11:25 AM, Sep 5, 2017 — tronc (TRNC), a US publisher, which owns the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times, said that it acquired all of the outstanding interests of Mortimer Zuckerman’s Daily News, LP., the owner of the New York Daily News and NYDailyNews.com, to expand its publishing portfolio to 10 major US markets.

Financial terms of the transaction weren’t disclosed. Under the terms of the transaction, tronc assumed operational and pension liabilities of the New York Daily News, the media company said on its website late on Monday. The company will meet the obligations from New York Daily News cash flow.

Founded in 1919, the New York Daily News has 11 Pulitzer prizes under its belt, most recently winning the public service journalism prize in 2017. The NYDailyNews.com boasts more than 80 million unique monthly visitors. The New Your Daily News was founded by tronc’s predecessor company, The Tribune Company, tronc said.

The deal includes 100% ownership of the New York Daily News’ printing facility in Jersey City, New Jersey. As part of the transaction, tronc will acquire a 49.9% interest in a joint venture with Zuckerman-related entities that will own the 25-acre parcel of land on which the printing facility is located, overlooking the Manhattan skyline, tronc said.

Companies: tronc, Inc.
Price: 14.98 Price Change: +0.32 Percent Change: +2.18

 

10:11 AM, Aug 28, 2017 — Prices for gasoline surged on Monday as refiners in the Gulf Coast assessed operations in the wake of Hurricane Harvey, which has led to widespread flooding in Houston, the fourth-biggest city in the US.

Now a tropical storm that’s still dumping rain on parts of Texas, Harvey is “significantly disrupting” refining in the state, with nearly three million barrels a day of capacity taken offline, according to a report from Goldman Sachs on Monday. That’s about 17% of the country’s capacity.

“At this stage, most of the refining outages are reported as preventative, with only a few comments on minor flooding,” according to the report. “However, the slow moving nature of the storm will likely lead to these shut-downs continuing in coming days and may generate persistent damage as well.”

If Harvey tracks east toward Houston, another 850,000 barrels a day of refining capacity could be affected with outages, the analysis showed. On Sunday, ExxonMobil (XOM) said flooding led to operational issues at the Baytown Complex, while other facilities on the Gulf Coast are operating normally, the company said.

Valero Energy’s (VLO) Corpus Christi and Three Rivers sites haven’t have substantial impacts from the storm, and they are working to “evaluate infrastructure needed to resume refinery operations, in particular, port operations,” according to a statement Sunday.

On the production side, Denbury Resources (DNR) said it “suspended operations and temporarily shut-in all production at its Houston area fields, representing net production of approximately 16,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day.” RBOB gasoline jumped nearly 4%, while West Texas Intermediate was down about 0.9%.

Also, United Airlines (UAL) had more than 400 flight cancellations Monday, according to flight tracking website FlightAware. Southwest (LUV) had more than 300. Royal Caribbean (RCL) diverted a vessel to Miami and cancelled a sailing out of the port of Galveston, Texas according to its website Sunday, while Carnival (CCL) said three ships will stop in New Orleans during the next two days to allow guests to disembark and make other arrangements.

7:06 AM, Aug 15, 2017 — Transocean (RIG), a Swiss offshore drilling company, has agreed to acquire Norwegian rival Songa Offshore for 9.1 billion Norwegian kroner ($1.14 billion) as it seeks to strengthen its position in ultra deep-water drilling.

The Zug-headquartered company is offering 47.50 kronor per share of Songa Offshore, a 37.0% premium to Songa Offshore’s five-day average closing price, the company said on Tuesday. The enterprise value of the transaction totals about 26.4 billion Norwegian kroner.

Songa operates four harsh environment, semi-submersible drilling rigs based on long-term contracts with Norway’s largest oil company Statoil (STO), which will now become part of Tarnsocean’s fleet, along with three additional semi-submersible drilling rigs.

“Songa Offshore is an excellent strategic fit for Transocean,” Jeremy Thigpen, Transocean’s chief executive said. “With this combination, we add four new state-of-the-art Cat-D semisubmersible rigs to our existing fleet, further enhancing our position in the harsh environment market.”

The deal, which is expected to close in the fourth quarter, increases Transocean’s contracted backlog by $4.1 billion to a combined total of $14.3 billion. The company expects the deal to generate annual cost savings of about $40 million.

Companies: Transocean Ltd.
Price: 8.31 Price Change: -0.08 Percent Change: -0.95

7:18 AM, Aug 2, 2017 — Apple (AAPL) reported fiscal third-quarter sales and earnings that topped analyst forecasts and gave a sales projection for the fourth quarter, which analysts said implies that the tech giant will release at least some of the latest editions of its blockbuster iPhone on schedule this year.

Net income was $8.72 billion, or $1.67 per diluted share in the quarter ended July 1, compared with $7.8 billion, or $1.42 per share a year earlier, the Cupertino, California-based company said on Tuesday after the market closed. The per-share earnings topped the average analyst forecast of $1.57 in a Capital IQ poll.

Revenue rose 7% to $45.4 billion, exceeding the average analyst forecast for $44.9 billion.

The company said it sold 41 million iPhone units in the quarter, 2% more than a year earlier. Sales of iPads jumped 15% to 11.4 million units and it sold 4.3 million Mac computers, up 1% from a year earlier.

Shares of the world’s most valuable company rose to a record in pre-market trading, lifted by the better-than-expected earnings figures.

Apple predicted sales this quarter will be between $49 billion and $52 billion, compared with the average Wall Street analyst forecast for $49.2 billion. Apple’s annual product launch event falls in its fiscal fourth quarter and the sales forecast helped dispel concern about reported production delays of the latest series of iPhone models.

“The firm comfortably topped its forecast and produced stellar numbers for its revenue and profit,” Naeem Aslam, chief market analyst at Think Markets UK, said by e-mail. “The big news was about the production of iPhone 8, the flagship product for the firm will hit the market on time with no issues around production.”

Tim Long, an analyst at BMO Capital Markets, said the revenue guidance “affirms our expectations that the premium iPhone ‘Pro’ will launch and ship alongside the standard ‘S’ refresh in September, though initial volumes are likely to be extremely constrained.”

Chief Executive Tim Cook said on a call with analysts, which was published on the Apple website, that sales of iPhones reached a milestone of 1.2 billion units sold cumulatively since the first model hit the market 10 years ago. He also highlighted the record revenue from services of $7.27 billion in the quarter, a 22% jump from a year earlier.

“iPhone results were impressive, with especially high demand at the high end of our lineup,” Cook said.

Companies: Apple Inc.
Price: 158.65 Price Change: +8.60 Percent Change: +5.73

2:23 PM, Jul 26, 2017 — Benchmark US interest rates were left unchanged as widely expected on Wednesday, while monetary policy makers said they expect to begin unwinding the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet “relatively soon.”

The Federal Open Market Committee kept the target range on the Federal funds rate at 1% to 1.25%. It was raised to that level in June in the second hike of 2017.

“Job gains have been solid, on average, since the beginning of the year, and the unemployment rate has declined,” the FOMC said in a statement released after a two-day meeting Wednesday. “Household spending and business fixed investment have continued to expand.”

Ahead of the decision, the chances of a rate hike stood at just 3.1% on the CME Group’s FedWatch tool, while almost 97% expected the hold. The FOMC has been incrementally raising rates as the economy recovers from the crisis that saw unemployment levels surge to 10% in October 2009. In June, the rate was 4.4%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The FOMC reiterated that any more rate hikes will depend on data, saying as it has previously that “with gradual adjustments in the stance of monetary policy, economic activity will expand at a moderate pace, and labor market conditions will strengthen somewhat further.”

Investors were keen to hear anything more on when the Fed will begin unwinding securities holdings. Monetary policy makers have previously said it’s expected to happen by the end of the year and in Wednesday’s statement the FOMC said it “expects to begin implementing its balance sheet normalization program relatively soon, provided that the economy evolves broadly as anticipated.”

Inflation on a 12-month basis is expected to remain somewhat below the Fed’s 2% goal in the near term before stabilize around that level over the medium term. The committee “will carefully monitor actual and expected inflation developments relative to its symmetric inflation goal.”