FT : VW puts European battery plant on hold as it seeks €10bn from US

VW puts European battery plant on hold as it seeks €10bn from US
Europe’s largest carmaker is ‘waiting’ for an EU response to Biden administration’s subsidies

Volkswagen is putting on hold a planned battery plant in eastern Europe and prioritising a similar facility in North America after estimating it could receive €10bn in US incentives.

The decision is the latest fallout from Joe Biden’s $369bn package of subsidies and tax incentives for green technology that is luring European companies to the US.

Europe’s largest carmaker told EU officials last week that it expected to reap €9bn-€10bn in subsidies and loans from the US president’s Inflation Reduction Act and other US schemes over the lifetime of the factory, according to people at the meeting.

VW was “waiting” to see how the EU would respond to Washington’s incentives before pressing ahead with a plan to build a plant in eastern Europe, said one person with direct knowledge of the decision making at VW.

“Plans in North America have moved forward faster than expected and overtaken decision making in Europe,” the person said.

The IRA has sparked panic among European policymakers as high-tech industries such as batteries, which they have spent years nurturing, look across the Atlantic as competition from China intensifies.

The European Commission, which will next week publish a Net Zero Industry Act as part of its response to the US green scheme, is looking to loosen rules on state aid and is reassessing whether to deploy EU-level subsidies. But an early draft outlined last week has fallen short, according to industry executives.

A senior executive at another European battery maker present at last week’s meeting, which took place in Brussels and that competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager attended, said: “It looks pretty bad. There was an absence of concrete measures.”

Another executive said: “We’ve been contacted by many US states and they all highlight the IRA. When we put the figures together, the conditions they offer are much more interesting than the conditions they offer in Europe.”

The European Commission said on Wednesday that it did not comment on individual decisions taken by companies.

VW said no decisions had been made on the locations of its plants in North America or Europe and it was committed to its plan to build more cell factories in Europe. “But for this we need the right framework conditions. That is why we wait and see what the so-called EU Green Deal will bring,” the company said.

Battery maker Northvolt, which also attended the meeting, suggested it could choose the US over Germany when deciding the location of its next gigafactory unless Brussels gave more concrete support, according to people with knowledge of the discussions. Northvolt estimated it would be able to receive more than €8bn in US subsidies for one factory, they said.

Northvolt declined to comment.

VW is making “much faster progress” with battery factory plans in North America compared with Europe, Thomas Schmall, head of VW’s components unit, wrote on LinkedIn after attending the meeting in Brussels. Europe was at risk of losing out on “billions of investments that will be decided in the coming months and years”, he added, calling for a European public state aid programme and lower prices for green energy.

Lobby group Transport & Environment warned this week that more than two-thirds of European battery projects were at risk of being cancelled, delayed or cut back.

VW, which has gone beyond most other carmakers to secure increasingly volatile supply chains by announcing plans to not only assemble batteries but also manufacture cells, said two years ago that it would build six gigafactories.

Arno Antlitz, VW’s chief financial officer, last week said the carmaker “would have done [a North American battery plant] anyway”, but that the new subsidies accelerated its plans.

“The IRA gives us a tailwind in terms of speed and consequence, so we have the possibility to enlarge our global footprint even faster in the US with the IRA.”

FT : Vivendi heir vows to prove business works as an integrated group

Vivendi heir vows to prove business works as an integrated group
Yannick Bolloré wants to show French media company is not just a ‘conglomerate of shareholdings’

The heir to Vincent Bolloré’s media group has pledged to prove that Vivendi is a coherent company and not a disparate set of holdings, a goal that has been promised many times but not yet achieved by the family-backed enterprise.

“The challenge we have at Vivendi is to prove that we are an integrated industrial group, present throughout the value chain of entertainment, media and culture and not a conglomerate of shareholdings,” Yannick Bolloré told the Financial Times, one year after his father, corporate raider and industrialist Vincent Bolloré, officially retired from the company.

“This would allow us to reduce the holding discount, which would create a lot of value,” Bolloré added.

Vivendi is at a point of transition, both in terms of the elder Bolloré stepping back from the limelight and the composition of the group. Vincent Bolloré first invested in the French group roughly a decade ago and has since held a minority stake of just under 30 per cent. Yet as chairman he has also long set its direction.

He presided over the slimming down of the company via asset sales and added advertising agency Havas. The most recent sale came when Vivendi spun out its biggest and most valuable business via a listing of Universal Music Group two years ago. That left it with a much smaller business in pay-TV with Canal Plus, Havas and some print magazines.

While UMG — in which the stakes of the Vivendi and Bolloré family holding companies combine to make them the biggest shareholder — is now valued at more than €40bn, a slimmed down Vivendi is currently valued at €10.8bn. 

The younger Bolloré, who became chair of Vivendi’s supervisory board in 2018 and remains chief executive of Havas, now faces the challenge of turning Vivendi into a more cohesive group. He announced a plan last year to knit together the group’s holdings — for instance, using material developed in its publishing houses to develop television series for Canal+ — while growing its businesses outside France.

The group is now negotiating with European competition authorities in the hopes of getting approval for its proposed takeover of French media and retail group Lagardère, which owns book publisher Hachette, the world’s third-largest publisher. But since it already owns Editis, a French-focused publishing business with significant market share, regulators have demanded that this be sold.

Vivendi had proposed to regulators that it spin out Editis in a so-called share distribution and sell its remaining stake in a two-stage process.

Yannick Bolloré said he expected to have a final response from the EU on buying Lagardère by early summer, following meetings in Brussels last week.

“Brussels had preferred the simplest solution [of an outright sale] and the share distribution is not common, so [it is] a little new. Brussels is open to new ideas but wants to be certain about them,” he said.

Three parties — an alliance of businessmen Stéphane Courbit, Daniel Kretinsky and Pierre-Edouard Stérin, Canadian group Quebecor and media group Reworld — have submitted bids for the Bolloré holding company’s remaining stake in Editis after the spinout, with the buyer expected to be chosen soon.

Vivendi on Wednesday reported an annual net loss of €1bn after revaluing and removing its stake in indebted group Telecom Italia from its balance sheet, having recorded record profits of €24.7bn in 2021 following the listing of UMG.

Revenues rose 10 per cent to €9.6bn. When the contribution from Vivendi’s stakes in Lagardère and UMG were excluded, earnings before interest, tax, amortisation and depreciation grew 10 per cent to €646mn.

Vivendi shares have fallen roughly 9 per cent in the past year, compared with a 17 per cent rise for the Stoxx 600 Europe Media index.

Canal+ has been betting on international expansion to grow and now has around two-thirds of its subscribers outside France. The broadcaster also recently increased its shareholding in South African pay-TV operator MultiChoice to more than 30 per cent, just below the threshold that would trigger a mandatory offer to shareholders.

The two complement each other geographically. Canal+ operates across much of west Africa, while MultiChoice spreads across the south and centre of the continent.

“The idea for Canal+ is to grow its subscriber base to make its content available to a wider base of subscribers either through acquisitions or partnerships,” Bolloré said. “The idea is to create a group or community of companies that can compete with big television platforms.”

FT : Adidas: Yeezy come, Yeezy go, Bjørn leader clears up the mess

Adidas: Yeezy come, Yeezy go, Bjørn leader clears up the mess
New chief must deal with aftermath of Kanye West tie-up before he can focus on turnround efforts

Adidas’s new chief executive, Bjørn Gulden, has set himself a lofty goal. He wants to make the brand, tarnished by its association with disgraced rapper Kanye West, “the best sports brand in the world once again”.

He also needs to rebuild the German company’s reputation with investors. The market has been willing to give Gulden — who comes from rival Puma with a strong record — the benefit of the doubt.

His first job is to sort out the aftermath of the partnership with West, now known as Ye, which accounted for about a third of operating profits. This includes figuring out what to do with €1.2bn of remaining Yeezy stock. Adidas is disinclined to burn the shoes or give them away. Both options would entail a €500mn write-off. Instead, Gulden has talked about selling the trainers and donating the profits to charity, which might enable Adidas to recoup some of the cost.

Gulden’s second job is even harder: turning the rest of Adidas around.

The new boss is hoping for a return to double-digit sales growth and ebit margins. But this will require a revitalisation of the underlying brand, which has languished. It has produced low single-digit sales growth in the past five years, according to Adam Cochrane, analyst at Deutsche Bank Research.

Backing out Yeezy’s operating profit in 2021 suggests Adidas is starting from margins in mid-single digits. The current year should be one of transition. Dispiritingly, guidance points to negative sales growth as the company pushes inventory out of the door.

A lot of what Gulden says makes sense. Adidas should be motivating staff better. The €15.9mn golden parachute that former chief Kasper Rørsted has secured at a time when other executives are getting no bonus hardly helps. And turnrounds do, as Gulden points out, take time.

The shares have already priced in most of the hope, trading on 34 times earnings in 2024, according to S&P Capital IQ. Adidas will have little upside until the Yeezy debacle is well behind it.

WWD : Louis Vuitton Presents First Self-winding Automata Watch for Women

Louis Vuitton Presents First Self-winding Automata Watch for Women
New releases included the feminine 42-mm rose gold timepiece, another automaton inspired by Sichuan opera and watches with cases cut from a single sapphire.


PARIS — Louis Vuitton’s watchmaking division is delving further into the automata genre with its latest launches, to be revealed on Thursday at an event in Courchevel.

First, the French luxury brand’s 42-mm rose gold Tambour Fiery Heart Automata is its first in-house self-winding automaton movement geared toward a female clientele, entirely developed in its La Fabrique du Temps Louis Vuitton workshop.

Marking another first is the new timepiece’s dial, done in-house by a master enameller. It features a crowned flaming heart bearing the word “sweet” on an unfurled scroll while briar roses and their thorny vines curl, serving as indices on the sub-dial, executed in candy-like reds and lush greens.

“The depth of the dial in this diameter is stunning in its detail,” said Jean Arnault, director of watches at Louis Vuitton, lauding the skilled hands at La Fabrique du Temps who brought “heritage techniques of engraving and enameling to bear in a modern and realistic way.”

There are no less than seven mechanisms involved in the 13-second animation, including the one that opens the heart to reveal the full message to be “Sweet but Fierce,” in a nod to the idea that “there is no rose without its thorn,” according to the brand.

It took three years for the teams under the direction of master watchmakers Enrico Barbasini and Michel Navas to develop the caliber LFT 325 movement for another novelty: the first time a flying tourbillon mechanism has been paired with a self-winding movement with automata on the dial. This latter part is driven by its own mainspring.

Another automaton that caught the eye at a preview at the brand’s headquarters in Paris: the Tambour Opera Automata, a jacquemart automaton design two years in the making and inspired by Bian Lian, a face-changing artform found in China’s Sichuan opera.

It sees performers change silk masks in a split second to depict different expressions from an array of up to 20, generally hiding the gesture behind the flick of a fan or another movement.

“We wanted the Tambour Opera Automata to reflect the striking aesthetics and expressive movements of Bian Lian,” stated Navas, who cocreated this watch’s movement with Barbasini, drawing a parallel between the legerdemain required for the mask changes and traditional watchmaking skills.

The dial bears the combined efforts of master engraver Dick Steenman and master enameller Anita Porchet, to portray a Bian Lian mask that shifts from joy to sadness set on a black monogrammed background. On the back, the mask is also reproduced in a black polish that can take 50 hours to achieve even for the most skilled hands.

The precious metal engraving alone took Steenman more than two weeks to complete, while Porchet worked white, red and black cloisonné enamel separated with white gold threads to depict the character’s expressive features.

Like its predecessor, the award-winning Tambour Carpe Diem that scooped the “Audacity Award at the 2021 Grand Prix de l’Horlogerie Genève,” the figure plays an active role in the way time is displayed.

Pressing the dragon’s head at two o’clock activates five different animations to come alive for a total of 16 seconds, driven by the LV 525 caliber with jumping hours and retrograde minutes. A pink-gold dragon’s head swings across the mask’s forehead to reveal the hours while the tail points to the minutes, as the mask’s eyes and mouth also move.

There are other nods to Chinese culture, including the replacement of the number four, considered unlucky, by a four-petal flower in the hour indicator; the power reserve is a calabash-shaped gourd, and there are enameled fans on the dial and crown.

Other new designs launching Thursday are a pair of Tambour Moon Flying Tourbillon Poinçon de Genève watches, with cases cut from single blocks of synthetic sapphire in fluorescent yellow or green.

All the better to see the intricacies of the flying tourbillon, with its Monogram Flower openwork carriage, and matte black circular bridges and plates. Like previous styles, both versions are customizable to one’s initials instead of the house’s L and V.

In addition to 420 hours required for the sapphire case, every watch component of a Poinçon de Genève timepiece has to be made and finished by hand in the Canton of Geneva by craftsmen in order to bear the city’s hallmark, so these are expected to be produced in very limited series.

>>> Billionaire Ken Griffin Negotiating ChatGPT License For Citadel Empire

Billionaire Ken Griffin Negotiating ChatGPT License For Citadel Empire

Citadel CEO Ken Griffin has taken a different approach from Wall Street banks, who have banned using artificial intelligence chatbots in their offices. Instead, Griffin is currently in the process of obtaining a company-wide license to utilize OpenAI's ChatGPT tool.

"This branch of technology has real impact on our business," Griffin told Bloomberg in an interview on Tuesday in sunny Palm Beach, Florida. "Everything from helping our developers write better code to translating software between languages to analyze various types of information that we analyze in the ordinary course of our business," he added.

Griffin, who heads the South Florida hedge fund Citadel and capital-markets firm Citadel Securities, touted the chatbot as the "fastest-growing consumer application in the history of the internet." He emphasized: "I'm really excited to see how this changes the world."

Griffin views ChatGPT as a way to streamline tasks for employees, enabling them to be more productive. "It will take an enormous amount of work that's done today by people, and do it in a distinctly different, highly automated, efficient way," he said.

Last year was a banner year for both of Griffin's companies, with Citadel Securities raking in revenue of $7.5 billion and becoming the largest trading unit in the US. Similarly, Griffin's flagship hedge fund recorded a 38% surge due to strong performances in equities and commodities.

The billionaire founder is setting a precedent for the industry at a time when many Wall Street banks, such as Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc., Deutsche Bank AG, Goldman Sachs Group Inc., and Wells Fargo & Co., have prohibited ChatGPT from the office.

WSJ : Crypto Bank Silvergate Capital Says It Will Shut Down; Stock Plummets

Crypto Bank Silvergate Capital Says It Will Shut Down; Stock Plummets

Silvergate Capital, one of the crypto market's top banks, is shutting down.

The bank will repay all deposits and “is also considering how best to resolve claims and preserve the residual value of its assets," it said in a news release Wednesday.

Silvergate caters to companies in the crypto business. It helped institutional investors move dollars in and out of crypto-trading platforms through its Silvergate Exchange Network, which it stopped operating last week.

The bank’s implosion makes it one of the few non-crypto companies to go out of business as a result of the industry’s downturn.

Silvergate's decline tracked the unraveling of the broader crypto industry. What once was a novel business strategy soured as crypto companies withdrew their deposits, bank regulators cracked down on lenders’ exposure to the sector and investors grew wary of the approach.

Silvergate's share were down more than 28% in after-hours trading. It closed Wednesday at $4.91, an all-time low in data going back to November 2019, according to Dow Jones Market Data, and off 98% from its all-time high set in November 2021.

>>> US Close Dow -0.18% S&P +0.14% Nasdaq +0.40% Russell +0.04%

Closing Stock Market Summary

There was not a lot of conviction behind today's trade as investors digested day two of Fed Chair Powell's testimony before the House Financial Services Committee. The main indices spent the majority of the session trading either slightly above or slightly below their flat lines.

The lackluster price action today was due to the Treasury market signaling concerns about the Fed possibly taking rates too high and forcing a recession. Yesterday's settlement levels brought the 2s10s spread to its widest margin since 1981 and things didn't get any better today. 

The 2-yr note yield rose five basis points to 5.06% and the 10-yr note yield settled unchanged at 3.98%. This followed a slate of better than expected data this morning and a $32 billion 10-yr note reopening, which did not go over so well at auction. The high yield of 3.985% at that auction tailed the when-issued yield of 3.958% by nearly three basis points on relatively weak dollar demand. The bid-to-cover ratio was 2.35 versus the prior 12-auction average of 2.43. 

Following the auction at 1:00 p.m. ET, the 10-yr note yield moved up to challenge the 4.00% level again. With that move, stock prices deteriorated and the major indices slipped to trade closer to their lows of the session.

The main indices were able to close comfortably above their lows, though, thanks to a mega-cap driven rally effort taking root in the last hour of trading. The upside momentum eventually petered out when the S&P 500 almost hit its 50-day moving average (3,997), which pivoted Tuesday from support to resistance.

With the late afternoon push higher, most of the S&P 500 sectors registered a gain today. Moves were somewhat modest in scope with the exception of real estate (+1.3%), information technology (+0.8%), and utilities (+0.8%). The energy sector (-1.0%), meanwhile, logged the biggest decline. 

Market participants also received the Fed's Beige Book, released at 2:00 p.m. ET, that indicated overall economic activity increased slightly in early 2023. The reaction to the Fed's Beige Book, along with today's better than expected economic data (the February ADP Employment Change, the January Trade Balance, and the January JOLTS - Job Openings), was relatively muted. 

  • Nasdaq Composite: +10.6% YTD
  • Russell 2000: +6.7% YTD
  • S&P Midcap 400: +6.4% YTD
  • S&P 500: +4.0% YTD
  • Dow Jones Industrial Average: -1.0% YTD

Reviewing today's economic data:

  • The weekly MBA Mortgage Application Index rose 7.4% with refinancing applications increasing 9.0% and purchase applications rising 7.0%.
  • The ADP Employment Change showed that private payrolls rose by 242,000 in February ( consensus 195,000) following a revised 119,000 increase in January (from 106,000).
  • The trade deficit for January widened to $68.3 billion ( consensus -$69.0 billion) from an upwardly revised $67.2 billion (from -$67.4 billion), as imports were $9.6 billion more than December imports and exports were $8.5 billion more than December exports.
    • The key takeaway from the report is that both imports and exports increased versus December, reflecting a pickup in global trade activity that is a reflection of increased demand.
  • JOLTS - Job Openings totaled 10.824 million in January following a revised 11.234 million in December (from 11.012 million).
  • Weekly EIA Crude Oil Inventories showed a draw of 1.69 million barrels following last week's build of 1.17 million barrels.

Looking ahead to Thursday, market participants will receive the following economic data:

  • 8:30 ET: Weekly Initial Claims ( consensus 198,000; prior 190,000) and Continuing Claims (prior 1.655 mln)
  • 10:30 ET: Weekly natural gas inventories (prior -81 bcf)

FT : EU countries urged to phase out huge energy subsidies

EU countries urged to phase out huge energy subsidies
Brussels prepares to reimpose budget rules suspended when pandemic began

Brussels has urged EU countries to start phasing out massive energy subsidies as it prepares to reimpose budget rules three years after the coronavirus pandemic broke out.

The European Commission on Wednesday set out its plan for the return of the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP), which was suspended at the start of the pandemic in 2020 as EU governments spent huge sums supporting their economies and providing healthcare.

Rising energy prices as Russia cut gas supplies after its invasion of Ukraine last year prompted member states to provide support to people and businesses struggling to pay their bills.

But the commission said the measures should now be unwound as the cost of energy drops and deficits need to be reduced. Governments spent 1.2 per cent of EU gross domestic product in 2022 on energy subsidies and plan to spend 0.9 per cent in 2023, its figures showed.

“As energy prices head lower, we should move to phasing out most of the support measures, starting with the least targeted,” said Valdis Dombrovskis, executive vice-president at the commission.

“The time for broad-based fiscal support has passed. It is time to shift gear and look to the future. From a fiscal standpoint, we need to change focus.” 

Dombrovskis said if support had been given to only the poorest 40 per cent of citizens last year, the cost would have been cut by three-quarters.

The subsidies in most countries disproportionately benefited the wealthy, who consume more, a senior commission official said. “The measures were not very well targeted and did little to reduce consumption.”

The commission confirmed that the general escape clause, which suspended enforcement of the SGP, would be “deactivated” at the end of this year. Under the pact countries are meant to limit budget deficits to 3 per cent of GDP and bring debt ratios to 60 per cent of GDP or below.

That means that from 2024 Brussels is likely once again to open so-called excessive deficit procedures against member states where the gap between public revenue and spending is overshooting the target, said Paolo Gentiloni, economics commissioner.

“Given the still high economic uncertainty, we have decided not to open any excessive deficit procedures until spring 2024,” he added.

Wednesday’s guidance is meant to help member states prepare their 2024 budgets. Gentiloni said fiscal rebalancing “should not be achieved by cutting investment but by limiting the growth of current spending”, given the need to fund green energy projects. “We do not need austerity,” he added.

Governments should provide plans of how they will comply with fiscal tightening by April. 

These stability and convergence programmes “should set ambitious fiscal targets that respect the 3 per cent GDP deficit reference value and ensure a path for credible, continuous debt reduction, or for keeping it at prudent levels in the medium term”, Dombrovskis said.

The commission has forecast the euro area budget deficit will widen from 3.5 per cent of GDP in 2022 to 3.7 per cent this year. The number of member states breaching the 3 per cent figure is expected to increase from 10 to 12 between 2022 and 2023, including Italy and Spain.

Public debt in the euro area is expected to fall to 92 per cent of GDP in 2023.

The commission set out its guidance for public finances in 2024 amid a planned overhaul of the bloc’s budget rules that will probably involve the introduction of fresh legislation.

EU finance ministers are expected to debate the ideas at a meeting in Brussels next week.

While there is no consensus, the senior official insisted there was growing convergence on several issues. While the 3 per cent deficit and 60 per cent debt targets should remain, fiscal plans would probably be assessed over several years rather than an annual basis.

FT : Thales targets capacity boost to meet growing military demand

Thales targets capacity boost to meet growing military demand
French group shores up supply chain as European nations boost defence budgets in response to Ukraine war

Thales, Europe’s largest defence electronics group, has said it is shoring up its supply chain in anticipation of rising demand as European countries move to boost their military budgets in the wake of Russia’s assault on Ukraine.

“Over the coming years, the geopolitical situation requires significant growth in the military budgets of the group’s major customers,” said chief executive Patrice Caine. “Our first priority is to ramp up capacity by increasing staff, enlarging our own production and making sure our supply chain can follow.”

The comments came after Paris-based Thales, which also manufactures systems for aerospace customers, published 2022 results on Wednesday in which core profit rose 15.6 per cent to €1.9bn, in line with expectations. Sales rose by an underlying 5.5 per cent to €17.6bn.

Thales is one of several European defence groups that are benefiting from a planned ramp-up in military spending because of the war in Ukraine.

France in particular is planning a 40 per cent step-up in its 2024-2030 military budget to reach more than €400bn, which according to Citigroup should benefit Thales since it earns 28 per cent of sales in France.

To be able to respond to demand, Thales will expand its workforce by about 5 per cent this year by recruiting 12,000 new workers, having already hired 11,500 people last year, a much faster pace of hiring than usual.

Thales predicted that revenue would grow on a like-for-like basis by “mid-single digits” in its defence segment this year, and said it would seek to maintain operating margins of roughly 13 per cent. Last year, when the group made €9.2bn in revenue, organic growth stood at 3.8 per cent.

The company said aerospace revenues would grow by “high single digits” this year on a like-for-like basis, while operating margins would reach 8.5 to 9 per cent next year, close to 2019 levels before the pandemic hit air travel.

Investors reacted unfavourably to the results, sending shares in Thales down 4.5 per cent in mid-morning trading in Paris, making it the biggest loser on the blue-chip CAC 40 index.

Analysts said the 2023 guidance for free cash flow and sales growth was underwhelming. Milene Kerner, of Barclays, said Thales stock had enjoyed “a good run” recently, rising about 12 per cent in the past month compared with a rise of 3 per cent for the CAC 40, so an adjustment was to be expected.

“The fundamental investment outlook has not changed much,” she said. “Thales is well positioned [for] growing defence spending.”

>>> US Gapping down

Gapping down
In reaction to earnings/guidance:

  • UNFI -21.9%, SOUN -10.5%, YEXT -8.4%, SFIX -8%, MBC -5.8%, COCO -5%, IMXI -4.6%, AGTI -4.3%, VRDN -2.2%, CRCT -1%

Other news:

  • SHLS -7.8% (prices secondary offering of 24501650 shares of common stock by certain selling stockholders at $24.70 per share)
  • PTLO -5.9% (prices offering of 8.0 mln shares of common stock at $21.05 per share)
  • COCO -5% (appoints new CFO)
  • PR -4.9% (prices secondary offering of 27.5 mln shares of common stock at $11.00 per share)
  • BANC -4.9% (files mixed shelf)
  • ASLE -2.2% (stock offering)
  • MODN -2.2% (to offer $220 mln convertible notes)
  • ACI -2% (established a retention program to incentivize and promote retention of a key group of Company employees to help consummate the Kroger (KR) merger)
  • AER -1.1% (stock offerings)
  • SAM -0.9% (CFO stepping down)

Analyst comments:

  • CARA -4.9% (downgraded to Underperform from Neutral at BofA Securities)
  • TSLA -1.4% (downgraded to Hold from Buy at Berenberg)
  • ACRE -1.3% (downgraded to Mkt Perform from Outperform at Keefe Bruyette)