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  • 163 Shares189 Views

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    Natural gas surges 14% as cold snap ahead is expected to boost demand

    A liquid natural gas (LNG) storage silo at the LNG terminal, operated by LNG Croatia LLC, in Krk, Croatia, on Monday, Jan. 25, 2021.
    Petar Santini | Bloomberg | Getty Images

    U.S. natural gas futures surged more than 14% on Wednesday as temperatures drop and forecasts call for more winter weather ahead.
    The contract for February delivery advanced 14.3% to settle at $4.857 per million British thermal units, hitting the highest level since November.

    “The heating demand outlook for [the] eastern-third of the U.S. has strengthened materially for this weekend and for the last week of January,” said Again Capital’s John Kilduff, noting that this Saturday could see record natural gas demand due to a cold blast forecast for Friday.
    “The weather has gone from being a non-factor or bearish factor all season to being meaningful, again, for prices and demand,” he added.
    After surging for much of 2021, natural gas prices dropped 36% during the fourth quarter following warm temperatures and as the omicron variant sent jitters through the market.
    Still, the contract posted a 47% gain for 2021, and is already up nearly 30% for 2022.
    “Due to the cold weather, and realistic worries about tighter supply, prices are moving higher across the North American complex,” said Campbell Faulkner, senior vice president and chief data analyst at OTC Global Holdings.

    “Overall there just isn’t the extremely slack supply of natural gas in the market that has been the prevailing trend over the past 10 years,” he added.
    Jeff Kilburg, chief investment officer at Sanctuary Wealth, added that some of the price surge can be attributed to traders covering positions.
    “The perfect storm is hitting Nat gas futures as freezing temperatures are hitting the market as supply shortages still exist, and this is all being amplified as many short speculator traders were caught offsides and are being forced to cover their positions, exaggerating the move higher today,” he said.

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    Despite higher wages, inflation gave the average worker a 2.4% pay cut last year

    Inflation grew 7% in December from a year earlier, the U.S. Department of Labor said Wednesday. Average hourly wages also increased by 4.7%.
    That amounts to a pay cut of more than 2%, on average.
    However, the experience for workers will differ widely based on their job and what they buy.

    A San Francisco grocery store.
    David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images

    Inflation is taking a big bite out of workers’ paychecks, eroding many of the raises businesses have offered to attract and keep employees in a hot job market.
    But strong wage growth in certain sectors, such as hotels and restaurants, has eclipsed those consumer price leaps — at least for now.

    The biggest raises have come in some of the country’s lowest-paying jobs, helping insulate cash-strapped households from rising prices for staples like food.
    More from Personal Finance:Rising inflation may affect your 2021 tax billTax filers should expect delaysBank of America is cutting overdraft fees
    The Consumer Price Index, a key inflation measure, jumped 7% in December from a year ago, the fastest rate since June 1982, the U.S. Department of Labor said Wednesday.
    The index accounts for costs across many goods and services, from alcohol to fruit, airfare, firewood, hospital services and musical instruments. On average, a consumer who paid $100 a year ago would pay $107 today.
    Average pay also jumped significantly in 2021 — to more than $31 an hour, a 4.7% annual increase, the Labor Department reported Friday.

    Despite that pay bump, higher consumer prices ate into household budgets. In effect, the average worker got a 2.4% pay cut last year, according to seasonally adjusted data published by the Labor Department.
    “In what was the best year for wage growth that we have seen in many, many years, it still comes up as a loss for many households,” said Greg McBride, chief financial analyst for Bankrate. “Their expenses increased even faster and chewed up all of the benefit of whatever pay raise they had seen.”

    Who’s outpacing inflation?

    So-called real earnings (wages minus inflation) fluctuate widely from household to household. The experience will differ based on consumers’ jobs and what they buy.
    For example, rank-and-file workers in leisure and hospitality — the lowest-paying sector of the U.S. economy — got a nearly 16% raise in 2021, to $16.97 an hour. That means the average employee at a bar, restaurants and hotel saw pay rise more than two times faster than inflation, amounting to a net 9% increase in annual pay.
    Similarly, rank-and-file workers in transportation and warehousing saw their annual pay rise 8.4%, to $25.04 an hour in December. Retail workers got a 7% increase to $19.20. These either exceeded or matched inflation.

    The typical experience is [that] inflation has likely taken a significant bite out of workers’ paychecks.

    Daniel Zhao
    senior economist at Glassdoor

    Employers have had difficulty finding workers to fill jobs in these sectors, according to Daniel Zhao, a senior economist at Glassdoor, a career site.
    High demand for labor (amid a near-record number of job openings) has pushed businesses to raise pay. The wages also reflect realities of the pandemic — workers may want a bigger paycheck to compensate for the higher risk accompanying these front-line roles, Zhao said.
    While wage gains have outstripped inflation for some lower earners, that doesn’t seem to be the experience for most households, Zhao added.
    “The typical experience is [that] inflation has likely taken a significant bite out of workers’ paychecks,” he said.

    Jason Furman, an economist at Harvard University and former economic advisor to President Barack Obama, found that wage growth among the bottom 25% of earners outpaced consumer prices in the two years through November 2021. The remainder of workers have gotten a new pay cut, he said.
    While average pay at the lower end has outpaced inflation, that doesn’t necessarily mean the jobs are paying a living wage, according to a Brookings Institution analysis of recent pay raises.
    “Headlines about rising wages for frontline workers — even rising real wages — often obscure the reality that wage levels are still low,” the analysis said. “In today’s inflationary environment, even as wages rise, so does the minimal threshold for an acceptable wage level.”

    Consumer buying

    d3sign | Moment | Getty Images

    Prices gains have occurred across a broad swath of goods, but the increases aren’t equally distributed.
    Americans who use public transit may have dodged some of the year’s biggest jump in costs — in gasoline and used cars and trucks, for example. (They jumped 50% and 37%, respectively.)
    Staples like rent and groceries are harder to avoid. (Their costs were up 3.3% and 6.5% on the year, respectively.) Consumers may change buying behavior to reduce the budget sting, perhaps substituting chicken or fish for beef (which jumped 19%), for instance.
    An increase in annual rent may prove longer-lasting than in other areas, according to economists. Even a small increase in percentage terms can quickly erode any paycheck gains for lower-earning renters, McBride said.
    It’s unclear how long inflation or wage gains will last. Many economists believe both will start to taper in 2022, if supply bottlenecks ease (helping to reduce prices) and virus cases wane (increasing the supply of workers).

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    WHO says omicron cases are 'off the charts' as global infections set new records

    The World Health Organization reported record numbers of cases of Covid-19 globally for a single week amid the omicron surge.
    A report from the WHO published Tuesday noted that the highest numbers of new cases over the week came from the U.S., with 4.6 million new cases.
    But hospitalizations are lower than in previous surges, though the death rate remains unsustainably high.

    Maria Van Kerkhove, head of the World Health Organization’s emerging diseases and zoonosis unit, speaks during a press conference following an emergency committee meeting over the new coronavirus in Geneva on Jan. 22, 2020.
    Pierre Albouy | AFP | Getty Images

    A record 15 million new Covid-19 infections were reported across the globe in a single week as omicron rapidly replaces delta as the dominant variant across the globe, and “we know this is an underestimate,” World Health Organization Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters at a press briefing Wednesday.
    “The sheer volume of cases is putting a burden on health-care systems,” said Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO’s technical lead on Covid-19. “Even though omicron is less severe than delta, it is still putting people in the hospital. It is still putting people into ICU and needing advanced clinical care. It is still killing people.”

    The U.S. saw the biggest jump in cases with 4.6 million new infections reported for the week through Sunday, a 73% increase over the prior week, compared to a 55% global increase in cases over the same period, according to a the WHO’s weekly epidemiology report published Tuesday.

    CNBC Health & Science

    Tedros noted that hospitalizations are not quite as high as seen in previous surges, possibly due to decreased severity of omicron compared to delta and widespread immunity from vaccines and prior infection. But, he added, the death rate is still unsustainably high, with an average of about 48,000 deaths per week, which hasn’t fluctuated much since October, Tedros said.
    “We’re seeing omicron out-compete delta in many populations,” Van Kerkhove said. While delta cases similarly peaked in a few months, it didn’t take over the globe as quickly nor were the cases as high as omicron. “This is off the charts,” she said.
    Among more than 357,000 cases sequenced in the last 30 days, nearly 59% were omicron, the WHO said in the epidemiological report. The WHO, the United Nations’ health organization, cautioned that the data may not fully show how far omicron has spread due to reporting delays and limits sequencing in some countries.
    According to the report, omicron has a shorter doubling time than other variants, meaning the number of days it takes for cases to double, and it can more readily evade prior immunity, allowing it an advantage over other variants.

    While omicron has appeared to rip through populations where it was detected early and then drop down to lower levels, Van Kerkhove said delta had a similar trajectory at its height, but never peaked at such levels as omicron.
    But, she emphasized, the direction of omicron can still be influenced by the world’s actions, including vaccination and taking steps to minimize spread.
    “There is no inevitability about this virus and how it circulates,” she said. “We have control, some measure of control, in terms of limiting its spread with tools that we have access to: masks, distancing, ventilation, avoiding crowds.”
    Van Kerkhove said the WHO expects the virus will continue to evolve to become more fit and either more or less severe, that there will continue to be outbreaks of disease among the unvaccinated and that as different populations mix, outbreaks of other viruses will sometimes occur at the same time as those of Covid.
    “The virus is well on its way to becoming endemic,” Van Kerkhove said. “But we’
    re not there yet.”
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    WATCH: World Health Organization warns of Covid ‘tsunami’ from delta and omicron variants

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    Rapidly rising food prices may give restaurants an edge—here's why

    The cost of eating at home is climbing faster than the cost of dining out.
    According to the Department of Labor, food-at-home prices rose a whopping 6.5% in December over the last 12 months, compared with 6% for eating away from home during the same time period.
    Bank of America Securities analyst Sara Senatore wrote in a note that the gap in inflation could make restaurants more appealing to consumers.

    Erick Williams, chef/owner of Virtue restaurant in Chicago’s Hyde Park, preps a beet salad on Feb. 4, 2021.
    Jose M. Osorio | Chicago Tribune | Tribune News Service | Getty Images

    Food prices are soaring, putting pressure on restaurants and grocery store shoppers alike.
    But the cost of eating at home is climbing faster than bills for dining away from home, which could help restaurants regain the “share of stomach” that they lost during the coronavirus pandemic.

    As the restaurant industry tries to bounce back from the crisis, eateries are competing not just against each other, but also against grocery stores and meal kit services for consumers’ money. In 2020, 51.9% of consumer spending on food was for at-home occasions, marking the first time since 2008 that consumers opted to allocate less than half of their food budget to away-from-home eating.
    Restaurants have seen their businesses rebound since then, but the industry still hasn’t fully recovered. The latest surge of new Covid-19 cases stemming from the omicron variant could present another obstacle for eateries. Black Box Intelligence data shows that restaurant sales growth in the week ended Jan. 2 was down compared with the first half of December, suggesting that some cautious consumers may be avoiding eating at restaurants.
    However, Bank of America Securities analyst Sara Senatore wrote in a note Tuesday that the gap between inflation for food at home and food away from home strengthens the value proposition of restaurants, making eating out more appealing to consumers. That could give restaurants a lift during the first half of 2022, although she expects those tail winds to peter out in the second half of the year.

    According to the Department of Labor report released Wednesday, food-at-home prices climbed a whopping 6.5% over the last 12 months. Meats, poultry, fish and eggs saw the highest price increases. The cost of eating away from home rose 6% over the last year, the highest jump since January 1982.
    Like grocery store shoppers, restaurants are also battling higher food costs, but they have more levers to pull to keep prices low for diners. For example, Domino’s Pizza CEO Ritch Allison said Tuesday at the virtual ICR Conference that the pizza chain is predicting its food basket costs will soar 8% to 10% in 2022, three to four times the pace for a typical year. The company plans to tailor its promotions to avoid sticker shock for consumers and maintain profit margins.

    Most restaurant chains haven’t been able to avoid raising menu prices. Checkers & Rally’s CEO Frances Allen said in an interview that the drive-thru chains raised prices by 6% this summer and hiked them an additional 6% at the start of the new year. Checkers & Rally’s plans to appeal to consumers with higher-quality ingredients.
    “We’re going to charge people more money, but they’re getting a better-quality product,” she said.

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    Apple's potential bid for MLB's weekday package could bring a big new player into live sports

    MLB and Apple are in talks to stream live regular-season games during the week.
    Should Apple land the deal, it would be the company’s first foray into airing live sports.
    Amazon has already become a formidable player in the market, most notably with “Thursday Night Football.”

    Los Angeles Dodgers center fielder Cody Bellinger (35) steals second base as St. Louis Cardinals second baseman Tommy Edman (19) takes the late throw at Dodger Stadium in the 2021 National League Wild Card game.
    Robert Hanashiro | USA TODAY Sports

    Now that Amazon has established itself in live sports, most recently through a $1 billion deal to air “Thursday Night Football,” Apple is trying to jump into the game.
    Apple is in talks with Major League Baseball to acquire the rights to its weekday package, according to people with knowledge of the deal who asked not to be named because discussions are confidential. An agreement would, for the first time, align the most valuable U.S. tech company with a pro sports media package and give Apple a major content boost for its streaming service, Apple TV+.

    MLB’s weekday package allows a network or streaming service to showcase baseball games on Mondays and Wednesdays during the regular season. MLB and Apple declined to comment on a potential deal, which was first reported Monday by the New York Post.
    The rights aren’t exclusive, as the games can still be aired on the regional sports networks (RSNs) for the teams that are playing. Still, for Apple it’s an important entry point, said Lee Berke, CEO of LHB Sports, which advises the sports entertainment industry.
    Apple is using its almost $3 trillion market cap and $191 billion in cash and equivalents to expand its business well beyond iPhones, computers, watches and the App Store. The company introduced Apple TV+ in 2019 as a $5 per month subscription service that would run across all the big streaming platforms and compete with the likes of Netflix and Amazon for original content.
    “When you’re looking to develop a content strategy on any media platform, one of the quickest ways to do it, and expensive by the way, is to add sports,” Berke said.
    For MLB, finding new revenue sources in the offseason is critical as the league contends with its ninth labor stoppage in history. MLB owners locked out players in December as the parties feud over how the economics generated by the sport should be shared.

    Media rights represent an increasingly lucrative source for the league, but MLB has to get creative in maximizing revenue.
    In January 2021, MLB was in the midst of a contract renewal with ESPN, following a deal that paid the league $5.6 billion over eight years and included exclusive games on Sunday nights as well as midweek rights. The games were semi-exclusive, because they were also shown on RSNs.
    Octagon analysts used 108 out of 114 games from MLB’s 2018 to 2020 seasons to determine average viewership on the Monday-Wednesday package on ESPN, not including ESPN2 broadcasts. They found average viewership of 761,434 in 2018, dropping to approximately 632,000 in 2019 and 358,947 in 2020.
    In May, the two parties agreed to carve out the weekday games, which reportedly cut ESPN’s fee from $700 million per year to a reported $550 million annually. The new deal runs through 2028, and ESPN retains exclusive rights to “Sunday Night Baseball,” the Home Run Derby and MLB playoff wild card games.
    While the gap between ESPN’s old deal and the new fee amounts to $150 million a year, industry experts suggested that MLB sought $350 million per year for the weekday rights.
    Daniel Cohen, senior vice president of Octagon’s global media rights consulting division, said a traditional media company would be unlikely to meet MLB’s asking price. And Turner Sports will add its own weekday game on Tuesday nights as part of its new $3.2 billion package that pays MLB $470 million per year, up from $325 million.
    But Berke said a cash-rich tech company like Apple would “absolutely” pay it.
    “Apple has the money to purchase a wide range of sports over and above the MLB package,” Berke said. “But to demonstrate they can do this properly, they have to work their way up the ladder.” 

    Apple the new radio?

    Berke likened Apple’s position to a situation another company faced a century ago.
    In the early 1920s, electronics manufacturer RCA created radio sets. The company then purchased radio stations and, in 1926, created the National Broadcasting Co. NBC agreed with MLB to air the first World Series on the radio. (NBCUniversal is now the parent of NBC and CNBC.)
    “RCA was trying to sell radio sets, and Apple is trying to sell headsets,” Berke said. “The same principle applies.”
    Apple has a whole ecosystem that it can present to consumers, he said.
    “You need to get in the game if you’re Apple,” Berke said. “If Apple is looking to increase usage of Apple TV+ but also looking to sell additional hardware – phones, watches, iPads – then sports provides you with a ready-made mass audience.”
    The pandemic changed media consumption, making a deal between MLB and Apple more attractive to both parties.
    MLB gets younger people, who have become even more glued to their devices for content while stuck at home. And with RSN’s in financial danger as consumers cut the cord, the league needs alternatives to linear TV.
    “You’re getting in front of your next generation of fans, which is absolutely critical for every effort you’re doing going forward,” Berke said. “The games need to be there on those screens for new fans to be exposed to it.”

    A view of the fans watching from the outfield during the game between the Houston Astros and the Atlanta Braves during the first inning of game six of the 2021 World Series at Minute Maid Park.
    Jerome Miron | USA TODAY Sports

    After years of simulcasting “Thursday Night” games and building up its technology to handle a large volume of livestreaming, Amazon lured a $1 billion per year NFL package in March 2021. Now the company is trying to get lead NFL analyst Troy Aikman to join its production staff from Fox.
    In 2019, Amazon also purchased shares of the YES Network, which airs New York Yankees games, and streams the regular-season contests. It has a deal with the Women’s National Basketball Association around its in-season tournament, an idea the NBA wants to adopt, as well as tennis streaming rights.
    “Step by step, they’ve built a very substantial portfolio in sports, not just in the U.S. but worldwide,” said Berke. “It’s a multiyear process to demonstrate that you have the chops in terms of production, sales, distribution on a professional level that’s glitch-free.”
    Apple and MLB have some history together, dating back to 2008 when the league debuted its iPhone app. Two years later, Apple asked MLB to help with the launch of the iPad.
    Should Apple now land MLB rights and prove it can compete with Amazon in attracting users with live sports, more opportunities could open up.
    “If you’re interested in making a bid for the NBA, I think it helps you if you have a track record in sports leading up to it,” said Berke.
    WATCH: Here’s how sports teams are changing Covid protocols amid outbreaks

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    Higher prices played a role in online sales hitting record $204 billion over the holidays

    Sales online during the holiday season rose nearly 9% to a record $204.5 billion, Adobe Analytics said.
    The uptick was driven, in part, by higher prices on goods from apparel to groceries to appliances: Online prices increased 3.1% in December compared with the prior year and rose 0.8% month over month, according to Adobe.
    “It’s definitely a key contributor to the growth but it’s not the totality of the growth,” said Vivek Pandya, lead analyst at Adobe Digital Insights, about the continued inflation.

    A worker moves boxes of goods to be scanned and sent to delivery trucks during operations on Cyber Monday at Amazon’s fulfillment center in Robbinsville, New Jersey, November 29, 2021.
    Mike Segar | Reuters

    Sales online during the holiday season rose nearly 9% to a record $204.5 billion, Adobe Analytics said on Wednesday, as consumers opened up their wallets to spend on gifts for family, friends and for themselves.
    But the uptick in sales was driven, in part, by higher prices on goods from apparel to groceries to appliances, said Adobe, which analyzes 1 trillion visits to retailers’ website.

    Online prices increased 3.1% in December compared with the prior year and rose 0.8% month over month. That marked the 20th consecutive month of online inflation on a year-over-year basis, and followed a record year-over-year spike in prices of 3.5% in November, Adobe said.
    “It’s definitely a key contributor to the growth but it’s not the totality of the growth,” said Vivek Pandya, lead analyst at Adobe Digital Insights, about the continued inflation. “There’s a level of just innate growth happening in overall retail sales … and we’re viewing the inflation as one of the explanatory factors.”
    Consumers have also been buying into more expensive categories, such as jewelry, which could be another factor contributing to the retail sales growth, he noted.

    Uptick in items out of stock

    And sales might have been even higher if consumers didn’t find so many items online out of stock. Retailers have been tackling supply chain hurdles in recent months, leaving shipments of merchandise delayed during key shopping days. Companies are also grappling with how to work through another surge in Covid cases in the U.S., fueled by the highly contagious omicron variant, that has left many of their workers sick and on the sidelines.
    Apparel companies Lululemon and Abercrombie & Fitch said this week that their fiscal fourth-quarter sales will come in lower than previously expected due to some of these constraints. Urban Outfitters said it struggled to keep an assortment of home goods in stock, whereas it could use air freight to bring clothing from overseas.

    Consumers saw more than 6 billion out-of-stock messages on retailers’ websites during the holiday period, which runs from Nov. 1 to Dec. 31, according to Adobe. That’s up 10% from year-ago levels and up a whopping 253% compared with the 2019 holiday season, Adobe said.
    Still, the stock-out messages might have just pushed consumers to other retailers’ websites in search of sought-after goods.
    “The thing about online is you have a bit more flexibility in choice, where if an item it out of stock on one site, you can open up another window browser and look at another site,” said Pandya.
    A separate analysis by Salesforce found retailers’ holiday inventories shrank 2% compared with 2020 levels due to lingering supply chain issues.

    Shoppers find fewer discounts

    As retailers faced higher prices on everything from transportation to labor, and inventory levels were constrained in many categories, that meant discounts were largely less prevalent this holiday season, too. Markdowns of electronics were for 8%, on average, compared with for 21% in 2020, Adobe found. Sporting goods were discounted by 6%, compared with 14% a year ago. Consumer did see greater promotions for apparel and toys, however.
    The cadence of shopping also evolved this past holiday season. Retailers were touting Black Friday-type deals as early as October, hoping to spread sales out amid the supply chain pressures and avoid running into a last-minute dash among consumers for presents.
    In the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving, from Nov. 1 to Nov. 24, sales online grew 19.2% year over year, Adobe said. Over the five days between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday, sales fell 1.4%, it said. And from Nov. 30 to Dec. 31, sales on the web grew 5.6% from prior-year levels, as procrastinators looked for last-minute options and shoppers used their gift cards in the days after Christmas.
    But some consumers started even sooner, in October. Data from Placer.ai showed visits to Best Buy locations in the U.S. climbed 10.2% that month compared with 2019 levels, while they rose 16.7% at Target, and jumped 14.7% at Dick’s Sporting Goods.
    Meantime, Black Friday — the day after Thanksgiving — has been losing its luster as a day for shoppers to flock to malls before sunrise in search of doorbusters.
    Placer.ai tracked shopper visits to department stores on Black Friday tumbled across the board versus 2019. Traffic at Macy’s fell 18%, while visits to Nordstrom were down 18.6%, it said. Traffic to Neiman Marcus dropped 20.3%, at Kohl’s traffic dropped 23.1%, and at Dillard’s visits were down 27.3%, according to Placer.ai.
    The National Retail Federation, the retail industry’s leading trade group, is expected to release its highly anticipated, final holiday sales results on Friday.

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    Stocks making the biggest moves premarket: DoorDash, Didi, Philips and others

    Check out the companies making headlines before the bell:
    DoorDash (DASH) – The stock added 2.6% in the premarket after Evercore upgraded it to “outperform” from “in line.” Evercore said the delivery service has strong fundamentals and the stock is at an attractive valuation. Separately, Meta Platforms (FB) named DoorDash CEO Tony Xu to its board of directors, the first new appointment to the Facebook parent’s board in nearly two years.

    Didi Global (DIDI) – The ride-hailing company’s shares rallied 5.9% in premarket trading on reports that it is in talks for a second-quarter Hong Kong IPO as it continues the process of delisting from the New York Stock Exchange.
    Philips (PHG) – Philips shares tumbled 15.6% in premarket action after predicting a roughly 40% drop in core profit for the fourth quarter. The Dutch health technology company’s results are being impacted by component shortages, its ventilator recall and other factors.
    Ocugen (OCGN) – The biopharmaceutical company’s stock jumped 5.5% in premarket trading after a booster dose of its vaccine candidate Covaxin was shown to neutralize the Covid-19 omicron and delta variants.
    Aerojet Rocketdyne (AJRD) – The FTC has postponed a vote on Lockheed Martin’s (LMT) proposed takeover of the aerospace systems maker for at least two weeks, according to people briefed on the matter who spoke to Reuters. Opponents of the deal say it would give Lockheed a dominant share of the market for rocket motors. Aerojet Rocketdyne shares added 3% in the premarket.
    Biogen (BIIB) – Biogen shares sank 9.1% in premarket trading after Medicare agreed to only partially cover the Alzheimer’s drug Aduhelm. Medicare will cover the treatment only if patients are enrolled in clinical trials and have early-stage symptoms.

    Dish Network (DISH) – Dish and DirecTV are once again in merger talks, according to sources who spoke to the New York Post. The satellite TV companies have held on-and-off talks periodically over the past 20 years, with the latest round said to be pushed forward by DirecTV’s minority owner TPG Capital. Dish Network surged 7.4% in the premarket.
    Just Eat Takeaway (GRUB) – The Grubhub parent rallied 4.3% in the premarket after the company maintained its 2022 forecast and said it was seeing a rise in order volume.
    Ally Financial (ALLY) – The bank announced a 20% dividend increase, raising its quarterly payout to 30 cents per share, and also authorized a $2 billion share repurchase program. Ally Financial gained 2.9% in premarket trading.
    Crocs (CROX) – The casual shoe maker’s stock rose 1.5% in premarket action after Piper Sandler named it a “top pick” for 2022, calling it one of the most impressive consumer growth stories for several years to come.
    Ambarella (AMBA) – Ambarella shares gained 2.7% in the premarket after Wells Fargo upgraded the chipmaker to “overweight” from “equal weight.” Wells Fargo said Ambarella has an attractive valuation after a recent pullback and called it one of the best ways to play the artificial intelligence market.

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    Kim Kardashian and Floyd Mayweather sued by investors over alleged crypto scam

    A class action lawsuit accuses Kim Kardashian and Floyd Mayweather of artificially inflating the price of the cryptocurrency EthereumMax.
    The celebrities made “false or misleading statements” about the little-known token in social media posts, the lawsuit claims.
    EthereumMax has lost around 97% of its value since early June, leading some investors to label it as a “pump and dump” scheme.

    Kim Kardashian arrives for the 2018 Met Gala on May 7, 2018, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
    Angela Weiss | AFP | Getty Images

    Kim Kardashian and Floyd Mayweather are being sued over allegations they misled investors when promoting a little-known cryptocurrency called EthereumMax to their millions of social media followers.
    A class action lawsuit filed last Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California accuses EthereumMax and its celebrity promoters of working together to artificially inflate the price of the token by making “false or misleading statements” in social media posts.

    Kardashian caused a stir last year when she made an Instagram post promoting the EthereumMax token. “Are you guys into crypto????” Kardashian wrote. “This is not financial advice but sharing what my friends just told me about the Ethereum Max token!”
    Kardashian included the hashtag #ad in the message, suggesting she was paid to promote it. It’s not clear how much Kardashian was paid by EthereumMax, though estimates have placed her fee per sponsored Instagram post in the $500,000 to $1 million range.
    Meanwhile, Mayweather endorsed the token in his boxing match with YouTube star Logan Paul. EthereumMax was accepted as payment for tickets to the event, a move the lawsuit claims boosted trading volumes sharply.
    Mayweather also promoted EthereumMax at a major bitcoin conference in Miami, and was subsequently booed off stage. Mayweather doesn’t appear to have disclosed payment for his promotion of the token, the lawsuit said.

    The lawsuit claims that plaintiff Ryan Huegerich, a New York resident, and other investors who purchased EthereumMax tokens between May 14, 2021, and June 17, 2021, suffered losses as a result of the celebrities’ conduct.

    EthereumMax has lost around 97% of its value since early June, leading some investors to label it as a “pump and dump” scheme where scammers attempt to boost the price of an asset through false or misleading statements. The accusation features in Huegerich’s lawsuit, which accuses Kardashian and Mayweather of “shilling” EthereumMax.
    EthereumMax “has no connection” to ether, the second-largest cryptocurrency, the lawsuit said, adding its branding appears to be an effort to mislead investors into believing the token is part of the Ethereum network.
    Representatives for Kardashian and Mayweather were not immediately available when contacted by CNBC. EthereumMax did not return a request for comment on Twitter.
    It’s not the first time celebrities have been in hot water for cryptocurrency endorsements — much to the ire of regulators.
    In 2018, Mayweather was charged by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission with pumping an initial coin offering, a controversial crypto crowdfunding method. Mayweather paid over $600,000 in a settlement with the SEC, without admitting or denying the regulator’s findings.
    In September 2021, Charles Randell, chair of the U.K.’s Financial Conduct Authority, singled out Kardashian’s Instagram ad for EthereumMax in a speech warning about crypto scams. Randell said that while he couldn’t say if EthereumMax specifically was a scam, “social media influencers are routinely paid by scammers to help them pump and dump new tokens on the back of pure speculation.”

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