Category: Stock Market News

Travis Kalanick, who co-founded ride-sharing service Uber, has stepped down from his post as chief executive officer, The New York Times reported on Wednesday, citing sources. His exit came Tuesday after five of the company’s big investors, which includes venture capital group Benchmark, had a letter delivered to Kalanick while he was in Chicago, demanding his resignation. The letter, obtained by The New York Times, stated that the company needs a new leader and after hours of talks, Kalanick agreed. “I love Uber more than anything in the world and at this difficult moment in my personal life I have accepted the investors request to step aside so that Uber can go back to building rather than be distracted by another fight,” Kalanick said in a statement, according to the Times. A spokesperson for Uber could not immediately be reached for comment.

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In a major shakeup within the Saudi royal family, Saudi Arabia’s king removed the Crown Prince Muhammad bin Nayef from his position Wednesday and replaced him with Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Salman, 31, is the country’s defense minister and has led an effort to expand and diversify the kingdom’s economy from one reliant on oil. Salman met with U.S. President Donald Trump at the White House earlier this year.

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Tesla Inc. has parted ways with Autopilot software chief Chris Lattner after just six months. Tesla had lured Lattner from Apple Inc. in January. In a tweet Tuesday night, Lattner said: “Turns out that Tesla isn’t a good fit for me after all. I’m interested to hear about interesting roles for a seasoned engineering leader!” Lattner’s position will be filled by Jim Keller, who will add software to his current role as chief of Tesla’s hardware division, and new hire Andrej Karpathy, who will be head of artificial intelligence and Autopilot Vision, according to a report by TechCrunch. Karpathy is a veteran of Alphabet Inc.’s Google, with expertise in deep learning.

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Republican Karen Handel has won a special election for a hotly contested House seat in Georgia on Tuesday, according to projections from CNN, the Associated Press and NBC News. As of 10 p.m. Eastern, Handel led Democrat Jon Ossof, 51.4% to 48.6%. The race was the costliest in House history, with the candidates raising more than $60 million combined. Many analysts had seen the race as a referendum on President Donald Trump’s policies, and Democrats had hoped for a momentum boost by winning the longtime Republican district in the Atlanta suburbs. The election was held to fill the post of former Rep. Tom Price, who is now Trump’s secretary of health and human services.

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Cypress Semiconductor Corp. investors voted for two board nominees put forth by the company’s former chief executive Tuesday, according to preliminary results, booting one director and replacing a chairman who resigned during an activist battle that led to a public fight between Cypress and its founder. Preliminary tabulations showed that J. Daniel McCranie and Camillo Martino were elected to the board with 148 million votes, while Eric Benhamou received about 60 million votes and will not return as a director, according to a statement from CypressFirst, a group formed by founder and former CEO T.J. Rodgers. Rodgers began an activist campaign after former Cypress Chairman Ray Bingham partnered with Chinese investors in a fund that agreed to acquire a Silicon Valley chip firm, Lattice Semiconductor Corp. . Bingham stepped down last week, but the campaign to oust Benhamou against Cypress’s wishes continued. Cypress, which confirmed the preliminary voting results in its own release, had said that the entire campaign was Rodgers’s attempt to force his way back into the company, but Rodgers sounded a different note in the CypressFirst announcement. “We are grateful to Cypress stockholders for their support of our two candidates,” the Cypress CEO for 34 years said. “I can now get back full-time to my work on innovative technologies for the IoT and in alternative energy and let the Cypress directors do their work.” Cypress stock fell 0.6% to $13.23 in Tuesday’s regular session, but bounced back slightly in after-hours trading.

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Whirlpool Corp. said Tuesday Chairman and Chief Executive Jeff Fettig will relinquish his role as CEO in October but continue to serve as chairman of the board. Fettig has served as chairman and CEO since 2004. The board has named Chief Operating Officer Marc Bitzer as the new CEO. Whirlpool shares were flat in late trade after closing down 1.2% to $194.56.

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Apple Inc. disclosed Tuesday that it has sold $1 billion in debt, adding to a growing debt load that it uses for shareholder return while keeping more than 90% of its $256 billion in cash overseas to avoid repatriation taxes. Apple consummated the issuance and sales of 10-year notes with a 3% rate Tuesday, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Apple has raised its debt load from zero in 2012 to nearly $85 billion by the end of the last quarter to offer dividends and share repurchases without paying a 35% corporate tax on overseas profit. That total should increase in Apple’s next quarterly report, as the $1 billion detailed Tuesday appears to be separate from a larger issuance that launched in May. Chief Executive Tim Cook has repeatedly said that the United States needs to change its tax laws to keep companies from holding cash overseas, and detailed his vision for a repatriation holiday in an interview published last week. Cook was one of several tech leaders who met with President Donald Trump this week; Trump proposed a repatriation holiday and a lower corporate tax rate while campaigning for the office. Apple shares gained about 0.2% in late trading Tuesday, after ending the session with a 0.9% decline at $145.01.

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The American Petroleum Institute reported Tuesday a decline of 2.7 million barrels in U.S. crude supplies for the week ended June 16, according to sources. The API data, however, showed a climb of 346,000 barrels in gasoline supplies, while inventories of distillates were up 1.8 million barrels, sources said. Supply data from the Energy Information Administration will be released Wednesday morning. Analysts polled by S&P Global Platts expect the EIA to report a decline of 2 million barrels in crude inventories. August crude was at $43.53 a barrel in electronic trading, little changed from the contract’s settlement of $43.51 on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

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Shares of La-Z-Boy Inc. rose more than 7% late Tuesday after the furniture maker reported fiscal fourth-quarter earnings and sales above Wall Street expectations. La-Z-Boy said it earned $28 million, or 57 cents a share, in the quarter, compared with $23 million, or 45 cents a share, in the year-ago period. Sales fell 1% to $412.7 million, compared with $417.1 million a year ago. Analysts polled by FactSet had expected earnings of 46 cents a share on sales of $401 million. La-Z-Boy shares ended the regular session down 3.9%.

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Red Hat Inc. shares jumped more than 9% in after-hours trading Tuesday following a quarterly earnings report that beat expectations and raised projections for the year, sending prices to levels unseen since the dot-com boom went bust. The open-source tech-infrastructure company reported net income of $73.2 million, or 40 cents a share, on sales of $676.8 million for the first quarter of its 2018 fiscal year. After adjustments for stock-based compensation and other effects, Red Hat claimed profit of 56 cents a share. Analysts on average expected Red Hat to report adjusted earnings of 53 cents a share on sales of $648 million, according to FactSet, and the company had guided for adjusted profit of 52 cents to 53 cents a share. Red Hat also increased its guidance for profit and revenue for the full fiscal year; adjusted earnings are now expected to fall in a range of $2.66 to $2.70 a share, up from a previous range of $2.60 to $2.64 a share, and sales are expected to finish the fiscal year at $2.785 billion to $2.825 billion, increased from a previous range of $2.72 billion to $2.76 billion. Red Hat stock rocketed to more than $98.50 after closing with a 0.4% decline at $89.96; shares have not topped $92.49 in regular trading since early 2000.

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