Liveblog Archief maandag 24 mei 2021

TOP NEWS
• Big banks look for post-pandemic rebound of credit card revenue
Big U.S. banks are prepared for credit-card balances to start ticking up again this year as pandemic restrictions ease and stimulus checks stop arriving, setting up the industry for a bump in one of its most profitable businesses.

• U.S. pot sellers stash cash as banks leave them high and dry
The U.S. cannabis business has a very particular cashflow problem -- too much of it. Marijuana can be sold legally in 36 U.S. states and the District of Columbia for medical use and in 15 of them and in D.C. for recreational purposes. But it's still illegal on a federal level, meaning most banks won't service the industry in case they fall afoul of money laundering laws.

• HSBC CEO says Bitcoin not for us
HSBC has no plans to launch a cryptocurrency trading desk or offer the digital coins as an investment to customers, because they are too volatile and lack transparency, its Chief Executive Noel Quinn told Reuters.

• Cabot Oil & Gas to buy Cimarex Energy in $7.35 billion deal
Cabot Oil said it would buy smaller rival Cimarex Energy in an all-stock deal valued at $7.35 billion, as it looks to scale up in the Permian and Anadarko basins.

• GM improves rating in annual supplier relations study
General Motors strengthened relations with its suppliers last year despite the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the global semiconductor chip shortage, according to an annual North American survey released.


BEFORE THE BELL
Wall Street futures rose, helped by gains in energy stocks as oil prices advanced. Most European shares were up as investors bet on economic recovery and upbeat corporate earnings. Chinese stocks ended in the green, tracking gains in financial firms. A weaker dollarpushed gold prices higher.


STOCKS TO WATCH

Deals Of The Day
• Cabot Oil & Gas Corp & Cimarex Energy Co: The company said it would buy smaller rival Cimarex Energy in an all-stock deal valued at $7.35 billion, as it looks to scale up in the Permian and Anadarko basins. The deal comes at a time when a recovery in crude prices has sparked a wave of consolidation in the energy industry. Cimarex shareholders will receive 4.0146 shares of Cabot common stock for each Cimarex share owned. That implies an offer value of $71.50 per share, a less than 1% premium to Cimarex's Friday close, according to Reuters calculations.

• Martin Marietta Materials Inc: The company said it will buy HeidelbergCement's assets in California and Arizona for $2.3 billion. The all-cash deal seeks to capitalise on state infrastructure investments and private-sector growth in the two U.S. states. The company said it entered an agreement with HeidelbergCement's U.S. affiliate, Lehigh Hanson, to buy assets including 17 active aggregates quarries and two cement plants. The deal is expected to close in the second half of this year and will be accretive to earnings per share in the first full year following closing, Martin Marietta said. German seller Heidelberg said it would focus on other regions in North America where it has the strongest market positions, and that the divestment was part of a strategic push to lift profit margins.

In Other News
• Aenza SAA: Peruvian construction conglomerate has signed a settlement with judicial authorities admitting that the company's previous management and six former executives committed acts of corruption, the Andean country's prosecutor's office said on Friday. Under the agreement, Aenza undertook to pay the Peruvian state about 480 million soles in reparations, said a joint statement from the special anti-corruption team of the public prosecutor and the attorney general's offices that co-signed the agreement. Aenza acknowledged that Graña y Montero, as it was previously known, and its subsidiaries GyM and CONCAR, as well as six former executives, were complicit in graft related to 16 infrastructure projects to build roads, highways and metro lines in Peru.

• Boeing Co: The head of Emirates airline, one of Boeing's biggest customers, has warned the U.S. planemaker that it would refuse delivery of 777x jets if they fall short of contractual performance commitments. In an interview broadcast on Monday, President Tim Clark said he had not received any performance details of the jet's engines so far even though test flights began in 2020. The influential industry veteran has raised concerns that Boeing had a recent history of over-promising on performance of new jets, including the in service 737 MAX and 787 Dreamliner. "We will not accept an aeroplane unless it is performing 100% to contract," Clark told aviation consultant John Strickland in a pre-recorded online interview for Dubai's Arabian Travel Market trade show. Boeing declined comment.

• Capital One Financial Corp, Citigroup Inc & JPMorgan Chase & Co: Big U.S. banks are prepared for credit-card balances to start ticking up again this year as pandemic restrictions ease and stimulus checks stop arriving, setting up the industry for a bump in one of its most profitable businesses. Lenders have been sending out more promotions to enroll new customers and encourage borrowers to spend, said Andrew Davidson of marketing-tracker Mintel Comperemedia. Some 260 million offers were sent in March, the firm estimates. Banks have increased digital marketing, too, on Facebook, Instagram, video sites and podcasts, he said. "The big banks are ramping up in anticipation of the recovery post-pandemic," Davidson said. "They are really trying to make up lost ground from last year."

• Fox Corp & Walt Disney Co: Mexican media conglomerate Grupo Lauman will buy Fox Sports' Mexico operations, fulfilling a key regulatory condition of the company’s acquisition of Twenty-First Century Fox's film and television assets, newspaper El Financiero said. El Financiero, which is part of Grupo Lauman, announced the news late on Friday without putting a value on the acquisition. The paper noted the deal was subject to regulatory approval, and that more details would follow. Neither Fox nor Grupo Lauman immediately responded to requests for comment.

• General Motors Co: The automaker strengthened relations with its suppliers last year despite the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the global semiconductor chip shortage, according to an annual North American survey. The No. 1 U.S. automaker improved its score in consulting firm Plante Moran's annual Working Relations Index by 20 points to 289. "The industry went through a trial by fire this past year, but seeing the positive results for four of the six automakers was a surprise in many ways," Dave Andrea, principal in Plante Moran's automotive practice, said in a statement. "Typically, a crisis is not the time to improve established relations." GM Vice President of global purchasing Shilpan Amin said in a separate statement the survey results show the company's efforts to strengthen supplier ties. "This provides many important benefits, including stronger business results for both GM and the supply base, along with supplier willingness to invest in new technology," he said.

• HSBC Holdings PLC: The bank has no plans to launch a cryptocurrency trading desk or offer the digital coins as an investment to customers, because they are too volatile and lack transparency, its Chief Executive Noel Quinn told Reuters. "Given the volatility we are not into Bitcoin as an asset class, if our clients want to be there then of course they are, but we are not promoting it as an asset class within our wealth management business," Quinn said. "For similar reasons we're not rushing into stablecoins," he said, referring to the digital currencies that seek to avoid the volatility associated with typical cryptocurrencies by pegging their value to assets such as the U.S. dollar. Quinn said his sceptical stance on cryptocurrencies partly arose from the difficulty of assessing the transparency of who owns them, as well as problems with their ready convertibility into fiat money.

• McDonald’s Corp: Activists from campaign group Animal Rebellion blockaded distribution centres of McDonald's in Britain on Saturday to demand the global restaurant chain turn to plant-based foods. Around 50 protesters used trucks and bamboo structures to stop lorries from leaving McDonald's four distribution centres in the United Kingdom, the group said. A spokeswoman for McDonald's UK apologised to its customers for any disruption. "We are assessing the impact on deliveries to our restaurants and to menu items," she said. The group said it would remain at the sites for at least 24 hours to disrupt the company's supply chain.

• Moderna Inc & Novavax Inc: The two drugmakers entered into a deal with the South Korean government to manufacture their COVID-19 vaccines, as the country has been under pressure to secure more and faster deliveries of U.S.-made vaccines. Saturday's agreements with the U.S. drugmakers came a day after U.S. President Joe Biden said that he and South Korean President Moon Jae-in had agreed on a comprehensive partnership on COVID-19 vaccines and that the United States would provide vaccinations for 550,000 South Korean soldiers. Moderna said on Saturday its vaccine will be manufactured by Samsung Biologics and that it intends to supply these vaccines to markets outside the United States starting in the third quarter. Separately, An Indian state looking to procure COVID-19 shots to combat a nationwide surge in infections on Sunday said that U.S. vaccine maker Moderna had declined to supply its shots and said it can only deal with the federal government.

• Nasdaq Inc: The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has approved a proposal by the exchange operator to allow companies to raise capital through direct listings. In a filing dated May 19, the SEC said Nasdaq's proposed rule change was consistent with the regulator's rules and regulations and could be beneficial to investors as an alternative to a traditional initial public offering. The move is a big breakthrough for the exchange operator that has been pushing for an alternative for companies to raise money. Reuters had reported in August that Nasdaq had filed with the SEC to change its rules to enable companies that debut on the stock market through a direct listing to raise capital. The latest rules will widen the options available to private companies that are looking to go public, but are wary of the role played by investment banks in the IPO process.

• Ryanair Holdings PLC: Western politicians accused Belarus of state piracy amounting to a "warlike act", searching for a way to retaliate that would match the gravity of the offence after Minsk forced an airliner down and arrested a dissident journalist. Sunday's action, in which a Belarusian warplane intercepted a Ryanair flight between European Union members Greece and Lithuania and forced it to land in Minsk, has few precedents, and denunciations were worded in the strongest terms. Ryanair's boss Michael O'Leary, who referred to the incident as a state-sponsored hijacking, said he believed security agents had been on the flight and had disembarked in Minsk. That would mean the operation had effectively been coordinated with spies operating on the ground in Greece.

• Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co Ltd: A staff member at the company has contracted COVID-19 and those who had direct contact are under quarantine, though operations are not affected, the company said on Saturday. The TSMC staff member went to work last Sunday but found out they had been in contact with someone who tested positive and went into isolation, during which time they too tested positive, TSMC said in a statement. TSMC performed contact tracing and identified more than a dozen people who had close contact, who left company premises the same day and began 14 days of home quarantine, it said. None of those in quarantine have shown any symptoms or discomfort, and the infected staff member has only light symptoms, the company said.

• Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson: The company said it might get lower share in China's 5G roll-out than its share of the current telecom infrastructure market there, partly due to a spat over exclusion of Chinese vendors from Sweden's roll-out of ultra-fast networks. The warning was included in an updated prospectus for investors related to Ericsson's issue of a 500 million euro unsecured 8-year bond. Ericsson said while it had been invited to various ongoing tender processes in China, the final outcome remains uncertain. "It is the company's current assessment that the risk has increased that Ericsson will in those tenders be allocated a significantly lower market share than its current market share," it said in a statement.

• Tesla Inc: The company’s Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk tweeted on Saturday that in a battle between fiat and cryptocurrencies, his support is with crypto. "The true battle is between fiat & crypto. On balance, I support the latter," he said on Twitter in reply to a user who asked him what his thoughts were about people who were angry at him because of crypto. Musk has previously compared bitcoin to fiat money and often tweets about cryptocurrencies that have sent values for bitcoin and the meme digital currency dogecoin up and down.

• Virgin Galactic Holdings Inc: Flying at Mach 3 and reaching more than 55 miles above the Earth Saturday, British billionaire Sir Richard Branson's spaceship company completed its first manned space flight from its new home port in New Mexico. Touted as the first human spaceflight from the state, Branson's SpaceShipTwo craft lifted off in the desert about 45 miles northeast of Las Cruces, New Mexico, about 10:35 a.m. About 50 minutes later, traveling at more than 2,300 miles an hour, it reached a height NASA recognizes as space and attained suborbital flight status. "Welcome to space" the company posted on Twitter. Branson shared videos of the flight on social media and said on Twitter, "Delighted to be on the flightline to Virgin Galactic's first human spaceflight from the majestic Spaceport America."


ANALYSIS
Job-inflation tradeoff, exiled from Fed policy, could mean a hot summer
Tension between sticky job markets and rising prices could pose a growing problem for U.S. Federal Reserve officials who have staked an aggressive monetary policy on the belief they can avoid a conflict between returning U.S. employment to pre-pandemic levels and keeping inflation under control.


ANALYSTS' RECOMMENDATION
• AMC Networks Inc: Cowen and Company raises target price to $52 from $40, citing the company's new segment structure and upbeat view of its OTT platform.

• Deere & Co: Jefferies raises target price to $450 from $400, citing strong first-quarter results.

• Tripadvisor Inc: D.A. Davidson raises target price to $47 from $46, reflecting on positive business recovery trends.

• Triumph Group Inc: Cowen and Company raises target price to $16 from $12, following the company's fourth-quarter results.

• VF Corp: Piper Sandler raises target price to $109 from $108, citing robust growth in China.


ECONOMIC EVENTS (All timings in U.S. Eastern Time)
0830 (approx.) National Activity Index for Apr: Prior 1.71


COMPANIES REPORTING RESULTS
No major S&P 500 companies are scheduled to report.


CORPORATE EVENTS (All timings in U.S. Eastern Time)
0800 Diodes Inc: Annual Shareholders Meeting
0830 Genetron Holdings Ltd: Q1 earnings conference call
1100 Hub Group Inc: Annual Shareholders Meeting
1130 HNI Corp: Annual Shareholders Meeting
1430 Insperity Inc: Annual Shareholders Meeting
1630 Lordstown Motors Corp: Q1 earnings conference call
1630 Zymergen Inc: Q1 earnings conference call
1800 Arco Platform Ltd: Q1 earnings conference call
2100 Agora Inc: Q1 earnings conference call


EX-DIVIDENDS
Baker Hughes Co: Amount $0.18
CDW Corp: Amount $0.40
Equifax Inc: Amount $0.39
Johnson & Johnson: Amount $1.06
Live Oak Bancshares Inc: Amount $0.03
Nordson Corp: Amount $0.39
Prudential Financial Inc: Amount $1.15
Robert Half International Inc: Amount $0.38
Switch Inc: Amount $0.05
Westlake Chemical Corp: Amount $0.27
Xperi Holding Corp: Amount $0.05
Yum China Holdings Inc: Amount $0.12