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☆ Employers say union is disrupting work at Southern California seaports
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-14 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

Major shippers - including suppliers to retailers including Walmart Inc (WMT.N) and Home Depot Inc (HD.N) - have been diverting cargo from the West Coast to rival seaports on the East Coast and Gulf of Mexico to avoid potential work stoppages. "These actions have slowed the start of operations throughout the Southern California port complex," PMA said. The disruption coincided with a routine monthly "stop work" meeting on April 6, Los Angeles Port Director Gene Seroka told reporters on a conference call on Wednesday. "The collective bargaining agreement between the union and the employers guarantees these monthly meetings, which are dedicated to addressing the union's proceedings," Seroka said. Reporting by Lisa Baertlein in Los Angeles Editing by Matthew LewisOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

☆ Analysis: Goldman Sachs faces hard sell for its consumer assets
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-01 | by ( Saeed Azhar | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +5 min

NEW YORK, March 1 (Reuters) - Goldman Sachs Group Inc (GS.N) is embarking on a tough sales pitch to investors for assets in its troubled consumer business, which has dragged on earnings and may lack appeal for potential buyers. In an unexpected move, Chief Executive Officer David Solomon said on Tuesday the bank is looking at 'strategic alternatives' for the consumer business, a signal of a possible sale. Solomon had championed Goldman's foray into consumer banking since taking the reins at the Wall Street powerhouse in 2018. The consumer operations largely failed to gain traction against well-established consumer banks and lost billions of dollars due to credit provisioning. Mike Mayo, an analyst at Wells Fargo, wrote in a note that the key question about Goldman's consumer business is: "who would be willing to buy it, and at what price?"

☆ Home Depot Forecasts Earnings Drop This Year
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-21 | by ( Dean Seal | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Home Depot shoppers are among the consumers directing spending away from goods and toward services. Home Depot Inc. forecast a drop in profit this year on flat sales as consumers spend less on goods and become more sensitive to higher prices. The home-improvement chain said Tuesday that it expects adjusted per-share earnings to decline at a mid-single-digit rate for 2023, with margins affected in part by an additional $1 billion that Home Depot said it would invest into wage increases for its hourly employees.

☆ Walmart, Home Depot Give Cautious Outlook as Shoppers Spend More on Basics
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-21 | by ( Sarah Nassauer | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Walmart said quarterly sales of some nonfood items fell, as consumers gave priority to spending on everyday needs. Consumers are spending more on food and less on electronics, apparel and home improvements as inflation and changing habits zap demand for many goods, two of the country’s largest retailers reported Tuesday. Walmart Inc. and Home Depot Inc. have enjoyed robust sales for much of the past two years as people looked for bargains or fixed up their homes. Now more of shoppers’ budgets are going to higher-priced groceries and travel, executives said.

☆ The stock market has been flipped and investors are taunting the Fed
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-21 | by ( Phil Rosen | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

As my colleague Matthew Fox writes, the stock market has been completely flipped upside down so far in 2023. This is the type of trading behavior you'd expect to see when interest rates are closer to 0% than 5%. To Kolanovic, the errant investor behavior foreshadows a plunge in the stock market. US stock futures fall early Tuesday, as investors stay worried that persistent inflation means interest rates will stay higher for longer. SoFi's Liz Young warned that a lack of reserve funds could stop this year's stock market rally: "What the equity market is not pricing in at this point, or is not worried enough about, is consumer spending."

☆ Home Depot warns of weak 2023 profit as rising prices hurt demand
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-21 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

1 U.S. home improvement chain posted a surprise drop in fourth-quarter comparable sales, sending its shares down more than 4% in premarket trading. Shares of smaller rival Lowe's Cos Inc (LOW.N) also slipped after Home Depot's dour forecast amid a strained U.S. housing market. Wall Street analysts have warned that home improvement chains are set for a challenging 2023. Home Depot said comparable sales fell 0.3% in the fourth quarter ended Jan. 29, compared with analysts' average estimate of a 0.56% increase. Home Depot said it would spend an additional $1 billion in annualized compensation for its frontline, hourly associates, starting from the first quarter of 2023.

☆ Home Depot Canada found sharing customer personal data with Meta - privacy regulator
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-26 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

Jan 26 (Reuters) - Home Depot Inc's (HD.N) Canadian arm was found to be sharing details from e-receipts related to in-store purchases with Facebook owner Meta Platforms Inc (META.O) without the knowledge or consent of its customers, according to Canada's privacy regulator. An investigation by the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (OPC) found that by participating in Meta's offline conversions program Home Depot shared the e-receipts that included encoded email addresses and purchase information. The regulator added that the home goods chain stopped sharing customer information with Meta in October 2022, which was among the recommendations made by OPC, until the company is able to implement measures to ensure valid consent. Home Depot and Meta did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment. Reporting by Ananya Mariam Rajesh in Bengaluru; Editing by Shailesh KuberOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

☆ Prologis Says Warehouse Demand Remains Strong in Slowing Economy
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-20 | by ( Paul Berger | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +3 min

Prologis Inc., the world’s largest developer of logistics properties, is bullish about warehouse demand this year despite signs of an economic slowdown. Executives at San Francisco-based Prologis said Wednesday they remain cautious about building new facilities as the economy wavers. But they said vacancy rates remain near record lows and that much of the leasing activity for this year is already secured or underway. Warehouse demand peaked last year, as average national vacancy rates plummeted to near 3% and reached close to 1% in Southern California. Average occupancy in Prologis’s owned and managed portfolio ticked up to 98% in the fourth quarter from 97.7% in the prior quarter.

☆ Home Depot to change pay policy for hourly employees
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-11 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: 1 min

Jan 11 (Reuters) - Home Depot Inc (HD.N) said on Wednesday it will change its pay policy for hourly employees starting Jan. 16, with associates being paid based on exact time punches. "Our policy has been to round total shift time up or down to the nearest 15 minutes ... we're changing our practice nationwide to pay hourly associates to the nearest minute," a company spokesperson said. Business Insider first reported on the development, adding that several Home Depot employees filed lawsuits in recent years accusing the company of purposefully rounding down their pay. According to the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), some employers track employee hours worked in 15 minute increments, and the FLSA allows an employer to round employee time to the nearest quarter hour. Reporting by Granth Vanaik in BengaluruOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

☆ Rising Interest Rates Imperil Remodeling Mania
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-29 | by ( Ryan Dezember | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Higher interest rates have slowed home sales. Now, rising borrowing costs threaten to put the brakes on the renovation boom. Spending on home remodeling and renovation by stuck-at-home Americans helped the economy surge out of lockdown in 2020. Demand overwhelmed makers of paint, wood panels and PVC pipe, leading to shortages. Lumber prices shot to more than twice the old record.

☆ CIOs Nominate Their Favorite Reads of 2022
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-28 | by ( Tom Loftus | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +9 min

Chief information officers, ever alert to any development in a field that only hurtles forward, largely reflected that alacrity in their choice of reading during 2022. PREVIEWChris Bedi, chief digital information officer, ServiceNow Inc. Photo: IBM Corp.Ron Guerrier, chief information officer, HP Inc. Photo: Cisco Systems Inc.Fletcher Previn, chief information officer, Cisco Systems Inc. Photo: Home Depot Inc.Fahim Siddiqui, chief information officer, Home Depot Inc.

☆ Retailers Pull Back From Using Chartered Cargo Ships
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-23 | by ( Paul Berger | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +5 min

Retailers are moving away from using chartered ships to get around pandemic-triggered disruptions now that congestion at ports has cleared and pressures in supply chains have eased. A representative for Home Depot said it stopped using chartered vessels earlier this year as space opened up in global shipping. Party City started booking space on chartered vessels in mid-2021 in advance of Halloween, its busiest time of year, said Bruce Dzinski, Party City’s director of international transportation. Will Harwood, a spokesman for Lidl, said Tailwind owns two container ships and can carry additional cargo on other chartered vessels. Most other companies, like Home Depot and Costco, relied on third-party companies to operate chartered ships.

☆ Eyeliner Out of Stock? Blame TikTok
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-22 | by ( Liz Young | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +7 min

Sonya Dube went to buy more of one of her favorite makeup products, a Charlotte Tilbury highlighter, this summer only to find it was out of stock—again. So, it was only natural that Ms. Dube turned to TikTok to document her exasperation at not being able to find another bottle. Viewers often can click a link to buy an item right away, making the shopping experience nearly seamless—if the product is in stock. Charlotte Tilbury has sought to adapt its supply chain to respond to customer demand as products go viral, a company spokesperson said. “We do our best to hold enough stock to get us through moments like these,” Ms. Schakler said.

☆ Oatly, Other Deflated IPO Stocks Haunt New-Issue Market
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-19 | by ( Corrie Driebusch | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Hundreds of companies that went public when the market for initial public offerings was booming have suffered such sharp reversals that they now face a stark reality: Their shares may never recover. More than one in four of the nearly 600 companies that went public via a traditional IPO in 2020 or 2021—including oat-milk maker Oatly Group AB and online lender loanDepot Inc.—traded at less than $2 a share as of Friday’s market close, according to Dealogic data. Many companies that went public in the surge of mergers involving SPACs, or special-purpose acquisition companies, also are faring poorly.

☆ Tax-loss selling in battered U.S. stocks could spur January snap-back
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-12 | by ( David Randall | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +4 min

Yet some investors are betting a number of those beaten-down stocks and possibly the broader market could snap back in January, once the selling period is over. DoubleLine founder Jeffrey Gundlach told CNBC on Wednesday that risk assets will likely rally in January once retail investors finish tax-loss selling. Strategists at Evercore wrote on Nov. 30 that they were "buyers of stocks whose 2022 Tax Loss selling pressure will soon abate." Investors appear to have already started selling underperforming shares. Private clients at BofA, for instance, sold nearly $1.4 billion of stocks in likely tax-motivated selling in November, up from roughly $800 million last year, and appear poised to continue that outsized rate of selling this month, the firm said.

[1/2] A view of the U.S. Supreme Court building on the first day of the court's new term in Washington, U.S. October 3, 2022. The Supreme Court on Dec. 1 said it would hear arguments on the legality of the debt relief program in the other case pursued by six mostly Republican-led states. Biden announced in August that the U.S. government would forgive up to $10,000 in student loan debt for borrowers making less than $125,000 a year, or $250,000 for married couples. Students who received Pell Grants to benefit lower-income college students would have up to $20,000 of their debt canceled. The Congressional Budget Office in September calculated that the debt forgiveness program would cost taxpayers about $400 billion.

☆ You’re Hired! No Interview Required in Tight Labor Market
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-10 | by ( Sarah Chaney Cambon | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Some employers racing to snap up workers in the tight labor market are omitting a step once considered crucial to hiring: the job interview. United Parcel Service Inc. has bulked up its staff without conducting job interviews for package handlers and seasonal drivers. Home Depot Inc. has sent job offers as quickly as 24 hours after candidates apply, in some cases eliminating the interview process. Gap Inc. has dropped job interviews for some warehousing positions.

Rulings by lower courts in two challenges filed against the debt relief program have put Biden's policy on ice. Biden announced in August that the U.S. government would forgive up to $10,000 in student loan debt for borrowers making less than $125,000 a year, or $250,000 for married couples. The Congressional Budget Office in September calculated that the debt forgiveness program would cost taxpayers about $400 billion. Biden and his predecessor Trump had invoked the law to pause student loan repayments. Biden on Nov. 22 extended the repayment pause to no later than next June 30 to give the Supreme Court time to decide the case.

☆ Logistics Companies Are Diversifying Hiring, but Challenges Persist
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-28 | by ( Liz Young | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +8 min

Photo: Sarah Oden/Associated PressWomen and people of color are being hired into top roles in the logistics industry. United Parcel Service Inc. turned to Carol Tomé, a former finance chief at Home Depot Inc., in 2020 to become chief executive officer. Raj Subramaniam, who is from India, was chosen to succeed FedEx Corp. founder Fred Smith as chief executive earlier this year. Judy McReynolds has been chief executive of ArcBest Corp. , one of the largest trucking companies in the U.S., since 2010. Studies also show there is a big gap in pay across the logistics industry.

☆ S&P 500 inches higher as Black Friday sales kick off
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-25 | by ( Ankika Biswas | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

SummarySummary Companies Retailers in focus as Black Friday sales startActivision down on likely FTC lawsuit to block Microsoft dealApple slips, Foxconn China plant sees lower shipmentsIndexes: Dow up 0.5%, S&P inches 0.1% higher, Nasdaq off 0.3%Nov 25 (Reuters) - The benchmark S&P 500 edged higher on Friday, with focus on retailers as Black Friday sales kicked off against the backdrop of stubbornly high inflation and cooling economic growth. The S&P 500 retail index (.SPXRT) slipped 0.1% on Friday, bringing its year-to-date losses to a little over 30%, while the S&P 500 is down 15% so far this year. "We're going have a higher-than-expected Black Friday sales number. The S&P 500 (.SPX) rose 3.41 points, or 0.08%, at 4,030.67, while the Nasdaq Composite (.IXIC) slipped 36.70 points, or 0.33%, at 11,248.61. The S&P index recorded 16 new 52-week highs and no new low, while the Nasdaq recorded 39 new highs and 42 new lows.

☆ Wall St Week Ahead With Black Friday ahead, investors look to U.S. consumer stocks
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-18 | by ( David Randall | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +4 min

Consumer discretionary stocks, a group whose members run the gamut from Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O) and automaker Tesla Inc (TSLA.O) to retailer Target Corp (TGT.N), have been walloped by surging prices, with the S&P 500’s consumer discretionary sector falling nearly 33% for the year to date compared with a nearly 17% fall for the broader index. Investors poured a net $1.05 billion into consumer discretionary stocks in the past week, the sixth-largest weekly inflows since 2008, data from BofA Global Research showed. “Everybody is watching the strength of the consumer and so far the consumer has held.”Yruma is bullish on retailers Nordstrom Inc (JWN.N) and Target. To be sure, consumer stocks have had more than their fair share of woes this year. The bank's analysts are underweight the consumer discretionary sector.

[1/2] Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York City, U.S., November 15, 2022. Home Depot Inc (HD.N) left its annual forecasts unchanged, but the home improvement chain's results exceeded Wall Street expectations and shares rose 1.6% amid a jump in shares of retailers. Among the S&P 500 sectors, consumer staples was up (.SPLRCS) 1.2%, while the consumer discretionary (.SPLRCD) index jumped 1.9%. Atlanta President Raphael Bostic echoed the views, saying he sees little evidence that the central bank's aggressive monetary policy tightening is slowing inflation. Advancing issues outnumbered decliners by a 5.30-to-1 ratio on the NYSE and by a 2.80-to-1 ratio on the Nasdaq.

☆ Home Depot gives 'mixed signals' with quarterly beat, dim holiday view
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-15 | by ( Deborah Mary Sophia | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

Nov 15 (Reuters) - Home Depot Inc (HD.N) tapped higher prices to override a drop in customer transactions for the third quarter and left its annual forecasts unchanged, signaling a weak holiday season amid a housing market slowdown. The fourth quarter will be the weakest of the year for comparable sales, it said, amid mounting uncertainties around the housing market. Home Depot saw customer transactions fall 4.3%, but higher prices of lumber, copper and other building materials helped drive average ticket - or the average amount of sales per customer - 8.8% higher, offsetting some pressure. Net earnings increased to $4.34 billion, or $4.24 per share, while analysts on average expected a profit of $4.12 per share. Shares of the company reversed course to gain about 2%, after Walmart Inc (WMT.N) raised its annual sales and profit forecasts, sending retail stocks higher.

☆ Home Depot Sales Up 5.6% in Third Quarter
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-15 | by ( Dean Seal | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Home Depot Inc.’s sales rose 5.6% in the third quarter as higher prices again offset a slowdown in transactions. The home-improvement chain said Tuesday that customers spent an average of 8.8% more per transaction during the quarter while the number of transactions fell 4.3%.

☆ A top oil analyst explains why oil is about to surge to $120 - and stay there for 2 years as Europe battles supply shocks
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-15 | by ( Phil Rosen | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

Come December, oil prices in particular will come under pressure as the European Union imposes fresh sanctions on Russia. Oil prices are about to hit $120 a barrel, and they're likely going to stay high for two years. The Energy Aspects senior analyst said that Europe is facing troubling supply issues that are unlikely to go away anytime soon. "OPEC's been very protective of making sure there's a floor to prices," Gallarati said. What's something that you think could help ease oil prices heading into 2023?

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