Tag: Earnings

Latest Headlines

Top U.S. health official: competition key to insurance markets in Humana-Aetna deal; British Pizza Huts are 😋 about their 🆕 menus; and Amazon adds 10th Calif. center

A news summary focused on 10 big employers; updated 5:23 p.m.

Pizza Hut emoji menu
An emoji expert wrote the new menus.

HUMANA: The Obama administration’s top health official highlighted the importance of competition to insurance markets, as the Justice Department is poised to decide on two massive deals among four of the health-plan industry’s biggest players: Humana-Aetna’s $37 billion tie-up, and Anthem-Cigna’s $48 billion. But Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell declined to comment on her department’s view of the two massive deals. “When there is competition, that creates downward price pressure, and it also creates upward quality pressure,” Burwell said in a brief interview in Fort Dodge, Iowa (Bloomberg).

PIZZA HUT: Six British Pizza Huts have unveiled menus written entirely in emojis, all in time for Sunday’s World Emoji Day. “Many of the items look easy enough to translate, with one pizza option including pictures of a tomato, basil plant, a green heart and a mushroom with the vegetarian ‘v’ sign next to it,” says the Daily Mail. “A crown, chicken and drumstick is slightly more obscure.” But if it all gets too difficult for some customers, there’s a traditional menu on hand (Daily Mail). Here’s an English-to-emoji translator.

YUM: Financial news site Seeking Alpha has published a transcript of Yum’s second-quarter conference call with analysts on Wednesday (Seeking Alpha).

AMAZON today disclosed plans to open its 10th California distribution center, in Sacramento. It’s the fourth center the retailer has announced for California alone over the past four months, and is expected to create more than 1,000 full-time jobs (press release). Amazon has more than 120 centers worldwide, including two in the Louisville area with a combined 6,000 employees, in Jeffersonville and Shephardsville.

FORD posted its best first-half for total European vehicle and passenger car sales since 2010, and best commercial vehicle sales since 1993 in its 20 traditional European markets (press release). The company’s philanthropic arm, the Ford Motor Company Fund, said it would award $400,000 in scholarships and grants to support programs encouraging Latino students to graduate from high school (press release).

And the U.S. Postal Service started selling first-class “forever” stamps today that commemorate four pickup trucks, including the 1948 Ford F-1 — the first F-Series truck — and the 1965 Ford F-100:

pr16_056

Ford’s Kentucky Truck Plant employs 5,100 workers, producing F-250 and F-550 Super Duty pickups, plus Expeditions, and Lincoln Navigators.

KFC: In the U.K.’s Plymouth, a 46-year-old man branded “too fat to work” on national television has vowed to chain himself to land set aside for a new KFC, in protest of the plans. Stephen Beer, who once gorged on three takeaways a day and weighed more than 420 lbs, is on a mission to raise awareness of childhood obesity, and says he’s “disgusted” by the thought of more fast-food chains in the city (Plymouth Herald).

In other news, presumptive GOP White House nominee Donald Trump Continue reading “Top U.S. health official: competition key to insurance markets in Humana-Aetna deal; British Pizza Huts are 😋 about their 🆕 menus; and Amazon adds 10th Calif. center” →

Latest Headlines

Roadhouse stock hits new record high; Yum shares climb 3% on second-quarter earnings report; and Trump reportedly picks Indiana’s Pence for VP

A news summary, focused on 10 big employers; updated 5:02 p.m.

Texas Roadhouse vs S&P
Texas Roadhouse stock (blue) outgunned the S&P 500 index over the past year.

TEXAS ROADHOUSE shares traded at a new record high today: $47.33, before closing slightly lower at $47.02, up 36 cents, or less than 1%. The company’s stock is up 24% from a year ago vs. a much smaller 4.2% gain in the broader S&P 500 index.

YUM‘s stock closed moments ago at $88.27 a share, up $2.53, or 3% on a better-than-expected second-quarter earnings report, released after markets closed yesterday afternoon. The fast food restaurant giant also raised its profit outlook for all of 2016 to 17% from an earlier 12%. Shares have been roaring so far this year, jumping 17% vs. a smaller 5% gain in the broader S&P 500 index (Google Finance).

KFC: The Kentucky Fried Chicken Foundation will award $1.2 million in college assistance to 600 hourly restaurant employees across the country this month (Portsmouth Daily Times).

FORD declared a regular quarterly dividend of 15 cents per share, payable Sept. 1 to shareholders of record July 28 (press release). The automaker also said it will release second-quarter financial results at 7 a.m. ET on July 28 (press release). Ford shares closed at $13.59, up 11 cents, or less than 1%. The current dividend yield is generous 4.4%.

AMAZON said it will hold a conference call to discuss its second-quarter results July 28 at 5:30 p.m. ET; the report itself will be released shortly after markets close that day (press release).

Smaller noose

UPS: About 15 people gathered yesterday outside the shipper’s Maumee, Ohio, distribution center to protest two nooses (photo, left) found hanging in the building, after photographs circulated widely on Facebook and Twitter.

“We want justice. We want accountability,” Julian Mack told WTVG. “There’s no place for nooses in Lucas County.”

Company spokeswoman Susan Rosenberg said UPS had confirmed the nooses’ presence, and fired the worker responsible when he arrived for work Tuesday evening. Maumee is 18 miles southwest of Toledo. (Blade and WTVG).

Trump and Pence
Trump and Pence.

In other news, presumptive GOP White House nominee Donald Trump will choose Indiana Gov. Mike Pence as his running mate, multiple media outlets are now reporting, including The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. The New York billionaire’s choice of Pence had been widely expected in recent days in advance of the start of the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, starting Monday.

Latest Headlines

Yum shares jump on sweetened profit forecast; UPS reportedly considering Louisville for new $65M project; and new Jack Daniel’s video is virtual reality

A news summary, focused on 10 big employers; updated 10:11 p.m.

YUM reported a big increase in second-quarter profit on a rebound in its big China unit, and raised its forecast for core operating profit growth for the full year. Shares surged 4.6% to $89.65 in extended trading on the report, which was released after markets closed.

For the period ended June 11, Yum reported earnings of $339 million, or 81 cents a share vs. $235 million, or 53 cents a share, a year ago, according to MarketWatch. Excluding costs related to the planned separation of the China business and other items, profit rose to 75 cents a share vs. 69 cents.

Revenue, which includes franchise and license fees, fell 3% to $3.01 billion. It was the third consecutive quarterly decline. Analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters had projected 74 cents a share on $3.09 billion in revenue.

Greg Creed
Creed

In its forecast, the Louisville-based fast-food giant said it now expects 14% growth from a year ago; the earlier forecast had been a smaller 12%. In a statement, CEO Greg Creed cited a rebound of its China business during the first half of the year. “I’m particularly pleased with the continued sales momentum at KFC China, which delivered better-than-expected same-store sales growth of 3% (MarketWatch and press release).

UPS is reportedly considering Louisville for a new $65 million 180,000-square-foot vehicle packaging facility with automated sorting equipment. But the shipper also is eyeing Jacksonville, Fla.; Nashville, Tenn., and Miami-Dade County. The project emerged in an application UPS filed with Miami-Dade seeking tax incentives to locate it in the northwest part of the county (Atlanta Business Chronicle). UPS is Louisville’s biggest private employer, with 22,000 workers at its Louisville International Airport hub.

AMAZON has passed an important threshold for invented holidays: Continue reading “Yum shares jump on sweetened profit forecast; UPS reportedly considering Louisville for new $65M project; and new Jack Daniel’s video is virtual reality” →

Latest Headlines

Yum close to finishing big corporate campus expansion in Plano; and Ford’s China vehicle sales jump 6% year-to-date

A news summary, focused on 10 big employers; updated 5:30 p.m.

spcorporateimg
Entrance to Plano corporate offices, in photo from employment site Glassdoor.

YUM‘s expansion of its Pizza Hut and KFC international corporate campus in Plano, Texas, will boost total space by 60% to 300,000 square feet, with the addition of two three-story buildings. The pizza and fried chicken chains are opening about 1,000 new locations a year, requiring more space for employees.

One of the two new buildings will house a life-sized mock up of a Pizza Hut restaurant for testing everything from diner traffic flow to consumer reaction to artwork. There will also be a new conference room for all the campus’ 450 employees, twice the capacity of the existing conference space.

Greg Creed
Creed

Yum CEO Greg Creed and four other top corporate executives are getting new offices above the conference center, too. The five executives now divide their time between Plano, which is 20 miles north of Dallas, and  Louisville, a move in February that raised questions about Yum’s commitment to Louisville. Yum said it was more practical for the top brass to work closer to the company’s two biggest and fast-growing divisions. The corporate campus expansion was disclosed at the time (Dallas Morning News).

The Pizza Hut Division has about 14,000 restaurants in 90 countries and territories outside China. KFC has about 15,000 in 120 countries and territories, also excluding China.

The China Division, based in Shanghai, has about 7,200 restaurants, mostly Pizza Huts and KFCs. Under pressure from an activist investor, Yum is in the process of spinning off the China Division, a process it expects to complete by the end of October.

Pizza Hut and Yum’s international business have been based in Plano since Yum was spun off from PepsiCo in 1997. KFC’s U.S. division remains in Louisville, where the company employs 1,000 workers. Yum’s third division, Taco Bell, is based in southern California’s Irvine. More about Yum in Louisville.

FORD said it sold 577,097 vehicles in China during the year’s first half, a 6% increase from a year ago. Demand for Ford and Lincoln SUVs sales was strong, with combined sales of the Ford EcoSport, Kuga, Edge, Everest and Explorer and Lincoln MKC, MKX and Navigator surpassing 150,000 vehicles, 27% more than a year ago (press release). Ford’s stock closed this afternoon at $12.75, up 1.4% to $12.74.

Last week, Ford said total U.S. sales grew 5% during the year’s first six months, its best first-half performance since 2006. The automaker employs nearly 10,000 workers at truck and auto factories in Louisville.

AMAZON‘s first Prime Day 24-hour sale last year didn’t go off without a hitch. “The company hyped price-breaks on everything from beard growth rubs to nail clippers for large animals, as well as the much-mocked 55-gallon bottle of lube for over $1,000,” says Time magazine. “The overwhelming verdict for the vast majority of Prime Day deals last year was: they kinda sucked.” What to do different for this year’s Prime Day, next Tuesday? Time offers five suggestions (Time). Also, Amazon plans to hire another 1,000 employees in the U.K. at its London head office, research and development centres in Cambridge and Edinburgh and new warehouses in Manchester and Leicestershire — all on top of 2,500 jobs it announced earlier this year (The Telegraph).

In other news, Courier-Journal parent Gannett Co. said it would report second-quarter financial results July 27, followed by a 10 a.m. ET conference call with Wall Street analysts (press release).

Latest Headlines

Brown-Forman jumps 4% on Q4 financial results; N.Y. says UPS illegally shipped 700K cartons of untaxed cigs; and a Brit’s bonkers for Roadhouse

A news summary, focused on big employers; updated 6:17 p.m.

Paul Varga
Varga

BROWN-FORMAN said fiscal fourth-quarter operating income soared to $726 million on sales of $933 million, on the continued strength of Jack Daniel’s whiskey sales. But the figures included a one-time $485 million gain from the sale of Southern Comfort and Tuaca during the quarter, which ended April 30. On a diluted per-share basis, earnings were $2.60 per share vs. 66 cents a year ago at the spirits and wine giant (press release and the SEC 8-K). What analysts had forecast. The company’s class A and class B shares both closed up 3.5% (Google Finance). CEO Paul Varga called the fiscal year “a tale of two halves,” with emerging market sales rising by 8% in the first half of the year before paring that decline to 1% in the second half (Wall Street Journal). Management held a 10 a.m. conference call to discuss the results, and it’s now available for replay. More about Brown-Forman.

UPS: New York’s attorney general yesterday accused UPS of knowingly shipping about 700,000 cartons of untaxed cigarettes from Native American reservations to consumers and smoke shops between 2010 and 2014, even though the company had agreed to halt the practice more than a decade ago. UPS denied the allegation (Associated Press).

Amazon logoAMAZON will invest another $3 billion in its India operations, more than doubling its prior commitment in what CEO Jeff Bezos said yesterday is the company’s fastest-growing market. Two years ago, the online retail giant announced a $2 billion investment in the nation, where it already employs 45,000 workers. Bezos disclosed the news at a Washington business summit attended by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi (BBC and International Business Times). Amazon didn’t help its efforts when consumers threatened a boycott over the company’s selling doormats bearing the image of the Hindu gods and other religious symbols; the company pulled the items this week (Mashable).

KINDRED: Jurors heard opening statements yesterday in a wrongful death lawsuit against the hospital and nursing home giant, brought by the family of a man who died in 2011 at the Greenbriar Terrace nursing home in Nashua, N.H. Byam “Bing” Whitney Jr. had developed pneumonia, followed by bedsores that led to sepsis; he was 84 (Union-Leader).

PAPA JOHN’S: A Miami delivery driver filed another proposed class-action lawsuit against 31-store franchiser Pizzerias LLC in Florida federal court on Monday, accusing the company of shorting drivers on mileage reimbursements (Law 360). In August, Papa John’s agreed to pay $12.3 million to settle a class-action lawsuit accusing the company of underpaying mileage reimbursements to drivers in Florida and five other states. That suit was originally filed in federal court in St. Louis in 2009, and represented about 19,000 drivers (KYCIR).

TEXAS ROADHOUSE: Noted, because it popped up in Boulevard’s news search results this morning: TripAdvisor users rated Texas Roadhouse No. 21 of 194 restaurants in St. George, Utah. “This was possibly our best meal out of the four that we had in St George,” user Tired Boy of the U.K.’s Sheffield wrote yesterday, in a perfect five-star review. “Some people may feel that they don’t like the chain restaurant scene, but it was our first time there and we’d definitely go back again” (TripAdvisor). St. George is a Mojave Desert resort in the state’s southwest corner.

In other news, U.S. stocks closed the day up modestly, as did most of the 11 big employers in Boulevard’s Stock Portfolio (Google Finance). Finally, the cast of “The Phantom of the Opera” was to pay tribute to the late boxing legend Muhammad Ali this afternoon at the Kentucky Center for the Performing Arts, where it began a 12-day run last week; Ali died last week at 74, and his funeral will be Friday (WDRB).

Latest Headlines

Why Ford will slam Tesla; Yum stock whips Mickey D’s, and Hut launches S’mores cookies
370621
Pizza Hut’s new S’mores cookies are $6.99.

A news summary, focused on big employers; updated 5:57.m.

FORD: Why Ford will beat Tesla, even as electric cars gain a toehold (Barron’s).

YUM: The company’s stock has overthrown McDonald’s as the hottest fast-food stock around. Year to date, shares have surged 9% vs. 4% for McDonald’s and a skinny 0.2% for the S&P 500 index. (The Street). Also, former Chairman David Novak says workers are “starved for recognition” from their supervisors (Business First).

PIZZA HUT today introduced 8-inch Hershey’s Toasted S’mores Cookies for a limited time at $6.99 (press release).

AMAZON has started hiring up to 500 employees for a new distribution center in Florence Township outside Trenton, N.J. “They want to be up and running in time for the Christmas holiday,” Township Administrator Richard Brook said last week (Burlington County Times).

GANNETT: Tribune Publishing’s shares dove 15% today on fears that Courier-Journal owner Gannett may rescind its $15-a-share takeover offer; Gannett’s stock fell 2.4% (Talking New Media). The chances Tribune would pursue a “Pac-Man” defense takeover of Gannett had already eased when Tribune decided to share confidential information that could pave the way for Gannett’s $864 million purchase of Tribune (Reuters).

KFC: A 29-year-old man was arrested last night in Columbus, Ga., after he allegedly approached the KFC drive-thru on Manchester Expressway completely nude (Ledger-Enquirer).

BROWN-FORMAN said today it will release fourth-quarter financial results on June 8, followed by a conference call with Wall Street analysts (press release). Meanwhile, Boulevard is sad we missed the chance on Saturday to celebrate World Whisky Day, where everyone was invited to “try a dram and celebrate the water of life” (Hot Rum Cow).

TEXAS ROADHOUSE opens one of its newest restaurants today, a $1.3 million outlet in the college town of Ithaca, N.Y. (Ithaca Voice).

CHURCHILL DOWNS: Thoroughbred racing’s now increasingly international, as NBC Sports made clear during Saturday’s Preakness Stakes, when the network teased its coverage of the Royal Ascot meeting in Britain starting next year (Chicago Now). Ascot got a big publicity boost in 1964’s “My Fair Lady.” The women’s dress code for the royal enclosure is super-strict, including this admonition: “strapless, off the shoulder, halter and spaghetti straps are not permitted” (Ascot).

Photo, top: Pizza Hut.