Finance

In this articleDBSM-SGSINGAPORE — DBS Group Holdings, the largest bank in Singapore and Southeast Asia, reported on Thursday second-quarter earnings that beat expectations as the economic recovery in its home market takes hold.The bank’s net profit for the April-to-June quarter jumped 37% from a year ago to 1.7 billion Singapore dollars ($1.26 billion). That beat an average forecast of 1.42 billion Singapore dollars, according to analyst estimates on Refinitiv.But compared with the previous quarter, net profit was 15% lower.DBS shares in Singapore rose around 0.7% on Thursday.Stock picks and investing trends from CNBC Pro:20 strategists predict when stocks will have the next big tumble — and how far they’ll fallForget the U.S. — Europe is now the place to pick out cheap stocks, Bernstein saysCiti sees a correction coming because too many inexperienced investors are plowing into stocks Piyush Gupta, chief executive of DBS, said better-than-expected performance in all business segments helped to offset headwinds from lower interest rates. He said the bank saw improvements in its loans business, as well as fee income from investment banking and wealth management.”It was a case of everything else kicking in very solidly, offsetting the headwinds from the interest rate,” Gupta told CNBC’s “Capital Connection.””Quite clearly, the zero interest rate environment takes its toll. And for a bank like us which is very long on current account and savings account deposits … that headwind is quite significant,” he added.DBS announced a dividend of 33 Singapore cents per share for the second quarter. That’s an increase from 18 Singapore cents per share in the previous quarter after the Monetary Authority of Singapore lifted a cap on dividend payments.Here are the other highlights from the earnings report:The bank’s provisions for potential loan losses fell to 79 million Singapore dollars in the second quarter, compared with 849 million Singapore dollars a year ago.Net interest margin, a measure of lending profitability, was 1.45% in the second quarter. That’s lower than 1.62% a year ago.Customer loans rose to around 397 billion Singapore dollars in the first six months of 2021, 6% higher than the same period last year.Prospects of Singapore banksThe release of DBS’ second-quarter earnings wrapped up the financial reporting season for Singapore-listed banks.On Wednesday, two smaller Singapore banks — Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp and United Overseas Bank — reported financial results that beat estimates.OCBC, Singapore’s second-largest bank, reported a 59% year-on-year increase in net profit to 1.16 billion Singapore dollars in the second quarter. UOB’s net profit for the period was around 1 billion Singapore dollars, 43% higher than a year ago.Prospects of the Singapore banking trio have improved this year as the economic recovery boosted demand for loans, while an upswing in financial markets earlier this year helped their wealth management businesses.But worsening Covid-19 outbreaks in parts of Asia could hit consumers, said the DBS CEO.”I do think that there will be more stress in the consumer portfolio, that’s where the increasing pandemic might have some impact than SMEs,” Gupta said, referring to small- and medium-sized enterprises. More

New Oriental is located at the West Yintai Campus, Hangzhou city, Zhejiang Province, China, on August 2, 2021.Costfoto | Barcroft Media | Getty ImagesThe Chinese government’s sudden crackdown on after-school education companies is raising costs for many parents and throwing millions of jobs into uncertainty.In a country where parents prize a good education — and good grades play an outsized role in determining career opportunities — tens of millions of students across China drown in after-school tutoring courses every year.But this summer will be the last one for educational institutions to legally sell such tutoring programs.Since the central government officially released the so-called double reduction policy last month, local authorities in several provinces, such as Shanxi and Hunan, have ordered private businesses to suspend online and offline tutoring classes for children from kindergarten to 9th grade.The policy states that one of its major goals is to ease the burden and anxiety for Chinese parents wanting to give their children a good education.The guidelines focus on the nine years of compulsory education before high school — from elementary to middle school — and call for academic tutoring businesses to restructure as non-profits.The policy also prohibits those businesses from offering classes on weekends, holidays, summer and winter breaks — effectively allowing tutoring only on weekdays with a limited number of hours.The scale of the crackdown is “far beyond expectations,” said Alan Wang, an analyst covering education at Beijing-based asset manager Harvest Fund Management.The industry was preparing for some regulations, but it didn’t expect an order for restructuring that included a ban on public listings, making the sector basically “not investable,” he said in Mandarin, according to a CNBC translation.Some parents will still pay up for tutoring courses they can find, sending costs higher, he added.CNBC interviews across the education industry reveal that the new regulations shocked parents and left businesses struggling, as millions of employees braced for job losses.Chinese parents scramble for optionsIf the local Beijing government bans after-school tutoring institutions, one mother surnamed Zhang said she will consider forming a small group with other parents to hire private tutors for their children. That means hourly rates will go up and parents will pay less up-front deposits than if they had gone through an institution, said Zhang, who declined to share her first name on privacy concerns. Zhang said she will spare no efforts to invest in helping her two children compete for “very limited” high quality education in China. The family lives in Beijing’s top public school district of Haidian, and the older child, who is set to begin middle school in the fall, spends about three hours a day at online group classes and one or two hours of one-on-one tutoring a week. That’s less than her peers in the district, who study all day or at least half a day during the summer break, Zhang said. Her younger child, who just finished the first year of elementary school, is spending about half an hour daily on online group classes. Zhang had hoped to enroll her daughter in more offline tutoring classes as staring at the screen is damaging her eyesight. But the latest crackdown means it will be almost impossible.”I feel this approach is kind of one size fits all,” Zhang said in Mandarin, according to a CNBC translation. Read more about China from CNBC ProThese Chinese U.S.-listed stocks could be relatively safe as Beijing crackdown continuesMorningstar names its top picks as investors sell off Chinese stocksHedge fund manager Dan Niles says he’s buying Chinese stocks again after government crackdownAfter-school tutoring can be costly, but many parents feel compelled to sign their children up so they stand a chance in the highly competitive college entrance exam system. Luna Cheng is raising her 13-year-old daughter in Shanghai’s downtown Jing’an district. She told CNBC she paid about 5,000 yuan ($774) for a two-week summer course with about 20 other students, comprising of three hours a day on mathematics. That’s a hefty sum for most households, who also face high housing costs. A 5,000 yuan course is about 71% of the average monthly disposable income of 7,058 yuan for urban residents in Shanghai, according to official data for this year. But the same course would far exceed the average monthly disposable income of 3,756 yuan for rural residents working in Shanghai, the data showed, although rural workers have seen their incomes grow more quickly than urban ones. In Beijing, the hourly rate of a private one-on-one class anecdotally ranges from around 500 yuan to 2000 yuan.Despite the cost, Cheng said she wanted to enroll her daughter in more courses this summer, but her daughter did not want to sign up.”I am a bit anxious,” Cheng said. Her daughter will begin physics class in the fall, and Cheng estimates that 90% of her classmates will be studying for it during the summer break. Without extra studying time after school, Cheng said she is afraid her daughter will not be able to catch up, let alone excel in the new subject.Such fears push parents in China to spend a lot on after-school tutoring and help fuel a burgeoning industry.According to a 2020 report by Oliver Wyman, the market size for China’s after-school tutoring for kindergarten to 12th grade students reached 800 billion yuan ($123.7 billion) in 2019.The consultancy predicted the market will break 1 trillion yuan by 2025. The growth was further accelerated by the Covid-19 pandemic, especially for online tutoring.The new policy may actually have adverse effects in the short term, especially since poorer families typically send their children to tutoring schools only because of peer pressure, Claudia Wang, partner at Oliver Wyman and lead of the firm’s Asia education practice, told CNBC on Monday.”Now, they’ve probably given up,” she said.Millions of jobs at riskThe consequences reach far beyond business owners and parents: the future of millions of workers also hangs in the balance.As education companies struggle to comply with the new policies, many businesses will likely be forced to shut down.The education service industry provides about 10 million jobs in China, according to a report in January by Beijing Normal University and TAL Education in 2021.Tutoring centers focused on academic subjects should pivot to another industry as soon as possible, Citic Securities, a major Chinese investment bank, said in a note sent to its clients on July 23.The “double reduction” is just the beginning, and more supporting policies will come to regulate nine-year compulsory education, said Citic Securities. The analysts said the risks for high school education-related businesses are not high at this time.A senior employee of 17 Education & Technology Group — a U.S.-listed after-school tutoring company in China — told CNBC the company plans to halve the number of employees.The source asked to resign when the central government released its harsh policy on the sector, but chose to stay longer to help the company pivot its business. However, “nobody really knows how,” he said in Mandarin, according to a CNBC translation.Other education industry giants are reportedly preparing for a 30% to 70% cut in their labor force, depending on how local authorities implement the central government’s regulation and how much the firm relies on income from tutoring students who are kindergarten to 9th grade.The ban on tutoring on weekends and summer or winter breaks particularly hurts the businesses, since those classes account for more than 65% of class hours for most privately run after-school tutoring companies, the source said. Banning those courses means the majority of employees will no longer be needed.In the wake of potential layoffs, Chen Xiangdong, the founder and CEO of Gaotu, said in a letter to employees last week that he is “very, very sorry that we have to make this tough decision,” according to a report by Chinese financial media Lei News.However, Wang, the analyst from Harvest Fund Management, said he did not expect much fallout from potential job losses because the government would likely have already considered employment issues before making the policy decision.U.S.-listed stocks plungeSome of China’s largest after-school tutoring companies — U.S. listed firms Gaotu Techedu, New Oriental and TAL Education — were riding a business boom before the summer crackdown.These three tutoring giants reported double-digit growth in the latest quarterly earnings reports.In the quarter ending Feb. 28, New Oriental recorded a 29% year-on-year increase in net revenues to $1.19 billion, with student enrollments in academic subjects tutoring and test preparation courses increasing by 43% to nearly 2.3 million registrations.During the same period, TAL’s net revenues increased 58.9% from last year to $1.36 billion.Gaotu said net revenue rose 49.5% year-on-year for the quarter that ended March 31.Chinese education stocks listed in the U.S. plunged after news of the government crackdown, and lost more than half their value that day. New Oriental and TAL postponed their earnings report plans scheduled for this week.New Oriental, TAL, Gaotu and 17EdTech did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment on this story.Among the privately held businesses, major players like Yuanfudao, Zuoyebang and Huohua Siwei successfully completed several rounds of fundraising during the pandemic, raking in billions of U.S. dollars. These “mega unicorns” are reported to have planned to list in the United States just before the policy announcement.Companies that managed to go public ahead of the crackdown are suffering as well.Beijing-headquartered 17EdTech was listed on the Nasdaq in December with an offering price of $10.50. Now, its share price is around $1.— CNBC’s Evelyn Cheng contributed to this report. More

In this articleVRAVERAA woman walks past JPMorgan Chase & Co’s international headquarters on Park Avenue in New York.Andrew Burton | ReutersJPMorgan Chase’s new healthcare unit has made its first investment, CNBC has learned exclusively.The bank has agreed to invest $50 million in Vera Whole Health, a Seattle-based start-up that is pioneering a new, subscription-type model for employee healthcare.Further, through the bank’s Morgan Health unit — a new business unveiled in May after a joint venture with Amazon and Berkshire Hathaway folded — JPMorgan will begin offering Vera’s services to its employees during benefits enrollment season this fall, the companies said.Vera, founded in 2008, aims to improve outcomes for workers and reduce costs for companies by making primary care teams accountable for the health of employees. Companies pay a flat monthly fee per patient, and primary care doctors are tasked with coordinating all their users’ care. The so-called advanced care model requires Vera to either operate or partner with clinics that work in a fundamentally different way than the prevailing system, according to Vera CEO Ryan Schmid.”In a traditional model, providers are paid based on the volume of procedures; it’s a highly transactional system which I think creates some perverse incentives,” Schmid said in a recent interview. “In our care model, our teams are paid a salary plus bonus, and that bonus is tied specifically to their outcomes.”In fact, JPMorgan will be one of the first large corporate employers to partner with Vera, providing a real-world test for a paradigm shift that could tackle one of the thorniest issues facing the U.S.: Despite spending trillions of dollars on medicine, the health of Americans has been deteriorating in recent years.While the use of Vera will be optional for JPMorgan employees, it provides a “higher level of care” that will likely be sought out once the benefits are appreciated, said Morgan Health CEO Dan Mendelson.A higher standardThe start-up’s approach involves a more holistic view of an employee’s health than merely focusing on physical ailments; higher patient engagement and an emphasis on mental well-being is more likely to detect diseases or even prevent them in some cases, he said.”We want to know that our employees are getting screened for cancer,” Mendelson said. “We want to know that our employees are having wellness visits, that if they have high cholesterol they’re actually taking their medicine. That is all about setting up a model where you have a group that is responsible.”Since it’s not a simple model to execute, only employees in select regions will have access to Vera this year, Mendelson said.Vera operates primary care centers in ten states; it also partners with Central Ohio Primary Care, the biggest U.S. independent doctor-owned primary care group. JPMorgan runs a technology hub in Columbus with several thousand employees, making that region a likely candidate for the service.The advanced care model is one that is more common to Medicare providers but has yet to gain traction in employer-sponsored programs, Schmid said.The partnership came about through a relationship between the private equity firm Clayton Dubilier & Rice and Morgan Health, the companies said. Clayton recently took a majority stake in Vera that valued the company at $400 million.”This hasn’t been done before at this scale, what we’re doing with Vera in partnership with JPMorgan and Central Ohio Primary Care to have a model focused on improving outcomes and lowering costs for the under-65 population,” said Ravi Sachdev, a Clayton Dubilier partner and former JPMorgan healthcare banker.”We couldn’t pioneer that without somebody like JPMorgan saying, ‘This is really important for us, we want to be part of the solution’,” Sachdev said.Become a smarter investor with CNBC Pro. Get stock picks, analyst calls, exclusive interviews and access to CNBC TV. Sign up to start a free trial today. More

Traders on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.Source: NYSEFutures contracts tied to the major U.S. equity indexes were little changed at the start of the overnight session Wednesday evening as Wall Street looked to improve upon a mixed week.Dow futures rose 16 points, while S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 futures each rose less than 0.1%.The moves in the extended session came after a mostly lower regular session.The Dow Jones Industrial Average shed 323.73 points, or 0.9%, and closed near its session low at 34,792.67. The S&P 500 slipped about 0.5% to finish at 4,402.66, while the Nasdaq Composite ticked up 0.1% to 14,780.53.On Thursday investors will receive yet another update on the U.S. employment situation with the Labor Department’s latest weekly update to initial jobless claims. Recent earnings and economic data have been strong overall, but some economists worry economic growth and employment gains will taper from here.”Many factors are likely driving worker shortages; concerns about catching the virus, childcare responsibilities, skills mismatches, and generous unemployment insurance benefits,” PNC Senior Economist Abbey Omodunbi said in an email. In the second half of the year, “more competition for workers, particularly in the leisure and hospitality sector, will support acceleration in wage growth, boosting household incomes and consumer spending.”The results of an ADP private payroll survey released Wednesday showed a gain of 330,000 jobs for July, well short of the consensus estimate of 653,000. The Labor Department’s official jobs report, which typically has more impact on investors, will be released on Friday.The 10-year Treasury yield was trading flat near 1.18% Wednesday evening after briefly dipping below 1.13% earlier in the session.Shares of Roku and Uber dropped in extended trading after each issued quarterly earnings results. Etsy swooned double digits in after-hours trading after the company gave guidance for the current quarter that indicated the pandemic-fueled commerce boom may be coming to an end.During regular trading Wednesday, shares of Robinhood surged 50%, continuing a volatile jump after last week’s soft initial public offering. Semiconductor stocks were another bright spot, with Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices rising. More

In this articleHOODPNC Financial’s Amanda Agati is predicting the retail frenzy’s downfall.When the government starts eliminating stimulus policies intended to help the nation weather the pandemic, the firm’s chief investment officer believes retail investors will hesitate to put new money to work.”As we start to see this fiscal cliff appear on the near-term horizon, let’s call it in September-ish and [as] the extended unemployment benefits are starting to roll off, I do think that mania around retail trading activity is going to start to fade,” she said on CNBC’s “Trading Nation” on Wednesday.The impact could help tip the highly-valued market into a 5% to 10% pullback, according to Agati.’We have to be really realistic'”We have to be really realistic about how far and how fast the market has rallied and how far valuations have moved,” she said. “The valuation backdrop is stretched by all standards: historical averages and otherwise.”On “Trading Nation” in early June, she recommended bracing for larger than normal price swings. Agati attributed the forecast to high valuations, Federal Reserve taper chatter and the winding down of stimulus policies.The Dow fell 324 points or 0.92% on Wednesday. The S&P 500 also struggled, falling 0.46% The tech-heavy Nasdaq, which bounced between negative and positive territory, ended the day with a gain of 0.13%.”We’ve started to see this rally get a little bit exhausted here and settle down,” said Agati.Agati is also listing Covid-19 variants and slowing earnings growth as top correction risks.”The key to the path forward certainly is earnings growth and positive revisions,” she said. “We are starting to see some slowing in terms of revisions for 2022. So, the key to keeping the market rally fueled is not just meeting this high bar in terms of earnings growth, it’s exceeding it by a wide margin.”Due to the concerns, Agati’s top play is to look abroad toward the emerging markets.”I feel a little bit like a broken record as this has been a story for us really over the course of 2021,” said Agati. “It’s really that the brightest star in the equity asset class universe.”She’s not letting the tensions surrounding Beijing regulators targeting U.S. listed China companies derail the strategy. Agati is viewing the uncertainty mostly as a sentiment overhang.”The earnings growth backdrop is also very strong,” Agati said. “That relative valuation spread versus the developed world is really attractive here.”The iShares MSCI Emerging Markets ETF, which tracks the space, is down 4.2% over the past month. So far this year, it’s up 1.5%.Disclaimer More

In this articleROKUUBERWYNNMGMEAETSYJosh Silverman, CEO of Etsy.Adam Jeffery | CNBCCheck out the companies making headlines after the bell: Etsy — Etsy shares fell 14% in extended trading despite reporting second-quarter adjusted income and revenues ahead of what analysts had forecast. The company also provided third-quarter financial guidance below estimates.Electronic Arts — EA shares added more than 3% in after-hours trading after the video game maker reported sales of $1.34 billion, ahead of the $1.28 billion analysts polled by Refinitiv had anticipated. Chief Financial Officer Blake Jorgensen offered a glowing outlook: “Based on our strong performance this quarter and supported by our ongoing confidence in our live services, we are raising our outlook for the full year. Our strategic position has never been stronger, with growth drivers in place for this year, next year, and beyond.”MGM Resorts — MGM shares rose 1% in extended trading after the company posted a surprise per-share profit for its second quarter. The resort operator said it generated adjusted profits of 14 cents per share during the three months ended June 30, well above the loss of 30 cents per share expected by analysts polled by Refinitiv.Roku — Roku dropped 8% in extended trading after it reported second-quarter earnings of 52 cents per share on revenues of $645 million. The downward pressure on the stock came despite healthy third-quarter revenue guidance.Uber — Uber shares fell 8% after it reported second-quarter earnings of 58 cents per share on revenues of $3.93 billion. Analysts had expected a loss per share of 51 cents on revenues of $3.75 billion, according to Refinitiv. Investors appeared to sell the stock as Uber spent big on incentives to attract drivers amid a shortage.Wynn Resorts — Wynn Resorts saw its stock climbed less than 1% after it reported a second-quarter loss of $1.12 per share on revenues of $990 million. Analysts had expected a loss per share of $1.61 on revenues of $933 million, according to Refinitiv. More

Job seekers speak with recruiters at a Job News USA career fair in Louisville, Kentucky, on June 23, 2021.Luke Sharrett/Bloomberg via Getty ImagesAbout half of U.S. states withdrew federal funds for the unemployed months early to encourage out-of-work residents to find a job. But mounting evidence shows that policy gambit hasn’t yet paid off.Twenty-six states announced their intent to end federal pandemic-era benefits starting in May. They officially pulled out in waves over June and July.UKG, a payroll and time-management firm, found that shifts among hourly workers in those states grew at about half the rate as states that continued the benefit — the opposite trend of what one might expect.Specifically, in states that ended benefits, shifts grew 2.2% from May through July; they grew 4.1% in the others that kept federal aid intact, according to UKG’s analysis.”Unemployment benefits were not the thing holding people back from going to work,” according to Dave Gilbertson, a vice president at UKG. “There are other elements out there, particularly in their personal lives, making it really difficult to go back to work.”It doesn’t appear differences in state economies or labor markets influenced the dichotomy, since both groups were growing at similar rates earlier this year, Gilbertson said.Similarly, employment fell 0.9% in states that ended federal benefits between mid-June and mid-July, but rose 2.3% in states that kept them, according to data published this week by Homebase, another payroll and time-management firm.The analysis examined percent change in number of employees working relative to April 2021.The UKG and Homebase figures are early indicators. It will likely take another month or two of job and other labor-market data before economists can make a more thorough assessment of how effective the state policies were, they say.”It’s an early view, there’s no question,” Gilbertson said. “It takes a while for folks to be able to rearrange their personal lives to start a new job.”But I feel it’s a pretty strong directional indicator.”The high-frequency data aligns with other recent analyses.Economists at Indeed, using proprietary job-search data, and Arindrajit Dube, an economics professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, who studied recent survey data published by the U.S. Census Bureau, also didn’t find evidence that state policies pushed people back to work.”[Data] suggest there’s no clear evidence that [unemployment] programs going away early led to a significant increase in employment growth or job finding,” according to Nick Bunker, the economic research director for North America at the Indeed Hiring Lab.Federal benefitsThe federal programs in question were created by the CARES Act in March 2020, as millions of people turned to the unemployment system amid mass layoffs.They raised the amount of weekly benefits (currently by $300 a week) and offered aid to workers who don’t typically qualify, like the long-term unemployed and gig workers, the self-employed, part-timers and freelancers.More from Personal Finance:Collecting unemployment? Most states re-impose ‘look for work’ rulesWhat to know about the new eviction banMore workers plan to quit as better job opportunities open upTalk of labor shortages — and the role of expanded benefits in them — began in earnest following the April jobs report. The U.S. economy added 269,000 new jobs that month, about a fourth of what economists predicted.Montana was the first of the 26 states to announce its withdrawal. The American Rescue Plan offers the federal assistance until Sept. 6.In place of expanded benefits, Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte offered residents a onetime return-to-work bonus. A handful of other states also offered such bonuses.”The vast expansion of federal unemployment benefits is now doing more harm than good,” Gianforte said May 4. “We need to incentivize Montanans to reenter the workforce.”U.S. job growth has ramped up since May, to 850,000 in June. The Bureau of Labor Statistics is issuing its July report Friday; economists expect it to show 845,000 new jobs.Some economists argue pandemic-related factors, not jobless benefits, are the primary reasons workers may not be returning to the workforce as quickly as anticipated.For example, parents may still not have adequate childcare; those who can’t work from home may still be cautious for health reasons; workers may have relocated away from jobs, or changed industries, during the pandemic; and baby boomers may have retired early and don’t plan to return.The delta variant threatens to further complicate the recovery. Many of the states that withdrew federal support also have lower rates of Covid vaccination, Bunker said.”Especially now with the delta variant, it could be pushing the labor markets back in those states,” he said.Nationally, fewer unemployed people flagged the pandemic as a reason for not searching urgently for work in July relative to June, according to an Indeed survey published Wednesday.Jobless respondents ranked unemployment payments last among factors keeping them from searching for work urgently. They ranked behind financial cushion, have an employed spouse, household care responsibilities and Covid fears.With the $300 supplement, almost half of jobless workers (48%) make as much or more money on unemployment benefits than their lost paychecks, according to a recent paper published by the JPMorgan Chase & Co. Institute.Those extra funds had a small impact on job-finding but didn’t significantly hold back the job market through mid-May, according to economists Fiona Greig, Daniel Sullivan, Peter Ganong, Pascal Noel and Joseph Vavra, who authored the analysis. More

In this articleGMLYFTHOODOmar Marques | LightRocket | Getty ImagesCheck out the companies making headlines in midday trading.Robinhood Markets — Robinhood shares rose in wild trading as the newly public online brokerage zoomed past its IPO price of $38 per share. The brokerage app surpassed its IPO debut volume of 102.5 million shares from July 29, as it traded over 104.6 million shares as of midday Wednesday, according to CNBC’s Gina Francolla. The stock was last seen up 37% around $64.Match Group — Shares of the dating app dropped more than 5% following a disappointing earnings report. Match reported reported 46 cents per share for the second quarter, missing Wall Street forecasts by 6 cents, according to Refinitiv. Still, Match’s revenue beat estimates amid recovering dating scene as the economy continued to reopen.Kraft Heinz — The food products stock slumped about 5.1% on Wednesday after the company reported that organic net sales and sales volumes were down year over year. Kraft Heinz did beat estimates on the top and bottom lines for its second quarter report.CVS Health — CVS shares dropped 1.9% in midday trading even after reporting second-quarter per-share earnings and revenues that topped consensus forecasts. The drug store and pharmacy company’s same-store sales rose a better-than-expected 12.3%. Separately, CVS declared that it was raising its minimum wage for employees to $15 per hour.Lyft — The ride sharing company’s stock lost about 9% after it reported a quarterly loss late Tuesday of 5 cents per share. That was still less than the loss of 24 cents per share Wall Street analysts estimated. The company said demand continued growing in July even with heightened Covid-19 cases.General Motors — Shares of General Motors fell 8.4% after the automaker missed Wall Street second-quarter earnings expectations. GM reported earnings of $1.97 per share, lower than analysts’ estimate of $2.23 per share, according to Refinitiv. Despite record operating profit, GM’s quarterly earnings were hit by about $1.3 billion in warranty recall costs. The company also raised its full-year guidance.Activision Blizzard — Shares of the video game company advanced roughly 2.6% after Activision Blizzard beat earnings estimates during the second quarter. The company earned 91 cents per share excluding estimates on revenue of $1.92 billion. Analysts were expecting 76 cents and $1.90 billion in revenue, according to estimates from Refinitiv. The company also gave upbeat guidance, thanks in part to strength from “Candy Crush” and “Call of Duty.”— CNBC’s Hannah Miao, Yun Li, Pippa Stevens, Jesse Pound and Tanaya Macheel contributed reporting.Become a smarter investor with CNBC Pro. Get stock picks, analyst calls, exclusive interviews and access to CNBC TV. Sign up to start a free trial today More