic on EM currency reserves as pct of 2018 debt repayments, click: reut.rs/2KyeTW4
Respected flow tracker, the Institute of International Finance, has looked at other areas of stress too, such as the currency exposures of banks in a country.
Though most major banking systems in the developing world are much more robust these days, there are exceptions where a crisis could be triggered if dollar-denominated loans start to default.
IIF data points to Argentina’s banks that have high levels of ‘net open FX positions’ - effectively where dollar loans are not balanced out by dollar deposits.
Argentine banks’ net open positions are at 14 percent and India too looks relatively high at over 8 percent. Turkish banks on the other hand look good in this respect at under one percent, thanks to deeply ingrained currency hedging practices.
“If the net open position is high, the possibility of a currency mismatch is high,” IIF capital markets department deputy director, Emre Tiftik said.Another area they consider are banks’ loan-to-deposit ratios. If these are over 100 percent, as in Turkey, but also in South Africa, Chile, Mexico and Colombia, any significant freeze in lending markets can prove dangerous.
On the plus side Tiftik says overall reserve levels in emerging markets are expected to accumulate this year at a rate of around $225 billion, a slightly smaller rise than last year.
The fact China now has restrictions stopping money leaving the country has also prevented a ‘taper tantrum’-style exodus of capital there, which means Beijing hasn’t had a major depletion of its giant reserves stockpile. “They are very much in charge of the movements now,” Tiftik added.
To view a graphic on Changes in EM FX reserves, click: reut.rs/2Ktdz6B
DOLLAR DEBT The other obvious pressure point is emerging markets’ record $3.7 trillion dollar-denominated debtpile after years of ultra-low global interest rates.
The Bank for International Settlements - the central bank for the world’s central banks - estimates that China’s firms have $530 billion of that total, with Mexico next at $265 billion.
Here too though Turkey and Argentina have sizeable piles at almost $200 billion and $150 billion respectively.
Economists at UK-based Oxford Economics estimate that a 100 basis point rise in 10-year U.S. Treasury yields feeds pretty much one-to-one into the borrowing costs of Mexico, Indonesia and Turkey.
Such moves add the equivalent of 0.2 percent of annual economic output to the cost of servicing debt in Turkey and Chile and 0.3 percent of GDP for Malaysia.
To view a graphic on Dollar debt levels in emerging markets, click: reut.rs/2wNhEAJ
Reporting by Marc Jones; Editing by Toby Chopra
| ashraq/financial-news-articles | https://www.reuters.com/article/us-emerging-markets-reserves-analysis/why-turkey-and-argentina-are-the-main-emerging-market-weak-links-idUSKCN1IJ1TX |
BATON ROUGE, La.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- eQHealth Solutions , a leader in population health and medical management solutions, announced Tyann Alexander has been appointed the new Senior Vice President of Commercial Programs.
This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180516005416/en/
Tyann Alexander, eQHealth Solutions, SVP Commercial Programs (Photo: Business Wire)
Ms. Alexander joins eQHealth from UnitedHealth Group where she was the Vice President of Utilization Management for one of their subsidiaries, WellMed Medical Management, an OptumCare company. In her prior role, Tyann provided clinical and strategic leadership to teams delivering utilization management, intake, prior authorization services and medical claims review. Tyann is a graduate of the Keller Graduate School of Management and received her bachelor’s degree in Business – Healthcare Administration from Kaplan University. Additionally, she earned an Associate degree of Applied Science in Nursing (RN) from Trinity Valley Community College.
“I am pleased to welcome Tyann to the eQHealth team, her depth and breadth of experiences and expertise make her uniquely qualified and well-equipped to step into this role,” said Glen J. Golemi, Chief Executive Officer, eQHealth Solutions. “In addition to her experience, Tyann’s drive to be innovative in the development of integrated programs across the continuum of care will serve our Commercial Programs team extremely well.”
As the leader for all operational aspects of our Commercial Programs division, Tyann will manage service level agreements for our commercial clients and will be eQHealth’s primary contact for our Third-Party Administrator (TPA) partners. She will also work closely with the corporate leadership to enhance our products and services and grow our commercial business. Tyann will be working from eQHealth Solutions’ office in Dallas, Texas.
About eQHealth Solutions
Founded in 1986, eQHealth Solutions is a population health management and technology solutions company that touches millions of lives annually throughout the nation. Our high-tech and high-touch models include innovative technology solutions and care coordination services and focus on outcomes and optimization of provider and payer networks. eQHealth serves a variety of entities including federal, state and commercial clients. www.eqhs.org
//www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180516005416/en/
eQHealth Solutions
Katie Varnado, 225-248-7069
Source: eQHealth Solutions | ashraq/financial-news-articles | http://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/16/business-wire-eqhealth-solutions-names-new-senior-vice-president-of-commercial-programs.html |
NEW YORK, May 15, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Medley Management Inc. (NYSE:MDLY) today reported its financial results for its first quarter ended March 31, 2018.
Highlights
Fee earning assets under management were $3.0 billion as of March 31, 2018 Total assets under management were $5.1 billion as of March 31, 2018 Declared $0.20 per share dividend for Q1 2018 payable on June 1, 2018 U.S. GAAP net loss per share attributable to Medley Management Inc. was $(0.26) for Q1 2018 Core Net Income Per Share was $0.05 for Q1 2018
Results of Operations for the Three Months Ended March 31, 2018
Total revenues increased to $14.4 million for the three months ended March 31, 2018 compared to $14.0 million for the same period in 2017.
Total expenses from operations were $12.8 million for the three months ended March 31, 2018 compared to $7.6 million for the same period in 2017. The increase was due primarily to an increase in severance related compensation, professional fees and expenses of our consolidated fund.
Total other expense, net was $11.0 million for the three months ended March 31, 2018 compared to $1.4 million for the same period in 2017. The increase was due primarily to unrealized losses from our investment in shares of MCC.
Net loss attributable to Medley Management Inc. and non-controlling interests in Medley LLC was $5.1 million for the three months ended March 31, 2018 compared to net income of $3.2 million for the same period in 2017. Medley Management Inc.’s net loss per share was $0.26 for the three months ended March 31, 2018 compared to net income per share of $0.06 for the same period in 2017.
Pre-Tax Core Net Income was $2.1 million for the three months ended March 31, 2018 compared to $5.2 million for the same period in 2017. Core Net Income Per Share was $0.05 for the three months ended March 31, 2018, compared to $0.10 for the same period in 2017. Core EBITDA was $5.0 million for the three months ended March 31, 2018 compared to $7.9 million for the same period in 2017.
Investor Contact:
Sam Anderson
Head of Capital Markets & Risk Management
Medley Management Inc.
212-759-0777
Media Contact:
Erin Clark
Teneo Strategy
646-214-8355
Key Performance Indicators:
For the Three Months Ended March 31,
(unaudited) 2018 2017 (Amounts in thousands, except AUM, share
and per share amounts) Consolidated Financial Data: Pre-Tax (Loss) Income $ (9,451 ) $ 5,063 Net (loss) income attributable to Medley Management Inc. and non-controlling interests in Medley LLC $ (5,127 ) $ 3,162 Net (loss) income per Class A common stock $ (0.26 ) $ 0.06 Net (Loss) Income Margin (1) (35.6 )% 22.6 % Weighted average shares - Basic and Diluted 5,483,303 5,808,626 Non-GAAP Data: Pre-Tax Core Net Income (2) $ 2,108 $ 5,187 Core Net Income (2) $ 1,257 $ 4,588 Core EBITDA (3) $ 5,008 $ 7,920 Core Net Income Per Share (4) $ 0.05 $ 0.10 Core Net Income Margin (5) 9.8 % 21.1 % Pro-Forma Weighted Average Shares Outstanding (6) 30,635,399 30,965,646 Other Data (at period end, in millions): AUM $ 5,076 $ 5,452 Fee Earning AUM $ 3,040 $ 3,214 (1) Net Income Margin equals Net income attributable to Medley Management Inc. and non-controlling interests in Medley LLC divided by total revenue.
(2) Pre-Tax Core Net Income is calculated as Core Net Income before income taxes. Core Net Income reflects net income attributable to Medley Management Inc. and net income attributable to non-controlling interests in Medley LLC adjusted to exclude reimbursable expenses associated with the launch of funds, stock-based compensation associated with restricted stock units that were granted in connection with our IPO, other non-core items and the income tax expense associated with the foregoing adjustments. Please refer to the reconciliation of Core Net Income to Net income attributable to Medley Management Inc. and non-controlling interests in Medley LLC in Exhibit C for additional details.
(3) Core EBITDA is calculated as Core Net Income before interest expense, income taxes, depreciation and amortization. Please refer to the reconciliation of Core EBITDA to Net income attributable to Medley Management Inc. and non-controlling interests in Medley LLC in Exhibit C for additional details.
(4) Core Net Income Per Share is calculated as Core Net Income, adjusted for the income tax effect of assuming that all of our pre-tax earnings were subject to federal, state and local corporate income taxes, divided by Pro-Forma Weighted Average Shares Outstanding (as defined below). We assumed an effective corporate tax rate of 33.0% for 2018 and 43.0% for 2017. Please refer to the calculation of Core Net Income Per Share in Exhibit D for additional details.
(5) Core Net Income Margin equals Core Net Income Per Share divided by total revenue per share.
(6) The calculation of Pro-Forma Weighted Average Shares Outstanding assumes the conversion by the pre-IPO holders of up to 24,032,533 Medley LLC units for 24,032,533 shares of Class A common stock at the beginning of each period presented, as well as the vesting of the weighted average number of restricted stock units.
Fee Earning AUM
The table below presents the quarter-to-date roll forward of our total fee earning AUM:
% of Fee Earning AUM Permanent
Capital
Vehicles Long-dated
Private Funds
and SMAs Total Permanent
Capital
Vehicles Long-dated
Private Funds
and SMAs (Dollars in millions) Ending balance, December 31, 2017 $ 2,090 $ 1,068 $ 3,158 66 % 34 % Commitments (60 ) 83 23 Distributions (24 ) (34 ) (58 ) Change in fund value (34 ) (49 ) (83 ) Ending balance, March 31, 2018 $ 1,972 $ 1,068 $ 3,040 65 % 35 % Total fee earning AUM decreased by $118 million, or 4% as of March 31, 2018 compared to total fee earning AUM as of December 31, 2017. The permanent capital vehicles’ share of fee earning AUM was 65% as of March 31, 2018 compared to 66% at December 31, 2017.
Conference Call and Webcast Information
We will host an earnings conference call and audio webcast at 10:00 a.m. (Eastern Time) on Wednesday, May 16, 2018 to discuss our first quarter financial results.
All interested parties may participate in the conference call by dialing (877) 524-5743 approximately 5-10 minutes prior to the call. International callers should dial (615) 247-0088. Participants should reference Medley Management Inc. and the conference ID of 4399459 when prompted. Following the call you may access a replay of the event via audio webcast. This conference call will be broadcast live over the Internet and can be accessed by all interested parties through the Company's website, http://www.mdly.com . To listen to the live call, please go to the Company's website at least 15 minutes prior to the start of the call to register and download any necessary audio software. For those who are not able to listen to the live broadcast, a shortly after the call on the Company’s website.
About Medley
Medley is an alternative asset management firm offering yield solutions to retail and institutional investors. Medley’s national direct origination franchise, with over 75 people, is a premier provider of capital to the middle market in the U.S. Medley has over $5 billion of assets under management in two business development companies, Medley Capital Corporation (NYSE:MCC) (TASE:MCC) and Sierra Income Corporation, a credit interval fund, Sierra Total Return Fund (NASDAQ:SRNTX) and several private investment vehicles. Over the past 15 years, Medley has provided capital to over 400 companies across 35 industries in North America. (1)
Medley LLC, the operating company of Medley Management Inc., has outstanding bonds which trade on the NYSE under the symbols (NYSE:MDLX) and (NYSE:MDLQ). Medley Capital Corporation is dual-listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE:MCC) and the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (TASE: MCC) and has outstanding bonds which trade on both the New York Stock Exchange under the symbols (NYSE:MCV), (NYSE:MCX) and the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange under the symbol (TASE: MCC.B1).
Forward-Looking Statements
Statements included herein may contain "forward-looking statements." Statements other than statements of historical facts included in this press release may constitute forward-looking statements and are not guarantees of future performance or results and involve a number of assumptions, risks and uncertainties, which change over time. Actual results may differ materially from those anticipated in any forward-looking statements as a result of a number of factors, including those described from time to time in filings by the Company with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including those described in the section “Risk Factors” in the Company’s Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2017. Except as required by law, the Company undertakes no duty to update any forward-looking statement made herein. All forward-looking statements made herein speak only as of the date of this press release.
Non-GAAP Financial Measures
We make reference to certain non-GAAP financial measures in this press release. A reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable financial measures calculated and presented in accordance with U.S. GAAP is contained in the tables attached hereto.
Non-GAAP measures used by management include Pre-Tax Core Net Income, Core Net Income, Core EBITDA, Core Net Income Per Share and Core Net Income Margin. Management believes that these measures provide analysts, investors and management with helpful information regarding our underlying operating performance and our business, as they remove the impact of items management believes are not reflective of underlying operating performance. These non-GAAP measures are also used by management for planning purposes, including the preparation of internal budgets; and for evaluating the effectiveness of operational strategies. Additionally, we believe these non-GAAP measures provide another tool for investors to use in comparing our results with other companies in our industry, many of whom use similar non-GAAP measures. There are limitations associated with the use of non-GAAP financial measures as compared to the use of the most directly comparable U.S. GAAP financial measure and these measures supplement and should be considered in addition to and not in lieu of the results of operations discussed below. Furthermore, such measures may be inconsistent with measures presented by other companies.
This press release does not constitute an offer for any Medley fund.
Available Information
Medley Management Inc.’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, press releases, earnings releases and other financial information are available at www.mdly.com .
(1) Medley Management Inc. is the parent company of Medley LLC and several registered investment advisors (collectively, "Medley”). Assets under management refers to assets of our funds, which represents the sum of the net asset value of such funds, the drawn and undrawn debt (at the fund level, including amounts subject to restrictions) and uncalled committed capital (including commitments to funds that have yet to commence their investment periods). Assets under management are as of March 31, 2018.
Exhibit A. Consolidated Statements of Operations of Medley Management Inc.
For the Three Months Ended March 31,
(unaudited) 2018 2017 (Amounts in thousands, except share and per
share data) Revenues Management fees (includes Part I incentive fees of $0 and $544 for three months ending March 31, 2018 and 2017, respectively) $ 12,085 $ 13,895 Performance fees — (2,363 ) Other revenues and fees 2,329 2,320 Investment Income: Carried interest 165 145 Other investment income (183 ) (1 ) Total Revenues 14,396 13,996 Expenses Compensation and benefits 8,338 5,794 Performance fee compensation (7 ) (881 ) General, administrative and other expenses 4,509 2,668 Total Expenses 12,840 7,581 Other Income (Expense) Dividend income 1,429 735 Interest expense (2,681 ) (3,647 ) Other income (expenses), net (9,755 ) 1,560 Total Other Expense, Net (11,007 ) (1,352 ) (Loss) Income before income taxes (9,451 ) 5,063 Provision for income taxes 190 413 Net (Loss) Income (9,641 ) 4,650 Net (loss) income attributable to redeemable non-controlling interests and non-controlling interests in consolidated subsidiaries (4,514 ) 1,488 Net (loss) income attributable to non-controlling interests in Medley LLC (3,899 ) 2,768 Net (Loss) Income Attributable to Medley Management Inc. $ (1,228 ) $ 394 Net (Loss) Income Per Share of Class A Common Stock: Basic $ (0.26 ) $ 0.06 Diluted $ (0.26 ) $ 0.06 Weighted average shares outstanding - Basic and Diluted 5,483,303 5,808,626 Exhibit B. Consolidated Statements of Comprehensive Income (Loss)
For the Three Months Ended March 31,
(unaudited) 2018 2017 (Amounts in thousands) Net (Loss) Income $ (9,641 ) $ 4,650 Other Comprehensive Income: Change in fair value of available-for-sale securities — 485 Total Comprehensive (Loss) Income (9,641 ) 5,135 Comprehensive (loss) income attributable to redeemable non-controlling interests and non-controlling interests in consolidated subsidiaries (4,514 ) 1,812 Comprehensive (loss) income attributable to non-controlling interests in Medley LLC (3,899 ) 2,897 Comprehensive (Loss) Income Attributable to Medley Management Inc. $ (1,228 ) $ 426 Exhibit C. Reconciliation of Core Net Income and Core EBITDA to Net income attributable to Medley Management Inc. and non-controlling interests in Medley LLC
For the Three Months Ended March 31,
(unaudited) 2018 2017 (Amounts in thousands) Net (loss) income attributable to Medley Management Inc. $ (1,228 ) $ 394 Net (loss) income attributable to non-controlling interests in Medley LLC (3,899 ) 2,768 Net (loss) income attributable to Medley Management Inc. and non-controlling interests in Medley LLC $ (5,127 ) $ 3,162 Reimbursable fund startup expenses 623 24 IPO date award stock-based compensation 141 (661 ) Other non-core items: Unrealized losses on shares of MCC 3,543 — Severance expense 1,886 1,099 Acceleration of debt issuance costs (1) — 1,150 Other (2)
852 — Income tax expense on adjustments (661 ) (186 ) Core Net Income $ 1,257 $ 4,588 Interest expense 2,681 2,498 Income taxes 851 599 Depreciation and amortization 219 235 Core EBITDA $ 5,008 $ 7,920 (1) Amounts relate to additional interest expense associated with the acceleration of amortization of debt issuance costs and discount relating to prepayments made on our Term Loan Facility as a result of the refinancing of our indebtedness from the issuance of Senior Unsecured Debt.
(2) For the three months ended March 31, 2018, other items consists of expenses related to non-core business development activities and other expenses.
Exhibit D. Calculation of Core Net Income Per Share
For the Three Months Ended March 31,
(unaudited) 2018 2017 (Amounts in thousands, except share and per
share amounts) Numerator Core Net Income $ 1,257 $ 4,588 Add: Income taxes 851 599 Pre-Tax Core Net Income $ 2,108 $ 5,187 Denominator Class A common stock 5,483,303 5,808,626 Conversion of LLC Units and restricted LLC Units to Class A common stock 23,670,187 23,333,333 Restricted Stock Units 1,481,909 1,823,687 Pro-Forma Weighted Average Shares Outstanding (1) 30,635,399 30,965,646 Pre-Tax Core Net Income Per Share $ 0.07 $ 0.17 Less: corporate income taxes per share (2) (0.02 ) (0.07 ) Core Net Income Per Share $ 0.05 $ 0.10 (1) The calculation of Pro-Forma Weighted Average Shares Outstanding assumes the conversion by the pre-IPO holders of up to 24,032,533 Medley LLC units for 24,032,533 shares of Class A common stock at the beginning of each period presented, as well as the vesting of the weighted average number of restricted stock units.
(2) Represents a per share adjustment for income taxes assuming that all of our pre-tax earnings were subject to federal, state and local income taxes. We assumed an effective corporate tax rate of 33.0% for 2018 and 43.0% for 2017.
Exhibit E. Reconciliation of Net Income Margin to Core Net Income Margin
For the Three Months Ended March 31,
(unaudited) 2018 2017 Net Income Margin (35.6 )% 22.6 % Reimbursable fund startup expenses (1) 4.3 % 0.2 % IPO date award stock-based compensation (1) 1.0 % (4.7 )% Other non-core items: (1) Unrealized losses on shares of MCC 24.6 % — % Severance expense 13.1 % 7.9 % Acceleration of debt issuance costs — % 8.1 % Other 5.9 % — % Provision for income taxes (1) 1.3 % 2.9 % Corporate income taxes (2) (4.8 )% (15.9 )% Core Net Income Margin 9.8 % 21.1 % (1) Adjustments to Net income attributable to Medley Management Inc. and non-controlling interests in Medley LLC to calculate Core Net Income are presented as a percentage of total revenue.
(2) Assumes that all of our pre-tax earnings, including adjustments above, are subject to federal, state and local income taxes. In determining corporate income taxes, we used a combined effective corporate tax rate of 33.0% for 2018 and 43.0% for 2017 and presented the calculation as a percentage of total revenue.
Exhibit F. Consolidated Balance Sheets of Medley Management Inc.
As of March 31, 2018
(unaudited) December 31, 2017
(Amounts in thousands) Assets Cash and cash equivalents $ 30,069 $ 36,163 Cash and cash equivalents of consolidated fund 377 164 Investments, at fair value 46,755 56,632 Management fees receivable 10,119 14,714 Performance fees receivable — 2,987 Other assets 15,955 17,262 Total assets $ 103,275 $ 127,922 Liabilities, Redeemable Non-controlling Interests and Equity Liabilities Senior unsecured debt $ 117,049 $ 116,892 Loans payable 9,395 9,233 Accounts payable, accrued expenses and other liabilities 20,884 25,130 Total Liabilities 147,328 151,255 Redeemable Non-controlling Interests 46,787 53,741 Equity Class A common stock 55 55 Class B common stock — — Additional paid in capital 3,805 2,820 Accumulated other comprehensive loss — (1,301 ) Accumulated deficit (14,080 ) (9,545 ) Total stockholders' deficit, Medley Management Inc. (10,220 ) (7,971 ) Non-controlling interests in consolidated subsidiaries (1,644 ) (1,702 ) Non-controlling interests in Medley LLC (78,976 ) (67,401 ) Total deficit (90,840 ) (77,074 ) Total Liabilities, Redeemable Non-controlling Interests and Equity $ 103,275 $ 127,922
Source:Medley Management Inc. | ashraq/financial-news-articles | http://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/15/globe-newswire-medley-management-inc-declares-0-point-20-per-share-dividend-and-reports-first-quarter-2018-results.html |
Is Donald Trump a liar? Many of his critics would answer with a zealous “yes.” But the great majority of Mr. Trump’s “lies,” if that’s what they are, are so obviously wrong and easily disprovable that very few people appear genuinely deceived by them. Compare his flagrant inventions—say, his claim that he “predicted Osama bin Laden” in 2000—with Hillary Clinton’s claim that she “did not email any classified material to anyone.” Both statements are untrue, but one gets the feeling that Mr. Trump half-believed his own ridiculous claim, whereas Mrs. Clinton knew perfectly well she had emailed classified information. Who’s... | ashraq/financial-news-articles | https://www.wsj.com/articles/politics-taking-voters-seriously-1526074038 |
STOCKHOLM, May 23 (Reuters) - High levels of indebtedness among Swedish households remains the greatest risk to the financial system, the central bank said in its semi-annual stability report, published on Wednesday.
House prices have surged for years, but the market has wobbled recently. The Riksbank said it expected the market to stabilize and debt levels to increase more moderately in future, but that further price falls could not be ruled out.
“A substantial and more lasting price fall may lead to serious consequences for both macroeconomic and financial stability,” the central bank said in a statement. (Reporting by Stockholm Newsroom; Editing by Daniel Dickson)
| ashraq/financial-news-articles | https://www.reuters.com/article/sweden-cenbank-stability/swedish-c-bank-says-household-debt-still-biggest-risk-to-economy-idUSS3N1R8004 |
May 21 (Reuters) - METLIFE INVESTMENT MANAGEMENT:
* METLIFE INVESTMENT MANAGEMENT SAYS FACEBOOK SIGNED LONG-TERM LEASE FOR ALL OF PARK TOWER AT TRANSBAY, ONE OF SAN FRANCISCO’S OFFICE BUILDINGS Source text for Eikon: Further company coverage:
| ashraq/financial-news-articles | https://www.reuters.com/article/brief-metlife-investment-management-says/brief-metlife-investment-management-says-facebook-signed-long-term-lease-for-all-of-park-tower-at-transbay-idUSFWN1SS0PV |
VIENNA (Reuters) - Major powers and Iran agreed on Friday to move quickly to offset the U.S. pullout from its nuclear deal and Washington’s renewed sanctions, with Tehran pressuring Europe to come up with a package of economic measures by May 31.
Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif leaves the EU council headquarters in Brussels, Belgium May 15, 2018. REUTERS/Yves Herman The 2015 agreement between Iran and world powers lifted international sanctions on Tehran. In return, Iran agreed to restrictions on its nuclear activities, increasing the time it would need to produce an atom bomb if it chose to do so.
Since President Donald Trump withdrew the United States this month, calling the agreement deeply flawed, European states have been scrambling to ensure Iran gets enough economic benefits to persuade it to stay in the deal.
But this has proven difficult, with many European firms alarmed at the spectre of far-reaching U.S. financial penalties.
Nations that remain in the deal - Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia - held a formal meeting on Friday without the United States for the first time since Trump’s announcement, but diplomats saw limited scope for salvaging the agreement.
“For the time being we are negotiating... to see if they can provide us with a package which can actually give Iran the benefits of sanctions-lifting and then the next step is to find guarantees for that package,” Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi told reporters after the meeting.
The talks between senior officials aimed at fleshing out the package of measures to keep oil and investments flowing.
Those measures include banning EU-based firms from complying with the reimposed U.S. sanctions, urging governments to make transfers to Iran’s central bank to avoid fines and creating alternative financing channels.
“We expect the (economic) package to be given to us by the end of May,” a senior Iranian official said earlier, adding that Tehran was “weeks” away from deciding whether to quit the pact.
European measures would need to ensure that oil exports did not halt, and that Iran would still have access to the SWIFT international bank payments messaging system, he said.
A senior EU official said the participants had stressed on Friday that the package would not be immediate.
“We made it very clear today that there are things that will take more time,” the official said.
Foreign ministers of the remaining countries will meet in the coming weeks.
COLD SHOWER Washington has not only reimposed sanctions but started to make them even tighter. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo threatened Iran on Monday with “the strongest sanctions in history” if it did not change its behaviour in the Middle East.
“Pompeo was like taking a cold shower,” said a European diplomat. “We’ll try to cling to the deal, but... we’re under no illusions.”
Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei set out conditions on Wednesday for Iran to stay in the deal: unless Europe guarantees Iran’s oil sales will not suffer, Tehran would resume enrichment activities that are currently prohibited. The deal lets Iran enrich but under tight restrictions.
“We were very clear we can’t give guarantees but we can create the necessary conditions for the Iranians to keep benefiting from the sanctions-lifting under the JCPOA (the nuclear deal) and to protect our interests and continue to develop legitimate business with Iran,” the EU official said.
Iran has so far benefited less from the accord than it had initially hoped, partly because of remaining U.S. sanctions that have deterred major Western investors from doing business with Tehran. Some Western companies have already quit Iran or said they may have to leave because of the new U.S. sanctions.
Trump denounced the accord, completed under his predecessor Barack Obama, because it did not cover Iran’s ballistic missile programme or its role in Middle East wars, or address the issue of what happens after the deal begins to expire in 2025.
Khamenei rejected any new negotiations over Iran’s ballistic missile programme or its regional activities.
European nations share some U.S. concerns but say that torpedoing the nuclear deal makes it far harder to address them. They have said that as long as Tehran meets its commitments, they will stick to the deal.
The U.N. nuclear watchdog, which polices the pact, says Iran continues to comply with its terms.
Additional reporting by Parisa Hafezi in Ankara, editing by Mark Heinrich and Gareth Jones
| ashraq/financial-news-articles | https://in.reuters.com/article/iran-nuclear-talks/no-illusions-as-iran-nuclear-deal-countries-look-to-future-without-u-s-idINKCN1IQ010 |
French bakers vie for prestigious title of Best Baguette 01:05
A baker from Le Reunion Island wins the prize for France's Best Traditional Baguette at an annual contest in Paris. Rough cut (no reporter narration).
A baker from Le Reunion Island wins the prize for France's Best Traditional Baguette at an annual contest in Paris. Rough cut (no reporter narration). //reut.rs/2KZEsQJ | ashraq/financial-news-articles | https://uk.reuters.com/video/2018/05/15/french-bakers-vie-for-prestigious-title?videoId=427203997 |
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Tesla Inc ( TSLA.O ) will pause production at its California factory for six days at the end of the May to work on fixes to its assembly line for its new Model 3 sedan, sources inside the company told Reuters.
A Tesla logo is seen in Los Angeles, California U.S. January 12, 2018. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson The Silicon Valley luxury electric car maker previously warned of 10 days of temporary shutdowns this quarter as the company addresses manufacturing problems that have delayed volume production of the Model 3 sedan, which is seen as crucial to Tesla’s long-term profitability.
Two sources confirmed to Reuters that the next stoppage on the general assembly line at the Fremont, California, plant was scheduled for May 26-31.
A Tesla spokesperson declined to comment.
Tesla has been struggling to find solutions to manufacturing bottlenecks on the new assembly line that produces the Model 3, a sedan intended for volume production. An over-reliance on robots has complicated that task, Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk has acknowledged.
Musk, Tesla’s billionaire founder, told employees it was “quite likely” the company would reach a rate of 500 Model 3s per day this week, or 3,500 a week, automotive news website Electrek reported on Tuesday, citing an internal email. Musk also told staff to alert him of “any specific bottlenecks” on the production line.
The company shut down the Fremont assembly line last month, and also in February, for a few days to rework. The April shutdown, combined with the upcoming one, would add up to the planned 10 days of stoppages.
Musk has said the planned stoppages are intended to give the company time to perform upgrades that will help it reach a goal of building 6,000 vehicles per week by the end of June. Musk last month said the company was producing 2,000 Model 3 cars a week.
In order to meet the goal, Musk said last month that all Model 3 production would begin working around the clock. Reuters learned that the teams working on general assembly have already switched to three shifts, a schedule that helps maximize capacity and flexibility.
Teams working on the body of the vehicle - where the external shell of the car is assembled - are working in two 12-hour shifts.
Reporting by Alexandria Sage; Editing by Peter Henderson and Leslie Adler
| ashraq/financial-news-articles | https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tesla-shutdown/tesla-plans-6-day-stoppage-at-factory-for-assembly-line-fixes-sources-idUSKCN1IG2YA |
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, on a three-day visit to Russia, took part on Saturday in the handing over of an Akita puppy to Russian Olympic champion figure skater Alina Zagitova.
Endo Takashi, head of the Association for the preservation of the purity of the Akito breed, Russian figure skating gold medallist Alina Zagitova, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his wife Akie Abe poses with an Akita Inu puppy presented to Zagitova, in Moscow, Russia May 26, 2018. REUTERS/Maxim Shemetov The three-month old female puppy has been offered to the teenage Pyeongchang Winter Olympic gold medalist by a group dedicated to preserving the Japanese breed.
Abe, who arrived in Russia on Thursday for an economic forum in St Petersburg, is due to hold talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin later on Saturday in the Kremlin.
Slideshow (8 Images) Accompanied by his wife, Abe petted the fluffy dog before it was handed over to the 16-year-old Zagitova.
Zagitova fell in love with the breed while training in Japan before and during the Olympics and asked her parents to let her have an Akita puppy if she won the Games.
The puppy is called Masaru, which is a male name that means “win” or “victory”.
Reporting by Maxim Shemetov; writing by Maria Kiselyova; Editing by Stephen Powell
| ashraq/financial-news-articles | https://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia-japan-puppy/japans-abe-oversees-puppy-handover-to-russian-olympic-champion-idUSKCN1IR0BK |
SACRAMENTO, Calif., S&W Seed Company (Nasdaq: SANW) will report financial results for its third quarter fiscal year 2018, ended March 31, 2018, before the open of the market on Wednesday, May 9, 2018. The Company has scheduled a conference call that same day, Wednesday, May 9, 2018, at 11:00 am ET, to review the results.
Interested parties can access the conference call by dialing (844) 861-5498 or (412) 317-6580 or can listen via a live Internet webcast, which is available in the Investor Relations section of the Company's website at http://swseedco.com/investors/ .
A teleconference replay of the call will be available for three days at (877) 344-7529 or (412) 317-0088, confirmation # 10120143. A webcast replay will be available in the Investor Relations section of the Company's website at http://swseedco.com/investors/ for 30 days.
About S&W Seed Company
Founded in 1980, S&W Seed Company is a global agricultural company headquartered in Sacramento, California. S&W's vision is to be the world's preferred proprietary seed company which supplies a range of forage and specialty crop products that supports the growing global demand for animal proteins and healthier consumer diets. S&W is a global leader in alfalfa seed, with significant research and development, production and distribution capabilities. S&W's capabilities span the world's alfalfa seed production regions, with operations in the Western United States, including the San Joaquin and Imperial Valleys of California, Australia, and Canada, and S&W sells its seed products in more than 30 countries around the globe. S&W also provides hybrid sorghum and sunflower, and is utilizing its research and breeding expertise to develop and produce stevia, the all-natural, zero calorie sweetener for the food and beverage industry. For more information, please visit www.swseedco.com .
Safe Harbor Statement
This release contains "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended and such forward-looking statements are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. "Forward-looking statements" describe future expectations, plans, results, or strategies and are generally preceded by words such as "may," "future," "plan" or "planned," "will" or "should," "expected," "anticipates," "draft," "eventually" or "projected." You are cautioned that such statements are subject to a multitude of risks and uncertainties that could cause future circumstances, events, or results to differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements, including the risk that actual results may differ materially from those projected. This and other risks are identified in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including without limitation our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2017, and in our other filings subsequently made with the Securities and Exchange Commission. All forward-looking statements contained in this press release speak only as of the date on which they were made. We do not undertake any obligation to publicly update any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of the receipt of new information, the occurrence of future events or otherwise.
Company Contact:
Investor Contact:
Matthew Szot, Chief Financial Officer
Joe Dorame, Robert Blum, Joe Diaz
S&W Seed Company
Lytham Partners, LLC
Phone: (559) 884-2535
Phone: (602) 889-9700
www.swseedco.com
[email protected]
www.lythampartners.com
with multimedia: releases/sw-seed-company-sets-third-quarter-fiscal-year-2018-conference-call-and-earnings-release-for-wednesday-may-9-2018-300641378.html
SOURCE S&W Seed Company | ashraq/financial-news-articles | http://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/02/pr-newswire-sw-seed-company-sets-third-quarter-fiscal-year-2018-conference-call-and-earnings-release-for-wednesday-may-9-2018.html |
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia will maintain close coordination on nuclear issues with Iran despite the United States quitting the international agreement, Russian Foreign Ministry said on Thursday.
President Donald Trump announced the U.S. withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear deal on Tuesday and said he was preparing new sanctions against Iran.
Reporting by Gabrielle Tétrault-Farber, writing by Denis Pinchuk; editing by John Stonestreet
| ashraq/financial-news-articles | https://www.reuters.com/article/us-iran-nuclear-russia-deal/russia-says-will-cooperate-with-iran-on-nuclear-deal-related-issues-idUSKBN1IB1YW |
GE, Apple and Exxon all have this one thing in common 2 Hours Ago Craig Johnson of Piper Jaffray and Mike Binger of Gradient Investments discuss Dow stocks trading well above their 50-day moving averages with Eric Chemi. | ashraq/financial-news-articles | https://www.cnbc.com/video/2018/05/18/ge-apple-and-exxon-all-have-this-one-thing-in-common.html |
* U.S., China drop tariff threats amid work on wider agreement
* Oil markets tight on OPEC-cuts, looming U.S. sanctions vs Iran
* Plunging output in Venezuela also a market concern
* But surge in U.S. production counters supply shortfalls (Updates prices)
SINGAPORE, May 21 (Reuters) - Oil prices rose on Monday as markets reacted to news that China and the United States have put a looming trade war between the world's two biggest economies "on hold".
Brent crude futures were at $79.06 per barrel at 0650 GMT, up 55 cents, or 0.7 percent, from their last close. Brent broke through $80 for the first time since November 2014 last week.
U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures were at $71.71 a barrel, up 43 cents, or 0.6 percent, from their last settlement.
The U.S. trade war with China is "on hold" after the world's largest economies agreed to drop their tariff threats while they work on a wider trade agreement, U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said on Sunday, giving global markets a lift in early trading on Monday.
"The temporary trade dispute will de-escalate over time through negotiation," U.S. bank Morgan Stanley said.
"Both sides plan to work on implementing agriculture and energy purchases and to continue to negotiate on manufacturing and service trade, bilateral investment and intellectual property protection in coming months," it added.
Still, crude prices were some way off the November 2014 highs reached last week as many traders and analysts say there is enough supply to meet demand despite ongoing production cuts led by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), plunging output in crisis-struck Venezuela and looming U.S. sanctions against major oil producer Iran.
"Without a further escalation in geopolitical risk, oil might be due a pullback," said Greg McKenna, chief market strategist at futures brokerage AxiTrader.
BP's Chief Executive Bob Dudley told Reuters he expected a flood of U.S. shale and a possible reopening of OPEC taps to cool oil markets after crude rose above $80 a barrel last week.
Dudley said he saw oil prices falling to between $50 and $65 a barrel due to surging shale output and OPEC's capacity to boost production to replace potential falls in Iranian supplies due to sanctions.
The U.S. oil rig count, an early indicator of future output, was at 844, according to energy services firm Baker Hughes. That was the same count as the week before, which marked the highest level since March 2015.
(Reporting by Henning Gloystein Editing by Joseph Radford and Richard Pullin) | ashraq/financial-news-articles | https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/21/reuters-america-update-2-oil-prices-rise-as-china-u-s-put-trade-war-on-hold.html |
BRASILIA (Reuters) - The U.S. government called off negotiations with Brazil on tariffs over U.S. protectionist measures and reinstated tariffs and quotas on imports of Brazilian steel and aluminum, according to a statement by the Brazilian government on Wednesday.
The United States had announced on April 30 that it had reached a preliminary agreement with Brazil. But negotiators had broken off talks on April 26, giving the Brazilian industry the choice of picking between tariffs or quotas, the statement said.
Brazil’s aluminum industry opted for 10 percent import tariffs, while the steel industry opted for an imports quota system, according to the statement issued jointly by the Foreign and Trade Ministries.
Reporting by Bruno Federowski; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama
| ashraq/financial-news-articles | https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trade-brazil/u-s-halts-talks-with-brazil-slaps-import-tariffs-quotas-brazil-government-idUSKBN1I31ZD |
LOS ANGELES & NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Colony NorthStar, Inc. (NYSE:CLNS) and subsidiaries (collectively, “Colony NorthStar,” or the “Company”) today announced its financial results for the first quarter ended March 31, 2018 and the Company’s Board of Directors declared a second quarter 2018 cash dividend of $0.11 per share of Class A and Class B common stock.
First Quarter 2018 Financial Results and Highlights
First quarter 2018 net loss attributable to common stockholders of $(72.7) million, or $(0.14) per share, and Core FFO of $115.1 million, or $0.20 per share The Company’s Board of Directors declared and paid a first quarter 2018 dividend of $0.11 per share of Class A and B common stock During the first quarter 2018, the Company raised approximately $2.0 billion of third-party capital (including amounts representing its share related to affiliates) from institutional clients The Company, in partnership with Digital Bridge, established a digital real estate infrastructure vehicle with $1.95 billion of capital raised as of March 31, 2018, inclusive of a $162 million capital commitment by certain subsidiaries of the Company During the first quarter 2018, the Company completed $60 million of Other Equity and Debt asset monetizations During the first quarter 2018, the Company invested and agreed to invest $113 million in Other Equity and Debt primarily with an objective of creating investment management structures around these investments The Company repurchased approximately 48.2 million shares of its Class A common stock at an average price of $5.79 per share, or $279 million, year-to-date 2018 Listed Colony NorthStar Credit Real Estate, Inc. (NYSE: CLNC), one of the largest commercial real estate credit REITs, creating a new permanent capital vehicle externally managed by the Company Subsequent to the first quarter 2018: The Company completed the combination of its broker-dealer business with S2K Financial creating an enhanced retail investor distribution platform, Colony S2K The Company has approximately $1.1 billion of liquidity through cash-on-hand and availability under its revolving credit facility
For more information and a reconciliation of net income/(loss) to common stockholders to Core FFO, NOI and/or EBITDA, please refer to the non-GAAP financial measure definitions and tables at the end of this press release.
"After resetting our baseline at the beginning of this year, we are pleased to report Colony NorthStar’s first quarter results and concurrent strategic progress,” said Richard B. Saltzman, President and Chief Executive Officer. “For example, the formation and public listing of Colony NorthStar Credit Real Estate during the quarter is a prime example of leveraging our institutional expertise and balance sheet assets to create a new permanent capital vehicle under our management. In addition, liquidity generated by more accelerated sales of non-core assets and businesses is being utilized to repurchase our common shares, reduce debt, and sponsor compelling new investment opportunities under a predominantly third party capital model such as the recently announced Digital Colony Partners vehicle focused on digital real estate infrastructure. All of these endeavors represent progress towards the goal of strengthening our global investment management franchise and becoming more balance sheet-lite as we focus on maximizing shareholder value from a total return perspective.”
First Quarter 2018 Operating Results and Investment Activity by Segment
Colony NorthStar holds investment interests in six reportable segments: Healthcare Real Estate; Industrial Real Estate; Hospitality Real Estate; CLNC; Other Equity and Debt; and Investment Management.
Healthcare Real Estate
As of March 31, 2018, the consolidated healthcare portfolio consisted of 413 properties: 192 senior housing properties, 108 medical office properties, 99 skilled nursing facilities and 14 hospitals. The Company’s equity interest in the consolidated Healthcare Real Estate segment was approximately 71% as of March 31, 2018. The healthcare portfolio earns rental and escalation income from leasing space to various healthcare tenants and operators. The leases are for fixed terms of varying length and generally provide for rent and expense reimbursements to be paid in monthly installments. The healthcare portfolio also generates operating income from healthcare properties operated through management agreements with independent third-party operators, predominantly through structures permitted by the REIT Investment Diversification and Empowerment Act of 2007 (“RIDEA”).
During the first quarter 2018, this segment’s net loss attributable to common stockholders was $(10.4) million, Core FFO was $23.1 million and consolidated NOI was $81.3 million. In the first quarter 2018, healthcare same store portfolio sequential quarter to quarter comparable revenue increased 2.0% and net operating income increased 6.5% primarily attributed to an approximately $3 million early lease termination fee received from a former medical office building tenant and approximately $1 million of hurricane Harvey expenses not covered by insurance that was incurred in senior housing properties during the fourth quarter 2017. Compared to the same period last year, first quarter 2018 same store revenue grew 1.2% and net operating income increased 5.5% primarily attributable to the previously referenced early lease termination fee and changes in foreign currency exchange rates. The healthcare same store portfolio is defined as properties in operation throughout the full periods presented under the comparison and included 413 properties in the sequential quarter to quarter and year to year comparisons.
The following table presents NOI and certain operating metrics by property types in the Company’s Healthcare Real Estate segment:
Consolidated CLNS OP Same Store NOI Share NOI (1) Consolidated NOI Occupancy % (2) TTM Lease Coverage (3) ($ In millions) Q1 2018 Q1 2018 Q1 2018 Q4 2017 Q1 2018 Q4 2017 12/31/17 9/30/17 Senior Housing - Operating $ 17.5 $ 12.6 $ 17.5 $ 15.8 86.4 % 87.4 % N/A N/A Medical Office Buildings 16.6 11.5 16.5 13.4 83.2 % 83.4 % N/A N/A Triple-Net Lease: Senior Housing 15.5 11.0 15.5 15.2 83.2 % 82.9 % 1.4x 1.4x Skilled Nursing Facilities 26.8 19.3 26.9 26.8 82.7 % 82.6 % 1.2x 1.2x Hospitals 4.9 3.4 4.9 5.2 55.3 % 58.4 % 3.5x 2.5x Healthcare Total/W.A. $ 81.3 $ 57.8 $ 81.3 $ 76.4 82.8 % 83.1 % 1.5x 1.4x (1) CLNS OP Share NOI represents first quarter 2018 Consolidated NOI multiplied by CLNS OP’s ownership interest as of March 31, 2018. (2) Occupancy % for Senior Housing - Operating represents average during the presented quarter, MOB’s is as of last day in the quarter and for other types represents average during the prior quarter. (3) Represents the ratio of the tenant’s/operator’s EBITDAR to cash rent payable to the Company’s Healthcare Real Estate segment on a trailing twelve month basis. Asset Dispositions and Financing
During the first quarter 2018, the consolidated healthcare portfolio disposed of three non-core skilled nursing facilities for an aggregate $14 million and one medical office building, which was encumbered by a $3 million mortgage and consensually transferred to the respective lender.
Industrial Real Estate
As of March 31, 2018, the consolidated industrial portfolio consisted of 378 primarily light industrial buildings totaling 45.6 million rentable square feet across 18 major U.S. markets and was 94% leased. During the first quarter 2018, the Company closed on $70 million of new third-party capital. As a result, the Company’s equity interest in the consolidated Industrial Real Estate segment decreased to approximately 40% as of March 31, 2018 from 41% as of December 31, 2017. Total third-party capital commitments were approximately $1.2 billion compared to cumulative balance sheet contributions of $750 million as of March 31, 2018. The Company continues to own a 100% interest in the related operating platform. The Industrial Real Estate segment is comprised of and primarily invests in light industrial properties in infill locations in major U.S. metropolitan markets targeting multi-tenant buildings of up to 500,000 square feet and single tenant buildings of up to 250,000 square feet with an office buildout of less than 20%.
During the first quarter 2018, this segment’s net income attributable to common stockholders was $1.3 million, Core FFO was $12.5 million and consolidated NOI was $44.6 million. In the first quarter 2018, industrial same store portfolio sequential quarter to quarter comparable revenue grew 4.5% and net operating income decreased (1.1)%, primarily due to higher snow removal expense. Compared to the same period last year, first quarter 2018 same store revenue grew by 5.4% and net operating income grew 3.5%. The Company’s industrial same store portfolio consisted of the same 305 buildings that were stabilized during the three months ended March 31, 2018 and March 31, 2017. Properties acquired, disposed or held for sale during these periods are excluded. Stabilized properties are defined as properties owned for more than one year or are greater than 90% leased as of the beginning of the January 1, 2017.
The following table presents NOI and certain operating metrics in the Company’s Industrial Real Estate segment:
Consolidated CLNS OP Same Store NOI Share NOI (1) Consolidated NOI Leased % (2) ($ In millions) Q1 2018 Q1 2018 Q1 2018 Q4 2017 Q1 2018 Q4 2017 Industrial $ 44.6 $ 17.9 $ 35.3 $ 35.7 95.1 % 95.7 % (1) CLNS OP Share NOI represents first quarter 2018 Consolidated NOI multiplied by CLNS OP’s ownership interest as of March 31, 2018. (2) Leased % represents the last day of the presented quarter. Asset Acquisitions and Dispositions
During the first quarter 2018, the consolidated industrial portfolio acquired ten industrial buildings totaling approximately 2.4 million square feet and land for development for approximately $179 million and disposed of one non-core building totaling approximately 0.2 million square feet for approximately $11 million.
Subsequent to the first quarter 2018, the consolidated industrial portfolio acquired four industrial buildings totaling approximately 1.0 million square feet for approximately $138 million.
Hospitality Real Estate
As of March 31, 2018, the consolidated hospitality portfolio consisted of 167 properties: 97 select service properties, 66 extended stay properties and 4 full service properties. The Company’s equity interest in the consolidated Hospitality Real Estate segment was approximately 94% as of March 31, 2018. The hospitality portfolio consists primarily of premium branded select service hotels and extended stay hotels located mostly in major metropolitan markets, of which a majority are affiliated with top hotel brands. The select service hospitality portfolio, referred to as the THL Hotel Portfolio, which the Company acquired through consensual transfer during the third quarter 2017, is not included in the Hospitality Real Estate segment and is included in the Other Equity and Debt segment.
During the first quarter 2018, this segment’s net loss attributable to common stockholders was $(10.1) million, Core FFO was $25.9 million and consolidated EBITDA was $59.2 million. Compared to the same period last year, first quarter 2018 hospitality same store portfolio revenue increased 1.6% and EBITDA decreased (3.3)%, primarily due to increased utility costs related to a colder first quarter 2018 and increased wages. The Company’s hotels typically experience seasonal variations in occupancy which may cause quarterly fluctuations in revenues and therefore sequential quarter to quarter revenue and EBITDA result comparisons are not meaningful. The hospitality same store portfolio is defined as hotels in operation throughout the full periods presented under the comparison and included 167 hotels in the year to year comparison.
The following table presents EBITDA and certain operating metrics by brands in the Company’s Hospitality Real Estate segment:
Same Store Consolidated CLNS OP Share Avg. Daily Rate RevPAR (3) EBITDA (1)
EBITDA (2) Consolidated
EBITDA
Occupancy % (4) (In dollars) (4) (In dollars) (4) ($ In millions) Q1 2018 Q1 2018 Q1 2018 Q1 2017 Q1 2018 Q1 2017 Q1 2018 Q1 2017 Q1 2018 Q1 2017 Marriott $ 46.8 $ 44.2 $ 46.8 $ 48.1 69.3 % 68.8 % $ 129 $ 129 $ 90 $ 89 Hilton 8.9 8.3 8.9 9.7 73.8 % 72.8 % 124 123 91 90 Other 3.5 3.3 3.5 3.4 78.2 % 72.5 % 127 129 99 93 Total/W.A. $ 59.2 $ 55.8 $ 59.2 $ 61.2 70.5 % 69.7 % $ 128 $ 128 $ 90 $ 89 (1) Q1 2018 Consolidated EBITDA excludes a FF&E reserve contribution amount of $8.6 million. (2) CLNS OP Share EBITDA represents first quarter 2018 Consolidated EBITDA multiplied by CLNS OP’s ownership interest as of March 31, 2018. (3) RevPAR, or revenue per available room, represents a hotel's total guestroom revenue divided by the room count and the number of days in the period being measured. (4) For each metric, data represents average during the presented quarter. Colony NorthStar Credit Real Estate, Inc. (“CLNC”)
On February 1, 2018, Colony NorthStar Credit Real Estate, Inc., a leading commercial real estate credit REIT, announced the completion of the combination of a select portfolio of the Company’s assets and liabilities from the Other Equity and Debt segment with NorthStar Real Estate Income Trust, Inc. (“NorthStar I”) and NorthStar Real Estate Income II, Inc. (“NorthStar II”) in an all-stock transaction. In connection with the closing, CLNC completed the listing of its Class A common stock on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol “CLNC.” The combination creates a permanent capital vehicle, externally managed by the Company, with approximately $4.9 billion in assets, excluding securitization trust liabilities, and $3.1 billion in equity value as of March 31, 2018. The Company owns 48.0 million shares, or 37%, of CLNC and earns an annual base management fee of 1.5% on stockholders’ equity and an incentive fee of 20% of CLNC’s Core Earnings over a 7% hurdle rate. During the first quarter 2018, this segment’s net loss attributable to common stockholders was $(3.4) million and Core FFO was $13.4 million, which reflects two months of the Company’s 37% share of CLNC’s net loss and Core Earnings. The financial results related to the assets and liabilities contributed to CLNC for the period January 1, 2018 to January 31, 2018 are included in the Other Equity and Debt segment.
Other Equity and Debt
The Company owns a diversified group of strategic and non-strategic real estate and real estate-related debt and equity investments. Strategic investments include our 10% interest in NorthStar Realty Europe (NYSE: NRE) and other investments for which the Company acts as a general partner or manager (“GP Co-Investments”) and receives various forms of investment management economics on the related third-party capital. Non-strategic investments are composed of those investments the Company does not intend to own for the long term including net leased assets; real estate loans; other real estate equity including the THL Hotel Portfolio and the Company’s interest in Albertsons; limited partnership interests in third-party sponsored real estate private equity funds; and multiple classes of commercial real estate (“CRE”) securities. During the first quarter 2018, this segment’s aggregate net income attributable to common stockholders was $49.1 million and Core FFO was $77.8 million. During the first quarter 2018, this segment’s net income, FFO and Core FFO included financial results related to assets and liabilities contributed to CLNC for the period January 1, 2018 to January 31, 2018. First quarter 2018 Core FFO included gains on sale, net of losses and provisions, of approximately $12 million, including a $9.9 million fair value gain related to the contribution of net assets to CLNC.
Other Equity and Debt Segment Asset Acquisitions and Dispositions
During the first quarter 2018, the Company invested and agreed to invest approximately $113 million in three investments, one real estate debt investment and two equity investments.
As of March 31, 2018, the undepreciated carrying value of assets and equity within the Other Equity and Debt segment were $4.3 billion and $2.7 billion, respectively.
CLNS OP Share March 31, 2018 Undepreciated Carrying Value (1) ($ In millions) Assets Equity Strategic:
GP co-investments $ 293 $ 254 Interest in NRE 74 74 Strategic Subtotal 367 328 Non-Strategic:
Other Real Estate Equity & Albertsons 2,039 1,104 Real Estate Debt 1,032 761 Net Lease Real Estate Equity 583 239 Real Estate Private Equity Funds and CRE Securities 304 304 Non-Strategic Subtotal 3,958 2,408 Total Other Equity and Debt $ 4,325 $ 2,736 (1) Includes investment-level cash and net other assets. Investment Management
The Company’s Investment Management segment includes the business and operations of managing capital on behalf of third-party investors through closed and open-end private funds, non-traded and traded real estate investment trusts and registered investment companies. As of March 31, 2018, the Company had $27.5 billion of third-party AUM compared to $26.9 billion as of December 31, 2017. The increase was primarily due to the capital raised in the co-sponsored digital real estate infrastructure vehicle, capital raised in the industrial open-end fund and the successful syndication of an approximately 30% interest in an Irish non-performing loan portfolio acquired in 2017. As of March 31, 2018, Fee-Earning Equity Under Management (“FEEUM”) was $16.2 billion compared to $15.4 billion as of December 31, 2017. During the first quarter 2018, this segment’s aggregate net loss attributable to common stockholders was $(80.5) million and Core FFO was $31.4 million. During the first quarter 2018, this segment’s net loss and Core FFO included one month of asset management, acquisition and disposition fees related to NorthStar I and NorthStar II; two months of CLNC management fees; approximately $3 million of realized carried interest from a Non-Wholly Owned Real Estate Investment Management Platform; and approximately $1 million of unrealized carried interest from the industrial open-end fund. This segment’s net loss also included a $139 million impairment loss to write down the carrying value of management contract intangible assets related to NorthStar I and NorthStar II, which ceased to exist upon closing of CLNC.
During the first quarter 2018, the Company raised $67 million from an institutional investor for a 30% interest in an Irish non-performing loan portfolio acquired by the Company in 2017.
Digital Real Estate Infrastructure
During the first quarter 2018, the Company, in partnership with Digital Bridge, established a digital real estate infrastructure vehicle with $1.95 billion of capital raised, inclusive of a $162 million capital commitment by certain subsidiaries of the Company.
During the first quarter 2018, the Company’s interest in Andean Tower Partners, a South American cell tower owner and operator was contributed to the digital real estate infrastructure vehicle for $146 million, which included approximately $3 million of realized preferred return in the Company’s Other Equity and Debt segment.
Combination of S2K Financial and NorthStar Securities
Subsequent to the first quarter 2018, the Company completed the previously announced combination of S2K Financial Holdings, LLC ("S2K Financial”) with the Company’s broker-dealer, NorthStar Securities creating a stronger broker-dealer retail distribution business that will distribute the current product slate of the Company, S2K Financial and future investment products to be developed by the new joint company. The new company is known as Colony S2K Holdings LLC (“Colony S2K”).
Assets Under Management (“AUM”)
As of March 31, 2018, the Company had $43 billion of AUM:
($ In billions) Amount % of
Grand Total
Balance Sheet (CLNS OP Share): Healthcare $ 4.1 9.5 % Industrial 1.3 3.0 % Hospitality 3.9 9.3 % Other Equity and Debt 4.3 10.0 % CLNC: Investments contributed to CLNC (1) 1.8 4.2 % Balance Sheet Subtotal 15.4 36.0 % Investment Management: Institutional Funds 9.8 22.8 % Retail Companies 3.7 8.6 % Colony NorthStar Credit Real Estate (NYSE:CLNC) (2) 3.1 7.2 % NorthStar Realty Europe (NYSE:NRE) 2.2 5.1 % Non-Wholly Owned REIM Platforms (3) 8.7 20.3 % Investment Management Subtotal 27.5 64.0 % Grand Total $ 42.9 100.0 % (1) Represents the Company’s 37% ownership share of CLNC’s March 31, 2018 total pro-rata share of assets, excluding securitization trust liabilities, of $4.9 billion. (2) Represents 3rd party 63% ownership share of CLNC’s March 31, 2018 total pro-rata share of assets, excluding securitization trust liabilities, of $4.9 billion. (3) REIM: Real Estate Investment Management Liquidity and Financing
As of May 7, 2018, the Company had approximately $1.1 billion of liquidity through cash-on-hand and availability under its revolving credit facility.
Common Stock and Operating Company Units
As of May 7, 2018, the Company had approximately 496.8 million shares of Class A and B common stock outstanding and the Company’s operating partnership had approximately 30.6 million operating company units outstanding held by members other than the Company or its subsidiaries.
On February 26, 2018, the Company’s Board of Directors provided authorization for the Company to purchase up to $300 million of its outstanding common stock.
During the first quarter 2018, the Company repurchased approximately 42.3 million shares of its Class A common stock at an average price of $5.82 per share, or $246 million, and another approximately 5.9 million shares at an average price of $5.65 per share, or $33 million, subsequent to the first quarter 2018 resulting in aggregate year-to-date 2018 repurchases of approximately 48.2 million shares at an average price of $5.79 per share, or $279 million.
Common and Preferred Dividends
On February 26, 2018, the Company’s Board of Directors declared a quarterly cash dividend of $0.11 per share of Class A and Class B common stock for the first quarter of 2018, which was paid on April 16, 2018 to respective stockholders of record on March 29, 2018. The Board of Directors also declared cash dividends with respect to each series of the Company’s cumulative redeemable perpetual preferred stock each in accordance with terms of such series as follows: (i) with respect to each of the Series B stock - $0.515625 per share, Series D stock - $0.53125 per share and Series E stock - $0.546875 per share, such dividends to be paid on May 15, 2018 to the respective stockholders of record on May 10, 2018 and (ii) with respect to each of the Series G stock - $0.46875 per share, Series H stock - $0.4453125 per share, Series I stock - $0.446875 per share and Series J stock - $0.4453125 per share, such dividends were paid on April 16, 2018 to the respective stockholders of record on April 10, 2018.
On May 8, 2018, the Company’s Board of Directors declared a quarterly cash dividend of $0.11 per share of Class A and Class B common stock for the second quarter of 2018, which will be paid on July 16, 2018 to respective stockholders of record on June 29, 2018. The Board of Directors also declared cash dividends with respect to each series of the Company’s cumulative redeemable perpetual preferred stock each in accordance with terms of such series as follows: (i) with respect to each of the Series B stock - $0.515625 per share, Series D stock - $0.53125 per share and Series E stock - $0.546875 per share, such dividends to be paid on August 15, 2018 to the respective stockholders of record on August 10, 2018 and (ii) with respect to each of the Series G stock - $0.46875 per share, Series H stock - $0.4453125 per share, Series I stock - $0.446875 per share and Series J stock - $0.4453125 per share, such dividends to be paid on July 16, 2018 to the respective stockholders of record on July 10, 2018.
Non-GAAP Financial Measures and Definitions
Assets Under Management (“AUM”)
Assets for which the Company and its affiliates provide investment management services, including assets for which the Company may or may not charge management fees and/or performance allocations. AUM is based on reported gross undepreciated carrying value of managed investments as reported by each underlying vehicle at March 31, 2018. AUM further includes a) uncalled capital commitments and b) includes the Company’s pro-rata share of each affiliate non wholly-owned real estate investment management platform’s assets as presented and calculated by the affiliate. Affiliates include the co-sponsored digital real estate infrastructure vehicle, RXR Realty LLC, SteelWave, LLC, American Healthcare Investors and Hamburg Trust. The Company's calculations of AUM may differ materially from the calculations of other asset managers, and as a result, this measure may not be comparable to similar measures presented by other asset managers.
CLNS OP
The operating partnership through which the Company conducts all of its activities and holds substantially all of its assets and liabilities. CLNS OP share excludes noncontrolling interests in investment entities.
Fee-Earning Equity Under Management (“FEEUM”)
Equity for which the Company and its affiliates provides investment management services and derives management fees and/or performance allocations. FEEUM generally represents a) the basis used to derive fees, which may be based on invested equity, stockholders’ equity, or fair value pursuant to the terms of each underlying investment management agreement and b) the Company’s pro-rata share of fee bearing equity of each affiliate as presented and calculated by the affiliate. Affiliates include the co-sponsored digital real estate infrastructure vehicle, RXR Realty LLC, SteelWave, LLC, American Healthcare Investors and Hamburg Trust. The Company's calculations of FEEUM may differ materially from the calculations of other asset managers, and as a result, this measure may not be comparable to similar measures presented by other asset managers.
Funds From Operations (“FFO”) and Core Funds From Operations (“Core FFO”)
The Company calculates funds from operations ("FFO") in accordance with standards established by the Board of Governors of the National Association of Real Estate Investment Trusts, which defines FFO as net income or loss calculated in accordance with GAAP, excluding extraordinary items, as defined by GAAP, gains and losses from sales of depreciable real estate and impairment write-downs associated with depreciable real estate, plus real estate-related depreciation and amortization, and after similar adjustments for unconsolidated partnerships and joint ventures. Included in FFO are gains and losses from sales of assets which are not depreciable real estate such as loans receivable, investments in unconsolidated joint ventures as well as investments in debt and other equity securities, as applicable.
The Company computes core funds from operations ("Core FFO") by adjusting FFO for the following items, including the Company’s share of these items recognized by its unconsolidated partnerships and joint ventures: (i) gains and losses from sales of depreciable real estate within the Other Equity and Debt segment, net of depreciation, amortization and impairment previously adjusted for FFO; (ii) gains and losses from sales of businesses within the Investment Management segment and impairment write-downs associated with the Investment Management segment; (iii) equity-based compensation expense; (iv) effects of straight-line rent revenue and straight-line rent expense on ground leases; (v) amortization of acquired above- and below-market lease values; (vi) amortization of deferred financing costs and debt premiums and discounts; (vii) unrealized fair value gains or losses and foreign currency remeasurements; (viii) acquisition-related expenses, merger and integration costs; (ix) amortization and impairment of finite-lived intangibles related to investment management contracts and customer relationships; (x) gain on remeasurement of consolidated investment entities and the effect of amortization thereof; (xi) non-real estate depreciation and amortization; (xii) change in fair value of contingent consideration; and (xiii) tax effect on certain of the foregoing adjustments. Beginning with the first quarter of 2018, the Company’s Core FFO from its interest in Colony NorthStar Credit Real Estate (NYSE: CLNC) and NorthStar Realty Europe (NYSE: NRE) represented its percentage interest multiplied by CLNC’s Core Earnings and NRE’s Cash Available for Distribution (“CAD”), respectively. Refer to CLNC’s and NRE's respective filings for the definition and calculation of Core Earnings and CAD.
FFO and Core FFO should not be considered alternatives to GAAP net income as indications of operating performance, or to cash flows from operating activities as measures of liquidity, nor as indications of the availability of funds for our cash needs, including funds available to make distributions. FFO and Core FFO should not be used as supplements to or substitutes for cash flow from operating activities computed in accordance with GAAP. The Company’s calculations of FFO and Core FFO may differ from methodologies utilized by other REITs for similar performance measurements, and, accordingly, may not be comparable to those of other REITs.
The Company uses FFO and Core FFO as supplemental performance measures because, in excluding real estate depreciation and amortization and gains and losses from property dispositions, it provides a performance measure that captures trends in occupancy rates, rental rates, and operating costs. The Company also believes that, as widely recognized measures of the performance of REITs, FFO and Core FFO will be used by investors as a basis to compare its operating performance with that of other REITs. However, because FFO and Core FFO exclude depreciation and amortization and capture neither the changes in the value of the Company’s properties that resulted from use or market conditions nor the level of capital expenditures and leasing commissions necessary to maintain the operating performance of its properties, all of which have real economic effect and could materially impact the Company’s results from operations, the utility of FFO and Core FFO as measures of the Company’s performance is limited. FFO and Core FFO should be considered only as supplements to GAAP net income as a measure of the Company’s performance.
Net Operating Income (“NOI”) / Earnings Before Interest, Tax, Depreciation and Amortization (“EBITDA”)
NOI for healthcare and industrial segments represents total property and related income less property operating expenses, adjusted for the effects of (i) straight-line rental income adjustments; (ii) amortization of acquired above- and below-market lease adjustments to rental income; and (iii) other items such as adjustments for the Company’s share of NOI of unconsolidated ventures.
EBITDA for the hospitality real estate segment represents net income from continuing operations of that segment excluding the impact of interest expense, income tax expense or benefit, and depreciation and amortization. The Company believes that NOI and EBITDA are useful measures of operating performance of its respective real estate portfolios as they are more closely linked to the direct results of operations at the property level. NOI also reflects actual rents received during the period after adjusting for the effects of straight-line rents and amortization of above- and below- market leases; therefore, a comparison of NOI across periods better reflects the trend in occupancy rates and rental rates of the Company’s properties.
NOI and EBITDA exclude historical cost depreciation and amortization, which are based on different useful life estimates depending on the age of the properties, as well as adjust for the effects of real estate impairment and gains or losses on sales of depreciated properties, which eliminate differences arising from investment and disposition decisions. This allows for comparability of operating performance of the Company’s properties period over period and also against the results of other equity REITs in the same sectors. Additionally, by excluding corporate level expenses or benefits such as interest expense, any gain or loss on early extinguishment of debt and income taxes, which are incurred by the parent entity and are not directly linked to the operating performance of the Company’s properties, NOI and EBITDA provide a measure of operating performance independent of the Company’s capital structure and indebtedness.
However, the exclusion of these items as well as others, such as capital expenditures and leasing costs, which are necessary to maintain the operating performance of the Company’s properties, and transaction costs and administrative costs, may limit the usefulness of NOI and EBITDA. NOI may fail to capture significant trends in these components of U.S. GAAP net income (loss) which further limits its usefulness.
NOI should not be considered as an alternative to net income (loss), determined in accordance with U.S. GAAP, as an indicator of operating performance. In addition, the Company’s methodology for calculating NOI involves subjective judgment and discretion and may differ from the methodologies used by other comparable companies, including other REITs, when calculating the same or similar supplemental financial measures and may not be comparable with other companies.
Earnings Before Interest, Tax, Depreciation, Amortization and Rent (“EBITDAR”)
Represents earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, amortization and rent for facilities accruing to the tenant/operator of the property (not the Company) for the period presented. The Company uses EBITDAR in determining TTM Lease Coverage for triple-net lease properties in its Healthcare Real Estate segment. EBITDAR has limitations as an analytical tool. EBITDAR does not reflect historical cash expenditures or future cash requirements for facility capital expenditures or contractual commitments. In addition, EBITDAR does not represent a property's net income or cash flow from operations and should not be considered an alternative to those indicators. The Company utilizes EBITDAR as a supplemental measure of the ability of the Company's operators/tenants to generate sufficient liquidity to meet related obligations to the Company.
TTM Lease Coverage
Represents the ratio of EBITDAR to recognized cash rent for owned facilities on a trailing twelve month basis. TTM Lease Coverage is a supplemental measure of a tenant’s/operator’s ability to meet their cash rent obligations to the Company. However, its usefulness is limited by, among other things, the same factors that limit the usefulness of EBITDAR.
The information related to the Company’s tenants/operators that is provided in this press release has been provided by, or derived from information provided by, such tenants/operators. The Company has not independently verified this information and has no reason to believe that such information is inaccurate in any material respect. The Company is providing this data for informational purposes only.
First Quarter 2018 Conference Call
The Company will conduct a conference call to discuss the financial results on Thursday, May 10, 2018 at 7:00 a.m. PT / 10:00 a.m. ET. To participate in the event by telephone, please dial (877) 407-4018 ten minutes prior to the start time (to allow time for registration). International callers should dial (201) 689-8471. The call will also be broadcast live over the Internet and can be accessed on the Public Shareholders section of the Company’s website at http://www.clns.com . A webcast of the call will be available for 90 days on the Company’s website.
For those unable to participate during the live call, a replay will be available starting May 10, 2018, at 10:00 a.m. PT / 1:00 p.m. ET, through May 18, 2018, at 8:59 p.m. PT / 11:59 p.m. ET. To access the replay, dial (844) 512-2921 (U.S.), and use passcode 13678906. International callers should dial (412) 317-6671 and enter the same conference ID number.
Supplemental Financial Report
A First Quarter 2018 Supplemental Financial Report is available on the Company’s website at www.clns.com . This information has also been furnished to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in a Current Report on Form 8-K.
About Colony NorthStar, Inc.
Colony NorthStar, Inc. (NYSE:CLNS) is a leading global real estate and investment management firm. The Company resulted from the January 2017 merger between Colony Capital, Inc., NorthStar Asset Management Group Inc. and NorthStar Realty Finance Corp. The Company has significant property holdings in the healthcare, industrial and hospitality sectors, other equity and debt investments and an embedded institutional and retail investment management business. The Company currently has assets under management of $43 billion and manages capital on behalf of its stockholders, as well as institutional and retail investors in private funds, non-traded and traded real estate investment trusts and registered investment companies. The firm maintains principal offices in Los Angeles and New York, with approximately 500 employees in offices located across 18 cities in ten countries. The Company will elect to be taxed as a REIT for U.S. federal income tax purposes. For additional information regarding the Company and its management and business, please refer to www.clns.com .
Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward-Looking Statements
This press release may contain within the meaning of the federal securities laws. Forward-looking statements relate to expectations, beliefs, projections, future plans and strategies, anticipated events or trends and similar expressions concerning matters that are not historical facts. In some cases, you can identify by the use of forward-looking terminology such as “may,” “will,” “should,” “expects,” “intends,” “plans,” “anticipates,” “believes,” “estimates,” “predicts,” or “potential” or the negative of these words and phrases or similar words or phrases which are predictions of or indicate future events or trends and which do not relate solely to historical matters. You can also identify by discussions of strategy, plans or intentions.
Forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties, assumptions and contingencies, many of which are beyond the Company’s control, and may cause the Company’s significantly from those expressed in any forward-looking statement. Factors that might cause such a difference include, without limitation, our failure to achieve anticipated synergies in and benefits of the completed merger among NorthStar Asset Management Group Inc., Colony Capital, Inc. and NorthStar Realty Finance Corp., the impact of changes to organizational structure and employee composition, the timing and pace of growth of the Company's Industrial platform, the performance of the Company’s investment in Colony NorthStar Credit Real Estate, Inc., our ability to create future permanent capital vehicles under our management, whether the Company will realize any anticipated benefits from the Digital Bridge partnership, the Company’s ability to become more balance sheet-light, including its availability to maximize shareholder value from a total return perspective, the Company's portfolio composition, Colony NorthStar’s liquidity, including its ability to generate liquidity by more accelerated sales of non-core assets and businesses, whether the Company will complete or sponsor any compelling investment opportunities under a predominantly third-party capital model, the Company's ability to strengthen its global investment management franchise, the Company's expected taxable income and net cash flows, excluding the contribution of gains, our ability to grow the dividend at all in the future the impact to the Company of the management agreement amendments with NorthStar Healthcare Income, Inc. and NorthStar Realty Europe Corp., whether Colony NorthStar will be able to maintain its qualification as a REIT for U.S. federal income tax purposes, the timing of and ability to deploy available capital, the timing of and ability to complete repurchases of Colony NorthStar’s stock, Colony NorthStar’s ability to maintain inclusion and relative performance on the RMZ, Colony NorthStar’s leverage, including the Company’s ability to reduce debt and the timing and amount of borrowings under its credit facility, whether the Company will benefit from the combination of its broker-dealer business with S2K Financial, increased interest rates and operating costs, adverse economic or real estate developments in Colony NorthStar’s markets, Colony NorthStar’s failure to successfully operate or lease acquired properties, decreased rental rates, increased vacancy rates or failure to renew or replace expiring leases, defaults on or non-renewal of leases by tenants, the impact of economic conditions on the borrowers of Colony NorthStar’s commercial real estate debt investments and the commercial mortgage loans underlying its commercial mortgage backed securities, adverse general and local economic conditions, an unfavorable capital market environment, decreased leasing activity or lease renewals, and other risks and uncertainties detailed in our filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”). All reflect the Company’s good faith beliefs, assumptions and expectations, but they are not guarantees of future performance. Additional information about these and other factors can be found in Colony NorthStar’s reports filed from time to time with the SEC.
Colony NorthStar cautions investors not to unduly rely on any The speak only as of the date of this press release. Colony NorthStar is under no duty to update any of these after the date of this press release, nor to conform prior statements to actual results or revised expectations, and Colony NorthStar does not intend to do so.
COLONY NORTHSTAR, INC. CONSOLIDATED BALANCE SHEETS (In thousands, except per share data) March 31, 2018
(unaudited)
December 31, 2017
Assets Cash and cash equivalents $ 484,827 $ 921,822 Restricted cash 453,366 471,078 Real estate, net 14,100,874 14,464,258 Loans receivable, net ($44,330 and $45,423 at fair value, respectively) 1,972,179 3,223,762 Investments in unconsolidated ventures ($247,983 and $363,901 at fair value, respectively) 2,549,630 1,655,239 Securities, at fair value 288,900 383,942 Goodwill 1,534,561 1,534,561 Deferred leasing costs and intangible assets, net 691,896 852,872 Assets held for sale ($215,162 and $49,498 at fair value, respectively) 1,002,838 781,630 Other assets ($7,267 and $10,150 at fair value, respectively) 441,839 444,968 Due from affiliates 43,582 51,518 Total assets $ 23,564,492 $ 24,785,650 Liabilities Debt, net ($44,103 and $44,542 at fair value, respectively) $ 10,495,429 $ 10,827,810 Accrued and other liabilities ($158,558 and $212,267 at fair value, respectively) 791,439 898,161 Intangible liabilities, net 187,864 191,109 Liabilities related to assets held for sale 273,778 273,298 Due to affiliates ($10,170 and $20,650 at fair value, respectively) 13,105 23,534 Dividends and distributions payable 90,791 188,202 Total liabilities 11,852,406 12,402,114 Commitments and contingencies Redeemable noncontrolling interests 31,648 34,144 Equity Stockholders’ equity: Preferred stock, $0.01 par value per share; $1,636,605 liquidation preference; 250,000 shares authorized; 65,464 shares issued and outstanding 1,606,966 1,606,966 Common stock, $0.01 par value per share Class A, 949,000 shares authorized; 500,643 and 542,599 shares issued and outstanding 5,007 5,426 Class B, 1,000 shares authorized; 736 shares issued and outstanding 7 7 Additional paid-in capital 7,634,952 7,913,622 Distributions in excess of earnings (1,294,996 ) (1,165,412 ) Accumulated other comprehensive income 49,037 47,316 Total stockholders’ equity 8,000,973 8,407,925 Noncontrolling interests in investment entities 3,267,834 3,539,072 Noncontrolling interests in Operating Company 411,631 402,395 Total equity 11,680,438 12,349,392 Total liabilities, redeemable noncontrolling interests and equity $ 23,564,492 $ 24,785,650 COLONY NORTHSTAR, INC. CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF OPERATIONS (In thousands, except per share data) (unaudited) Three Months Ended March 31, 2018 2017 Revenues Property operating income $ 554,730 $ 426,854 Interest income 63,854 115,544 Fee income 36,842 53,250 Other income 11,238 11,517 Total revenues 666,664 607,165 Expenses Property operating expense 305,770 216,349 Interest expense 148,889 126,278 Investment, servicing and commission expense 18,653 11,807 Transaction costs 716 87,340 Depreciation and amortization 144,705 137,420 Provision for loan loss 5,375 6,724 Impairment loss 153,398 8,519 Compensation expense 49,484 91,818 Administrative expenses 24,863 25,914 Total expenses 851,853 712,169 Other income Gain on sale of real estate assets 18,444 8,970 Other gain, net 75,256 25,381 Earnings from investments in unconsolidated ventures 32,265 113,992 Income (loss) before income taxes (59,224 ) 43,339 Income tax benefit (expense) 32,808 (3,709 ) Net income (loss) from continuing operations (26,416 ) 39,630 Income from discontinued operations 117 12,560 Net income (loss) (26,299 ) 52,190 Net income (loss) attributable to noncontrolling interests: Redeemable noncontrolling interests (696 ) 617 Investment entities 20,102 27,059 Operating Company (4,378 ) (1,083 ) Net income (loss) attributable to Colony NorthStar, Inc. (41,327 ) 25,597 Preferred stock dividends 31,387 30,813 Net loss attributable to common stockholders $ (72,714 ) $ (5,216 ) Basic loss per share (1) Loss from continuing operations per basic common share $ (0.14 ) $ (0.03 ) Net loss per basic common share $ (0.14 ) $ (0.01 ) Diluted earnings per share (1) Loss from continuing operations per diluted common share $ (0.14 ) $ (0.03 ) Net loss per diluted common share $ (0.14 ) $ (0.01 ) Weighted average number of shares (1) Basic 530,680 506,405 Diluted 530,680 506,405 (1) As a result of the Merger, each outstanding share of common stock of Colony Capital, Inc. was exchanged for the right to receive 1.4663 of Class A common stock of Colony NorthStar. All historical share counts and per share amounts have been adjusted to reflect the exchange ratio. COLONY NORTHSTAR, INC. FUNDS FROM OPERATIONS AND CORE FUNDS FROM OPERATIONS (In thousands, except per share data) (Unaudited) Three Months Ended
March 31, 2018
Net loss attributable to common stockholders $ (72,714 ) Adjustments for FFO attributable to common interests in Operating Company: Net loss attributable to noncontrolling common interests in Operating Company (4,378 ) Real estate depreciation and amortization 143,906 Impairment write-downs associated with depreciable real estate 14,940 Gain from sales of depreciable real estate (22,925 ) Less: Adjustments attributable to noncontrolling interests in investment entities (40,763 ) FFO attributable to common interests in Operating Company and common stockholders 18,066 Additional adjustments for Core FFO attributable to common interests in Operating Company and common stockholders: Gains and losses from sales of depreciable real estate within the Other Equity and Debt segment, net of depreciation, amortization and impairment previously adjusted for FFO (1) 13,142 Gains and losses from sales of businesses within the Investment Management segment and impairment write-downs associated with the Investment Management segment 5,431 Equity-based compensation expense (2) 12,470 Straight-line rent revenue and straight-line rent expense on ground leases (5,268 ) Change in fair value of contingent consideration (10,480 ) Amortization of acquired above- and below-market lease values (1,976 ) Amortization of deferred financing costs and debt premiums and discounts 20,623 Unrealized fair value gains and foreign currency remeasurements (55,603 ) Acquisition and merger-related transaction costs 11,812 Merger integration costs (3) 6,129 Amortization and impairment of investment management intangibles 147,912 Non-real estate depreciation and amortization 2,277 Gain on remeasurement of consolidated investment entities and the effect of amortization thereof 2,848 Deferred tax benefit, net (39,901 ) Less: Adjustments attributable to noncontrolling interests in investment entities (12,403 ) Core FFO attributable to common interests in Operating Company and common stockholders $ 115,079 FFO per common share / common OP unit (4) $ 0.03 FFO per common share / common OP unit—diluted (5) $ 0.03 Core FFO per common share / common OP unit (4) $ 0.20 Core FFO per common share / common OP unit—diluted (5) $ 0.20 Weighted average number of common OP units outstanding used for FFO and Core FFO per common share and OP unit (4) 567,432 Weighted average number of common OP units outstanding used for FFO per common share and OP unit—diluted (4)(5) 568,095 Weighted average number of common OP units outstanding used for Core FFO per common share and OP unit—diluted (4)(5) 593,513 | ashraq/financial-news-articles | http://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/10/business-wire-colony-northstar-announces-first-quarter-2018-financial-results.html |
May 30, 2018 / 1:07 PM / Updated 4 hours ago Italian imbroglio splits hedge funds on bank bets Maiya Keidan 3 Min Read
LONDON (Reuters) - Hedge funds are split on how to position billions of dollars in bets they have taken on Italian banks as the country’s political tumult takes its toll on bonds, shares and the euro. FILE PHOTO: U.S. dollar and Euro notes are seen in this November 7, 2016 picture illustration. Picture taken November 7. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration
Although hedge funds have a combined 1 billion euro ($1.2 billion) bet against Italy’s top 10 banks, these so-called ‘shorts’ have been rising and falling since the election in March which led to the political impasse.
These ‘short’ positions are driven by the expectation that bank stocks will fall and that they can be bought back at a lower price in the future to make a profit.
British and U.S. funds including Marshall Wace, PDT Partners, Oceanwood Capital Management and Citadel, as well as computer-driven AHL Partners and Numeric Investors, all added to their Italian bank short positions on Friday and Monday, data reviewed by Reuters showed.
“Given the price volatility, (it) does not surprise me at all the people are thinking of shorting,” Louis Gargour, chief investment officer of LNG Capital, said. “(We’re) flat for now (and) evaluating to come back once it’s sold off a bit more.”
Other hedge funds have taken an opposite view and some see the recent fall in share prices as a buying opportunity.
Giuseppe di Mino said on Wednesday that Amber Capital had been using Italian banks as a hedge against its long positions in other banks, but had cut them back over the last 24 hours.
“Volatility creates opportunity. The moves have been very extreme in some of the names, like UniCredit and Intesa, which is an opportunity,” he said, adding that Amber Capital had been taking “long” positions in the bigger banks and hedging these by going short on some of the smaller ones.
“We don’t think this is the beginning of the end of the Italian euro membership. We expect more volatility ahead but we’re still very constructive on Italy.”
Bridgewater, the world’s largest hedge fund manager, has reduced its pre-existing short positions in Intesa Sanpaolo ( ISP.MI ), UniCredit ( CRDI.MI ), UBI Banca ( UBI.MI ), Banco BPM ( BAMI.MI ) and BPER Banca ( EMII.MI ) since the election.
Its short in Mediobanca ( MDBI.MI ) fell below threshold disclosure requirements, which mandate that all firms disclose shorts in European companies above 0.5 percent, in April.
Computer-driven hedge fund AQR also cut its positions in UBI Banca, Banca BPM and BPER Banca in May, showed filings.
Bridgewater, AQR, Mashall Wace, AHL and Numeric declined to comment while PDT, Oceanwood and Citadel could not be reached. Reporting by Maiya Keidan, additional reporting by Valentina Za, editing by Alexander Smith | ashraq/financial-news-articles | https://www.reuters.com/article/us-hedgefunds-italy/italian-imbroglio-splits-hedge-funds-on-bank-bets-idUSKCN1IV1N8 |
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ANKARA, May 6 (Reuters) - Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan promised on Sunday to bring down interest rates, inflation and the current account deficit following snap presidential and parliamentary elections next month.
Speaking to thousands of flag-waving supporters in Istanbul, Erdogan said a powerful new executive presidency Turkey will switch to following the elections on June 24 would give a new momentum to the economy.
Turkey’s wide current account deficit, along with double-digit inflation, are major worries for investors. Concerns about the economic outlook have helped push the lira to record lows in recent days.
Erdogan, a self-described “enemy of interest rates”, has also repeatedly called for lower borrowing costs to fuel loan growth and boost the economy. The central bank’s reluctance to tighten has exacerbated concerns that it is under political pressure.
Last month, the bank raised its top interest rate by a more-than-expected 75 basis points but analysts said it would need to do more to fight inflation and support the currency.
“I promise that inflation, interest rates and current account deficit will fall, that the Turkish economy will become more resilient to external shocks and financial attacks, that Turkey’s investment appeal will increase,” Erdogan said.
Erdogan has called snap parliamentary and presidential more than a year early. The elections will herald the launch of Turkey’s new executive presidency, that was championed by Erdogan and narrowly approved in a referendum last year.
Ahead of the elections, Turkey will roll out a debt restructuring and social reforms package costing nearly $6 billion, Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said on Wednesday.
Turkey’s inflation climbed to almost 11 percent in April, while current account deficit stood at $4.152 billion in February, data showed.
The lira tumbled as much as 1.5 percent to a record low against the dollar on Friday, exacerbated by Standard & Poor’s decision to cut Turkey’s sovereign debt rating further into junk territory on Tuesday. (Reporting by Tuvan Gumrukcu Editing by Adrian Croft/Keith Weir)
| ashraq/financial-news-articles | https://www.reuters.com/article/turkey-economy/update-1-turkeys-erdogan-promises-to-lower-inflation-interest-rates-after-elections-idUSL8N1SD0HL |
May 29, 2018 / 9:55 AM / Updated 21 minutes ago Italy banker warns on political crisis as investors fear for euro Philip Pullella 5 Min Read
ROME, May 29 (Reuters) - Italy’s central bank chief warned on Tuesday that the state was “only ever a few short steps” from losing investors’ trust as markets dumped stocks and bonds, fearing repeat elections will become a de facto referendum on the country’s euro membership.
Prime minister-designate Carlo Cottarelli is set to unveil his cabinet on Tuesday, as tensions between the country’s president and the two political parties he sidelined flared.
Cottarelli, a former International Monetary Fund official who President Sergio Mattarella chose on Monday to head a stop-gap government leading to early elections, was due to meet the head of state in the afternoon.
The anti-establishment 5-Star Movement and the far-right League, the biggest winners from inconclusive elections in March, abandoned plans to form a coalition government at the weekend after Mattarella vetoed their choice for economy minister, an 81-year-old who has argued for Italy to leave the euro.
Investors believe that Cottarelli will fail to muster support to pass a budget, leading to repeat elections in the autumn when the two eurosceptic parties could return with even larger representation in parliament.
These worries sent Italian stocks to their lowest level since July 2017, dragged down by a heavy selloff in financial stocks. The spread between Italy’s 10-year bund and its German equivalent grew further to touch more than 270 basis points from Monday’s 235 close, its highest since September, 2013.
The continuing uncertainty in the euro zone’s third biggest economy also helped the euro tumble to fresh multi-month lows. Investors had already worried about the proposed coalition’s ambitious spending programme for a country which already has the third highest public debt in the world - plans that were likely to bring it into conflict with the European Union.
Bank of Italy chief Ignazio Visco said any move to weaken the country’s public finances could undermine confidence and years of valuable reforms.
Italy’s high debt as a proportion of its annual economic output could expose it to dangerous crises of confidence, he told the central bank’s annual meeting.
The number of investors expecting the euro zone to lose at least one member state in the coming months has increased due to the crisis in Italy, a survey showed on Tuesday.
The Frankfurt-based Sentix research group said its monthly “euro break-up” index, based on a survey of around 1,000 institutional and retail investors, more than doubled to 13 percent from 6.3 percent in April.
“The turmoil over the Italian government formation, in which the euro-critical parties League and 5-Star want to form an alliance, has alarmed the bond markets,” Sentix researcher Manfred Huebner said. SIMPLE MAN, COMPLICATED JOB
Cottarelli, whose simplicity startled reporters on Monday when he arrived at the presidential palace by taxi carrying a backpack and pulling his trolley bag, was preparing a slimed-down cabinet of experts with no direct links to political parties to steer the country to elections.
When he accepted the mandate from Mattarella on Monday, Cottarelli vowed that he and his cabinet would step aside after their job is done and not seek political office in the next elections.
Both parties planning the failed coalition were infuriated by Mattarella’s veto, accusing him of violating democratic principles.
The 5-Star leader, Luigi Di Maio, called on parliament to impeach Mattarella, which would be unprecedented in Italy’s post-World War Two history.
The 5-Star is planning big street protests against the president on Saturday to coincide with Italy’s Feast of the Republic, which is usually a time of unity marking the end of the monarchy after the war.
5-Star members took to the streets holding anti-Mattarella placards such as “Sovereignty Belongs to the People”, while the president’s supporters went on Twitter with the hashtag “I stand with Mattarella”.
Even foreign leaders jumped into the fray.
French President Emmanuel Macron defended Mattarella’s courage and “great spirit of responsibility” and German Chancellor Angela Merkel issued a veiled warning to Italian parties that any discussions on economic policy would have to be within the rules governing the euro zone.
When he names his ministers later on Tuesday, Cottarelli, who served as a cost-cutting tsar to a previous government, is expected to again reassure investors on the Italian economy.
On Monday, when he accepted the mandate from Mattarella, Cottarelli said the country’s economy was “still growing and the public accounts remain under control.” (additional reporting by Steve Jewkes in Milan editing by David Stamp) | ashraq/financial-news-articles | https://www.reuters.com/article/italy-politics/italy-banker-warns-on-political-crisis-as-investors-fear-for-euro-idUSL5N1T01ZP |
(Reuters) - Google’s YouTube will launch a music streaming service next week, it said on Thursday, looking to use its popular internet video brand to tap the growing market for paid music streaming.
FILE PHOTO: The YouTube app logo is seen on a smartphone in this picture illustration taken September 15, 2017. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo YouTube Music, which will offer both ad-supported and $9.99-per-month versions, will compete directly with services from Spotify Technology SA, Pandora Media Inc, Apple Inc and Amazon.com Inc.
YouTube Music will launch on May 22, and include features such as personalized playlists based on a user’s YouTube history. The service is expected to eventually replace Google Play Music, the Alphabet Inc unit’s existing music streaming brand.
The news sent stocks of music streaming companies Spotify and Pandora lower by about 2 percent on Thursday morning.
“Google has an advantage given YouTube’s more than a billion users and viewers. So, it has opportunities to convert some into YouTube Music listeners or premium subscribers,” said Ali Mogharabi, analyst at Morningstar Research.
The growing adoption of paid music streaming has helped wean a generation of music listeners away from free or pirated music, and has led to services such as Spotify and Apple Music becoming the recording industry’s single biggest revenue source.
To view a graphic on A snapshot of the number of paid subscribers using music streaming services, click: reut.rs/2L8ez1m
Revenue from music streaming services overtook sales of CDs and digital downloads for the first time in 2017, according to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry.
YouTube Music will launch in the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Mexico and South Korea on May 22. It will roll out to more countries in the following weeks.
Separately on Thursday, YouTube also said it would revamp YouTube Red, the paid version of YouTube that comes with original programming, to include YouTube Music at an additional price of $2.
YouTube Premium, which will replace YouTube Red, will cost $11.99.
Reporting by Shubham Kalia and Arjun Panchadar in Bengaluru; Editing by Gopakumar Warrier and Sai Sachin Ravikumar
| ashraq/financial-news-articles | https://in.reuters.com/article/us-alphabet-inc-youtube/youtube-to-revamp-music-service-charge-more-for-ad-free-shows-recode-idINKCN1II07Q |
May 22, 2018 / 1:26 PM / Updated an hour ago Commentary: Why is China's aluminium output so hard to count Andy Home 7 Min Read
LONDON (Reuters) - China is the world’s dominant producer of aluminium, having ramped up production to more than half of global output, from less than a quarter at the turn of the century. A worker checks aluminium rolls at a warehouse inside an industrial park in Binzhou, Shandong province, China April 7, 2018. China Daily via REUTERS
The turbo-charged expansion has outpaced even China’s voracious demand for the metal, inciting increasing protestation from the rest of the world over the resulting flow of exports and lack of transparency from China’s alumunium sector.
The culmination of these tensions is the United States’ decision to impose tariffs on aluminium imports.
Many will be affected, but the No.1 target is China, already the subject of a lengthening list of product-specific U.S. anti-dumping duties.
Given China’s central role in the aluminium market and trade dynamics, it’s curious how hazy its internal workings are. Even the most basic questions are surprisingly difficult to answer, such as how much of the stuff does China actually produce?
The official figures have always been problematic, but the divergence with reality has grown ever wider over the past year.
Which is why the International Aluminium Institute (IAI), the publisher of production figures for the rest of the world, is changing the way it counts Chinese production.
Graphic on China's aluminium production, the official version and the unofficial version: tmsnrt.rs/2Lna0QS LIES, DAMN LIES, AND...
The IAI’s monthly bulletins on global aluminium production have for many years used data supplied by the China Nonferrous Metals Industry Association (CNIA).
CNIA is a government association, which should lend authority to its figures. The same applies to the National Bureau of Statistics, which also publishes monthly run rates.
The two official counts haven’t always tallied in the past, but they have run broadly in tandem over the past couple of years.
Unfortunately, both have displayed the same propensity towards monthly volatility and been subject to occasional huge revisions, most recently in January 2016, when CNIA added more than four million tonnes of production back into the historical figures for 2011 to 2014.
That’s a lot of aluminium to go statistically missing. And a lot more went missing last year, to the point that the IAI’s own adjustment to the CNIA count amounted to 3.65 million tonnes.
The IAI is now going to provide its own estimate, using information supplied by CNIA as well as state research group Beijing Antaike, local analyst Aladinny and the non-Chinese research house CRU and, potentially, others.
Based on this new methodology, the IAI estimates China’s aluminium output was 2.96 million tonnes in April, equivalent to 56 percent of total global production. COUNTING PROBLEMS
But how is it that two of China’s state agencies, CNIA and Antaike, can’t agree on how much aluminium the country produces?
Aluminium smelters aren’t clandestine back-yard operations. Or at least they haven’t been since Beijing forced the closure of smaller plants more than a decade ago.
Modern Chinese smelters are huge, literally too big to miss, even from satellite imagery.
Is the Chinese government massaging the figures to appease international criticism of its growing dominance of the supply chain? Conspiracy theorists would love to think so, but why would it merely open up statistical gaps that invite the curious to explore.
The truth is almost certainly more complex and more chaotic.
One part of the conundrum may be down to the way the Chinese aluminium sector has evolved, raw production capacity being vertically integrated with semi-manufactured products capacity.
Those big 2016 revisions, for example, were down to one of China’s largest producers failing to report any aluminium production because the metal had all been transformed into products and was no longer only aluminium, strictly speaking.
Several Western producers do the same in their public accounts because what comes out of their plants isn’t crude metal but aluminium wheels, tubes or structures.
Such nuances are further complicated by the increasing use of “hot metal” transfers between Chinese smelters and product makers, meaning that aluminium can literally melt before being counted.
But the real statistical damage was done by Beijing’s move last year to eliminate what it designated as “illegal” capacity, meaning that built without the full panoply of permits.
That’s when the gap between analysts’ and official tallies started yawning ever wider.
“Illegal capacity” dropped out of the official figures from one month to the next in a statistical adjustment that bears no reality to how long it takes a smelter to wind down production.
If it wound down production at all.
Systemic under-reporting of so-called illegal capacity by operators to authorities would go a long way to explaining the statistical mists that have clouded China’s aluminium output ever since Beijing’s supply-side reforms swept into the sector.
The ability to offset closures of such capacity against mandated winter heating season closures may well have added a whole new dimension to the counting game. CHINA ALUMINIUM INC?
Whatever the detailed mathematical workings, the key takeaway is that if state statisticians are struggling to count how much aluminium China produces, then so is Beijing.
It’s easy to think of China’s aluminium sector as a single leviathan entity, operating efficiently under the watchful eye of the state. But China’s aluminium producers are split along multiple fault lines — between state and private ownership, between “clean” hydro and “dirty” coal power, between “old” east coast and “new” northwestern. And more recently: between “illegal” and “legal”.
Beijing has long struggled to exert full control over its fractious aluminium sector, which is one of the reasons it has grown so monstrous.
The current drive to eliminate capacity is the most serious attempt yet, but it is still very much a messy work in progress and subject to all sorts of pushback and wheeling-dealing from operators and regional governments.
Statistical clarity has been lost in this chaotic reform process.
The IAI’s decision to move from a single set of officially sanctioned figures to a multiple-source estimate is a recognition of the confused reality.
But remember, when it comes to how much aluminium the world’s biggest producer actually produces, it will only be an estimate.
The opinions expressed here are those of the author, a columnist for Reuters. Editing by David Goodman | ashraq/financial-news-articles | https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-aluminium-china-ahome/commentary-why-is-chinas-aluminium-output-so-hard-to-count-idUKKCN1IN1O3 |
WASHINGTON (AP) — Just over decade ago, the first inklings of the coming recession emerged as a housing bubble fueled by scant regulation, low-interest rates and easy credit gradually began to crater and soon would take the rest of the economy along for the painful ride.
By the time the Great Recession ended in June 2009, almost no one was spared.
Home prices fell 30 percent on average, the unemployment rate nearly doubled and the S&P 500 lost about half its value. The net worth of U.S. households and nonprofit organizations fell by nearly $14 trillion, about 20 percent.
In the midst of a presidential election, Washington struggled in its response. The bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers and the takeover of Merrill Lynch turned the spotlight on Democratic Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois and Republican Sen. John McCain even brighter, with McCain's assertion that the "the fundamentals of our economy are strong" used to depict him as out of touch.
After the economy stabilized, Congress shifted from economic stimulus and bailouts to establishing the kind of regulatory framework that might keep another Great Recession from happening. The result was the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010.
On Tuesday, Congress voted to roll back some key elements of the law. A look at the background of the legislation and what's being changed.
REPUBLICANS DON'T LIKE DODD-FRANK
In June 2010, the House passed the financial regulatory overhaul by a vote of 237-192. Only three Republicans sided with the vast majority of Democratic members in support of the bill.
Two weeks later, the Senate passed the bill 60-39. This time, only two Republicans voted for the bill, Sens. Olympia Snowe of Maine and Scott Brown of Massachusetts. But that was just enough to overcome the procedural hurdles that can bring major legislation to a crashing halt in the Senate.
Obama signed Dodd-Frank into law on July 21, 2010: "In the end, our financial system only works — our market is only free — when there are clear rules and basic safeguards that prevent abuse, that check excess, that ensure that it is more profitable to play by the rules than to game the system," Obama said. "And that's what these reforms are designed to achieve — no more, no less."
WHAT DOES DODD-FRANK DO?
Under the act, large banks undergo "stress tests" to ensure they have enough capital necessary to absorb losses during an economic crisis. The law also put into place strict limits on how commercial banks could invest capital in speculative investments.
Dodd-Frank also established a process when the federal government could break-up and wind down a failing financial company whose failure threatens financial stability in the United States. And it established a new agency with a mission of ensuring that banks and other financial companies don't abuse consumers.
That's just a small snapshot of the changes put into place through the nearly 2,300-page bill.
WHO IS DODD AND WHO IS FRANK?
Rep. Barney Frank was the top Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee. When the financial crisis hit, the Massachusetts lawmaker worked closely with the Bush administration to enact a historic bailout of the nation's financial system so that the government could purchase as much as $700 billion in troubled assets to stabilize banks and get them lending again. Once the crisis began to subside, he turned his attention to an overhaul of the entire financial services industry. Frank was renowned for his knowledge of public policy and parliamentary rules, but also for his gruff, piercing criticism for those who disagreed with him. He declined to seek re-election in 2012 after serving 16 terms.
Sen. Christopher Dodd was the chairman of the Senate's Banking committee. Dodd announced in January 2010 that he would not seek re-election once his term ended, and he led the debate on the Senate side without fear of how it would harm his political standing. His home state of Connecticut counts several of the insurance companies that were shaken in the crisis.
WHAT IS CHANGING?
The Republican-led legislation, pushed by Wall Street banks as well as regional banks and smaller institutions, raises the threshold at which banks are deemed so large that a failure would cause major damage to the wider economy. The bill makes a fivefold increase, to $250 billion, in the threshold of assets at which banks are deemed to pose a potential threat if they fail.
Backers of the legislation say it will spur the economy by increasing lending, easing the regulatory burden on small and medium-sized banks. Critics argue that it increases the chances of future taxpayer bailouts like the ones that followed the financial crisis.
WILL THE PRESIDENT SIGN THE BILL?
That's expected. The bill, which garnered some Democratic support in the House and Senate, is seen as a legislative victory for Trump. During his campaign, he repeatedly attacked the Dodd-Frank Act as a "disaster" that had crimped lending and stifled the economy's ability to grow by imposing burdensome regulations.
Associated Press writer Marcy Gordon contributed to this report. | ashraq/financial-news-articles | https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/22/the-associated-press-ap-explains-congress-moves-to-roll-back-dodd-frank-law.html |
May 2 (Reuters) - AGNC Investment Corp:
* ANNOUNCES AMENDMENT TO MTGE MANAGEMENT AGREEMENT IN CONNECTION WITH PROPOSED ACQUISITION OF MTGE INVESTMENT CORP. BY ANNALY CAPITAL MANAGEMENT, INC.
* TRANSACTION IS SUBJECT TO CUSTOMARY CLOSING CONDITIONS AND IS EXPECTED TO CLOSE IN Q3 OF 2018
* AGNC INVESTMENT- ADDITION TO REGULAR MONTHLY MANAGEMENT FEES PAYABLE FOR ONGOING SERVICE, MTGE MANAGEMENT WILL BE PAID TERMINATION FEE OF $41.7 MILLION Source text for Eikon: Further company coverage:
| ashraq/financial-news-articles | https://www.reuters.com/article/brief-agnc-investment-announces-amendmen/brief-agnc-investment-announces-amendment-to-mtge-management-agreement-in-connection-with-proposed-acquisition-of-latter-idUSASC09ZAD |
SAN DIEGO, May 10, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Halozyme Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ: HALO), a biotechnology company developing novel oncology and drug-delivery therapies, today reported financial results and recent highlights for the first quarter ended March 31.
"Reflecting the enthusiasm and opportunity for competitive differentiation that ENHANZE may provide, in the first quarter we supported our partners in planning for initiation of an unprecedented number of clinical study starts in 2018, including two additional Phase 1 studies that were not included in our forecast at the beginning of the year," said Dr. Helen Torley, president and chief executive officer. "The momentum we have with ENHANZE reinforces our conviction for the approximately $1 billion royalty revenue potential we outlined in January.
"For PEGPH20, we currently project we will achieve the target number of Progression-Free Survival (PFS) events in HALO-301 between December 2018 and February 2019. Upon achieving the target number of PFS events, final data collection and the steps required for database lock prior to the interim analysis will be initiated. With enrollment at the end of April on track with more than 350 patients, we continue to project approximately 500 patients will have been enrolled by year-end."
First Quarter 2018 and Recent Highlights include:
Two new ENHANZE Phase 1 clinical studies now planned for initiation in 2018 by collaboration partners, a result of momentum generated through new agreements in 2017. The eight ENHANZE-partnered products expected to be in a clinical study in 2018 is an increase from the company's forecast in January of six. Collaboration partner Bristol-Myers Squibb planning to initiate two Phase 1 studies in 2018 , including a new study of an undisclosed target with Halozyme's ENHANZE technology planned for Q2 and a study of nivolumab with ENHANZE planned for Q3. Among the products in clinical study, Janssen continues in multiple ongoing trials of a subcutaneous formulation of DARZALEX ® (daratumumab) in support of plans for commercialization . Halozyme's ENHANZE technology has the potential to enable a 15-ml injection to be delivered in five minutes or less. The ongoing or planned trials in patients with Multiple Myeloma, Amyloidosis and Smoldering Myeloma include four Phase 3 studies and two earlier stage studies. Continued progress screening and enrolling patients in the HALO-301 study of PEGPH20 in combination with ABRAXANE ® (nab-paclitaxel) and gemcitabine in first-line metastatic pancreas cancer patients with high levels of tumor hyaluronan (HA-High). An interim analysis will be conducted for the first primary endpoint of PFS when the target number of events has been reached, which the company currently projects will occur between December 2018 and February 2019. Upon achieving the target number of PFS events, final data collection and the steps required for database lock prior to the interim analysis will be initiated. Acceptance of an abstract for poster presentation at the 2018 American Society of Clinical Oncology Annual Meeting examining Extracellular Matrix Circulating Peptide Biomarkers as Potential Predictors of Survival in Patients with Untreated Metastatic Pancreatic Ductal Adenocarcinoma Receiving Pegvorhyaluronidase Alfa (PEGPH20), nab-Paclitaxel and Gemcitabine.
First Quarter 2018 Financial Highlights
Revenue for the first quarter was $30.9 million compared to $29.6 million for the first quarter of 2017. The year-over-year increase was driven by 50 percent growth in royalties on a reported basis from partner sales of Herceptin ® (trastuzumab) SC, MabThera ® (rituximab) SC, RITUXAN HYCELA™ and HYQVIA ® (Immune Globulin Infusion 10% (Human) with Recombinant Human Hyaluronidase), offset by the expected decrease in bulk rHuPH20 sales to partners and research and development reimbursements. Revenue for the first quarter included $20.9 million in royalties, $3.4 million in sales of bulk rHuPH20 primarily for use in manufacturing collaboration products and $3.4 million in HYLENEX ® recombinant (hyaluronidase human injection) product sales. Research and development expenses for the first quarter were $38 million, compared to $36.9 million for the first quarter of 2017. Selling, general and administrative expenses for the first quarter were $13.6 million, compared to $12.6 million for the first quarter of 2017. The increase was primarily due to personnel expenses, including stock compensation, for the period. Net loss for the first quarter was $27.5 million, or $0.19 per share, compared to net loss in the first quarter of 2017 of $32.9 million, or $0.26 per share. Cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities were $433.7 million at March 31, 2018, compared to $469.2 million at December 31, 2017.
Financial Outlook for 2018
Halozyme reiterated its financial guidance of:
Net revenue of $115 million to $125 million, including 25 to 30 percent royalty growth; Operating expenses of $230 million to $240 million; Operating cash burn of $75 million to $85 million; and Year-end cash balance of $305 million to $315 million.
Webcast and Conference Call
Halozyme will webcast its Quarterly Update Conference Call for the first quarter of 2018 today, Thursday, May 10 at 4:30 p.m. ET/1:30 p.m. PT. Dr. Torley will lead the call, which will be webcast live through the "Investors" section of Halozyme's corporate website and a recording made available following the close of the call. To access the webcast and additional documents related to the call, please visit halozyme.com approximately fifteen minutes prior to the call to register, download and install any necessary audio software. The call may also be accessed by dialing (877) 410-5657 (domestic callers) or (334) 323-7224 (international callers) using passcode 769890. A telephone replay will be available after the call by dialing (877) 919-4059 (domestic callers) or (334) 323-0140 (international callers) using replay ID number 68917761.
About Halozyme
Halozyme Therapeutics is a biotechnology company focused on developing and commercializing novel oncology therapies that target the tumor microenvironment. Halozyme's lead proprietary program, investigational drug pegvorhyaluronidase alfa (PEGPH20), applies a unique approach to targeting solid tumors, allowing increased access of co-administered cancer drug therapies to the tumor in animal models. PEGPH20 is currently in development for metastatic pancreatic cancer, non-small cell lung cancer, gastric cancer, metastatic breast cancer and has potential across additional cancers in combination with different types of cancer therapies. In addition to its proprietary product portfolio, Halozyme has established value-driving partnerships with leading pharmaceutical companies including Roche, Baxalta, Pfizer, Janssen, AbbVie, Lilly, Bristol-Myers Squibb and Alexion for its ENHANZE ® drug delivery technology. Halozyme is headquartered in San Diego. For more information visit www.halozyme.com .
Safe Harbor Statement
In addition to historical information, the statements set forth above include (including, without limitation, statements concerning the Company's future expectations and plans for growth in 2018, entering into new collaboration agreements, the development and commercialization of product candidates, including timing of clinical trial results announcements and future development and commercial activities of our collaboration partners, the potential benefits and attributes of such product candidates and expected financial outlook for 2018) that involve risk and uncertainties that could cause actual results to those in the The are typically, but not always, identified through use of the words "believe," "enable," "may," "will," "could," "intends," "estimate," "anticipate," "plan," "predict," "probable," "potential," "possible," "should," "continue," and other words of similar meaning. Actual results could the expectations contained in as a result of several factors, including unexpected expenditures and costs, unexpected fluctuations or changes in revenues, including revenues from collaborators, unexpected delays in entering into new collaboration agreements, unexpected results or delays in development of product candidates, including delays in clinical trial patient enrollment and development activities of our collaboration partners, and regulatory review, regulatory approval requirements, unexpected adverse events and competitive conditions. These and other factors that may result in differences are discussed in greater detail in the Company's Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on May 10, 2018.
Halozyme Therapeutics, Inc.
Condensed Consolidated Statements of Operations
(Unaudited)
(In thousands, except per share amounts)
Three Months Ended
March 31,
2018
2017
Revenues:
Royalties
$
20,944
$
13,982
Product sales, net
6,801
11,434
Revenues under collaborative agreements
3,127
4,152
Total revenues
30,872
29,568
Operating expenses:
Cost of product sales
3,052
7,544
Research and development
37,976
36,935
Selling, general and administrative
13,556
12,615
54,584
57,094
Operating loss
(23,712)
(27,526)
Other income (expense):
Investment and other income, net
1,668
287
Interest expense
(5,230)
(5,448)
Net loss before income taxes
(27,274)
(32,687)
Income tax expense
187
210
Net loss
$
(27,461)
$
(32,897)
Net loss per share:
Basic and diluted
$
(0.19)
$
(0.26)
Shares used in computing net loss per share:
Basic and diluted
142,656
128,615
Halozyme Therapeutics, Inc.
Condensed Consolidated Balance Sheets
(Unaudited)
(In thousands)
March 31,
2018
December 31,
2017
ASSETS
Current assets:
Cash and cash equivalents
$
98,012
$
168,740
Marketable securities, available-for-sale
335,682
300,474
Accounts receivable, net
26,574
22,133
Inventories
4,393
5,146
Prepaid expenses and other assets
19,809
13,879
Total current assets
484,470
510,372
Property and equipment, net
4,937
3,520
Prepaid expenses and other assets
5,562
5,553
Restricted cash
500
500
Total assets
$
495,469
$
519,945
LIABILITIES AND STOCKHOLDERS' EQUITY
Current liabilities:
Accounts payable
$
3,628
$
7,948
Accrued expenses
31,889
39,601
Deferred revenue, current portion
1,247
6,568
Current portion of long-term debt, net
82,460
77,211
Total current liabilities
119,224
131,328
Deferred revenue, net of current portion
6,006
54,297
Long-term debt, net
102,696
125,140
Other long-term liabilities
2,479
814
Stockholders' equity:
Common stock
144
143
Additional paid-in capital
744,359
731,044
Accumulated other comprehensive loss
(870)
(450)
Accumulated deficit
(478,569)
(522,371)
Total stockholders' equity
265,064
208,366
$
495,469
$
519,945
Contacts:
Jim Mazzola
858-704-8122
[email protected]
Chris Burton
858-704-8352
[email protected]
View original content with multimedia: http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/halozyme-reports-first-quarter-2018-results-300646576.html
SOURCE Halozyme Therapeutics, Inc. | ashraq/financial-news-articles | http://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/10/pr-newswire-halozyme-reports-first-quarter-2018-results.html |
A federal jury found Autonomy Corp.’s former financial chief guilty of falsifying financial statements and exaggerating the British software maker’s value before its sale to Hewlett-Packard for $11 billion in 2011.
If upheld, the fraud conviction of Sushovan Hussain after a six-week trial in San Francisco would offer some vindication to H-P executives who have long alleged Autonomy’s management cooked the books before one of its biggest acquisitions.
... | ashraq/financial-news-articles | https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-jury-convicts-former-autonomy-cfo-of-fraud-in-h-p-deal-1525134860 |
May 8 (Reuters) - Merrimack Pharmaceuticals Inc:
* Q1 OPERATING LOSS PER SHARE $1.33 * THREE CLINICAL READOUTS EXPECTED IN 2018, INCLUDING DATA FROM TWO RANDOMIZED PHASE 2 STUDIES
* MERRIMACK - BELIEVE CASH,CASH EQUIVALENTS OF $76.3 MILLION AS OF MARCH 31&SOME MILESTONE PAYMENTS ANTICIPATED FROM SHIRE TO BE ENOUGH TO FUND INTO H2 2019 Source text for Eikon: Further company coverage:
| ashraq/financial-news-articles | https://www.reuters.com/article/brief-merrimack-pharmaceuticals-reports/brief-merrimack-pharmaceuticals-reports-q1-operating-loss-per-share-of-1-33-idUSASC0A0CW |
SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., May 11, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Denali Therapeutics Inc. (NASDAQ:DNLI), a biopharmaceutical company developing a broad portfolio of therapeutic candidates for neurodegenerative diseases, today reported financial results for the first quarter ended March 31, 2018.
First Quarter 2018 Financial Results
For the three months ended March 31, 2018, Denali reported a net loss of $23.7 million, compared with a net loss for the three months ended March 31, 2017 of $21.3 million.
Collaboration Revenue was $0.6 million for the three months ended March 31, 2018, with no revenue recognized for the three months ended March 31, 2017. The increase was due to revenue recognized under the Option and Collaboration Agreement with Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited, which was entered into in January 2018.
Total research and development expenses were $20.8 million for the three months ended March 31, 2018 compared to $18.5 million for the three months ended March 31, 2017, including non-cash stock-based compensation of $1.7 million and $0.5 million in the first quarter of 2018 and 2017, respectively. The increase in total research and development expenses of $2.3 million was primarily attributable to an increase in personnel related expenses, including stock-based compensation, and an increase in lab consumable costs and facilities related expenses. The main drivers of these increases are an increase in research and development headcount and the increased value of Denali's common stock.
General and administrative expenses were $5.6 million for the three months ended March 31, 2018 compared to $3.3 million for the three months ended March 31, 2017, including non-cash stock-based compensation of $1.2 million and $0.2 million in the first quarter of 2018 and 2017, respectively. The increase in total general and administrative expenses of $2.3 million was primarily attributable to an increase in personnel related expenses, including stock-based compensation, and an increase in legal and professional service expenses. The main drivers of these increases are an increase in general and administrative headcount and the increased value of Denali's common stock, as well as the increased professional services required as a public company.
Cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities were $592.8 million as of March 31, 2018, compared to $467.0 million as of December 31, 2017. The increase of $125.8 million was primarily attributable to $155.0 million in cash received related to the Option and Collaboration Agreement and Stock Purchase Agreement with Takeda.
About Denali Therapeutics
Denali is a biopharmaceutical company developing a broad portfolio of therapeutic candidates for neurodegenerative diseases. Denali pursues new treatments by rigorously assessing genetically validated targets, engineering delivery across the blood-brain barrier and guiding development with biomarker monitoring to demonstrate target engagement and select patients. Denali is based in South San Francisco. For additional information, please visit www.denalitherapeutics.com .
Denali Therapeutics Inc.
Condensed Consolidated Statements of Operations
(Unaudited)
(In thousands, except per share amounts)
Three Months Ended
March 31, 2018 2017 Collaboration revenue $ 641 $ — Operating expenses: Research and development 20,819 18,470 General and administrative 5,570 3,274 Total operating expenses 26,389 21,744 Loss from operations (25,748 ) (21,744 ) Interest income, net 2,070 424 Net loss $ (23,678 ) $ (21,320 ) Net loss per share, basic and diluted $ (0.26 ) $ (2.36 ) Weighted average number of shares outstanding, basic and diluted 89,560,576 9,017,425 Denali Therapeutics Inc.
Condensed Consolidated Balance Sheet Data
(Unaudited)
(In thousands)
March 31,
2018 December 31,
2017 Assets Current assets: Cash and cash equivalents $ 44,001 $ 218,375 Short-term marketable securities 329,401 187,851 Prepaid expenses and other current assets 4,020 3,381 Total current assets 377,422 409,607 Long-term marketable securities 219,406 60,750 Property and equipment, net 14,860 14,923 Other non-current assets 2,265 1,441 Total assets $ 613,953 $ 486,721 Liabilities, convertible preferred stock and stockholders’ equity Current liabilities: Accounts payable $ 1,377 $ 2,716 Accrued liabilities 4,425 5,364 Accrued compensation 1,994 5,166 Contract Liability 8,434 — Deferred rent 874 855 Other current liabilities 63 63 Total current liabilities 17,167 14,164 Contract liability, less current portion 51,519 — Deferred rent, less current portion 6,051 6,294 Other non-current liabilities 188 467 Total liabilities 74,925 20,925 Total stockholders’ equity 539,028 465,796 Total liabilities and stockholders’ equity $ 613,953 $ 486,721 Contact:
Morgan Warners
(202) 337-0808
[email protected]
Source:Denali Therapeutics Inc. | ashraq/financial-news-articles | http://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/11/globe-newswire-denali-therapeutics-reports-first-quarter-2018-financial-results.html |
May 1 (Reuters) - Northern Dynasty Minerals Ltd:
* NORTHERN DYNASTY PROVIDES UPDATE ON PROPOSED TRANSACTION WITH FIRST QUANTUM MINERALS
* NORTHERN DYNASTY MINERALS - AGREED TO EXTEND DEADLINE DATE OF FRAMEWORK AGREEMENT WITH FIRST QUANTUM MINERALS LTD. TO MAY 31 Source text for Eikon: Further company coverage:
| ashraq/financial-news-articles | https://www.reuters.com/article/brief-northern-dynasty-provides-update-o/brief-northern-dynasty-provides-update-on-proposed-deal-with-first-quantum-minerals-idUSASC09YI8 |
VANCOUVER, British Columbia, May 02, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The following issues have been halted by IIROC / L'OCRCVM a suspendu la negociation des titres suivants:
Company / Société : West African Resources Limited TSX-Venture Symbol / Symbole à la Bourse de croissance TSX : WAF Reason / Motif : At the Request of the Company Pending News / À la demande de la société en attendant une nouvelle Halt Time (ET) / Heure de la suspension (HE) 9 :42 IIROC can make a decision to impose a temporary suspension of trading in a security of a publicly listed company, usually in anticipation of a material news announcement by the company. Trading halts are issued based on the principle that all investors should have the same timely access to important company information. IIROC is the national self-regulatory organization which oversees all investment dealers and trading activity on debt and equity marketplaces in Canada.
L'OCRCVM peut prendre la decision d'imposer une suspension provisoire des negociations sur le titre d'une societe cotee en bourse, habituellement en prevision d'une annonce importante de la part de la societe. Les suspensions de negociations sont imposees suivant le principe que tous les investisseurs devraient avoir un acces egal et simultane a l'information importante au sujet des societes dans lesquelles ils investissent. L'OCRCVM est l'organisme d'autoreglementation national qui surveille l'ensemble des societes de courtage et l'ensemble des operations effectuees sur les marches boursiers et les marches de titres d'emprunt au Canada.
Please note that IIROC is not able to provide any additional information regarding a specific trading halt. Information is limited to general enquiries only.
Veuillez prendre note que l'OCRCVM n'est pas en mesure de fournir d'informations supplementaires au sujet d'une suspension des negociations en particulier. L'information est restreinte aux questions generales.
IIROC Inquiries
1-877-442-4322 (Option 2)
Source:Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada | ashraq/financial-news-articles | http://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/02/globe-newswire-iiroc-trading-halt-suspension-de-la-negociation-par-locrcvm--waf.html |
May 14, 2018 / 8:16 PM / Updated 23 minutes ago Four Egyptian workers killed by land mine near new capital - sources Reuters Staff 1 Min Read
CAIRO (Reuters) - Four Egyptian workers were killed and two injured, when a land mine exploded east of Cairo in an area where the government is constructing a new administrative capital, security sources said.
The sources said the mine was likely a remnant of the 1973 war Egypt fought with Israel for control of the Sinai peninsula.
Egypt’s ambitious plan to construct a new metropolis 45 km (28 miles) east of Cairo was announced in March 2015 as part of a plan to lure back foreign investors who fled after its 2011 uprising. Reporting by Ahmed Mohamed Hassan; Writing by Eric Knecht; Editing by Andrew Roche | ashraq/financial-news-articles | https://in.reuters.com/article/egypt-blast/four-egyptian-workers-killed-by-land-mine-near-new-capital-sources-idINKCN1IF2TF |
CNBC.com ReutersTV | Reuters Facebook's CEO Mark Zuckerberg answers questions about the improper use of millions of users' data by a political consultancy, at the European Parliament in Brussels, Belgium, in this still image taken from Reuters TV May 22, 2018
Mark Zuckerberg failed to answer a lot of questions from members of the European Parliament Tuesday — largely due to time constraints and a bizarre meeting format that let the Facebook founder and CEO peddle talking points.
"I mean I asked you six yes-and-no questions. I got not a single answer," Belgian European Parliament member Philippe Lamberts said at the conclusion of the meeting.
Zuckerberg met with European Union leaders for his third appearance before regulators to address Facebook 's Cambridge Analytica scandal. EU officials, who have historically been tougher on Silicon Valley and more concerned about privacy than their U.S. counterparts, pitched tough questions on shadow profiles, data tracking and Facebook's market power.
Members of the European Parliament asked questions in bulk for the first 60-plus minutes while Zuckerberg took notes. He began addressing all the questions at once with just 7 minutes remaining in the allotted time.
"The questions were really strong. And then [Zuckerberg] basically went on kind of a five or 10-minute rehearsed, big-theme talking point. And then said, 'Oh we're 15 minutes over, peace out,' and headed for the jet," NYU professor and vocal tech critic Scott Galloway told CNBC's "Closing Bell" after the meeting.
"I was saying this morning, it felt like prom night for me," Galloway said. "A lot of expectations, and now I'm just in a haze of disappointment and unmet expectations."
Zuckerberg acknowledged the time limitations and attempted to close the meeting about 15 minutes after it was scheduled to end — to the clear exasperation of several EU officials.
"There were a lot of specific questions that I didn't get to specifically answer," Zuckerberg acknowledged as the meeting broke up. "I think I was able to address the high-level areas."
A Facebook representative was not immediately available to comment on the meeting format after its conclusion. 'It would be good if you say at least one word to that.'
Tuesday's meeting comes after Zuckerberg spent 10 grueling hours before the U.S. Congress last month during which members of Congress asked about the fundamentals of online advertising and basic functionality of Facebook's platforms.
Their European counterparts appeared largely more knowledgeable and asked specific, direct questions.
The parliamentary member from London asked about so-called shadow profiles, which Facebook creates and stores on non-Facebook users through pixels and plug-ins across the internet. Facebook earlier this month said it would offer users the option to disassociate that data from their profiles , but it has not made clear how and if non-Facebook users can prevent that collection altogether.
"Is it morally acceptable do you think in your opinion to collect non-Facebook users data without them knowing what you do with it?" parliamentary member Syed Kamall asked.
Zuckerberg was later pressed to address shadow profiles — with brief shouts across the meeting room — at which point he said it was important for Facebook's community to keep that data on non-users before abruptly switching subjects.
One official poked fun at Zuckerberg's history of privacy scandals and apologizing: "I think in total you apologized now 15 or 16 times [in] the last decade. You started in 2003 and every year you have one or other wrongdoing or problem with Facebook and you have to face the reality and to say sorry and to say you're going to fix it," Guy Verhofstadt from Belgium said. "Are you capable to fix it?"
Another questioner asked about data sharing between Facebook and its secure messaging app, WhatsApp, and how the recently passed GDPR data regulations would affect them.
"I think it's a very important question this round," Jan Philipp Albrecht of Germany said after Zuckerberg failed to address the question. "It would be good if you say at least one word to that."
—CNBC's Anita Balakrishnan contributed to this report. | ashraq/financial-news-articles | https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/22/mark-zuckerberg-didnt-answer-a-lot-of-eu-leaders-questions.html |
May 7 (Reuters) - Red Lion Hotels Corp:
* RED LION HOTELS CORP - ON MAY 1, UNIT ENTERED INTO AMENDED, RESTATED PURCHASE DEAL WITH KNIGHTS FRANCHISE SYSTEMS, WYNDHAM HOTEL GROUP, AMONG OTHERS
* RED LION HOTELS - PURCHASE AGREEMENT AMENDS AND RESTATES PURCHASE AGREEMENT ENTERED INTO BY SAME PARTIES ON APRIL 3, 2018 - SEC FILING
* RED LION HOTELS - PURCHASE AGREEMENT PROVIDES REMAINDER OF PURCHASE PRICE TO BE PAID IN CASH AT CLOSING
* RED LION HOTELS CORP - CONSISTENT WITH ORIGINAL AGREEMENT, AGGREGATE PURCHASE PRICE REMAINS $27 MILLION
* RED LION HOTELS CORP - PURSUANT TO PURCHASE AGREEMENT, BUYER PAID $3 MILLION DEPOSIT TOWARDS PURCHASE PRICE TO WHG ON MAY 1, 2018 Source text: ( bit.ly/2FQXEfH )
Our | ashraq/financial-news-articles | https://www.reuters.com/article/brief-red-lion-hotels-corp-unit-entered/brief-red-lion-hotels-corp-unit-entered-into-amended-purchase-deal-with-knights-franchise-systems-wyndham-hotel-group-among-others-idUSFWN1SE0ZH |
LISBON/BARCELONA (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - After learning that three babies died in a government hospital in the Sierra Leone city of Bo last November when a power cut switched off machinery keeping them alive, London-based energy adviser Michael Liebreich decided to act.
He set up Project Bo to provide a solar electricity and battery system to supply uninterrupted power to the hospital’s oxygen devices and baby “warmers”.
The campaign has so far raised just over three-quarters of the £100,000 ($135,830) it is seeking.
A shift in thinking is needed to channel more funding to places where a lack of clean, reliable power is putting babies in danger and holding people back, Liebreich told a Lisbon conference on improving access to energy this month.
“The economic value of saving that life is currently not financeable,” said the founder of Bloomberg New Energy Finance, urging greater efforts to work out how it could be turned into something “markets can spray money at”.
Shine, an investment campaign officially launched at the Portugal forum, aims to do just that.
It brings together more than 35 faith, financial and philanthropic organizations - including the IKEA Foundation, the World Evangelical Alliance and Oikocredit, a cooperative and social impact investor - that will galvanize new money and expand solutions to boost energy access in the world’s poorest communities.
U.N. data showed last week that roughly 1 billion people on the planet still have no electric power, while about 3 billion cook with polluting fuels such as kerosene, crop waste and dung. [nL8N1S94S5]
Investments by governments and business are lagging far behind the amounts needed to close the gap in providing sustainable and affordable energy to everyone by the U.N. deadline of 2030.
Experts estimate that would require just 0.2 percent of global gross domestic product.
While the energy sector receives some $2 trillion in investments each year, only $13 billion of that prioritizes those living without electricity, according to Shine.
‘PATIENT’ MONEY Ellen Dorsey, executive director of Wallace Global Fund, a private foundation and one of the founding partners in the campaign, said Shine - which aims to mobilize $100 million this year - will help investors put their money to good use in getting power to the world’s poorest people.
“We needed to have a champion, a constituency to stand up and say the billion (people) must be reached first,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation from Washington DC.
Virtually all the 17 Sustainable Development Goals - from ending poverty and hunger, to providing healthcare for all - will be influenced by people’s access to energy, she added.
Wallace Global Fund has committed to put 1 percent of its capital into impact investments in energy access, and to provide at least $1 million in grants each year with a focus on helping women in sub-Saharan Africa.
Rachel Kyte, CEO of Sustainable Energy for All (SEforALL), a U.N.-founded body which organized the Lisbon forum, said entrepreneurs trying to build local markets for small-scale solar systems in developing countries are struggling to find capital, including from development banks.
“The money is beginning to flow from the top, but... it’s not reaching some markets and in other markets, it’s reaching (there) but it’s too expensive,” she said in an interview this week.
Shine, in which SEforALL is a partner, hopes to attract new funders that could contribute to filling those gaps - whether in geographical locations or supply chains - with low-cost “patient” capital which is invested for at least three years.
“We need to stay committed until we get the job done,” said Dorsey. “This can’t be a fad.”
Some governments - including in Mexico and Rwanda - have set up funds dedicated to boosting investment in renewables and getting electricity to those without, and are cross-subsiding those efforts with levies on large power consumers.
Meanwhile, energy investment businesses like SunFunder are starting to raise larger amounts of debt finance for companies that are building off-grid solar systems in sub-Saharan Africa, often based on pay-as-you-go technology.
In a report this month, SunFunder said “catalytic capital” from foundations and impact investors, including Facebook and The Rockefeller Foundation, had been critical in helping attract institutional investors to its debt funds, by bearing upfront risks.
SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS? Yet despite a rise in investor interest, development and energy experts in Lisbon agreed that commercial dollars are unlikely to reach the most marginalized communities any time soon - especially impoverished women.
“There is a crying need among financiers to better understand the needs of small enterprises doing the last mile,” said Lucy Stevens of development charity Practical Action, referring to companies bringing clean energy to remote areas.
Researchers spoke about the importance of helping local people develop businesses that will stimulate demand for the power generated by micro-grids using renewable energy sources.
In south Tanzania, for example, a community-run hydropower utility set up agricultural processing plants whose revenues go towards maintenance costs and subsidizing cheaper power.
But in some cases, where a sustainable business model is simply not possible, governments and development agencies may need to look at bundling access to energy into social safety nets for the poorest, said SEforALL’s Kyte and others.
Andrew Scott of the London-based Overseas Development Institute said there would always be a proportion of people who cannot afford to pay for electricity or cleaner cooking fuels.
Under social protection programs, they could be given cash transfers and vouchers, or free power connections and equipment, he added.
Kyte said “all kinds of new capital” would be needed to meet the world’s energy access targets.
To that end, the Shine campaign can link the growing ranks of philanthropists and investors looking to make a social impact with in-depth evidence on how to achieve that by supplying clean energy to the poor, she said.
“We’ve been able to converge these different conversations around ‘this is the time, this is the place, we are the people’,” she added.
Reporting by Megan Rowling @meganrowling; editing by Zoe Tabary. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, climate change, resilience, women's rights, trafficking and property rights. Visit news.trust.org/climate
| ashraq/financial-news-articles | https://www.reuters.com/article/us-global-energy-funding-analysis/social-investors-see-the-light-on-clean-energy-for-the-poor-idUSKBN1IB1FJ |
WASHINGTON—Starting next week, mom-and-pop investors will learn how much their broker made selling them bonds.
The change in practice is due to a new rule meant to curb abusive sales practices. Beginning Monday, brokers will have to say how much they pocket when they buy corporate and municipal bonds and sell them to retail investors later that day.
The... | ashraq/financial-news-articles | https://www.wsj.com/articles/starting-next-week-you-can-see-brokers-profits-from-bond-sales-1525858201 |
1:24 PM EDT
Netflix’s popular series Queer Eye is coming back for Season 2 — perhaps sooner than fans expected.
The Netflix series was renewed for a second season just two months ago, but Queer Eye is now on the fast track for a June 15 release date. Season 2 will see the “Fab Five” reunite outside the Atlanta metro area for more adventures.
“This season, the Queer Eye Fab Five return to the Georgia heartland, forging connections with communities from a wide array of backgrounds and beliefs often contrary to their own, touching on everything from self-love and faith, to immigration and how to make the perfect homemade poke bowls and more!” Netflix’s official description of Season 2 reads.
Following the reboot of the original Bravo series, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy , the new Fab Five and their expertise includes: Antoni Porowski (food and wine), Tan France (fashion), Karamo Brown (culture), Bobby Berk (interior design), and Jonathan Van Ness (grooming).
Speaking earlier this year following Queer Eye and several other Netflix shows’ renewal, Netflix vice president of content Bela Bajaria said: “These series elevate the genre with innovative takes on familiar formats. They deliver immersive and nuanced stories. They elicit so many emotions from viewers, from tears of laughter to tears of joy – and that’s just Queer Eye .” SPONSORED FINANCIAL CONTENT | ashraq/financial-news-articles | http://fortune.com/2018/05/24/when-is-queer-eye-season-2-on-netflix/ |
PARIS (Reuters) - France’s top court on Thursday authorized the extradition to Argentina of a former police officer accused of crimes against humanity during the Latin American country’s 1976-1983 “dirty war”.
Mario Sandoval, who moved to France after the fall of Argentina’s seven-year military dictatorship and obtained French citizenship in 1997, is accused by Argentine prosecutors of more than 600 human rights violations including torture.
Thursday’s ruling by the Cour de Cassation ends a five-year legal tussle. A decree permitting Sandoval’s extradition needs now to be signed by the French government.
“It is time for Mario Sandoval to face Argentine justice,” said Sophie Thonon-Wesfreid, a lawyer representing Argentina.
Sandoval’s attorney told Reuters the ruling was a “disappointment”.
A former federal police officer, Sandoval is accused of committing crimes at a secret prison where he was a specialist in fighting “subversive elements”. He denies the charges.
As many as 30,000 Argentines were murdered during the military dictatorship’s so-called dirty war against suspected leftists and political dissidents, according to human rights groups.
Reporting by Simon Carraud; writing by Richard Lough, Editing by Angus MacSwan
| ashraq/financial-news-articles | https://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-argentina-extradition/french-court-allows-ex-policemans-extradition-to-argentina-over-dirty-war-idUSKCN1IP2S0 |
CAMPBELL, Calif., May 1, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Dasher Technologies , a leading Silicon Valley-based systems integrator, today announced the promotion of Al Chien to president and hiring of John Galatea as vice president of sales. Laurie Dasher, who established the company in 1999, will continue to serve as chief executive officer.
Al Chien will serve as Dasher's president and brings nearly 30 years of enterprise tech experience. After 19 years at HP, Chien joined Dasher in 2008 as executive vice president of sales and marketing. His leadership has helped expand Dasher into one of the fastest growing IT solution providers in the country, with a 30 percent annual compounded growth rate and expansion into multiple regions in the U.S. In his last role at HP, Chien ran U.S. channel sales for the industry servers business, managing operations in excess of $2.5 billion in annual revenue and assuming sales and management roles within the channel, commercial and enterprise organizations.
"I am delighted to announce Al's new role as Dasher president and to welcome John to our executive team," said Laurie Dasher, CEO, Dasher Technologies. "Al and John are strategic hires as we put in place the leadership team that will drive Dasher through our next phase of growth. Al has been a visionary sales and marketing executive since he joined Dasher in 2008. His leadership embodies the best of Dasher's vision and values: identifying new opportunities for Dasher, while always emphasizing doing what is right for our clients. Al embodies our Dasher way."
John Galatea joins the Dasher team as vice president of sales from Juniper Networks, where he led strategic vertical and enterprise sales for five years. Throughout his career, Galatea has held leadership roles in sales, marketing and business development that have allowed him to fully understand the reseller ecosystem. His technical expertise in the networking and security spaces makes him a true visionary and key addition to the executive team.
"This is an exciting time for Dasher. We're on the precipice of evolving from the best kept secret in our industry into a household name. Dasher is a family run business that treats our clients like family, and we base that relationship on mutual trust and respect," said Al Chien, president, Dasher Technologies. "I am incredibly proud and honored to lead this team that I truly respect. Dasher goes above and beyond every single day to ensure the best customer outcomes."
About Dasher Technologies
Dasher Technologies is a premier IT solution provider that delivers expert technical resources along with trusted account executives to architect and deliver complete IT solutions and services to help our clients execute their goals, plans and objectives. Since 1999, we've helped public, private and nonprofit organizations implement technology solutions that speed and simplify their operations. Our strong technical expertise and vendor independence allow us to integrate best-of-breed software, hardware and services into a custom solution.
Dasher is a privately-held company and certified Woman Owned Business that services California, the Pacific Northwest and the Southeast. Our integration and warehouse facilities allow us to assist our clients in both national and international deployments. For more information, visit https://www.dasher.com/ .
View original content with multimedia: http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/dasher-technologies-appoints-al-chien-as-president-and-former-juniper-networks-executive-john-galatea-as-vp-of-sales-300639489.html
SOURCE Dasher Technologies | ashraq/financial-news-articles | http://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/01/pr-newswire-dasher-technologies-appoints-al-chien-as-president-and-former-juniper-networks-executive-john-galatea-as-vp-of-sales.html |
May 18 (Reuters) -
* BEIJING OFFICIAL SAYS QUALCOMM-NXP DEAL LOOKING MORE OPTIMISTIC NOW - CNBC, CITING DJ Further company coverage:
| ashraq/financial-news-articles | https://www.reuters.com/article/brief-beijing-official-says-qualcomm-nxp/brief-beijing-official-says-qualcomm-nxp-deal-looking-more-optimistic-now-cnbc-citing-dj-idUSFWN1SP0TD |
If you're a recent college graduate or headed into your senior year of school and wondering where your generation is looking for work, here's a tip: try IBM , JP Morgan Chase , Amazon , Tesla and Deloitte.
Those firms receive more entry-level job applications from college students than any other companies.
That's according to a new annual report from Handshake, a "LinkedIn" for colleges and universities. This online platform connects over 9 million students with 250,000 employers, from corporations to nonprofits and government institutions.
The data is based on 5.2 million applications that students and recent alumni across all 50 U.S. states submitted on Handshake over the past 12 months.
It may not comes as a surprise that these companies, and others like them in technology and financial services, are at the top of the list. But some other firms winning the battle for the attention of the next generation of workers aren't exactly household names.
Eighth among all companies receiving job applications for entry-level positions is Akuna Capital, a Chicago-based trading firm that has boomed during the bitcoin craze.
Drew Angerer | Getty Images Graduating students wait for the start of New York University's commencement ceremony at Yankee Stadium, May 16, 2018 in the Bronx borough of New York City. Akuna has been recruiting beyond the traditional finance/business schools, tapping talent from schools such as San Jose State University, Colorado State University and the University of South Florida.
"It's a smart recruiting tactic that allows them to find untapped talent who may not be able to afford the education at a top business school like a Penn or a Villanova, but still has the same skill set and potential as an employee," Handshake CEO Garrett Lord said in an email.
"They get to avoid the recruiting battles that unfold between the Big 4 [consulting firms EY, PwC, Accenture and KPMG] and other large financial companies that compete for talent on top campuses," Lord added.
The Handshake data is limited to companies that participate on its platform, but with 250,000 employers including all of the Fortune 1000, Handshake says that the companies investing more time and effort in recruiting and engaging students coming onto the job market are reflected in the annual report .
"These companies are the ones that see the value of investing in strong entry-level talent recruitment and understand the long-term benefit engaging graduates who will hopefully grow with their company over time," Lord wrote.
Many of these firms have strong rotational programs for interns or campus partnerships that help boost their relationship with universities and build deeper ties with students, Lord said.
Handshake Handshake operates like a 'LinkedIn' for university and college students, offering a platform where 250,000 employers across the country, including corporations, governments and nonprofits, can perform outreach and recruit the next generation of workers. One example is IBM, which partners with Handshake on virtual events to break down regional barriers in recruitment.
The platform is free to students and employers — companies are not charged to post a job or connect with a school. Handshake did launch a premium feature six months ago that allows employers to pay for additional outreach efforts and branding, but not for job postings or applications. Universities pay a low yearly fee to use Handshake.
4 new ways that students are tackling the job market In addition to the top 25 firms (see full list below), the Handshake report revealed that the current generation of college students are rewriting the rules on resume writing, and seeking new types of jobs across an increasing number of cities.
1. Quantified skills are in, traditional soft skills are going away
These terms are all out in resumes: hard worker, organized, self-motivated, reliable, quick learned, responsible, dedicated, personable. All of these words have seen a decline of between 30 percent and 60 percent.
The keywords that are seeing huge growth in the past year, measured in hundreds of percent increases: creative problem solving, client relations, team lead, front-end, visualization, community engagement.
2. The job keywords that students are searching on more
The following work terms have been the most popular in student searches in the past year, also seeing increases measured in the hundreds of percent: Remote, work study, data analysis, politics, mental health and machine learning.
3. New York, Chicago and San Francisco are the top draws, but not the only ones
College students think regionally when it comes to jobs. In the West, they want to work in San Francisco; in the Northeast, they want to work in New York; in the Midwest, they want to work in Chicago; and in the Southeast, they want to work in Atlanta. These are also the top four cities for jobs overall.
But some cities are more than pulling their weight based on population: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (No. 14 among cities); Palo Alto, California (No. 15); Cambridge, Massachusetts; (No. 16); and Orlando, Florida (No. 22).
For three of those four cities, there is a correlation with the prominence of nearby institutions of higher education — Stanford (Palo Alto), MIT and Harvard (Cambridge) and Carnegie Mellon (Pittsburgh). However, Palo Alto, Cambridge, and Pittsburgh made the top 20 rank by omitting on-campus employment and university-roles, so these numbers don't include jobs at the actual local institution. And the numbers also reflect interest in jobs within these cities from around the country, not just candidates located nearby.
"It's notable because, while cities like New York and San Francisco are still some of the most popular with students, they're also becoming so expensive that it's difficult for most recent grads," said Lord. "It may be causing them to turn to less expensive cities like Pittsburgh or Orlando to start their career."
4. The public education sector is struggling
Only 8 percent of students applying to jobs through Handshake applied to jobs in K-12 education, by far the lowest among major hiring areas beyond the private corporate sector: nonprofits (40 percent of applicants); federal agencies (30 percent of applicants); and local government (22 percent of applicants).
These findings come at a time when teacher strikes across the country have highlighted the issues of public education pay and work conditions.
"The demand for teachers is greater than the supply of students looking to enter the teaching profession," said Lord.
Full list of top 25 companies for entry-level job applications 1. IBM 2. JPMorgan Chase 3. Amazon 4. Tesla 5. Deloitte 6. EY 7. DE Shaw 8. Akuna Capital 9. BlackRock 10. Facebook 11. Microsoft 12. KPMG 13. Morgan Stanley 14. PwC 15. Goldman Sachs 16. Accenture 17. Citigroup 18. AlphaSights 19. Apple 20. McKinsey 21. Wells Fargo 22. Bank of America Merrill Lynch 23. P&G 24. Capital One 25. Barclays | ashraq/financial-news-articles | https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/22/25-firms-with-the-most-entry-level-job-applications-from-college-grads.html |
FRANKFURT, May 18 (Reuters) - German online furniture retailer Home24, which wants to challenge IKEA’s dominance of the European furniture market, said on Friday that it was planning a stock market listing, hoping to raise up to 200 million euros ($236.20 million).
Launched in 2009 in Berlin, the loss-making firm delivers furniture in seven European markets, plus Brazil. Ecommerce investor Rocket Internet holds a 43 percent stake. ($1 = 0.8467 euros) (Reporting by Emma Thomasson; editing by Tom Sims )
| ashraq/financial-news-articles | https://www.reuters.com/article/home24-ipo/germanys-home24-plans-ipo-as-seeks-to-rival-ikea-in-online-furniture-sales-idUSF9N1SA020 |
KINGSTON, Ontario, May 03, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Board of Directors of The Empire Life Insurance Company (Empire Life) (TSX:EML.PR.A) today declared the following cash dividends:
Class Record Date Payable Date Amount of
Dividend Common Shares May 17, 2018 June 8, 2018 $10.151501 Non-Cumulative Rate Reset Preferred Shares, Series 1 June 18, 2018 July 17, 2018 $0.359375 Non-Cumulative Rate Reset Preferred Shares, Series 3 June 18, 2018 July 17, 2018 $0.30625 Empire Life advises that the above referenced dividends are eligible dividends for the purposes of the Income Tax Act, Canada and any similar provincial tax legislation.
About Empire Life
Established in 1923 and a subsidiary of E-L Financial Corporation Limited, Empire Life provides individual and group life and health insurance, investment and retirement products to Canadians. Our mission is to make it simple, fast and easy for Canadians to get the investment, insurance and group benefits coverage they need to build wealth, generate income, and achieve financial security. As of March 31, 2018 Empire Life had total assets under management of $17.3 billion. Follow Empire Life on Twitter @EmpireLife or visit www.empire.ca for more information.
Contact: Laurie Swinton Director, Communication Services 613 548-1890, ext. 3374, [email protected] www.empire.ca
Source: L’Empire, Compagnie d’Assurance-Vie | ashraq/financial-news-articles | http://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/03/globe-newswire-empire-life-announces-dividends.html |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - San Francisco Fed President John Williams said on Friday that he does not see any abrupt rise in inflation happening even as price gains have risen towards the central bank’s target.
FILE PHOTO: San Francisco Federal Reserve President John Williams speaks to Reuters in San Francisco, California, U.S., September 27, 2016. REUTERS/Stephen Lam/File Photo “They’ve been picking up (inflation data), moving closer to our 2 percent trend but I don’t see any rapid increase in inflation coming, so I feel this is pretty much a ‘Goldilocks’ economy,” Williams said in an interview with broadcaster CNBC.
Williams is set to be promoted to become the head of the New York Fed, seen as the second most influential position at the U.S. central bank, on June 18.
Reporting by Lindsay Dunsmuir; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama
| ashraq/financial-news-articles | https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-fed-williams/feds-williams-i-dont-see-any-rapid-increase-in-inflation-coming-idUSKBN1I52AF |
BERLIN/FRANKFURT (Reuters) - A report that U.S. President Donald Trump has threatened to pursue German carmakers until there are no Mercedes-Benz rolling down New York’s Fifth Avenue dented shares in the luxury car manufacturers on Thursday.
FILE PHOTO: A logo of the German luxury carmaker BMW is seen during the company's annual news conference in Munich, Germany, March 21, 2018. REUTERS/Michael Dalder/File Photo An excerpt from German magazine Wirtschaftswoche’s article, which cited several unnamed European and U.S. diplomats but did not include any direct Quote: s, could not be independently verified, while a United States Embassy spokesman in Berlin referred questions to Washington.
The news and current affairs magazine said Trump had told French President Emmanuel Macron in April that he aimed to push German carmakers out of the United States altogether. Macron’s administration in Paris declined to comment on the report.
The Trump administration last week opened a trade investigation into vehicle imports, which could result in a 25 percent tariff on cars on the same “national security” grounds Washington used to impose metals duties in March..
This could destroy exports by German carmakers, which control 90 percent of the U.S. premium market and are the biggest European Union exporters of cars to the United States.
BMW owns Rolls-Royce, while Daimler has Mercedes-Benz and Volkswagen controls Bentley, Bugatti, Porsche and Audi.
Daimler, BMW and Audi declined comment. Porsche was not immediately available for comment.
BMW shares were trading 0.5 percent lower at 0939 GMT, while Daimler and VW’s shares were down 1 percent and 1.6 percent respectively, underperforming Germany’s blue-chip DAX.
Trump has railed against German carmakers before and in early 2017, in an interview with German newspaper Bild, had said he would impose 35 percent tariffs on imported cars.
At the time, the president called Germany a great car producer but said that the business relationship with the United States was an unfair one-way street.
Germany’s auto industry association VDA says its members exported 657,000 vehicles to North America last year, with total exports of vehicle components, cars, engines, as well as second-hand vehicles totalling 31.2 billion euros in 2016.
Imports from the United States to Germany amounted to 7.4 billion euros, meaning a trade deficit of 23.8 billion euros the VDA’s latest available figures show.
However, German brands also have huge factories in the United States, where they built 804,000 cars last year, VDA said, providing jobs for U.S. workers.
NATIONAL SECURITY Berlin has reacted angrily to the U.S. vehicle imports investigation, but the head of Germany’s BDI industry association Dieter Kempf on Thursday called for prudence in the growing trade tensions between the EU and the United States.
If the EU imposes countermeasures, it must expect Trump to come up with further measures, he told Deutschlandfunk radio.
EU passenger car imports from the United States were worth 6.2 billion euros ($7.3 billion) last year, while the bloc’s U.S. exports topped 37 billion euros, according to Brussels-based industry association ACEA.
The threats made to the car sector are part of a bigger trade dispute with the United States.
Trump is expected to decide on Thursday whether to end an EU exemption from tariffs on U.S. imports of steel and aluminium, a move Germany has warned could lead to a trade war.
But late on Wednesday, talks to avoid a transatlantic trade war showed no sign of a breakthrough.
German Finance Minister Olaf Scholz told Reuters there were no signs of a de-escalation and that the EU response to any tariffs must be “clear and strong and smart”.
Trump’s auto tariff is a test of Franco-German solidarity since French carmakers have hardly any U.S. sales, while German carmakers generate up to 30 percent of global sales there.
A 25 percent tariff would destroy the business case for German carmakers to export to the United States, and mean a 4.5 billion euro hit for Germany’s premium manufacturers, analysts at Evercore ISI said in a note last week.
Audi and Porsche are seen to be particularly vulnerable because they do not have U.S. factories, while Mercedes-Benz and BMW have large established plants which could more easily allow them to expand local production capacity if imports were curtailed.
Additional reporting by Jean-Baptiste Vey in Paris and Michael Nienaber in Berlin; Reporting by Madeline Chambers; Writing by Edward Taylor; editing by John Stonestreet and Alexander Smith
| ashraq/financial-news-articles | https://in.reuters.com/article/usa-trump-autos-germany/german-carmakers-hit-by-report-trump-threatens-to-drive-them-off-u-s-streets-idINKCN1IW1BB |
NAIROBI (Reuters) - Burundi suspended operations by the British Broadcasting Corporation and Voice of America on Friday, two weeks before a referendum that could extend the president’s rule for at least a decade.
The National Communication Council said it had suspended the international media organizations for six months, accusing them of breaching press laws and unprofessional conduct.
The regulator said in a statement the BBC had invited a Burundi national on its program whose remarks were “inappropriate, exaggerated, non-verified, damaging the reputation of the head of state, to ethnic hatred, to political conflict and civil disobedience.”
VOA was suspended for broadcasting on a frequency banned by the regulator, according to the statement.
The French broadcaster Radio France International and the local station Isanganiro were also cited in the statement and warned about employing more rigorous verification of sources.
VOA said it was dismayed by the ban but that its content will continue to be available in Kirundi and Kinyarwanda via shortwave channels, on the Internet and on FM transmitters located in neighboring countries.
“Our audience members count on VOA to provide factual, unbiased and objective coverage of current events, so this ban deprives the citizens of Burundi of a trusted news source during a critical time in that country,” VOA Director Amanda Bennett said in a statement.
There was no immediate comment from the BBC.
“This falls in line with the repression in Burundi as we head closer to the referendum,” said Lewis Mudge, a senior researcher in the Africa Division at Human Rights Watch. “The banning of two major sources of information for the Burundian people is worrying.
“This is happening in the context of journalists getting threatened, those reporting on some of the oppression are being muzzled.”
Burundi ranks 159th out of 180 countries on the World Press Freedom Index compiled by the advocacy group Reporters Without Borders, which says “journalists find it hard to work freely and are often harassed by security forces.”
The country is scheduled to hold a referendum on May 17 that would extend the presidential term to seven years from five. If the measure passes, President Pierre Nkurunziza, now 54 years old, would be free to run for office again in 2020.
The amendment would limit the president to two consecutive seven-year terms, but it would not take into account previous terms, potentially extending Nkurunziza’s rule to 2034.
“Conditions for holding a credible referendum deteriorate as days go by ... the regime is now afraid of the media’s force, which can derail their plan for the upcoming referendum and the 2020 elections,” said Léonce Ngendakumana, deputy chairman of the opposition party FRODEBU, the Front for Democracy in Burundi.
On Tuesday, the U.S. State Department condemned recent political violence in Burundi and expressed concern that the vote could hurt the country’s institutions. Human rights groups say they do not think the vote will take place in a free and fair climate.
Nearly 430,000 people, including opposition politicians, have fled the East African nation of 10.5 million people since Nkurunziza won a third term in a 2015 election that led to violent clashes. His foes said he had no right to run again.
Writing by Omar Mohammed, editing by Larry King
| ashraq/financial-news-articles | https://www.reuters.com/article/us-burundi-politics/burundi-bans-the-bbc-voa-two-weeks-before-referendum-idUSKBN1I51UK |
What we need from OPEC is certainty: Libby Toudouze 1 Hour Ago | ashraq/financial-news-articles | https://www.cnbc.com/video/2018/05/29/what-we-need-from-opec-is-certainty-libby-toudouze.html |
MADRID (Reuters) - Caroline Wozniacki’s bid to reclaim the world number one ranking this week ended when she lost to world number 20 Kiki Bertens in the third round of the Madrid Open on Wednesday.
2016 Rio Olympics - Tennis - Preliminary - Women's Singles First Round - Olympic Tennis Centre - Rio de Janeiro, Brazil - 06/08/2016. Kiki Bertens (NED) of Netherlands in action against Sara Errani (ITA) of Italy. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque Picture Supplied by Action Images Bertens, who reached the 2016 French Open semi-finals, beat the 27-year-old Dane 6-2 6-2 in an hour to claim the biggest scalp of her career.
Australian Open champion Wozniacki had to win the Madrid title to overhaul Simona Halep in the top spot but her defeat means the Romanian will retain first place.
Tennis - WTA Mandatory - Madrid Open - Madrid, Spain - May 7, 2018 Denmark's Caroline Wozniacki in action during her second round match against Australia's Ashley Barty REUTERS/Juan Medina Bertens’ will face five-time grand slam champion Maria Sharapova or Kristina Mladenovic of France in the last eight.
Tennis - WTA Mandatory - Madrid Open - Madrid, Spain - May 9, 2018 Romania’s Simona Halep in action during her third round match against Czech Republic’s Karolina Pliskova REUTERS/Sergio Perez Earlier on Wednesday, Halep strolled into the quarter-finals with a 6-1 6-4 win over Czech Kristyna Pliskova.
Halep, the two-time defending champion, struck 20 winners and broke Pliskova’s serve three times as she extended her winning streak in the Spanish capital to 15 straight matches.
After conceding the opener in 29 minutes, Pliskova produced a better second set but failed to deliver consistently as Halep saved all five of the break points she faced.
“I think she served much better (in the second set) and I couldn’t do much with the return,” Halep told a news conference.
“But I served well, too. I feel like it was a very good match, the hardest here. She has improved a lot since last year, we played together here, and she was a different player.”
Halep will next face Krystyna’s twin sister Karolina Pliskova, who raced past American Sloane Stephens 6-2 6-3.
Reporting by Hardik Vyas in Bengaluru; Editing by Ken Ferris
| ashraq/financial-news-articles | https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tennis-madrid-women/bertens-knocks-wozniacki-out-in-madrid-halep-strolls-into-quarters-idUSKBN1IA2D4 |
MILAN, May 28 (Reuters) - Italy’s League leader Matteo Salvini said on Monday he hoped a new government would be in place in October, in time to approve the country’s 2019 budget and avoid a vat tax hike next year.
Salvini did not specify whether he was referring to a new caretaker government led by prime-minister designate Carlo Cottarelli, or a newly elected government.
Cottarelli, an ex-IMF official, was nominated by Italy’s president on Monday to run the country until new elections could be held, sometime between September and early next year. (Reporting by Giulia Segreti Editing by Mark Bendeich)
| ashraq/financial-news-articles | https://www.reuters.com/article/italy-politics-budget/italys-league-leader-hopes-a-new-govt-can-pass-2019-budget-idUSR1N1SG01G |
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