Kone Oyj is in talks to acquire TK Elevator , the private equity-owned elevator maker that’s been planning an initial public offering, people familiar with the matter said. The Finnish company is working with advisers as it progresses in negotiations on a potential cash and stock deal for TK Elevator, according to some of the people. TK Elevator’s owners have been seeking a valuation of as much as...
Kone Oyj is in talks to acquire TK Elevator , the private equity-owned elevator maker that’s been planning an initial public offering, people familiar with the matter said. The Finnish company is working with advisers as it progresses in negotiations on a potential cash and stock deal for TK Elevator, according to some of the people. TK Elevator’s owners have been seeking a valuation of as much as €25 billion ($28.7 billion) including debt in any transaction, the people said. Kone aims to reach a deal as soon as the coming weeks, pending completion of in-depth due diligence on Düsseldorf, Germany-based TK Elevator, some of the people said. TK Elevator’s owners are continuing work on a potential listing alongside negotiations about a sale, the people said. TK Elevator is controlled by Advent and Cinven , which took the company out of German industrials engineering giant Thyssenkrupp AG for €17.2 billion in 2020. Kone at the time teamed up with CVC Capital Partners Plc to make an offer for TK Elevator, with plans for CVC to take on the company’s European operations, before Advent and Cinven won the bidding. Bloomberg News reported last year that Kone was again exploring a move for TK Elevator. Advent and Cinven have been working a planned IPO of TK Elevator but recent volatility in equity markets stemming from the ongoing war in Iran has made the owners more open to a potential sale instead, the people said. Shares in Kone have risen around 4.6% in Helsinki over the last 12 months, giving the company a market value of €29.8 billion. Finnish billionaire Antti Herlin is Kone’s largest shareholder with more than 50% of voting rights. Deliberations are ongoing and there’s no certainty they will result in an agreement, the people said, asking not to be identified discussing confidential information. Representatives for Advent, Cinven, Kone and TK Elevator declined to comment. A Kone takeover of TK Elevator could face antitrust hurdles and the Finnish company may need to ex...
Getty Images How about turning $10,000 into $2.12 million, for a 212-time increase in capital, over a period of less than 25 years — does it sound compelling? Is it still the case even if it means monitoring a simple, single-security position daily and making an average of 1.5 trades per year? Keeping in mind that past results are no guarantee of future returns, this is what heavily monitoring but...
Getty Images How about turning $10,000 into $2.12 million, for a 212-time increase in capital, over a period of less than 25 years — does it sound compelling? Is it still the case even if it means monitoring a simple, single-security position daily and making an average of 1.5 trades per year? Keeping in mind that past results are no guarantee of future returns, this is what heavily monitoring but lightly trading an aggressive fund like the Direxion Daily Semiconductor Bull 3X Shares ( SOXL ) using moving averages would have produced since early 2002. Below, I explain how an investor could have achieved the feat and wonder if similar performance can still be produced. About SOXL and the Risks of Leverage The Direxion Daily Semiconductor Bull 3X Shares is an ETF that, simply stated, targets three times the daily return produced by the NYSE Semiconductor Index — that is, +3% if the index is up +1%, and -3% if the index is down 1%. The benchmark today is comprised of the usual suspects in the semiconductor space: Micron ( MU ), NVIDIA ( NVDA ), Advanced Micro Devices ( AMD ), and others (see the allocation pie chart below). BlackRock SOXL is a large fund with about $12 billion in AUM. It trades 80 million shares per day, on average, suggesting 37% daily turnover — not a swing- and day-trading instrument necessarily, but one that is not held for much longer than a few days. The net expense ratio of 75 bps may seem high at first glance, but it is, in fact, quite small for a fund with such stratospheric volatility (a risk-balanced way of thinking about fund fees). As the name of the ETF suggests, this is a leveraged fund. It is never too often to remind readers that 3x leveraged ETFs on an underlying asset (semiconductor stocks, in this case) that is already volatile by nature pose risks to portfolio value destruction that far exceed those of "plain vanilla" funds. One of the main, sometimes hidden risks is volatility drag. Simply stated, this is the risk that the long-te...
SNAP Recipients Claim Trump Trying To "Destabilize Food Access", Sue Feds Over Junk Food Ban The Make America Healthy Again agenda just found its first serious legal challenger. This week, five food stamp recipients filed suit in Washington, D.C., federal court demanding the right to spend taxpayer-funded SNAP benefits on candy, soda, and energy drinks. The plaintiffs filed the lawsuit against the...
SNAP Recipients Claim Trump Trying To "Destabilize Food Access", Sue Feds Over Junk Food Ban The Make America Healthy Again agenda just found its first serious legal challenger. This week, five food stamp recipients filed suit in Washington, D.C., federal court demanding the right to spend taxpayer-funded SNAP benefits on candy, soda, and energy drinks. The plaintiffs filed the lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) over its growing list of "food restriction" waivers, which Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins began approving back in May 2025. Since then, 22 states have signed on, each with their own specific list of banned items — generally soda, energy drinks, candy, and pre-packaged desserts. Both Rollins and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. have championed the waivers as a concrete step toward addressing chronic disease and redirecting taxpayer money toward genuinely nutritious food. “The Trump Administration is unified in improving the health of our nation. America’s governors have proudly answered the call to innovate by improving nutrition programs, ensuring better choices while respecting the generosity of the American taxpayer,” Rollins said last year. “Each waiver submitted by the states and signed is yet another step closer to fulfilling President Trump’s promise to Make America Healthy Again.” The lawsuit claims they had no right to do this. The five plaintiffs. residents of Colorado, Iowa, Nebraska, Tennessee, and West Virginia, and represented by the law firm Shinder Cantor Lerner, argue in their complaint that the restrictions "destabilize food access" for SNAP participants in the 22 affected states. They claim the USDA exceeded its legal authority by approving the waivers without soliciting public input, establishing proper evaluation metrics, or engaging those directly impacted by the waivers first, in accordance with the Administrative Procedure Act. The lawsuit further contends that the relevant section ...
You don't need to be a rocket scientist or a brain surgeon to recognize the stock market's going through some pretty serious turbulence right now. The conflict in the Middle East is of course a big source of this turbulence, although it would be naïve to pretend overvalued stocks of overestimated artificial intelligence (AI) companies aren't playing a role in the matter either. While this shift is...
You don't need to be a rocket scientist or a brain surgeon to recognize the stock market's going through some pretty serious turbulence right now. The conflict in the Middle East is of course a big source of this turbulence, although it would be naïve to pretend overvalued stocks of overestimated artificial intelligence (AI) companies aren't playing a role in the matter either. While this shift isn't a reason to get out of the market altogether, it arguably is a reason to rethink your holdings. This may well be the time to get back to basics by owning stakes in industrial companies that actually make, build, or do stuff of tangible value. Here's a closer look at three such names that just might outperform a suppressed S&P 500 (SNPINDEX: ^GSPC) this year. Based on nothing more than the company's recent performance, it might be a bit difficult to get excited about owning a piece of Fluor (NYSE: FLR) . The engineering and heavy construction outfit's revenue fell 5% to $15.5 billion last year, taking a similar toll on adjusted net earnings. The stock's been upended several times since early last year as well. Continue reading
Key Points Mortgage rates dropped below 6% briefly before spiking oil prices reversed that downward trend. The reversal in the falling mortgage rate trend is a drag on homebuilder and home improvement stocks. 10 stocks we like better than Lennar › The average 30-year fixed mortgage rate fell below 6% in recent weeks, the first time it dipped below that threshold in more than three years, giving pr...
Key Points Mortgage rates dropped below 6% briefly before spiking oil prices reversed that downward trend. The reversal in the falling mortgage rate trend is a drag on homebuilder and home improvement stocks. 10 stocks we like better than Lennar › The average 30-year fixed mortgage rate fell below 6% in recent weeks, the first time it dipped below that threshold in more than three years, giving prospective homebuyers hope that the price of homeownership was finally coming within reach and the housing industry hope that the long-frozen housing market might begin to thaw. Unfortunately, that lower rate didn't last long, and rates are now headed back up. The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage -- the standard home loan for most Americans -- dropped to 5.98% in the last days of February, after hovering at or above 7% for several years. But the mortgage rate has now risen for two weeks in a row and is back up to 6.11%. Last week saw the biggest increase in the 30-year rate in a year. Will AI create the world's first trillionaire? Our team just released a report on the one little-known company, called an "Indispensable Monopoly" providing the critical technology Nvidia and Intel both need. Continue » What happened? Basically, a war broke out in the Middle East on Feb. 27. As I wrote on March 6 , until the war broke out, investors were beginning to anticipate as many as three quarter-point rate cuts this year from the Federal Reserve as inflation stabilized and signs of cracks in the labor market appeared. That sent the yield on the 10-year Treasury security down below 4%, as investors rushed to buy Treasury securities and lock in current yields before they decline (bond yields move in the opposite direction from prices). And mortgage rates track the 10-year yield, so they fell too, to a three-year low. Expectations for rate cuts in 2026 have fallen to zero But as oil prices began to soar due to the war and the resulting blockage of the Strait of Hormuz, concerns about inflation b...
is a news writer covering all things consumer tech. Stevie started out at Laptop Mag writing news and reviews on hardware, gaming, and AI. Posts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. On Friday, Encyclopedia Britannica and dictionary publisher Merriam-Webster filed a lawsuit against OpenAI alleging that it used their copyrighted content to train its AI, t...
is a news writer covering all things consumer tech. Stevie started out at Laptop Mag writing news and reviews on hardware, gaming, and AI. Posts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. On Friday, Encyclopedia Britannica and dictionary publisher Merriam-Webster filed a lawsuit against OpenAI alleging that it used their copyrighted content to train its AI, then generated responses that were “substantially similar” to their content, as previously reported by Reuters. According to Britannica, OpenAI repeatedly copied its content without permission, stating, “GPT-4 itself has ‘memorized’ much of Britannica’s copyrighted content and will output near-verbatim copies of significant portions on demand. The memorized examples are unauthorized copies that [OpenAI] used to train their models, including GPT-4.” The lawsuit goes on to include examples of responses from OpenAI’s models side-by-side with Britannica’s text, in which entire passages appear to match word-for-word. Britannica also claims that OpenAI has been “cannibalizing” its web traffic by generating responses that “substitute, or directly compete” with Britannica’s content, rather than directing users to its website the way a traditional search engine would. It’s the latest in a growing series of copyright lawsuits from publishers aimed at AI companies over the past several years. The New York Times has made similar claims in its ongoing lawsuit against OpenAI, including accusing the AI company of copying mass amounts of its copyrighted content. In September, Anthropic settled a class action lawsuit for using copyrighted books to train its AI models, resulting in a $1.5 billion payout to the books’ authors.
Sonos Inc. Chief Executive Officer Tom Conrad said the company remains committed to the headphones category, even though its first effort in that space failed to win over consumers. At the same time, he downplayed the company’s effort to put Sonos in cars as a “hobby,” indicating it’s not a priority for the audio brand as it makes a return to more frequent product announcements following a disastr...
Sonos Inc. Chief Executive Officer Tom Conrad said the company remains committed to the headphones category, even though its first effort in that space failed to win over consumers. At the same time, he downplayed the company’s effort to put Sonos in cars as a “hobby,” indicating it’s not a priority for the audio brand as it makes a return to more frequent product announcements following a disastrous software update two years ago. During an interview with Bloomberg News last month, Conrad — who has a tattoo of the brand’s Ace headphones — said the company is “really excited” about the category even after the Ace drew tepid demand. It didn’t help that the Ace hit the market shortly after the company’s mobile-app fiasco in mid 2024, which took Sonos more than a year to recover from. (Just a week ago, Sonos introduced its first consumer products in over a year.) Read More: How Sonos CEO Tom Conrad Is Reshaping the Audio Brand After App Disaster The Ace received positive reviews after it went on sale in June 2024, but it sold poorly when pit against more established competitors. Conrad said that the “big opportunity” that Sonos envisioned with that product was “daunting” and perhaps ill-conceived. “I think the thesis for Ace at launch was: It’s a $5 billion or $6 billion category, we can make a pair of headphones that is as good or better than anything else on the market, and the opportunity is to go out there and do hand-to-hand combat with Sony and Bose and Apple and win.” Conrad believes the company would have been wiser to target its first-ever headphones more directly at its existing 17 million user households. And if the new CEO had his way, Sonos might have waited to release them until a deeper integration with its speaker system was feasible. “There’s an opportunity to be really, really successful just inside the four walls of the Sonos ecosystem,” he said. “You make different decisions if that’s the thing that you’re chasing first.” Conrad also echoed the desir...
RHJ/iStock via Getty Images Simply Good Foods ( SMPL ) shares are oversold, says Jefferies’ Kaumil Gajrawala, as investors are not fully appreciating the secular shift in demand towards more protein and convenience, enabling its Quest brand to compensate for weakness in its weight-loss brand, Atkins. An environment with increased competition and inflation is compressing the growth and margin outlo...
RHJ/iStock via Getty Images Simply Good Foods ( SMPL ) shares are oversold, says Jefferies’ Kaumil Gajrawala, as investors are not fully appreciating the secular shift in demand towards more protein and convenience, enabling its Quest brand to compensate for weakness in its weight-loss brand, Atkins. An environment with increased competition and inflation is compressing the growth and margin outlook. But with the stock currently valued at 5x three-year EBITDA, the price underappreciates a “powerhouse brand with staying power,” Gajrawala says about the Quest selection. Gajrawala acknowledges the portfolio has a few “pressure points,” namely its Atkins brand, and its recently acquired Only What You Need brand (OWYN) is displaying slowing growth. Quest nutrition bars are doing well, but the category remains highly fragmented and is turning more promotional. “The ebbs and flows make it difficult to deliver consistent growth, and exposure to cocoa and whey inflation has not made it any easier,” Gajrawala says. But a sum-of-the-parts valuation (excluding Atkins) suggests sales have been oversold. Assigning de-risked EBITDA multiples of 10x to Quest and 8x to OWYN and assuming a 300 basis point spread in profitability, the implied equity value for the business is ~$2B. Accordingly, Gajrawala upgrades Simply Good Foods ( SMPL ) to Buy from Hold and raises the target price by a dollar to $23 to reflect a valuation that has “over-corrected for a portfolio positioned at the intersection of several consumer mega-trends.” More on Simply Good Foods Simply Good Foods Buybacks Don't Make Up For Weaker Margins The Simply Good Foods Company (SMPL) Q1 2026 Earnings Call Transcript The Simply Good Foods Company 2026 Q1 - Results - Earnings Call Presentation Simply Good Foods appoints Joe Scalzo as CEO Simply Good Foods reaffirms 2026 outlook with targeted share repurchases and margin improvement plans
(RTTNews) - UniCredit S.p.A. (UNCFF.PK) on Monday announced a takeover offer worth 35 billion euros, which is equivalent to $40 billion, for Commerzbank AG (CBK.DE). While emphasizing that it does not intend to take full control of the lender, UniCredit said it plans to increase its stake in Germany's second-largest bank to more than 30 percent. However, Commerzbank said the proposed offer had not...
(RTTNews) - UniCredit S.p.A. (UNCFF.PK) on Monday announced a takeover offer worth 35 billion euros, which is equivalent to $40 billion, for Commerzbank AG (CBK.DE). While emphasizing that it does not intend to take full control of the lender, UniCredit said it plans to increase its stake in Germany's second-largest bank to more than 30 percent. However, Commerzbank said the proposed offer had not been coordinated with the bank. It also noted that UniCredit's communication did not provide additional details about the key terms that would typically form the basis for discussions on a value-creating transaction. Bettina Orlopp said the bank's primary focus remains on creating sustainable value for its shareholders and stakeholders. She added that Commerzbank remains confident in its current strategy centred on independence and profitable growth. Commerzbank also said that its Board of Managing Directors and Supervisory Board will carefully review the voluntary takeover offer once it is formally published. The assessment, the bank added, will be carried out in the best interests of the institution, its shareholders, employees and clients. Currently, UniCredit's stock is moving down 4.40 percent, to $72.38 on the OTC Markets. The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.
DongFunStock/iStock via Getty Images By Steffan Szumowski As the U.S.-Israeli conflict with Iran continues, global energy markets are feeling the strain. The effective closing of the Strait of Hormuz, which is the chokepoint for roughly 20% of the world’s petroleum and liquefied natural gas (LNG) trade, combined with attacks on energy infrastructure, has driven sharp spikes in commodity prices. As...
DongFunStock/iStock via Getty Images By Steffan Szumowski As the U.S.-Israeli conflict with Iran continues, global energy markets are feeling the strain. The effective closing of the Strait of Hormuz, which is the chokepoint for roughly 20% of the world’s petroleum and liquefied natural gas (LNG) trade, combined with attacks on energy infrastructure, has driven sharp spikes in commodity prices. As just one example, the European benchmark for LNG is up over 50% since the conflict began. Policymakers and investors are once again confronting the fragility of fossil fuel-dependent power systems in an unstable geopolitical landscape. Far from a setback, this situation actually shines a bright light on nuclear energy as one of the most resilient and strategically advantageous power sources available. The conflict underscores why nations and utilities are likely to accelerate nuclear construction in the years ahead. It’s not simply for clean, reliable baseload power but for genuine energy security that fossil fuels cannot match. Fossil Fuels’ Vulnerability Exposed Natural gas-fired generation is inherently tied to volatile commodity markets. When prices swing as wildly as they are right now amid the Iran conflict, those fluctuations flow straight through to electricity rates. Fuel can represent 50–75% of the total cost of producing power at a combined-cycle natural gas plant. A sustained jump in natural gas prices can dramatically elevate wholesale electricity costs, squeezing consumers, businesses, and entire economies. This is not theoretical. Markets have already reacted to Hormuz risks and supply disruptions, with analysts warning of further upside pressure on energy prices. For countries relying heavily on imported LNG for power, the Iran conflict is a painful reminder of external risks that can disrupt budgets and grid stability overnight. Nuclear’s Commodity Insulation Nuclear energy operates on an entirely different economic foundation. Uranium fuel accounts for on...