Best Buy shares fall after second-quarter sales miss and looming tariffs on core products weigh on stock - CNBC

Best Buy shares fell 6.5% after its second-quarter revenue and same-store sales growth missed analysts' expectations and upcoming tariffs on the company's core products weigh on the stock. 

Investors were pessimistic Thursday morning, focusing on both the sales miss and a narrower estimate for same-store sales, driven by disappointing sales in Canada. However, the company did report earnings that beat expectations by 9 cents and raised its earnings forecast for the fiscal year.

Here's how the company did, compared with what Wall Street was expecting, according to Refinitiv consensus estimates:

• Adjusted earnings per share: $1.08, vs. 99 cents estimated
• Revenue: $9.54 billion, vs. $9.56 billion estimated
• Same-store sales: up 1.6%, vs. 2.1% increase estimated

"For the second quarter, we are reporting comparable sales growth of 1.6% on top of a very strong 6.2% last year," said Barry. "We also delivered improved profitability driven by gross profit rate expansion and continued disciplined expense management, demonstrating the culture we have built around driving cost reductions and efficiencies to help fund investments."

Sales at Best Buy stores open for at least 12 months grew 1.6%, lower than analyst expectations of a 2.1% increase.

In the quarter ended Aug. 3, Best Buy reported net income of $238 million, or 89 cents a share, compared with $244 million, or 86 cents a share, a year earlier. Excluding restructuring costs and other one-time items, Best Buy earned $1.08 a share, topping analysts' estimates from Refinitiv.

Revenue rose to $9.54 billion from $9.38 billion a year ago, but was slightly below estimates of $9.56 billion.

Best Buy raised its earnings forecast for the fiscal year to a range of $5.60 to $5.75 per share from a previous estimate of between $5.45 to $5.60 per share. Both numbers are after excluding one-time items.

However, sales at stores open at least a year are expected to rise 0.7% to 1.7% this year. Previously, it estimated 0.5% to 2.5% same-store sales growth. Analysts were anticipating a 2% increase.

Domestic same-store sales grew 1.9% and revenue increased 2.1% to $8.82 billion. The company saw a domestic online revenue rise 17.3% to $1.42 billion because of higher average order values and increased traffic. Its domestic online revenue represented 16.1% of sales compared with 14% last year.

Internationally, same-store sales fell 1.9%, while revenue dropped 3.4% to $715 million. The company said the decline was driven primarily by sales in Canada.

Best Buy said repurchased $230 million in stock during the quarter. Prior to Thursday's selloff, Best Buy shares were up 30% since the start of the year, bringing its market cap to about $18.4 billion.

"I think that the challenges with Best Buy are many of the same challenges that are overall facing the retail industry. There are certainly the issues related to tariffs, but you can't overlook all of the other challenges the company has as well," said Sucharita Kodali, an analyst at Forrester on CNBC's "Squawk Box " Thursday.

She said one of the pressures the company is facing is commodification of their core products, including electronics.

"When you see the strength in numbers from retailers like Walmart and Target, their consumer electronic sections are bolstering that and that is absolutely going to naturally adversely affect Best Buy. You have the continued growth of Amazon, where electronics are a significant part of what consumers buy on that site. "

The company also said its same-store sales growth was fueled by strength in appliances and headphones, while gaming and home theater sales declined.

"What Best Buy has leaned into and what their strength was in this quarter was in categories like appliances, which are not well-suited to the e-commerce landscape, you have services, you have accessories which are high-margin things like headphones so those are definitely things that have helped and supported Best Buy," said Kodali.

"But the question is how much more can they lean into things like services and installations, and is there more headroom there? I would argue that those are sectors that can be somewhat challenged," she said. 

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2019-08-29 12:20:32Z
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Google rocked by David Drummond claims, shows permissive culture - Business Insider

Google employees walked out in September 2018 to protest the firm's policies on harassment.Troy Wolverton/Business Insider

• Google has been rocked once again by explosive #MeToo allegations after former employee Jennifer Blakely detailed her affair with the firm's top lawyer, David Drummond.
• In a Medium post, Blakely alleged that the pair had a son together, and that Drummond subsequently abandoned her and struck up an affair with another Google colleague. Drummond hasn't commented.
• Blakely's first-person story follows numerous, lurid accounts of senior male Google execs having extramarital affairs with junior colleagues, or just outright harassing women.
• Google has had a permissive culture around workplace relationships for years, as exemplified by some of its leadership, and that culture now looks destructive in a post-#MeToo world.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Google's culture is, once again, under the spotlight after another set of allegations from a former female employee about a powerful, male senior executive abusing his power to have multiple extramarital affairs with colleagues.

Jennifer Blakely is a former Google legal manager who has written an astonishing account on Medium of her time at the company, and of her affair with Alphabet's chief legal officer David Drummond.

She outlined how she and Drummond had a consensual relationship while he was married, had a child together, but that her life changed drastically after she was shifted out from the legal department, struggled with her new role, and decided to leave. Drummond, she alleged, abandoned the relationship suddenly, struck up an affair with another Google employee, and continued seeing his son "exclusively on his terms."

Drummond and Google are yet to comment on Blakely's version of events.

Google SVP David Drummond.Ryan Anson/AFP/Getty Images

The New York Times initially reported on some of Blakely's allegations against Drummond in October 2018. Her story, and those of others at Google, sparked huge employee protests last year over the company's treatment of sexual misconduct allegations. It forced CEO Sundar Pichai into revealing that 48 people had been fired from Google over such allegations.

That same New York Times story, cast new light on Google's generally permissive culture around relationships, which resulted in some lurid accounts of several male executives abusing their power.

Former Google chairman Eric Schmidt once kept a mistress as a company consultant. Android chief Andy Rubin reportedly received a $90 million payoff after sexual misconduct allegations. And it was widely reported in 2014 that Google cofounder Sergey Brin split from his wife and had an affair with a younger coworker at Google. Finally, Richard DeVaul, formerly a Google X director, offered a potential employee a back rub during what she thought was a job interview. DeVaul subsequently resigned.

This begins to look like a pattern, not least because Google hasn't punished many of these high-profile men.

Schmidt didn't resign from Alphabet's board until May this year — and there was no suggestion it was related to any of the accusations against him. Google invested in Andy Rubin's subsequent company, Playground Global, after he left the firm. Drummond is one of the most senior and the highest paid executives at Alphabet, even earning more than Google CEO Pichai. Sergey Brin has become more elusive at internal events, but has been speaking at all-hands meetings this summer and remains on the firm's board.

Read more: The Google exec at the centre of explosive #MeToo allegations is one of the highest paid at the firm, earning $47 million

A Twitter account for the Google protesters, commented on Blakely's story: "This is a powerful first person account about the long term effects of #metoo and the systemic culture of treating people like objects at the highest levels of Google. This hurts all of us - of all genders and at all levels of the company."

Google did respond to last year's protests by overhauling its sexual misconduct policies, ending forced arbitration, increasing training for executives, and improving reporting tools.

But the latest shocking claims from Blakely, the trickling departure of the Google Walkout organizers, new workplace discussion rules that could halt similar protests from bubbling up in the future, and the fact that women remain severely outnumbered in the highest echelons of the company (it has only two female board members out of 10) suggest cultural change has a long way to go.

Contact this reporter on sghosh@businessinsider.com.

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2019-08-29 11:50:16Z
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Jack Ma, once proponent of 12-hour work days, now foresees 12-hour workweeks - The Washington Post

Aly Song Reuters Alibaba executive chairman Jack Ma, left, with Tesla chief executive officer Elon Musk in Shanghai on Thursday.

BEIJING — Jack Ma, the Chinese tech billionaire known for arguing in favor of a 12-hour work day, sees a future in which people will have to work only 12 hours a week.

The founder of e-commerce behemoth Alibaba said Thursday that technological advancements would enable people to live longer and work far fewer hours.

“Every technology revolution, people start to worry. In the last 200 years we have worried [that] new technology is going to take away all the jobs,” he said in a discussion in Shanghai on Thursday with Elon Musk, Tesla’s billionaire founder. Tesla is building an electric-vehicle factory in the city, and the two were on the stage at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference there. 

Ma has previously courted controversy with his endorsement of the “996” work practices prevalent in China’s tech industry, under which employees are expected to work 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week.

In remarks earlier this year, Ma said that the opportunity to work such hours was a “blessing” and that without this kind of working culture, China’s economy was “very likely to lose vitality and impetus.”

Another tech titan went further, declaring that the 996 culture was for slackers. Richard Liu, chief executive of rival e-commerce company JD.com, said he works “8116+8” — or 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. Monday to Saturday, then a mere eight hours on Sunday.

But speaking with Musk on Thursday, Ma said that in the future, people would be able to enjoy a much shorter workweek.

 “In the next 20 to 30 years, human beings will live much longer. Life science technology is going to make people live probably 100 or 120 years,” he said. “That may not be a good thing because you get your grandfather’s grandfather still working hard.”

But it didn’t matter, he said, as the world wouldn't need a lot of jobs.

Can we say that artificial intelligence is actually demonstrating intelligence? The concept of AI has been around for decades and has progressed to a point where doctors may be able to use it to search for Alzheimer’s and other patterns of disease. But what does current research on the brain say about how smart artificial intelligence really is?

 “I think people should work three days a week, four hours a day,” he said, citing previous technological leaps like the Industrial Revolution and the use of electricity as improving work-life balance. 

“The power of electricity is that we make people more time, so you can go to the karaoke in the evening, you can go to dancing parties in the evening,” he said in English.

“I think that because of artificial intelligence, people will have more time to enjoy being human beings. I don’t think we’ll need a lot of jobs,” Ma told Musk. “The jobs we need are [ones to] make people happier. People experience life, enjoy [being] human beings.”

[ In a workaholic China, the stressed-out find a refuge with monks and Sanskrit ]

China’s netizens were unimpressed.

“Ma has said previously that 996 was a blessing. How can he say now that people can work three days a week, four hours a day, and go to karaoke or dance parties in the evening,” asked one person using the nickname “Be a friend with time daily” on Weibo, the Chinese version of Twitter.

“Previously he talked in Chinese about 996. That’s for us. This time, he said ‘three days a week, four hours a day’ in English. That’s for foreigners.”

Another, using the name “Soda water,” used a Chinese saying that means two things don’t fit together: “Musk will find that this dialogue is like putting a donkey’s lips on a horse’s mouth.”

Liu Yang contributed to this article.

Read more

A year into the trade war, China learns to ride out Trump’s turbulence

Trump retaliates in trade war by demanding companies cut ties with China

Today’s coverage from Post correspondents around the world

Like Washington Post World on Facebook and stay updated on foreign news

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2019-08-29 09:26:31Z
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Jack Ma: AI could enable a 12-hour work week - Axios

Alibaba Group Chairman Jack Ma and Tesla CEO Elon Musk at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai, China, Thursday. Photo: VCG/VCG via Getty Images

Alibaba Group Chairman Jack Ma told the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai Thursday that artificial intelligence should enable people to work 4 hours a day, 3 days a week, Bloomberg reports.

Why it matters: It's a remarkable demonstration of Ma's faith in AI, given he's known for endorsing the Chinese tech sector's standard "996" schedule, which consists of a 72-hour workweek: 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week.

The big picture: Ma appeared onstage at the event with Tesla CEO Elon Musk, with whom he had a disagreement on whether humans can be outsmarted by computers.

Go deeper: America's work-life balance isn't so great

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2019-08-29 08:30:00Z
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US futures turn higher after 'calm' trade comments from China - CNBC

U.S. stock index futures turned positive Thursday morning, after China said it wished to resolve its protracted trade dispute with the world's largest economy with a "calm" attitude.

At around 04:00 a.m. ET, Dow futures rose 184 points, indicating a positive open of more than 197 points. Futures on the S&P and Nasdaq were both slightly higher, reversing earlier losses.

When asked about its ongoing trade war with the U.S., China's commerce ministry reportedly said Thursday that it was opposed to escalating trade tensions.

The comments appeared to soothe investor concerns at a time when many are worried about the possibility of a global recession.

On Wednesday, the rate on the benchmark 30-year Treasury bond sank to an all-time low, while the U.S. yield curve inverted even further.

The closely-watched spread between the 10-year Treasury yield and the 2-year rate briefly fell to negative 6 basis points in the previous session. The move extended losses from earlier in the week, when the spread registered its lowest level since 2007.

A 10-year rate below the 2-year yield is viewed by fixed income traders as an important recession prognosticator, marking an unusual phenomenon as bondholders receive better compensation in the short term.

U.S. bond yields hovered marginally above record lows on Thursday morning.

Data, earnings

On the data front, the latest weekly jobless claims, a second reading of second-quarter GDP (gross domestic product) and advance economic indicators for July are all scheduled to be released at 8:30 a.m.

Pending home sales for July will follow slightly later in the session.

In corporate news, Toronto-Dominion Bank, Best Buy and Dollar General are among some of the companies expected to report earnings before the opening bell.

Dell, Marvell Tech and Workday are scheduled to release their latest quarterly results after market close.

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2019-08-29 06:33:12Z
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U.S. 30-year bond yields hit record low, curve inversion grows - Reuters

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. Treasury debt yields fell on Wednesday, with 30-year yields setting all-time lows, as fears about a recession and trade tensions between China and the United States stoked unrelenting demand for low-risk government debt.

A specialist trader works at his station on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., August 2, 2019. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

Inversion is spreading across the U.S. yield curve, where short-dated yields are running above long-dated ones, which has also unsettled investors as yield curve inversion often precedes a recession.

“A deeper inversion is sending a stronger statement that a meaningful slowdown is coming,” said Brian Rehling, co-head of global fixed income strategy at Wells Fargo Investment Institute in St. Louis, Missouri. “A recession is a possibility in the next 12 to 18 months, but it’s not a done deal.”

Investors added to their safe-haven holdings of Treasuries as UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson sought to limit parliament’s opportunity to derail his Brexit plan by suspending the House of Commons for around a month, starting in mid-September.

GRAPHIC: U.S. yield curve inversion - here.png

Treasury prices pared their gains as Wall Street rose, reversing earlier losses.

While some fund managers view Treasuries as expensive, they are hard pressed to make a case to sell them given the uncertain outcome of the trade developments between Beijing and Washington.

“It’s hard to see where the endgame is with the trade tensions,” said James Barnes, director of fixed income at The Bryn Mawr Trust Co. in Devon, Pennsylvania.

The Federal Reserve is also monitoring the trade tensions in its economic outlook.

Interest rates futures implied traders fully expect the U.S. central bank to lower key borrowing costs by at least a quarter point at its Sept. 17-18 policy meeting, following up on its first rate cut since 2008.

GRAPHIC: U.S. Fed's next rate cut? - here

Meanwhile, the Treasury Department sold $18 billion in two-year floating-rate notes and five-year fixed-rate debt to solid demand.

It will complete this week’s $113 billion of fixed-rate government note supply with a $32 billion sale of seven-year debt on Thursday.

In late Wednesday trading, the yields on 30-year government bonds were 1.939%, down 2.2 basis points from late Tuesday. They hit an all-time low of 1.905% earlier Wednesday.

The 30-year yield is below 3-month T-bill rates, which has not happened since 2007.

As for the rest of the yield curve, the spread on three-month T-bill rates over 10-year yields widened to as much as 55 basis points, a level not seen since March 2007, while the premium on 2-year yields above 10-year yields increased to as high as 6.5 basis points, according to Refinitiv and Tradeweb data.

GRAPHIC: Biggest monthly fall in 30-year USTs since 2011 - tmsnrt.rs/2zrV0MJ

Additional reporting from Dhara Ranasinghe in London; editing by Jonathan Oatis and Chris Reese

Our Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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2019-08-28 19:22:00Z
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Why record low bond yields could keep heading lower as market fears 'disaster scenario' - CNBC

Traders signal offers in the Ten-Year Treasury Note Options pit at the Chicago Board of Trade.

Scott Olson | Getty Images

Bond yields are heading south, and there appears to be no stopping them for now.

The benchmark 10-year Treasury note yield, which influences everything from business loans to home mortgages, has been hugging three-year lows and was at 1.45% Wednesday. That's below the 2-year yield of 1.5%, and the move has been signaling recession.

The 30-year Treasury bond yield fell to an all-time low 1.91% Wednesday as yields around the world, which move opposite price, slid to multi-year or record lows. U.S. rates followed a global move lower, with the Japanese 10-year yield falling to a new negative three-year low and the German 10-year bund yield sliding to its own record, minus-0.72%.

"This is one big trade," said Gregory Faranello, head of U.S. rates at Amerivet Securities. "The momentum and trends that are in place right now are pretty steadfast. There's nothing glaring to me that will change the dynamics right now. We're in the latter stages of the summer months. Liquidity is definitely an issue. When you look at it globally right now, it encompasses a lot of different, diverse things. Today we have the headline from the U.K.; you have this ongoing trade war, and this global yield structure just continues to unfold."

Strategists said the bond market has been caught between a number of forces and is now a vortex sucking in investors who have to buy yield, which keep getting lower as bond prices move higher. In the past several days, investors have begun to believe that there's a very good chance the trade wars between the U.S. and China could continue for a very long time, and possibly until after the presidential election.

Fear factors

The global economy is slowing, and increasingly there are warning signs that make it appear Europe could enter a recession. China's slowdown has sent a chill across emerging market economies, which have seen a decline in exports.

Then there is political uncertainty, which got even murkier in the U.K. on Wednesday, after Prime Minister Boris Johnson pushed back the reopening of Parliament until mid-October, limiting the amount of debate time and increasing the chances of a no-deal Brexit. Sterling fell and the 10-year gilt yield dropped to its lowest level in three years.

"The disaster scenario is if yields fall dramatically from here," said Michael Schumacher, director rates at Wells Fargo. "Hypothetically, if the trade situation intensifies, if maybe Hong Kong goes badly and Brexit seems like it results in a hard exit ... then what you probably get is a massive rally again in Treasurys."

"Anyone who is handing you a hard forecast in that scenario is throwing darts," he said. After the 10-year yield broke through the psychologically important 1.50% level Tuesday, Schumacher said investors are looking for the next target on the benchmark note at the record low it reached in the weeks after the U.K. voted for Brexit, or to leave the European Union.

"People seem to be fixated on 1.35%," he said.

For investors, he said a good place to hide might be in very short-term Treasurys. For instance, the 1-month Treasury bill was yielding 2.06%, well above other securities. "Why be a hero?" he said.

Many strategists do not expect U.S. bonds to follow the rest of the world into negative yields, but they concede it could happen. The other side of the falling yield story is that bond yields could quickly snap higher, if for instance there was significant progress in the trade situation. But strategists are skeptical that will happen any time soon.

"Clearly, the trade war is such a big piece of this and it remains so incredibly unpredictable. Most people feel like it's elevated to such an extent that it's highly unlikely to get anywhere," said Ralph Axel, rates strategist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch. He said people are wondering why China would sign a long-term deal with President Donald Trump ahead of the election.

Sinkhole of global yields

Another major factor driving yields lower is the fact that more than $16 trillion in bonds around the world now have negative yields, and the U.S. Treasury market has been a magnet for investors looking for yield, as well as safety.

Axel said he has a 1.25% target on the 10-year, and he also expects the 30-year yield to be at that level by the second quarter of next year.

Faranello said yields move lower because buying forces in more buyers as investors look to lock in yield. The question is will the consumer, who has been holding up the U.S. economy, begin to react to what's scaring markets.

"If you're a U.S. consumer, you see volatility in markets. You don't understand it. They see negative interest rates. You see the inverted yield curve, which consumers don't understand, and there's talk of recession," Faranello said. "This could be self-fulfilling at some point, and the Fed has to keep an eye on it."

Data in the next week could be important since it includes the monthly employment report next Friday and also ISM manufacutring and PMI, two indicators that have been signaling a slowdown in manufacturing

"The yield curve is telling us essentially that we're looking at zero percent GDP growth next year. That's what the front end of the curve would imply. The question is will the yield curve win out or will policy makers be able to support the data enough," Faranello said. "I have no idea how it's going to play out, but there's very incredible fear and focus on a recession."

Central banks behind the curve

Central banks around the world have been driving rates down as their economies slow, and the worry is that they are in a race to the bottom as they defend their currencies. Another worry is they don't have the ammunition they once had before the financial crisis since so many embarked on extraordinary easing efforts or already have super low rates. They also failed in the decade since the financial crisis to do much to spark inflation.

The Fed is widely expected to cut rates by a quarter point when it meets on Sept. 17 and 18.

"I think the Fed needs to go 50 [basis points]. The Fed, I think, has to change the tone globally. Heading into September, they need to hit it. They need to hit it 50. They need to change the tone and psychology of the market. Right now, we're in a vice," Faranello said.

Even before the Fed meets, the European Central Bank is meeting on Sept. 12, and it is expected to take action, including its already negative rate and possibly announcing asset purchases.

"We'll see what the ECB does. They have a lot of bad choices," Faranello said. "They're probably going to do several different things but the market is not convinced they have much power to turn the economy around now, and you're going to have to start thinking about fiscal boosts, but that's a sticky process when you have a [political] union. The big issue is central banks globally are just out of bullets, just at the same time tings are moving south...You feel like the central bank puts are less powerful.

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https://www.cnbc.com/2019/08/28/bond-yields-still-heading-lower-as-market-fears-disaster-scenario.html

2019-08-28 18:27:02Z
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