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AT&T reported fourth-quarter subscriber growth that exceeded Wall Street’s estimates.
CEO John Stankey rejected the idea that the phone service industry is in a pricing war.
Verizon also reported fourth-quarter earnings this week that matched analyst’s expectations.

A pedestrian walks in front of an AT&T location in New York.
Scott Mlyn | CNBC

AT&T shares jumped on Wednesday after the carrier reported fourth-quarter subscriber growth that exceeded Wall Street’s estimates, shrugging off its rivals’ lower pricing strategies.
The U.S. phone service provider added 217 million total subscribers across all of its divisions for the fourth quarter, beating StreetAccount estimates of 215 million. New phone subscribers specifically, however, missed analyst expectations, coming in at 656,000 net adds, versus an estimate of 678,400, according to StreetAccount.

Shares of AT&T closed 6% higher Wednesday, trading at $20 per share.
The company has continued to discount the idea that the phone carrier industry is in a pricing war.
“I don’t submit to the view that there’s a race to the bottom going on. I actually think the industry is doing quite well,” CEO John Stankey said in an interview on CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street.”
T-Mobile has touted its ongoing “Price Lock,” which promises that the company won’t hike monthly phone rates in response to inflation, though it raised millions of customers’ other fees in early 2022, according to a report from Bloomberg. The carrier has called out Verizon and AT&T for raising rates.
That marketing campaign triggered speculation about whether the competing service providers would adjust their pricing strategies in order to snag more subscribers. T-Mobile has also offered customers discounts for switching from rival carriers.

AT&T’s refusal to engage in the price war doesn’t seem to be taking a toll. The company reported a phone churn rate of 0.84%, a slight improvement from a churn rate of 0.85% during last year’s fourth quarter.
Here’s how AT&T performed in the fourth quarter compared with what Wall Street anticipated, based on an average of analysts’ estimates compiled by Refinitiv:

Adjusted earnings per share: 61 cents versus an expected 57 cents
Total revenue: $31.34 billion versus an expected $31.38 billion

The company expects wireless service revenue growth of 4% in 2023, below analyst expectations.
Stankey said during the company’s earnings call it is staying “very conservative” as it heads into its new fiscal year and watches for recession as well as geopolitical disruption.
Verizon also reported fourth-quarter earnings this week that matched analyst’s expectations. It added 217,000 phone subscribers, up from 8,000 in its third quarter but trailing behind AT&T’s subscriber growth.
Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg explained in a call with analysts that the company has been able to lean on its business customers to prop up subscriber numbers, but said it is still working to rebuild the consumer side of its business.
Verizon increased prices last year to offset rising costs, which hurt the consumer base at the lower end of its pricing tiers.
Vestberg said in an interview on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” Tuesday that he is looking to see “where inflation goes this year” in order to gauge Verizon’s pricing strategy for 2023.

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Access to the abortion pill mifepristone has become a major legal battleground in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling that overturned federal abortion rights last June.
GenBioPro argues that FDA regulations on the abortion pill preempt West Virginia’s state law that basically bans the medication.
Anti-abortion activists, on the other hand, are pushing to have mifepristone completely pulled from the U.S. market through a lawsuit in Texas.

Boxes of the medication Mifepristone used to induce a medical abortion are prepared for patients at Planned Parenthood health center in Birmingham, Alabama, March 14, 2022.
Evelyn Hockstein | Reuters

Abortion pill manufacturer GenBioPro on Wednesday sued to overturn West Virginia’s ban on abortion because it restricts access to a medication approved by the Food and Drug Administration.
The lawsuit, filed in federal court in West Virginia’s southern district, argues that FDA regulations on medications such as the abortion pill preempt state law under the U.S. Constitution.

Access to the pill, called mifepristone, has become a major legal battleground in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling that overturned federal abortion rights last June. A dozen states, including West Virginia, have implemented near total abortion bans that basically outlaw the use of mifepristone.
The FDA approved mifepristone more than 20 years ago as a safe and effective method to terminate an early pregnancy, though the agency imposed restrictions on how the pill was distributed and administered.
Mifepristone, when used in combination with misoprostol, is the most common way to end a pregnancy in the U.S., accounting for about half of all abortions nationwide in 2020.
The FDA has eased many of its restrictions to expand access to mifepristone. During the Covid-19 pandemic, the agency allowed patients to receive the pill by mail. Earlier this month, the FDA allowed retail pharmacies to start dispensing mifepristone for the first time so long as they get certified to do so.
But bans such as those in West Virginia conflict with FDA regulations on mifepristone, raising the question of whether federal or state laws take precedence. Although the FDA has a congressional mandate to approve drugs for use in the U.S. market, the states generally license the pharmacies that dispense those medications.

GenBioPro, in its lawsuit, argues that West Virginia’s state ban is unconstitutional because it violates the supremacy and commerce clauses of the U.S. Constitution, which gives the FDA power to regulate which drugs are sold in across the country.
“Individual state regulation of mifepristone destroys the national common market and conflict with the strong national interest in ensuring access to a federally approved medication to end a pregnancy, resulting in the kind of economic fracturing the Framers intended the Clause to preclude,” GenBioPro’s lawyers argued in the lawsuit.
“A State’s police power does not extend to functionally banning an article of interstate commerce — the Constitution leaves that to Congress,” the company’s lawyers wrote.
In another case, a doctor in North Carolina asked a federal court Wednesday to toss out the state’s restrictions on mifepristone because they go beyond the FDA’s rules. North Carolina requires patients to obtain the pill in person from a physician in a certified facility.
“For North Carolina to impose restrictions that go beyond those FDA deemed warranted as part of its regulatory balancing, including restrictions that FDA specifically rejected, frustrates the objectives of federal law,” the doctor’s lawyers wrote in the complaint.
Anti-abortion activists, on the other hand, are pushing to have mifepristone completely pulled from the U.S. market. A coalition of physicians who oppose abortion have asked a federal court in Texas to overturn the FDA’s more than two-decade-old approval of mifepristone as safe and effective.
A decision in that case could come as soon as February.

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The Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing this week titled, “That’s the Ticket: Promoting Competition and Protecting Consumers in Live Entertainment,” which focused on the state of Live Nation Entertainment and the lack of competition in the primary and secondary ticketing markets.
“I just want to dispel this notion that this is not a monopoly and then we can go from there about solutions,” Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., said at the hearing, which was held Tuesday.

Live Nation Entertainment is composed of Live Nation, an events promoter and venue operator, and Ticketmaster, a ticket sales giant. The two companies merged in 2010 and now control an estimated 70% of the ticketing and live event venues market.
It’s no secret that Taylor Swift fans were outraged in November 2022 when millions flocked to Ticketmaster.com to grab tickets to see the heartbreak queen for the first time since 2018 and the website crashed. The long wait lines and frozen screens sparked an uproar with fans, blaming Ticketmaster for ruining their chances to see the pop star.
“As the leading player, we have an obligation to do better,” said Joe Berchtold, Live Nation Entertainment president and chief financial officer, at the hearing Tuesday.
This is not the first time consumers have called for the breakup of Ticketmaster and Live Nation. It’s also not the first time the Department of Justice has been reportedly looking into alleged misconduct by the company.
When the Live Nation and Ticketmaster merger was approved in 2010, it was under the condition of a consent decree. Among other things, the purpose of that agreement was to forbid Live Nation from retaliating against a venue for using a ticketer other than Ticketmaster. After an investigation, in 2019 the DOJ made its most significant enforcement action of an antitrust decree in 20 years when it alleged Live Nation Entertainment violated that decree. The company settled with the government.

“The Department of Justice alleged six issues in 2019 which led to our decision with them to extend the consent decree. We did not feel it made sense to be seen as defending the theories of retaliation or threats. It’s not our business practice. It goes against our fundamental focus on alignment with the artists. The idea that we would ever put our interests ahead of theirs. So we are comfortable extending the consent decree,” said Berchtold during Tuesday’s hearing. “It is absolutely our policy to not pressure, threaten or retaliate against venues by using content as part of the ticketing discussion,” he added.
In November 2022, The New York Times reported the DOJ is once again investigating the company.
While Live Nation Entertainment arguably has a monopoly on the industry, a monopoly in itself is not illegal in the United States. A monopoly occurs when a company holds exclusive possession or control of an industry.  
“If we made monopolies illegal on the basis of pricing above cost and generating monopoly profits for a firm, the concern would be that that would potentially stifle risk-taking and entrepreneurial activity,” said Diana Moss, president of the American Antitrust Institute.
Abuse of a monopoly position is another matter. It’s illegal for a business to establish or maintain a monopoly through improper conduct and not allow for others to enter the market. 
Clyde Lawrence, a singer-songwriter in the New York City-based band Lawrence, testified during Tuesday’s hearing. The band regularly interacts with Live Nation Entertainment. It’s often their promoter, venue operator and ticketer. 
“In a world where the promoter and the venue are not affiliated with each other, we can trust that the promoter will look to get the best deal from the venue; however, in this case the promoter and the venue are part of the same corporate entity so the line items are essentially Live Nation negotiating to pay itself,” Lawrence said.
The band told CNBC if they want to play a certain size venue in a particular city, they are sometimes left no choice other than to use Live Nation because of the lack of competition in some regions. Then if they would like to use another ticketer other than Ticketmaster, they say that is not an option.
“Ticketmaster has created these exclusive contracts, once you sign that contract, a band is not allowed to come in and say, ‘we want to sell our tickets with X, Y, Z platform,'” said Jordan Cohen, one of the band’s eight members.
They even have a song with the lyric, “Live Nation is a monopoly.” “Due to Live Nation’s control across the industry, we have practically no leverage in negotiating,” Lawrence said.
While the company does have some competition, experts say no other firm currently stands a chance.
“There’s really no one that’s been able to get the type of scale that Live Nation has. The closest comparable is Anschutz Entertainment Group with their own kind of internal ticketing platform. But they made a statement that speaks to the market power of Ticketmaster, which is that they used Ticketmaster to ticket Taylor Swift,” said Barton Crockett, managing director and senior equity analyst at Rosenblatt Securities.
It’s a business that a lot of people have looked at. They’ve spoken about wanting to get into it, and no one’s really been able to grab enough market share to really be a meaningful player,” he added.
Live Nation declined CNBC’s request for an interview or comment but in a statement on its website said that it’s against company policy to threaten venues if they do not use Ticketmaster and that it does not retaliate for a lost ticketing deal.
It’s unclear what’s next for Live Nation Entertainment.
Watch this video to learn more about how the company got to where it is today and what the future might hold.

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Many who have met Satya Nadella like him. For those who haven’t, a skim through his autobiography endorses the view that the boss of Microsoft is an intelligent, decent sort of person. He is unassuming, with a passion for cricket. He is a listener, who encourages employees to share their personal as well as professional dreams. He writes about Buddhism, but not in a new-agey way. His son was born with cerebral palsy, so Mr Nadella seeks to understand suffering. At times, there is something gleefully Tigger-like about him, when he can barely contain his excitement about Microsoft’s new technologies. He describes one such “eureka moment” the first time he put on one of the firm’s HoloLens mixed-reality headsets and, thanks to a live feed from NASA’s Mars rover, visualised himself walking on the red planet. It was, he wrote, a glimpse into the future. “The experience was so inspiring, so moving, that one member of my leadership team cried.”Once again Mr Nadella is giddy with “this-is-the-future” euphoria. On January 23rd Microsoft announced its third investment, estimated at $10bn, in OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT. The advanced artificial-intelligence (AI) tool lets users ask questions and get human-like, often funny responses. In the past few months it has grabbed headlines and become part of the zeitgeist. In no time, the wizardry of the technology, however error-prone, has led to its portrayal as a potential Kodak moment for Alphabet-owned Google, a boon to cancer research, the end of coding as you know it, and a nail in the coffin of the exam essay. In other words, it’s the tech hype cycle on steroids. At the risk of sounding churlish, it is worth noting that seven years after Mr Nadella’s HoloLens epiphany, the whole mixed-reality buzz at Microsoft has gone deathly quiet. HoloLens was reportedly affected by the firm’s 10,000 recent lay-offs. That said, ChatGPT is already so accessible and intuitive to use that it is hard to imagine it will be a flash in the pan. It is not difficult to see how Microsoft, with its strength in cloud computing and business software, could use OpenAI’s underlying GPT models to rejuvenate a whole range of products. And Mr Nadella, for all his mindfulness, burns with an ambition to restore the company to the pinnacle of tech innovation that it vacated with the onset of social media and the smartphone. Could this be his moment? Microsoft’s share price suggests not. It has barely advanced since November 29th, the day before OpenAI publicly launched ChatGPT (save for a brief rally after Microsoft reported quarterly earnings results on January 24th that were a bit better than expected). Given the risks of an economic slowdown, which is cooling demand for Microsoft’s software and cloud services, investors have too many short-term concerns to pay much heed to Mr Nadella’s promises of AI-flavoured jam tomorrow. Yet they shouldn’t underestimate his missionary zeal. He led Bing, Microsoft’s search engine, when Google was on a tear. He led its cloud provider, now called Azure, when it was an also-ran to Amazon Web Services, owned by the e-commerce giant. He has long nurtured a passion to leapfrog his west-coast rivals. That makes him impatient with AI research for its own sake. He wants it embedded in products that wow customers. Hence Bing, with a mere 7% of search queries in America, will shortly incorporate ChatGPT to wrestle share away from Google. GitHub, Microsoft’s coding tool, is using OpenAI technology in its Co-pilot product, aimed at accelerating the work rate of software developers. Microsoft is likely to overhaul products like Office and Windows with GPT technology, so that chatbots can take the drudge out of creating PowerPoints and Excel spreadsheets. As for the cloud, Microsoft benefits because OpenAI has built and trained its GPT models on Azure, and it can offer state-of-the-art chatbot services to Azure’s customers. The more they are used, the better they get. Microsoft will not have the field to itself, nor will it be a winner-takes-all market. Among other cloud providers, Alphabet, for one, has foundational models that are more powerful than GPT. For now, though, its ability to compete is constrained. Alphabet, loathed by critics of surveillance capitalism, bears a big reputational risk if human-like AI amplifies the biases and privacy concerns of current consumer technology. It is under regulatory fire: a lawsuit filed on January 24th by America’s Department of Justice and eight states calls for the break-up of Google’s ad-tech business. Moreover, the cost of the average Google search is exceedingly cheap; adding ChatGPT-like searches, heavy on computing power, would raise it. As for Microsoft’s business-software competitors, such as beleaguered Salesforce, they are trying to cut costs and cannot hope to match Microsoft’s advanced AI investments, says Mark Moerdler of Bernstein, an investment firm.First innings In short, Microsoft has a valuable head start and Mr Nadella is loth to squander it. The big question, however, is not who will win. In these early days that would be like asking, at the dawn of the 19th century, who will come out top from the Industrial Revolution. It is more a matter of how well-equipped is any company to handle the potential implications of introducing technology that will do work previously done by humans, but with neither the ability nor the moral compass to check the reliability of its work. The risks of propagating errors or, worse, misinformation, are serious. So is the danger of societal backlash if knowledge workers feel their jobs are threatened—though if the technology succeeds, over the long term it is likely to be a boon to job creation.Microsoft’s initial approach to the potential pitfalls is shrewd. Investing in OpenAI puts ChatGPT at arm’s length if something goes wrong. But eventually, with GPT infused in all of its products, it will bear a big responsibility for the outcome. In that case, the attention will focus on Microsoft’s own moral compass—and Mr Nadella’s human decency will be put to the test. ■ More

Every weekday the CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer holds a “Morning Meeting” livestream at 10:20 a.m. ET. Here’s a recap of Wednesday’s key moments. Don’t buy the Microsoft dip Buy P & G Watch Estee Lauder 1. Don’t buy the Microsoft dip Microsoft (MSFT) was trading down around 0.75% midmorning Wednesday, at $240.24 a share, after the company issued softer-than-expected guidance for its fiscal third quarter Tuesday, despite delivering a slim second-quarter earnings beat. Our main concern is around the company’s expectation revenue growth at cloud computing unit Azure will decelerate by four-to-five percentage points in constant currency, down from a mid-30s percent growth rate last month. We are holding off on buying the stock while it’s down, until we see renewed Azure growth. 2. Buy P & G We bought 50 of Procter and Gamble (PG) on Wednesday at roughly $139 apiece to take advantage of the stock’s recent decline. While the rest of the market has largely favored tech this year, we’re sticking with defensive stocks to maintain a diverse portfolio that can withstand economic turbulence. Jim Cramer had recently said he would add to the Club’s P & G position if the stock fell to $140 a share. “You can’t be a coward if you want to know how to invest. This is the gut-wrenching moment at Procter. This is when you want to buy,” Jim said Wednesday. 3. Watch Estee Lauder Piper Sandler on Wednesday named Estee Lauder (EL) a top pick, predicting a substantial upside to the stock as China — a key market for the cosmetics giant — continues to reopen. Estee Lauder is also a margin expansion story. Chinese consumers will likely buy more makeup as they return to the outside world, generating higher profits for the company. Shares of Estee Lauder were down more than 2.5% Wednesday morning, at $270 apiece — a level at which we would consider buying. (Jim Cramer’s Charitable Trust is long EL, PG, MSFT. See here for a full list of the stocks.) As a subscriber to the CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer, you will receive a trade alert before Jim makes a trade. Jim waits 45 minutes after sending a trade alert before buying or selling a stock in his charitable trust’s portfolio. If Jim has talked about a stock on CNBC TV, he waits 72 hours after issuing the trade alert before executing the trade. THE ABOVE INVESTING CLUB INFORMATION IS SUBJECT TO OUR TERMS AND CONDITIONS AND PRIVACY POLICY , TOGETHER WITH OUR DISCLAIMER . NO FIDUCIARY OBLIGATION OR DUTY EXISTS, OR IS CREATED, BY VIRTUE OF YOUR RECEIPT OF ANY INFORMATION PROVIDED IN CONNECTION WITH THE INVESTING CLUB. NO SPECIFIC OUTCOME OR PROFIT IS GUARANTEED. More

Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket launched from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility on the coast of Virginia, in the company’s first launch from the U.S.
The mission marks a long-awaited expansion of Rocket Lab’s launch capabilities.
Rocket Lab plans to release fourth quarter results after markets close on Feb. 28.

The company’s Electron rocket lifts off from LC-2 at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia on Jan. 24, 2023.
Brady Kenniston / Rocket Lab

Rocket Lab’s first U.S. launch got off the ground Tuesday evening, marking a successful mission and a long-awaited expansion of the company’s capabilities.
The company’s Electron rocket launched from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility on the coast of Virginia, carrying a trio of satellites to orbit for radio frequency analytics specialist Hawkeye 360.

“Electron is already the leading small orbital rocket globally, and today’s perfect mission from a new pad is testament to our team’s unrelenting commitment to mission success,” Rocket Lab CEO Peter Beck said in a statement Tuesday night.
The mission was Rocket Lab’s 33rd to date, but the first from U.S. soil. The company has been regularly launching from its two private launchpads in New Zealand – with nine successful missions last year.
Tuesday’s launch also comes after years of delays.

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The company selected Wallops in late 2018 to build a new launchpad, called LC-2, and aimed for a debut launch by the third quarter of 2019. The company completed work on the ground infrastructure less than a year later and conducted initial testing with an Electron on the pad in mid-2020, but a new safety software system from NASA held up the inaugural launch attempt, according to Rocket Lab.
Beck previously said that NASA’s development of the software was “supposed to be complete by the end” of 2021. But certification of the NASA Autonomous Flight Termination Unit (NAFTU), which is used to automatically monitor a rocket launch and destroy the vehicle if it heads off course, wasn’t completed until last year.

The software was designed to serve the role traditionally performed by a person, known as a “range safety officer,” who monitors the launch’s data.
While some rocket building companies have developed proprietary versions of autonomous flight safety software, NASA heralds its NAFTU system as “revolutionary” since it can be used by “any launch provider at all U.S. launch ranges.” NASA also says NAFTU will help save time and money associated with conducting an orbital rocket launch safely — cost savings that will benefit the agency and companies alike.
NASA’s completion of the system fills a “critical gap in modernizing our nation’s launch ranges,” Wallops director David Pierce said in a statement after Rocket Lab’s launch.
“We’re proud to have made this and future U.S. Rocket Lab Electron launches possible with our game-changing flight safety technology,” he said.
Rocket Lab previously said it expects to conduct 14 Electron launches in 2023, with anywhere from four to six flying from LC-2 in Wallops. The company is slated to release fourth-quarter results after market close on Feb. 28.
Rocket Lab stock was down about 2% in early trading Wednesday from its previous close of $4.97 a share. Like other pure-play space stocks, the company’s stock has regained ground this month after a brutal 2022, with shares up roughly 28% year to date.

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Boeing posted a loss in the fourth quarter as supply chain issues weighed on results.
Boeing generated $3.1 billion in cash flow in the quarter, higher than analyst forecasts.
The company’s leaders have been hesitant to ramp up production.

A Boeing 747-8F operated by AirBridgeCargo takes off from Leipzig/Halle Airport.
Jan Woitas | Picture Alliance | Getty Images

Boeing posted a $663 million loss for the fourth quarter as supply chain issues weighed on results despite a rebound in aircraft sales and deliveries that drove up revenue.
Airlines and aircraft manufacturers have benefited from a sharp recovery in air travel, one of the most affected industries from the Covid pandemic. But Boeing’s leaders have been hesitant to ramp up aircraft production until the supply chain has stabilized.

The company is producing 31 of its 737 jets a month and plans to increase that to about 50 per month in 2025 or 2026. It said it would raise what has been low production rate of the 787 Dreamliners to five each month toward the end of the year and to 10 per month in 2025 or 2026. Deliveries of those wide-body planes had been paused for around two years until this summer due to production flaws.
For the full year, Boeing had a loss of $5 billion despite a 7% increase in revenue to $66.6 billion.
Here’s how the company performed in the fourth quarter compared with analysts’ estimates complied by Refinitiv:

Adjusted loss per share: $1.75 vs. expected earnings per share of 26 cents.
Revenue: $19.98 billion vs. $20.38 billion expected.

Boeing generated $3.1 billion in cash flow in the fourth quarter, higher than analyst forecasts, and $2.3 billion for the year, the most since 2018, before the second of two fatal 737 Max crashes that sparked a yearslong crisis for the company.
Its commercial aircraft unit generated $9.2 billion in sales in the fourth quarter, up 94% from a year earlier as deliveries jumped, but it still produced a loss due to abnormal costs and other expenses such as research and development, the company said.

Boeing reiterated its expectation to generate between $3 billion and $5 billion in free cash flow this year.
“We’re proud of how we closed out 2022, and despite the hurdles in front of us, we’re confident in our path ahead,” CEO Dave Calhoun said in a memo to employees. “We have a robust pipeline of development programs, we’re innovating for the future and we’re increasing investments to prepare for our next generation of products.”

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Mortgage interest rates fell for the third straight week, while mortgage demand rose again.
Total application volume increased 7% last week compared with the previous week, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association’s seasonally adjusted index.
Applications to refinance a home loan saw the sharpest gains, up 15%, compared with the previous week.

A For Sale sign is posted in front of a property in Monterey Park, California on August 16, 2022.
Frederic J. Brown | AFP | Getty Images

Mortgage interest rates fell for the third straight week, while mortgage demand also rose again.
Total application volume increased 7% last week compared with the previous week, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association’s seasonally adjusted index.

The average contract interest rate for 30-year fixed-rate mortgages with conforming loan balances ($726,200 or less) decreased to 6.2% from 6.23%, with points increasing to 0.69 from 0.67 (including the origination fee) for loans with a 20% down payment. That rate was just about half that one year ago.
Applications to refinance a home loan saw the sharpest gains, up 15%, compared with the previous week. They were still 77% lower than the same week a year ago, but that annual gain is now shrinking fast.
Mortgage applications to purchase a home rose 3% for the week but were 39% lower year over year. Homebuyers are still trickling back into the market, as house prices ease slightly. There is still, however, precious little to choose from with inventory low.
“Homebuying activity remains tepid, but if rates continue to fall and home prices cool further, we expect to see potential buyers come back into the market,” said Joel Kan, an MBA economist. “Many have been waiting for affordability challenges to subside.”
Mortgage rates have moved slightly higher to start this week, but are still well within the new lower range. Some real estate brokerages, like Redfin, are reporting an uptick in buyer interest with rates at these levels, but the housing market still seems to be in a holding pattern, as potential sellers and buyers sit tight, waiting to see where prices shake out.

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