Morning, I’m Louise Moon from Bloomberg UK’s breaking news team, bringing you up to speed on today’s top business stories. Selling a home is no small feat at the best of times, but buyers and vendors alike are facing a tough spring ahead. The number of Brits looking for a new home nosedived in March, with the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors’ gauge hitting the lowest since August 2023. Agr...
Morning, I’m Louise Moon from Bloomberg UK’s breaking news team, bringing you up to speed on today’s top business stories. Selling a home is no small feat at the best of times, but buyers and vendors alike are facing a tough spring ahead. The number of Brits looking for a new home nosedived in March, with the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors’ gauge hitting the lowest since August 2023. Agreed sales plunged too. Estate agents’ near-term sales expectations have turned “significantly more pessimistic,” RICS found. It’s all down to a mortgage market knocked off course by the Iran war. While the housing market started the year on more positive footing, the average fixed mortgage has now surged back above 5% on worries the Bank of England may hike interest rates. Sure, those bets on rate rises have eased somewhat, but buyers are likely to have higher borrowing costs for some time. “What had been a cautiously improving picture for activity has been knocked off course by the wider macro fallout from the Middle East conflict,” said RICS’ Tarrant Parsons. What’s your take? Ping me on X , LinkedIn or drop me an email at lmoon13@bloomberg.net. Oh, and do subscribe to Bloomberg.com for unlimited access to trusted business journalism on the UK, and beyond. What We’re Watching Lucky Strike maker British American Tobacco has named Dragos Constantinescu as finance chief. He’ll join in September, shifting from heading up Asahi Europe & International, part of Japanese beer maker. The London Stock Exchange Group is starting a new £900 million share buyback, to be wrapped up by the end of July. Earlier this year , activist investor Elliott called on the stock exchange operator to review its portfolio and pursue a £5 billion buyback over time, which it’s been chipping away at . German grocers Aldi and Lidl , which have upended the UK market since arriving in the early 1990s, are no longer just competing with the big names. Now they’re battling one another for new areas and custom...
Bloomberg Daybreak Europe is your essential morning viewing to stay ahead. Live from London, we set the agenda for your day, catching you up with overnight markets news from the US and Asia. And we'll tell you what matters for investors in Europe, giving you insight before trading begins. On today's show, JD Vance will lead US-Iran talks in Islamabad this weekend even as fighting continues in the ...
Bloomberg Daybreak Europe is your essential morning viewing to stay ahead. Live from London, we set the agenda for your day, catching you up with overnight markets news from the US and Asia. And we'll tell you what matters for investors in Europe, giving you insight before trading begins. On today's show, JD Vance will lead US-Iran talks in Islamabad this weekend even as fighting continues in the Middle East. Tehran claims the ceasefire has been violated by Israeli strikes in Lebanon. Oil rebounded after its biggest one-day drop since April 2020, as the Strait of Hormuz remained largely blocked. Bloomberg has learned that the US wants specific commitments from its European allies on their pledge to help secure the Strait of Hormuz. This comes after the US President again lashed out at NATO following his meeting with the alliance's chief Mark Rutte in the White House. (Source: Bloomberg)
Yao Yuzhou. Photo: VCG A retired senior Communist Party official who previously oversaw law enforcement and internal security in China’s eastern Anhui province has been placed under investigation for suspected corruption, the country’s top anti-graft watchdog said. The Central Commission for Discipline Inspection announced on April 9 that Yao Yuzhou, a former member of the Anhui Provincial Party S...
Yao Yuzhou. Photo: VCG A retired senior Communist Party official who previously oversaw law enforcement and internal security in China’s eastern Anhui province has been placed under investigation for suspected corruption, the country’s top anti-graft watchdog said. The Central Commission for Discipline Inspection announced on April 9 that Yao Yuzhou, a former member of the Anhui Provincial Party Standing Committee and head of the provincial Political and Legal Affairs Commission, is currently facing a disciplinary review and supervisory investigation for suspected severe violations of party discipline and the law.
Sandwish/iStock via Getty Images Introduction It’s been over 2 and a half years since I covered HireQuest ( HQI ), so I thought it would be a good time to see how it performed throughout 2025 and whether it would be a good time to start a position. Unfortunately, the narrative remains. Margins are taking a beating as business slows, and I don’t see this changing in 2026 just yet; therefore, my hol...
Sandwish/iStock via Getty Images Introduction It’s been over 2 and a half years since I covered HireQuest ( HQI ), so I thought it would be a good time to see how it performed throughout 2025 and whether it would be a good time to start a position. Unfortunately, the narrative remains. Margins are taking a beating as business slows, and I don’t see this changing in 2026 just yet; therefore, my hold rating is staying in place. Since the last time I covered HQI, the share price went down by over 38%, while the SPY ( SPY ) advanced 51%, so you would have been better off setting and forgetting your investment in a broad index. 2025 Performance We can see straightaway that the company did not have a particularly good year just by looking at its top-line performance. HireQuest’s volumes were down throughout the year because staffing activity softened. This is not a surprising find at all. There were many layoffs throughout the year, so the decline was not all on the company’s inability to maintain growth, but rather it was the overall staffing activity that caused it. For the full year, revenues from royalties and services declined a little under 12%. System-wide sales declined about the same amount as well, to $500.2m. This matters because royalty revenue is tied to the staffing activity flowing through the franchise network. Seeking Alpha Going over the company’s profitability and efficiency, we can see that HQI’s margins went down as well. The management couldn’t offset the lower volume in hiring activity with internal cost-cutting initiatives enough. One positive this time around, however, is that the bottom line improved significantly due to much lower goodwill and intangible asset impairment charges this year, which helped its net margin double in a year. But operationally speaking, the company took a decent hit as well. Seeking Alpha Let’s see how the company’s financial situation fared during these tough times. HQI’s cash balance at the end of the year was around ...
rarrarorro U.S. President Donald Trump said Wednesday that American military forces will stay deployed in and around Iran until Tehran fully honors the “real agreement,” and warned of a major escalation in fighting if it fails to comply, as oil prices rose on supply concerns. “All US ships, aircraft, and military personnel...will remain in place in, and around, Iran, until such time as the REAL A...
rarrarorro U.S. President Donald Trump said Wednesday that American military forces will stay deployed in and around Iran until Tehran fully honors the “real agreement,” and warned of a major escalation in fighting if it fails to comply, as oil prices rose on supply concerns. “All US ships, aircraft, and military personnel...will remain in place in, and around, Iran, until such time as the REAL AGREEMENT reached is fully complied with,” Trump wrote on Truth Social . “If for any reason it is not...the ‘Shootin’ Starts,′ bigger, and better, and stronger than anyone has ever seen before.” Trump reiterated that it was agreed that Iran will not develop nuclear weapons, and the Strait of Hormuz will be open and safe for commercial shipping. “In the meantime our great Military is Loading Up and Resting, looking forward, actually, to its next Conquest,” Trump added. He ended the post, which was published near midnight, with a declaration: “AMERICA IS BACK!” The remarks followed the largest coordinated strike of the war by Israel on Wednesday that killed more than 250 people in Lebanon, prompting a warning from Iran's lead negotiator that Israel's ramping up its parallel war and Washington's insistence on Tehran abandoning its nuclear ambitions could jeopardise talks to forge a permanent peace deal. "In such a situation, a bilateral ceasefire or negotiations were unreasonable," Iran's parliament speaker, Mohammed Bager Qalibaf, said in a statement on Wednesday. Elsewhere, Vice President JD Vance, in response to the alleged drone incursion into Iran’s airspace, said, “Ceasefires are always messy.” He said the U.S. position is that Iran cannot enrich uranium. The ceasefire extending to Lebanon was never part of the agreement, he added. Brent crude futures ( CO1:COM ) were up 2.7% to $97.34 a barrel at press time, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude ( CL1:COM ) rose 3.4% to $97.57 a barrel, a day after both benchmarks had fallen sharply on the ceasefire announcement. Dea...
Nvidia is extending its Jetson edge AI platform to the Moon through a new collaboration with Firefly Aerospace to enable real time AI data processing in lunar orbit. The company is also joining Project Glasswing, an urgent multi company effort to apply advanced AI models to emerging cybersecurity threats. NVIDIA (NasdaqGS:NVDA) is moving its AI footprint beyond traditional data centers, with Jetso...
Nvidia is extending its Jetson edge AI platform to the Moon through a new collaboration with Firefly Aerospace to enable real time AI data processing in lunar orbit. The company is also joining Project Glasswing, an urgent multi company effort to apply advanced AI models to emerging cybersecurity threats. NVIDIA (NasdaqGS:NVDA) is moving its AI footprint beyond traditional data centers, with Jetson hardware and software now aimed at on orbit analytics around the Moon. For investors tracking...
Strattec Security (STRT) saw its shares surge in the last session with trading volume being higher than average. The latest trend in earnings estimate revisions may not translate into further price increase in the near term.
Strattec Security (STRT) saw its shares surge in the last session with trading volume being higher than average. The latest trend in earnings estimate revisions may not translate into further price increase in the near term.