1 day Ago
NEW YORK — U.S. stocks drifted to a mixed finish Nov.
20, though the modest moves for indexes masked some thrashing underneath the surface: Retail giant Target lost more than a fifth of its value after it gave a dour forecast for the holiday shopping season. The S&P 500 closed out Wednesday virtually unchanged after coming back from an early loss of 1 percent. The Dow Jones Industrial Average eked out a gain of 0.
3 percent, and the Nasdaq composite slipped 0.1 percent. Target's 21.
4 percent tumble followed its report showed weaker profits and revenue for the latest quarter than analysts expected. The retailer also gave a forecast for profit in the upcoming holiday season that was below forecasts. Target's performance stood in stark contrast to rival Walmart, which reported another quarter of stellar sales Tuesday and released optimistic projections for the holiday season.
"I find the Target and Walmart earnings very interesting because we typically see a waterfall type effect when the economy begins to struggle, with shoppers trading down from stores such as Target to Walmart," said JJ Kinahan, CEO of IG North America. "I'm not entirely sure if the move to Walmart is simply a matter of shoppers finding more items they like at Walmart or if this is a potentially concerning economic sign." Besides Target, several lower-priced retailers were among the biggest losers in the S&P 500.
Dollar General fell 4.2 percent, and Dollar Tree sank 2.6 percent.
On the winning end of Wall Street was Williams-Sonoma, which jumped 27.5% after the home retailer delivered better profit and revenue for the latest quarter than analysts expected. NEW YORK — Campbell's is ditching the soup — at least in name.
And the change has now received the OK from shareholders. Campbell Soup Co. announced its intention to change its name just over two months ago, saying it wanted to instead be known as the Campbell's Co.
Shareholders overwhelmingly approved the change on Nov, 19. CEO Mark Clouse maintained that this "subtle yet important change" will retain the company's iconic name "while reflecting the full breadth of our portfolio." New Jersey-based Campbell's hasn't been exclusive to the soup business for some time.
The company also owns brands like Prego sauce and Goldfish crackers — and completed a $2.7 billion acquisition of Sovos Brands, the maker of Rao's pasta sauces, earlier this year. Still, the 155-year-old food seller is most famous for its namesake canned soups, adorned with red and white labels.
Its new name won't change the packaging. FRANKFURT, Germany — Ford Motor Co. will reduce its workforce by 4,000 in Europe and the U.
K. by the end of 2027, citing headwinds from the economy and pressure from increased competition and weaker than expected sales of electric cars. The carmaker said Nov.
20 that 2,900 of the cuts would come in Germany and would be carried out in consultation with employee representatives. Another 800 jobs in the U.K.
will be elimination, with the rest in other European Union countries. Ford has 28,000 employees in Europe, and 174,000 worldwide. ATLANTA — The CEO of Delta Air Lines says the incoming Trump administration will be a "breath of fresh air" for airlines after what he calls government "overreach" under President Joe Biden.
The airline industry has chafed under consumer-protection regulations imposed by the Biden administration. And Delta is facing a federal investigation into its slow recovery from a global technology outage this summer. Delta CEO Ed Bastian made the comment as he and fellow executives prepared to host Wall Street analysts at an investor day Wednesday in Atlanta.
Bastian noted that Donald Trump campaigned on a pledge to reform the federal government and reduce its size. The airline executive said Trump promised "to take a fresh look at the regulatory environment, the bureaucracy that exists in government, the level of overreach that we have seen over the last four years within our industry. I think that will be a breath of fresh air.
" Southwest Airlines CEO Robert Jordan struck a similar tone last week. LONDON — Inflation in the U.K.
rose sharply to a six-month high in October and back above the rate targeted by rate-setters at the Bank of England, official figures showed Nov. 20, cementing market expectations that there will be no further cuts in borrowing costs this year. The Office for National Statistics said higher domestic energy bills pushed up consumer price inflation up to 2.
3 percent in the year to last month from the three-year low of 1.7 percent recorded in September. Stubbornly high inflation in the services sector, which accounts for around 80 percent of the British economy, didn't help either.
The increase, which was above forecasts for a more modest increase, took inflation above the U.K central bank's target rate of 2 percent. NEW YORK — The founder of Archegos Capital Management, a hedge fund, has been sentenced to 18 years in prison for his conviction in a securities and market manipulation fraud that prosecutors say cost global investment banks billions of dollars.
Bill Hwang was told the length of his prison term Nov. 20. Judge Alvin K.
Hellerstein said that over $9 billion lost by financial institutions when the fund collapsed in 2021 meant he had never presided over a case with so much financial loss. Hwang told the judge before the sentence was announced that he felt "really terrible for what happened at Archegos." The judge did not complete the sentencing hearing, though, and said it will resume on Thursday.
But he said he had "pronounced" the length of the prison term he is imposing. At Hwang's July trial, prosecutors blamed Hwang and his co-conspirators, saying they artificially inflated the values of nearly a dozen stocks before the investments collapsed in March 2021, wiping out $100 billion in market value along with the company he created. NEW YORK — A promotional video for a rebrand of British luxury car brand Jaguar is being criticized online for showing models in brightly colored outfits — and no car.
The rebrand, which includes a new logo, is slated to launch Dec. 2 during the Miami Art Week, when the company will unveil a new electric GT model. Until then, Jaguar Land Rover, a unit of India's Tata Motors Ltd.
, has been promoting it online. The Jaguar brand is in the middle of a transition to going all-electric. "Copy Nothing," marketing materials read.
"We're here to delete the ordinary. To go bold. To copy nothing.
" The promotional video, posted on X and Instagram, shows models dressed in futuristic brightly colored outfits walking in an alien-like landscape. "Break Moulds," copy reads. It drew ire online, with some posts complaining about the lack of a car, the confusing message and the new, stylized logo.
.
