logo
CN: Q2 Earnings Snapshot

CN: Q2 Earnings Snapshot

MONTREAL QUEBEC, Quebec (AP) — MONTREAL QUEBEC, Quebec (AP) — Canadian National Railway Co. (CNI) on Tuesday reported second-quarter profit of $847 million.
The Montreal Quebec, Quebec-based company said it had net income of $1.35 per share.
The results missed Wall Street expectations. The average estimate of nine analysts surveyed by Zacks Investment Research was for earnings of $1.37 per share.
The railroad posted revenue of $3.09 billion in the period, which also did not meet Street forecasts. Eight analysts surveyed by Zacks expected $3.16 billion.
_____
Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Federal Reserve Governor Kugler steps down, giving Trump slot to fill
Federal Reserve Governor Kugler steps down, giving Trump slot to fill

The Hill

time23 minutes ago

  • The Hill

Federal Reserve Governor Kugler steps down, giving Trump slot to fill

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Federal Reserve announced Friday that governor Adriana Kugler will step down next week, opening up a spot on the central bank's powerful board that President Donald Trump will be able to fill. Kugler, who did not participate in the Fed's policy meeting earlier this week, would have completed her term in January. Instead, she will retire Aug. 8. She did not provide a reason for stepping down in her resignation letter. Trump has continued his attacks on the Fed since chair Jerome Powell said Wednesday that the central bank would keep its short-term interest rate unchanged. Powell also said the Fed could take months to evaluate the impact of tariffs on the economy before deciding to cut rates, as Trump has demanded. Powell is 'a stubborn MORON, must substantially lower interest rates, NOW,' Trump posted early Friday morning, before the monthly jobs report was released. That report showed hiring slowed in July and was much lower in May and June than had been initially reported. Kugler was appointed to the Fed's seven-member board of governors by former President Joe Biden in September 2023. She was the first Hispanic Fed governor, and prior to joining the Fed, was a professor at Georgetown University and was the U.S. representative to the World Bank. She will return to the Georgetown faculty in the fall. 'I am proud to have tackled this role with integrity, a strong commitment to serving the public, and with a data-driven approach strongly based on my expertise in labor markets and inflation,' she said in her resignation letter.

PayPal embarks on $300M restructuring
PayPal embarks on $300M restructuring

Yahoo

time41 minutes ago

  • Yahoo

PayPal embarks on $300M restructuring

This story was originally published on Payments Dive. To receive daily news and insights, subscribe to our free daily Payments Dive newsletter. Digital payments pioneer PayPal Holdings has begun a 'large-scale initiative' to update its 'existing technology infrastructure' at an estimated cost of as much as $300 million, the company said. The effort is expected to occur over 18 to 42 months and resulted in a $95 million charge during the second quarter, including for employee severance and benefits costs, according to a PayPal quarterly filing Tuesday with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The workforce reductions associated with the plan are expected to be completed by 2027, the filing said. It's a major 'existential' technology upgrade for a company that's considered the 'grand-daddy' of the fintech industry, TD Cowen analyst Bryan Bergin said in an interview. It's a part of providing the technology support for their new initiatives and re-accelerating growth, he said, referring to plans laid out at a February meeting with investors and analysts by PayPal CEO Alex Chriss and other executives. 'Large organizations need modern technology, and that's a component of this,' Bergin explained in a Thursday interview. 'So a lot of this has to do with making sure they are on the most modern technology, and it is also about consolidating disparate systems behind the scenes.' The company laid out the benefits it's seeking by way of the restructuring in its quarterly filing. 'Management undertook a large-scale initiative (the 'Q2 2025 Plan') to re-engineer our existing technology infrastructure to improve scalability, reduce network latency, decrease operational costs, and optimize our workforce,' the filing said. A spokesperson for the San Jose, California-based company declined to comment on the workforce reduction beyond the quarterly filing, which didn't specify how many employees will be cut. The restructuring was mentioned only briefly during a Tuesday webcast with analysts to discuss the company's second-quarter financial results. 'You'll also see in our (second-quarter) materials that we recorded restructuring costs of approximately $92 million,' PayPal's chief financial officer, Jamie Miller, told analysts during the webcast, referencing a non-GAAP figure. 'These costs are related to workforce actions and the key tech transformation initiatives that we discussed in our investor day,' she said. Chriss, who took the top post in September 2023, has replaced much of the company's management team and set a new strategic course since taking over from Dan Schulman, who struggled to expand the company's business after a temporary benefit from COVID-19 e-commerce activity. The three-year initiative will 're-engineer infrastructure, streamline operations and exit certain data centers as we unify platforms and migrate more to cloud-based solutions,' Miller said. Benefits of the overhaul will include increased speed, more flexibility in operations, better data utilization and increased scalability, she added. Based on the quarterly disclosure, the company expects to absorb as much as $300 million in overall cost reductions under the restructuring plan over time. Overall, PayPal forecast $90 million to $100 million in employee severance costs; $40 million to $60 million in accelerated depreciation expense; and other costs of $110 million to $140 million related to the initiative, the filing said. Some of the other costs are related to the re-engineering work, migration to cloud-based software expense, contractor costs, consulting fees, prepaid software expense and maintenance costs, the filing said. Still, the plan is still developing and the cost estimates could change, PayPal noted. The restructuring is also designed to allow the company to better compete with a slew of fintechs entering the payments arena. The current PayPal management team is showing 'more urgency in ultimately modernizing the company because if you don't it's going to be much more difficult in to compete with digital, native players built on stacks today,' Bergin said. Despite some macroeconomic headwinds this year, including related to U.S. tariffs, the company's PayPal namesake payments business for merchants, its Braintree offering for larger businesses and Venmo peer-to-peer system continued to expand. The company's second-quarter payments volume rose 6%, or 5% on a foreign exchange neutral basis, including 45%-plus growth in its Venmo volume and 20%-plus growth in buy now, pay later payments volume, the earnings report showed. Second-quarter net income rose 12% over the year-ago period to $1.26 billion as revenue climbed 5% to $8.29 billion, including a 20% jump in revenue from Venmo, PayPal said. Second-quarter sales and administrative expense dropped 19% to $461 million from a year ago, according to the earnings report, likely reflecting the smaller workforce. Those costs typically include labor expenses. As of the end of last year, PayPal had about 24,400 employees worldwide, including about 8,900 in the U.S., according to the company's annual filing with the SEC in February. PayPal also noted a 'workforce reduction' that began in the first quarter related to a new regulation in an unidentified international market, saying in the quarterly filing that it resulted in costs for the first half of the year of $36 million. Restructuring and related costs have been a reality for the company for the past two years. While the overall 'restructuring and other' charge for the second quarter this year was 3% higher at $116 million relative to the same quarter last year, PayPal's $182 million expense for the first half of this year was 44% lower than for the first half of 2024, according to the filing. Recommended Reading PayPal pays up for talent Sign in to access your portfolio

Jury orders Tesla to pay more than $240 million in Autopilot crash case
Jury orders Tesla to pay more than $240 million in Autopilot crash case

Yahoo

timean hour ago

  • Yahoo

Jury orders Tesla to pay more than $240 million in Autopilot crash case

MIAMI (AP) — A Miami jury decided that Elon Musk's car company Tesla was partly responsible for a deadly crash in Florida involving its Autopilot driver assist technology and must pay the victims more than $200 million in damages. The federal jury held that Tesla bore significant responsibility because its technology failed and that not all the blame can be put on a reckless driver, even one who admitted he was distracted by his cell phone before hitting a young couple out gazing at the stars. The decision comes as Musk seeks to convince Americans his cars are safe enough to drive on their own as he plans to roll out a driverless taxi service in several cities in the coming months. The decision ends a four-year long case remarkable not just in its outcome but that it even made it to trial. Many similar cases against Tesla have been dismissed and, when that didn't happen, settled by the company to avoid the spotlight of a trial. 'This will open the floodgates,' said Miguel Custodio, a car crash lawyer not involved in the Tesla case. 'It will embolden a lot of people to come to court.' The case also included startling charges by lawyers for the family of the deceased, 22-year-old, Naibel Benavides Leon, and for her injured boyfriend, Dillon Angulo. They claimed Tesla either hid or lost key evidence, including data and video recorded seconds before the accident. Tesla has previously faced criticism that it is slow to cough up crucial data by relatives of other victims in Tesla crashes, accusations that the car company has denied. In this case, the plaintiffs showed Tesla had the evidence all along, despite its repeated denials, by hiring a forensic data expert who dug it up. Tesla said it made a mistake after being shown the evidence and honestly hadn't thought it was there. 'Today's verdict is wrong," Tesla said in a statement, 'and only works to set back automotive safety and jeopardize Tesla's and the entire industry's efforts to develop and implement life-saving technology,' They said the plaintiffs concocted a story 'blaming the car when the driver – from day one – admitted and accepted responsibility.' In addition to a punitive award of $200 million, the jury said Tesla must also pay $43 million in compensatory damages, bringing the total borne by the company to $243 million. 'It's a big number that will send shockwaves to others in the industry,' said financial analyst Dan Ives of Wedbush Securities. 'It's not a good day for Tesla.' Tesla said it will appeal. It's not clear how much of a hit to Tesla's reputation for safety the verdict in the Miami case will make. Tesla has vastly improved its technology since the crash on a dark, rural road in Key Largo, Florida, in 2019. But the issue of trust generally in the company came up several times in the case, including in closing arguments Thursday. The plaintiffs' lead lawyer, Brett Schreiber, said Tesla's decision to even use the term Autopilot showed it was willing to mislead people and take big risks with their lives because the system only helps drivers with lane changes, slowing a car and other tasks, falling far short of driving the car itself. Schreiber said other automakers use terms like 'driver assist' and 'copilot' to make sure drivers don't rely too much on the technology. 'Words matter,' Schreiber said. 'And if someone is playing fast and lose with words, they're playing fast and lose with information and facts.' Schreiber acknowledged that the driver, George McGee, was negligent when he blew through flashing lights, a stop sign and a T-intersection at 62 miles an hour before slamming into a Chevrolet Tahoe that the couple had parked to get a look at the stars. The Tahoe spun around so hard it was able to launch Benavides 75 feet through the air into nearby woods where her body was later found. It also left Angulo, who walked into the courtroom Friday with a limp and cushion to sit on, with broken bones and a traumatic brain injury. But Schreiber said Tesla was at fault nonetheless. He said Tesla allowed drivers to act recklessly by not disengaging the Autopilot as soon as they begin to show signs of distraction and by allowing them to use the system on smaller roads that it was not designed for, like the one McGee was driving on. 'I trusted the technology too much,' said McGee at one point in his testimony. 'I believed that if the car saw something in front of it, it would provide a warning and apply the brakes.' The lead defense lawyer in the Miami case, Joel Smith, countered that Tesla warns drivers that they must keep their eyes on the road and hands on the wheel yet McGee chose not to do that while he looked for a dropped cell phone, adding to the danger by speeding. Noting that McGee had gone through the same intersection 30 or 40 times previously and hadn't crashed during any of those trips, Smith said that isolated the cause to one thing alone: 'The cause is that he dropped his cell phone.' The auto industry has been watching the case closely because a finding of Tesla liability despite a driver's admission of reckless behavior would pose significant legal risks for every company as they develop cars that increasingly drive themselves. __ Condon reported from New York. __ Earlier versions of this story incorrectly reported that the jury ordered Tesla to pay $329 million and that the compensatory damages totaled $49 million. Solve the daily Crossword

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into a world of global content with local flavor? Download Daily8 app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store