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Barnes & Noble (B&N) is close to securing a $436m deal to be bought by hedge fund Elliott Management, according to the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), amid speculation that Waterstones boss James Daunt could lead both retailers.
If the deal goes through, Barnes & Noble will be the second bookshop chain Elliott has bought since 2018 after the New York hedge fund acquired Waterstones in May last year. Speculation is mounting that Waterstones m.d. Daunt could lead both retailers. Waterstones declined to comment.
The private equity firm is the lead bidder in the auction for the US chain and is expected to pay $6.50 a share, the WSJ reports. At Thursday's close, B&N had a market value of $436m after stock went up 30% at $5.96. The deal, if successful, will mark the end of the once-dominant US book retailer as a publicly listed company.
The deal - which could collapse - got underway in October, according to the WSJ, with multiple parties expressing an interest in the acquisition.
B&N, which boasts 627 stores in the US, ended the fiscal year of 28th April 2018 with a loss of $125.5m as revenue fell 6% to $3.7bn. The chain had $129.3m in long-term debt, as of January, according to the WSJ.
The US chain has struggled to compete with Amazon in recent years and has also faced the revival of indie bookshops. In response B&N has grown its website and launched the Nook ereader. It has closed several stores, including its flagship. The deal, if successful, will mark the end of the once-dominant US book retailer as a publicly listed company.
Under Daunt, Waterstones, which has around 293 shops in the UK and Ireland, has returned to profit, reporting an operating profit of £24.0m (excluding Ireland and Europe) and sales of £385.7m, in the year end to 2018.
As of January 2019, Elliott, which employs 464 people, says it manages approximately $34bn in assets.
Oil prices rose on Thursday afternoon after reports surfaced that the United States may consider delaying the tariffs it has threatened to impose on its Latin American neighbor, according to Bloomberg.
The threat of tariffs of Mexico’s goods came as US President Donald Trump tries to stop the flow of migrants coming into the United States.
At 3:12pm EST, WTI was trading up $0.99 at $52.67 (+1.92%), while Brent crude was trading up $1.14 at $61.77 (+1.88%).
Earlier, Former Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez said that he expected that the 5% version of the tariffs would be imposed on Monday, because Mexico would not have had time over the weekend to come up with an immigration plan, according to CNBC.
Art Cashin of UBS Financial Services told CNBC on Thursday that the market would tolerate the tariff being imposed on Mexico—it just wouldn’t tolerate it if it lasts. He expects the tariffs would last no longer than a week.
“They’re assuming it may be too late to either postpone it or change it, so they’ll get imposed. But they assume they’ll come off within a week,” Cashin told CNBC.
The original plan was to eventually increase the tariffs to 25% by October, with incremental increases if Mexico fails to successfully implement a plan to stop migrants from flooding into the United States.
Related: Oil Just Had Its Worst Run Since 2008
The United States imported an average of 712,000 barrels per day of crude oil and petroleum products in March 2019, according to the Energy Information Administration (EIA), most of which is crude oil. The value of the oil imported from Mexico to the US totaled about $15 billion in 2018.
(Click to enlarge)
US refineries rely on this Mexican crude oil—which is of the heavy variety--particularly now that its other sources such as Venezuela—also heavy crude—have dried up. Canada supplies—also heavy crude oil—are also maxed out already thanks to their pipeline constraints. While Saudi Arabia also produces heavy oil, it has reduced its shipments to the US, in line with its desire to stick to the production cut quota it laid out as an OPEC member.
By Julianne Geiger for Oilprice.com
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Like most billionaires, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos owns a lot of lavish homes.
And in one of them, he has a special library with two fireplaces.
This week, his library and fireplaces were a topic of discussion at Amazon's inaugural re:MARS AI, robotics and space conference taking place this week in Las Vegas. The conference was born out of Bezos own private, invite-only robotics conference that takes place annually in Palm Springs. This Las Vegas event was the first one open to the public.
During a talk on Wednesday by Amazon senior exec Jeff Wilke, the CEO of Amazons' enormous consumer ecommerce business, Wilke described Bezos' library like this:
"In Jeff's library, there are two fireplaces that face each other. On one side of the library, over the fireplace, he has the word Builders, and under that is all of the books in his collection that are authored by builders. And on the other side of the library, it says Dreamers and he has books by Dreamers. This is a very good representation of what we are trying to do here - to bring together the builders and the dreamers - as we envision the future."
On Thursday, Bezos took the stage for a fireside chat with another Amazon exec, Jenny Freshwater, director of forecasting who immediately asked him about the fireplaces.
And his explanation was kind of a sweet way of looking at how human creativity can be nourished.
"The dreamers come first and they inspire," he said. This includes science fiction authors. For instance, he noted that Alexa "was inspired by the the Star Trek computer."
"So the dreamers come and the builders get inspired by them. And the builders build a new foundation that the dreamers can stand on and dream more," he said. "The dreamers can't continue to dream until the builders build. They stand on each other's shoulders."
But Bezos said that these builders and dreamers are not two different groups of people. "Everybody is a dreamer and everybody is a builder," he said. "We all have that capacity. It's a very human capacity to dream and to build and get that spinning."
Looked at that way, the Bezos philosophy could serve a practical guide for anyone feeling stuck.
If it's hard to build something new in your life, instead of turning your energy to tinkering or iterating or otherwise protecting what you last built, it may be time to dream a new dream. What may be possible now with the last thing you created? And if you're having trouble dreaming, it may be time to work on turning your last big dream into a reality, to roll up your sleeves and build.
Beyond Meat's shares soared after the plant-based meat company beat Wall Street's expectations in its first earnings report since its IPO in May.
The El Segundo, California-based company lost $6.6 million, or 95 cents per share, in the first quarter, up slightly from a 98-cent loss in the same period a year ago.
Adjusted for stock-based compensation costs and other items, the company lost 14 cents per share. That was better than the 15-cent loss analysts had forecast, according to FactSet.
Beyond Meat reported revenue of $40.2 million, more than triple the prior year. That also beat Wall Street's forecast of $39 million.
Beyond Meat's shares jumped 19% to $118.50 in after-hours trading.
Ten-year-old Beyond Meat burst into the spotlight last month with its successful IPO on the Nasdaq. Its $25 opening share price jumped 163% in the first day of trading, the biggest first-day pop since 2015, according to Renaissance Capital. Beyond Meat is now valued at nearly $6 billion.
It's one of the biggest names in a growing category of vegan “meats” that are meant to appeal to both vegetarians and carnivores. Impossible Foods and Nestle - which will launch a Sweet Earth-brand plant-based burger this fall - are others.
Beyond Meat's burgers and sausages are made from pea protein, potato starch and other plant-based ingredients. Its burgers “bleed” with beet juice; its sausages are colored with fruit juice. It sells to 30,000 grocery stores, restaurants and schools in the U.S., Canada, Italy, the United Kingdom and Israel.
Until now, Beyond Meat made all of its products in Columbia, Missouri. Last week, it took a step toward expansion, announcing a partnership with Dutch company Zandbergen World's Finest Meat. Zandbergen is expected to start making Beyond Meat products next year at a new facility in the Netherlands.
While tech companies have complied with the Commerce Department’s ban on Huawei, many are in discussion with U.S. officials on a possible resolution. A report today reveals that Google’s argument is centered around Huawei’s forked OS possibly being the bigger security threat.
The reputable Financial Times has just published a report detailing Google’s push for another extension to update existing Huawei phones in the market, or preferably an exemption to continue working with the Chinese company and release new devices.
According to sources, Google senior executives are making the case that the lack of updates after the August exemption would force Huawei to use an alternative operating system. Of course, Google and other tech companies, especially chip vendors, are concerned about the business impact of losing Huawei and ultimately the broader Chinese market.
Notably, this FT report described the immediate replacement OS as a “Huawei-modified version of Android” instead of being built from the ground up — a long-term project by the Chinese company known as Project Z.
Google is arguing to the U.S. government that the forked Huawei OS would have more bugs and be “more at risk of being hacked, not least by China.” Compared to the “genuine version,” the hybrid would lack Google’s Play Protect and Play Services, while a rush to market could result in vulnerabilities emerging.
Huawei confirmed last month that its Android alternative could launch in late 2019 or early 2020 for the Chinese market. Meanwhile, other reports suggest that the Play Store could be replaced with an in-house “App Gallery” amid talks with Aptoide.
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