Year: 2020

Berkshire, which acquired Precision for $32.1 billion in 2016 in its largest acquisition, said COVID-19 caused airlines to slash aircraft orders, resulting in significantly less demand for Precision’s products and revenue to fall by about one-third. It also said results may continue suffering as the unit undertakes an “aggressive restructuring” to shrink operations to meet lowered demand. Precision was not the only drag on Berkshire, which said the pandemic has caused “relatively minor to severe” damage to most of its more than 90 operating businesses, which include the BNSF railroad, Geico auto insurer and See’s candies. …read more […]

A Lordstown Motors IPO is coming to the market. Announced on Monday, the company plans to go public via SPAC IPO. It will be another electric vehicle (EV) company to hit the stock market in 2020.
But is Lordstown Motors stock a good investment? Here’s what we know…
Lordstown Motors IPO: The Business

Steve Burns founded Lordstown Motors in 2019. Burns is the also the founder and former CEO of Workhorse Group, an electric delivery and utility vehicle manufacturer. In November 2019, Lordstown Motors bought GM’s Lordstown plant, giving the company its name. The company is less than a year old. And it …read more […]

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(Bloomberg) — Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. spent a record $5 billion buying back Berkshire’s own stock in the second quarter.Berkshire’s Class A shares, which fell in line with the S&P 500 in the first three months of the year as the pandemic spread in the U.S., fell another 1.7% last quarter while the broader index rallied 20%. Buffett said in May that repurchases weren’t more compelling, but the buybacks in the quarter suggest his thinking shifted.Key InsightsEven with buybacks that more than doubled the previous quarterly record, Berkshire’s cash pile kept growing and hit $146.6 billion. Buffett has struggled …read more […]

Here’s how to avoid high closing costs that can eat up your savings. …read more […]

(Bloomberg) — Drillers cut exploration in U.S. oil fields to a 15-year low as billions of barrels from old discoveries became worthless and explorers abandoned growth plans.The number of active oil rigs in the U.S. fell by four to 176, the lowest since 2005, according to Baker Hughes Co. data released Friday. Energy companies have been parking rigs on an almost uninterrupted streak for more than four and half months.Stung by the pandemic-driven slump in demand and prices, oil explorers are fleeing from the very lifeblood of their business: Drilling for new discoveries. Exxon Mobil Corp. and Chevron Corp. have …read more […]

AstraZeneca PLC’s (LON:AZN) price-to-earnings (or “P/E”) ratio of 67.7x might make it look like a strong sell right… …read more […]

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Nokia’s new chief executive Pekka Lundmark said he will take time to re-acquaint himself with the Finnish telecom equipment maker as he works toward setting a strategy, as the company jostles for position in the highly political 5G race. U.S. government pressure to limit the use of China’s Huawei presents an opportunity for Nokia as next generation technology is rolled out, but Lundmark would not be drawn. “Maintaining good relations with governments in pretty much all parts of the world is extremely important,” Lundmark said in a video interview with Reuters on Friday. …read more […]

As the S&P 500 approaches fresh highs, some investors hope to pick up bargains in the battered U.S. real estate sector, where values of some major stocks have been cut in half this year. Coronavirus-fueled lockdowns and a major shift toward working from home have weighed on residential and retail U.S. real estate investment trusts. The sector has slid 7% this year compared with a 3% gain on the S&P 500. …read more […]

(Bloomberg) — Robintrack.net, the website whose hourly updates on retail stock demand became a minor obsession of Wall Street, will end its service after owners of the Robinhood investing app curtailed access to user data.The two-year-old portal “will be coming to an end, at least in its current form,” according to its creator, Casey Primozic, 23, who built the site as a college side project and watched daily traffic swell to the tens of thousands. Robinhood will stop providing the feed on which Robintrack’s information is based out of concern it’s disadvantaging clients.“They said the reason they’re doing this is …read more […]

(Bloomberg) — Tesla Inc. Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk is accused in a lawsuit of defaming a long-time critic of the company and triggering an online hate campaign against him.Randeep Hothi, a University of Michigan graduate student known as “@skabooshka” on Twitter, says after Musk accused him of “almost” killing Tesla employees, he was hit with “an onslaught of hateful Twitter responses, accusing Hothi of being a liar, a murderer, a terrorist, and a deranged maniac.”Musk’s accusations — made in an email to a website editor, who posted it on Twitter — arose from two incidents, both of which Hothi …read more […]

(Bloomberg) — Friday’s attack by President Donald Trump on WeChat may have pushed many investors to offload Asia’s technology shares. But for some, the selloff has presented a good buying opportunity.Jian Shi Cortesi, a portfolio manager at GAM Investment Management in Zurich, bought some Chinese internet stocks on Friday and plans to further increase holdings if the stock prices pull back more.“The U.S. ban on Chinese internet companies will have little impact on the revenue and earnings of most listed Chinese internet companies,” Cortesi said in an interview. Her Asia Focus Equity Fund has a third of its exposure in …read more […]

2020 has seen a market trouncing performance from fintech player Square (SQ). Since hitting the skids in mid-March with the price dropping to $38.09, shares have appreciated by an enormous 285%.The latest uptick came after Square’s Q2 earnings report blew the estimates out of the water. The banking industry disruptor generated revenue of $1.92 billion, indicating year-over-year growth of 64.1% and handily beating consensus by $790 million. Non-GAAP EPS of $0.18 came ahead of the estimates by $0.22.Although gross payment volume – a key metric – declined by 15% from the same period last year to $22.8 billion, the figure …read more […]

With President Trump’s executive order banning of popular Chinese apps TikTok and WeChat on the horizon, investors and regulators arewill mean for American companies and U.S-China relations, Paul Triolo, Eurasia Group Head of Global Tech Policy, joins The Final Round to discuss the long-term implications of tensions between the largest economies in the world. …read more […]