The fourth quarter was strong for Walmart, with an apparent mix of economic growth and market share gains boosting the company to solid profit and sales numbers during the holidays. Sarah Nassauer writes in The Wall Street Journal: In the U.S., the company’s comparable sales, which exclude gas but include digital sales, rose 4.2% in the January-ended quarter, adding to a string of positive quarterly sales. Walmart got a boost from strong grocery sales, online orders, as well as holiday purchases including toys. Walmart had expected quarterly U.S. comparable sales to rise at least 3% from a … [Read more...]
Happy Presidents Day!
New Zealand’s Trees Fill China’s Mills, While U.S. Lumber is Slumps
The performance of the forestry industry couldn't be much different in New Zealand and the United States. Lucy Craymer reports on the industry at The Wall Street Journal: The U.S. lumber industry is in a rut, but halfway across the world, wood is still a hot commodity. Forestry prices in New Zealand—one of the world’s largest timber exporters—are near record highs, thanks largely to strong Chinese demand for pine-tree logs. A-grade logs for export were recently selling for 140 New Zealand dollars (US$95) a metric ton, up around 14% from September, according to market data provider … [Read more...]
Record Hiring in Canada
Despite some weak data, Canada's employers are hiring at a record pace. Paul Vieira reports in The Wall Street Journal: Employment in Canada surged in January, led by the biggest one-month private-sector hiring spree on record, while the unemployment rate climbed on a sharp increase in the number of young people looking for a job. The Canadian economy added a net 66,800 jobs in January on a seasonally adjusted basis, Statistics Canada said Friday. That easily smashed market expectations for a net jobs increase of 5,000, according to economists at Royal Bank of Canada. In the previous … [Read more...]
Earnings Predictions Scare Investors
Earnings growth has begun to slow, and investors are getting worried. Justin Lahart reports for The Wall Street Journal: The earnings slowdown owes something to last year’s corporate tax cut reaching its anniversary date: Credit Suisse strategist Jonathan Golub calculates that the tax cut added about 7 percentage points to earnings growth in the fourth quarter. The slowdown also owes something to one big company: Apple . First-quarter estimates for the iPhone maker, which accounted for over 4% of S&P 500 net income last year, have come down sharply since the company issued a … [Read more...]
Mall Space: From Retail to Logistics
With American shopping malls suffering from growing use of e-commerce by shoppers, store space that has been vacated by bankrupt retailers is being converted to space for other types of tenants. Among those new lessees are the logistics operations of the very e-commerce companies beating brick and mortar retailers into submission. CNBC's Lauren Thomas reports: An old Toys R Us store in Milwaukee is now home to Engine & Transmission Exchange, a remanufacturer for car parts. Meanwhile, six dead malls across the U.S. are either in the process of being turned into or have been revamped as … [Read more...]
What’s Happening at Deutsche Bank?
German banking giant, Deutsche Bank, has been circling the drain for some time. (Read here and here). Now, Germany is planning to back a merger between Deutsche Bank and its smaller rival Commerzbank (which is also hurting) if the two can't fix their businesses. The Wall Street Journal's Jenny Strasburg reports: Deutsche Bank AG posted a steeper-than-expected fourth-quarter loss and vowed to cut costs more aggressively as the embattled bank struggles to quell persistent speculation about its future. Friday’s results showed continued revenue declines and other signs of vulnerability, … [Read more...]
Falling Sales for Smokes Make the Case for E-Cigs Say Tobacco Companies
Sales of traditional cigarettes are falling even faster than expected. That trend is reassuring tobacco companies like Altria of the importance of their investments in e-cigarettes and other smokeless alternatives. Jennifer Maloney writes for The Wall Street Journal: Altria CEO Howard Willard on Thursday offered new projections on U.S. cigarette industry volumes, saying cigarette sales would continue to decline at a faster clip than they have in the past as smokers switch to e-cigarettes. He also said his company’s recent $12.8 billion investment in vaping startup Juul Labs Inc. would allow … [Read more...]
The Robots Stocking Shelves
Retailers are working hard to blend the advanced logistics systems they have developed to compete with Amazon with their brick and mortar locations. One area of opportunity is better management of what's in stock on the shelves at each store. Now companies are deploying robots to take stock of inventory on store shelves and send that data back to warehouses in real time to make restocking more efficient. Jennifer Smith reports in The Wall Street Journal: The complicated blending of inventories in stores and warehouses has some retailers testing the use of shelf-scanning robots that roam store … [Read more...]
Is China’s Weak Economy Hurting American Manufacturers?
Data on sales and earnings are painting a bleak picture of the Chinese economy. The trend could have an impact on U.S. manufacturers. Austen Hufford and Patrick McGroarty report for The Wall Street Journal: A growing number of industrial companies said their sales are softening in China, threatening a strong three-year run for U.S. manufacturers. Makers of everything from bulldozers to computer chips have bet heavily on expanding their business in a country of 1.4 billion people with an increasing appetite for world-class consumer goods and infrastructure. U.S. exports to China doubled … [Read more...]
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