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White House press secretary Sean Spicer has resigned, according to reports on Friday. Spicer quit over the hiring of a new communications director, Anthony Scaramucci, the New York Times said.
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President Donald Trump is signing an executive order about the sources for the U.S. defense-industrial base, top officials said Friday. The goal, said Peter Navarro, director of the White House Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy, is to “assess where we source things and what risk that may entail.” The report is due within 270 days. Navarro declined to say what recommendations the report might make.
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Mastercard Inc. on Friday welcomed a decision by a U.K. court to block a 14 billion pound ($18 billion) class action suit against the company that alleged it had overcharged more than 45 million Britons over a 16-year stretch. The Competition Appeal Tribunal sided with the card issuer, which argued that the claims were unsuitable to be brought under a collective actions regime. “We welcome the Competition Appeal Tribunal’s judgment refusing certification for the proposed collective action,” the company said in a statement. The suit was brought by law firm Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP, and centered on interchange fees, which are charged to the banks of merchants that accept MasterCard debit and credit cards. The firm alleged that Mastercard had set fees at too high a level. Mastercard shares were up 0.6% and have gained 25% in 2017, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average has gained 9%.
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The Dow Jones Industrial Average on Friday was seeing early modest losses on Friday, but the day’s early declines were broad based and led by a stumble in shares of Goldman Sachs Group Inc., General Electric and Caterpillar Inc. Goldman’s stock was shaving about 15 points from the price-weighted blue-chip gauge. Goldman has been sinking since reporting second-quarter results that revealed a 40% fall in its bread-and-butter fixed-income, currencies and commodities trading business. The investment bank performed the worst among its peers in trading revenue. Shares are on track to log their steepest weekly decline since the period ended June 2. Meanwhile, General Electric and Caterpillar’s shares were cutting a combined 20 points from the Dow. GE’s stock turned lower after outgoing CEO Jeff Immelt delivered a downbeat outlook for its full-year 2017 earnings, despite second-quarter results that were better-than-expected. Immelt also offered a downbeat outlook for the oil-and-gas industry, which may have helped to drag industrial giant Caterpillar’s shares lower. The Dow was trading off 0.3% at 21,545, while the S&P 500 index slumped by 0.2% at 2,468, pressured by a 0.6% retreat in industrials and energy , weighed by a slide in crude-oil prices . The Nasdaq Composite Index was off 0.2% at 6,376, and threatened to snap a 10-session win streak, matching its longest since Feb. 24, 2015. For the week, the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq Composite are on pace to posts gains, while the Dow is fighting off a weekly drop, as earnings season gets under way. In other assets, the euro continued its confounding surge, following the European Central Bank’s decision to stand pat on its mix of accommodative policy programs, as ECB President Mario Draghi attempted to tamp down statements made in late June that were viewed as hinting at tapering of easy-money measures begun in the wake of the 2008-’09 financial crisis. The euro was most recently at $1.1647, versus the dollar and up 1.5% on the week, with most of those gains coming Thursday. The 10-year Treasury note , meanwhile, was drawing bidders, pushing yields, which move inversely to prices, lower. The benchmark yield stood at 2.24%.
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Newspaper publisher McClatchy Co. reported second-quarter earnings before the market opened on Friday and said digital-only subscribers grew nearly 14% from the previous year’s first quarter. The company reported a net loss of $37.4 million, or $4.91 per share for the second quarter, compared with a loss of $14.7 million, or $1.89 per share during the same quarter a year ago. The adjusted loss per share was 79 cents. McClatchy’s revenue hit $225.1 million in the quarter, down 7% compared with the prior year. Total advertising revenue revenues were down 11% compared with the same quarter last year, while digital-only advertising revenue grew by 10%. The company said that the rate of decline in total advertising slowed in the quarter. “As I have mentioned before, achieving a normalized operating environment takes some time in digital transitions,” McClatchy Chief Executive Craig Forman said in a statement. “While we continue to see strong headwinds in print advertising, we also are seeing our digital efforts in all aspects of the business moderate those headwinds.” McClatchy’s average total unique visitors to the company’s online products grew close to 15% to 66 million in the quarter. Shares of McClatchy were inactive in morning trade on Friday, but have declined more than 34% in the year to date, while the S&P 500 index have gained more than 10%.
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A European Central Bank building in Frankfurt was evacuated Friday as a precautionary measure directed by local authorities, a spokeswoman at the central bank said Friday. The directive was made under precaution related to a construction site near the ECB’s Japan Center building, the spokeswoman said. A “limited” number of staff were affected. She was unable to say if the matter was terrorism related.
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U.S. stock-market indexes opened lower on Friday but looked set to book modest weekly gains. Investors focused on earnings results from heavyweights such as General Electric Co. and Honeywell International Inc. The S&P 500 was down by 5 points, or 0.2%, to 2,468. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was off by 50 points, or 0.2%, to 21,558. The Nasdaq Composite index ticked 10 points, or 0.1%, lower to 6,380. Among early movers, GE shares dropped sharply as Chief Executive Jeff Immelt hosted his last post-results conference call, before handing the reins to incoming CEO John Flannery, and gave a downbeat outlook.
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Shares of General Electric Co. turned sharply lower in premarket trade Friday, as Chief Executive Jeff Immelt hosted his last post-results conference call, before handing the reins to incoming CEO John Flannery, and gave a downbeat outlook. The stock tumbled 4.2%, putting it on track to open at the lowest level since October 2015. The stock initially rose as much as 1.8% after results were reported before selling off to be down 0.9% just prior to the start of the conference call. Immelt said the recovery for the oil and gas market has been slower and more volatile than planned, and with customers delaying purchasing, he expects numbers for GE’s legacy business to be “lower than previously anticipated,” according to a transcript of the call provided by FactSet. “Given our outlook on oil and gas, we are trending to the bottom end of the range of $1.60 to $1.70 EPS for the year,” Immelt said. The stock had tumbled 15.5% year to date through Thursday, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average has gained 9.4%.
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Endo International PLC said Friday it was cutting 875 jobs, which is about 18% of its workforce, as part of a restructuring aimed at cutting costs by up to $65 million a year. The pharmaceutical company said it will close manufacturing and distribution facilities in Huntsville, Ala. over the next 12-to-18 months, as a result of declining volumes of commoditized products. Endo expects to record restructuring charges of $325 million, including cash charges of $60 million. “Today’s announced action enables a redeployment of investment from commoditized products to more differentiated capabilities and products that represent our core areas of future growth,” said Chief Executive Paul Campanelli. The stock, which slipped 0.5% in premarket trade, has tumbled 25.2% year to date through Thursday, while SPDR S&P Pharmaceuticals ETF has climbed 13.2% and the S&P 500 has gained 10.5%.
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Whole Foods Market Inc. informed its shareholders that the special meeting to vote on the acquisition by Amazon.com Inc. will be held on Aug. 23. The shareholder meeting will be at the natural and organic foods seller’s corporate headquarters in Austin, Texas, and will begin at 8:30 a.m. local time. “The Whole Foods Market board of directors unanimously recommends that our shareholders vote ‘FOR’ the proposal to approve the merger agreement,” a letter to shareholders said. Whole Foods had agreed on June 15 to be bought by Amazon for $42 a share, which was 47% above the 2017 closing low of $28.53 on March 27, but was 36% below the Oct. 25, 2013 record close of $65.24. The stock closed Thursday at $41.76. Amazon shares have run up 14.5% over the past three months, while the S&P 500 has gained 5.3%.
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