Aurelia Butler

(Reuters) -Investors in Hollywood studios on Thursday cheered a tentative deal with actors that could help restart production of movies and shows halted by a series of strikes since spring. Warner Bros Discovery (NASDAQ:WBD) and Paramount Global gained 3% each, Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX) rose marginally, while Walt Disney (NYSE:DIS) jumped 4%, as it also benefited from strong earnings and a plan to cut more costs. The 118-day work stoppage by actors officially ended just after midnight with a three-year deal that the SAG-AFTRA union said was valued at more than $1 billion and included increases in minimum salaries and a new bonus paid by streamers. The writers, who had gone on strike before the actors in spring, returned to work in late September, but most productions remained halted as the actors were on picket lines. “Its certainly a very encouraging sign the chasm that opened up between actors, writers and studios can finally be closed and work begin in earnest on re-starting productions,” said Susannah Streeter, head of money and markets at Hargreaves Lansdown.The actors union’s national board will on Friday consider the agreement, which also includes protections against unauthorized use of images generated by AI, and a final ratification vote is expected in the coming weeks.Streeter warned that “it’s going to take considerable time before new movies, in particular, will appear on screens given the lengthy post-production process.” Warner Bros Discovery executives said on Wednesday they expected the impact from the work stoppages to extend into the last quarter of the year, after a lack of content drove a drop in streaming subscriber numbers in the third quarter.The company, which delayed the release of “Dune: Part 2” from November to March next year, expects a hit of “a few hundred million dollars” to its core profit in the last three months of the year from the strikes. More

In Latin America’s second-largest economy, 12-month headline inflation hit 4.26% last month, down from 4.45% in September and the lowest since February 2021, although still above the central bank’s target of 3%, plus or minus one percentage point.That makes it unlikely for Banxico, as the Bank of Mexico is known, to deliver any interest rate cut at its meeting later in the day, as the monetary authority has been citing a still complicated and uncertain inflationary outlook.Consumer prices rose 0.38% in October, according to non-seasonally adjusted figures, mainly driven by core inflation including higher food, beverage and service costs.”The fresh rise in services inflation will alarm officials at Banxico,” Capital Economics deputy chief emerging markets economist Jason Tuvey said in a note to clients.”We doubt this will prompt a restart to the tightening cycle – interest rates are likely to be left unchanged later today – but there is a growing risk of rate cuts starting later and being even more protracted than we currently anticipate.”Banxico has kept its benchmark interest rate at 11.25% since March following a nearly two-year rate-rise cycle during which it added 725 basis points of hikes to combat increasing consumer prices, which reached a two-decade high last year.The annual headline inflation reading came in slightly below economist forecasts in a Reuters poll, which stood at 4.28%.The closely monitored core index, which strips out some volatile food and energy prices, rose 0.39% during the month, while annual core inflation came in at 5.5%, in line with market expectations.”This report strengthens our view that headline inflation will remain under control over the coming months,” said Pantheon Macroeconomics chief Latin America economist Andres Abadia, but “admittedly services inflation is still a bit sticky.”Today’s core service numbers suggest that policymakers will likely delay the start of the easing cycle to mid-first quarter, once the disinflation story is broad-based,” he added. More

Shares of the company rose more than 4% in premarket trading.    Novavax reported revenue of $187 million for the quarter, down from $734.58 million a year ago, but above analysts’ expectations of $158.5 million, according to LSEG data. “We’ve really optimized that U.S. grant opportunity, which was something that was uncertain at the beginning of the year,” Novavax CEO John Jacobs said in an interview, adding that the government had shortened the timeline for being able to tap into those funds. The Maryland-based biotech has flagged concerns about its ability to remain in business and has been banking on cost cuts and commercial sales of its retooled COVID shot to help it stay afloat. Novavax said it had reduced liabilities by $128 million in the third quarter and was prepared to cut costs by an additional $300 million in 2024 to better align itself with the smaller-than-expected COVID-19 vaccine market.”We and many others thought there would be 80 to 100 million doses in the U.S. market this year and it turned out to be significantly smaller than that,” said Jacobs. The company said it expects the 2023-2024 U.S. market for COVID shots to be between 30 million and 50 million doses.Over 15 million people in the United States, around 4.5% of the population, had received the updated COVID-19 shots by Oct. 27, according to a Department of Health and Human Services spokesperson, lagging behind last year’s vaccinations.Novavax said it had $666 million in cash as of Sept. 30, up from $518 million at the end of June.The company’s updated COVID shot, using a more traditional technology than the mRNA-based vaccines of rivals Pfizer (NYSE:PFE) and Moderna (NASDAQ:MRNA), was authorized in the U.S. in October. It has since been made available in pharmacies, including CVS and Rite Aid (NYSE:US90274J5618=UBSS), Novavax announced last month.Novavax missed out on the COVID vaccine windfall that benefited rivals due to manufacturing issues that delayed its filing for approval when the pandemic was raging.Its stock plunged 93% last year and is down about 34% this year.The company has said it expects to reduce its annual research and commercial expenses by 20% to 25% from last year through a series of cost-cutting initiatives, including layoffs. More

BENGALURU (Reuters) – The U.S. Federal Reserve will hold its federal funds rate steady through most of the first half of next year, according to the latest Reuters poll of economists who appear settled on the risk of the first reduction coming later than they expect.As widely predicted, the central bank left the fed funds rate in a 5.25%-5.50% range for a second consecutive meeting last week and kept the door open to another hike, although apparently with less conviction than before. “In our base case, the Fed is done hiking, inflation will remain above target and rates will remain elevated across the curve,” said Andrew Hollenhorst, chief U.S. economist at Citi.”The plan now is to be ‘careful’ – a word used multiple times in the press conference – in further rate increases.”But since then, financial conditions have loosened, with 10-year Treasury note yields falling around 40 basis points and Wall Street shares up for eight straight sessions.All but 13 of 100 economists polled Nov. 3-9 said the Federal Open Market Committee was done raising rates in the most aggressive tightening cycle in four decades that took them up 525 basis points from near zero.That compares with 26 of 111 in an October survey. While 86% of economists forecast no rate cut through the first quarter of next year, a 58% majority said rates would fall by mid-year. That was similar to 55% in last month’s survey, which had slipped from more than 70% in a September poll.Respondents mostly stuck to their views around the risks on the timing of the first rate cut for the third month in a row, with more than 70%, 31 of 42, saying the bigger risk was for the first reduction to come later than they expect.All inflation measures polled by Reuters – the consumer price index (CPI), core CPI, personal consumption expenditures (PCE) and core PCE – were predicted to remain above the Fed’s 2% PCE target until at least 2025.Fed officials have consistently said interest rates need to remain higher for longer to bring price pressures down. One thing that might justify an earlier rate cut is a severe economic downturn. But that is looking unlikely any time soon after the world’s largest economy posted a near 5% annualized growth rate last quarter. Still, gross domestic product (GDP) growth was expected to slow to an annualized pace of 1.1% this quarter and average just 1.1% in 2024. The unemployment rate, which rose slightly to 3.9% last month and has barely increased throughout the Fed’s historic policy tightening campaign, was expected to rise modestly to 4.4% by the end of next year.RBC economist Claire Fan said that even though “softer conditions are showing up more significantly” in payrolls data, there was “still momentum left in hiring activity”.”But clearer signs of moderating wage growth and low inflation readings mean the Fed should not need to hike again in the current cycle, while waiting for softening economic conditions to emerge elsewhere,” she wrote.(For other stories from the Reuters global economic poll:) More