Walmart set to release 1Q results today
Walmart Inc. is scheduled to release its first-quarter financial results today. A prerecorded conference call and quarterly earnings news release will be available around 6 a.m.
Analysts estimate the retailer will post revenue of $120.5 billion and earnings per share of $1.12 for the quarter, according to Yahoo Finance. Both forecasts are increases from a year ago when Walmart posted first-quarter revenue of $117.5 billion and earnings per share of $1.
The earnings call can be accessed in the United States and Canada by dialing (877) 523-5612 and entering access code 9256278 followed by the pound sign.
Shares of Walmart stock are down about 22 percent since late January, when company shares reached an all-time high of $109.98. Walmart's shares fell 10 percent on Feb. 20 when its fiscal 2018 fourth-quarter earnings showed U.S. e-commerce sales growth had slowed and net income fell 42 percent.
-- Robbie Neiswanger
Southwest finishes engine inspections
Southwest Airlines has completed checks on the last of its 35,500 engine fan blades and found no signs of the cracking that's been blamed in the fatal engine failure onboard last month's Flight 1380.
The company has sent several dozen blades to manufacturer General Electric for further inspection, although Chief Executive Officer Gary Kelly said Wednesday that he did not expect it would turn up any problems. Some of those blades had coating anomalies and were sent to GE "out of an abundance of caution," Chief Operating Officer Mike Van de Ven told Bloomberg.
Southwest sped up inspections after a fan blade broke off from the engine on an April 17 flight, damaging the engine's casing and sending debris flying into the fuselage. A window on the plane blew out from the damage, and the woman sitting next to it, Jennifer Riordan, died from injuries.
-- Tribune News Service
Novartis lawyer out over Cohen payment
Novartis' top lawyer is to retire from the company over payments made by the pharmaceutical giant to President Donald Trump's personal lawyer Michael Cohen, the Swiss drugmaker said Wednesday.
In a statement, Novartis said that Felix R. Ehrat, the group general counsel, would be replaced by Shannon Thyme Klinger, who is currently the company's top ethics officer, at the beginning of June. Ehrat was stepping down "in the context of discussions surrounding Novartis's former agreement with Essential Consultants, owned by Michael Cohen," the pharmaceutical company said.
Novartis has said that former chief executive Joe Jimenez entered into the agreement with Cohen as part of an effort to gain insight into the approach the new administration would take on topics of interest to Novartis, particularly health care. The company said that, after an initial meeting with Cohen last March, it concluded that he did not have the expertise they had hoped for and decided not to go forward with the arrangement.
-- The New York Times
Keep mine cleanup rule, activists urge
BILLINGS, Mont. -- Environmental groups challenged the Trump administration in federal court Wednesday over its rejection of an Obama-era proposal that would have required mining companies to prove they have enough money to clean up their pollution.
The Idaho Conservation League, Earthworks, Sierra Club and other groups filed a petition with the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., asking it to review last year's move to drop the rule.
An attorney for the environmental groups said the reversal under President Donald Trump leaves taxpayers responsible into the future for mining pollution that fouls waterways and endangers public health.
-- The Associated Press
Zuckerberg agrees to face EU grilling
Facebook Inc. Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg has agreed to face a grilling from European Union lawmakers over how the data of as many as 2.7 million Europeans could have ended up in the hands of consulting firm Cambridge Analytica.
European Parliament President Antonio Tajani on Wednesday said Zuckerberg had accepted the EU institution's invitation to travel across the Atlantic and face lawmakers in person as soon as next week. The meeting will take place in private, the assembly's press service said.
The revelations that the data of some 87 million Facebook users and their friends may have been misused by the consulting firm that worked on Donald Trump's U.S. presidential campaign has been called a game changer in the world of data protection as regulators seek to raise awareness about how to secure information.
-- Bloomberg News
Fed rethinking interest-rate forecasts
The Federal Reserve's dot plot is getting old.
So says the president of Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis referring to the diagram, published four times a year since January 2012, of interest-rate forecasts from U.S. central bankers. The median of most recent estimates showed expectations for a total of three to four rate increases this year, including the increase that officials made in March.
"The whole idea that you're naming the number of rate hikes way out into the future when you don't know what the data are going to be is something we should get out of the business of doing." James Bullard, the St. Louis Fed chief since 2008, said Wednesday. "When you're at zero and you're giving forward guidance, that's one thing. But we're not at zero anymore."
San Francisco Fed chief John Williams told Bloomberg on Tuesday that the central bank ought phase out forward guidance in the policy statement released by the rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee after each of its meetings.
Bullard says the Fed should be sending signals that the policy rate is near or at neutral -- the level at which it's neither stimulating or slowing economic growth -- which would help it be more agile to respond to the developments in the economy.
-- Bloomberg News
Business on 05/17/2018