For years, alcohol companies counted on steady global demand as drinking remained deeply woven into social life and consumer culture. But today, health concerns and tighter household budgets are prompting people to drink less. The shift is rippling through the drinks industry, wiping hundreds of billions of dollars from the market value of major beer, wine and spirits companies and forcing produce...
For years, alcohol companies counted on steady global demand as drinking remained deeply woven into social life and consumer culture. But today, health concerns and tighter household budgets are prompting people to drink less. The shift is rippling through the drinks industry, wiping hundreds of billions of dollars from the market value of major beer, wine and spirits companies and forcing producers to cut costs, replace executives and roll out new offerings. Here’s what’s driving the decline in alcohol consumption, where it’s most pronounced, and how the industry is adapting to what may be a new norm. How much is drinking down? From 2019 to 2025, consumption of alcohol, as measured by servings, fell at a compound annual rate of 2%, according to analysis of preliminary industry data from IWSR , a drinks market research firm. That means servings declined on average 2% per year for the period. Measuring by servings takes into account that a single beer has greater volume than, say, the shot of gin that goes into a cocktail. The IWSR data covered 21 countries and global duty-free retail, which collectively represent about 75% of the worldwide market. All alcohol categories — beer, wine, spirits, hard cider, and RTDs or “ready-to-drink” cocktails — were included. The decline is in keeping with a global trend of falling alcohol demand, as measured by per capita consumption by volume, that started a decade ago, according to the World Health Organization. IWSR, measuring overall consumption by servings, has registered the same pattern, with a blip during the global Covid-19 pandemic when bored drinkers indulged at home. Consumption rose 2.3% from 2020 to 2021 but began to fall again as of 2022, according to IWSR data, dropping 2.8% in 2025 as compared with 2024. People are drinking less in part because they’re drinking less often. In a global Euromonitor survey, 23% of respondents said they drank weekly in 2025, down from 25% in 2020. An increasing share of consumers is sa...
Customers shop at a Walmart store on May 13, 2026 in Chicago, Illinois. Scott Olson | Getty Images With all eyes on the health of the U.S. consumer, Walmart 's fiscal first-quarter earnings report Thursday morning may offer Wall Street some of the best clues yet. The big box retailer is expected to report another quarter of growing sales and profits, but its commentary on consumer spending – if it...
Customers shop at a Walmart store on May 13, 2026 in Chicago, Illinois. Scott Olson | Getty Images With all eyes on the health of the U.S. consumer, Walmart 's fiscal first-quarter earnings report Thursday morning may offer Wall Street some of the best clues yet. The big box retailer is expected to report another quarter of growing sales and profits, but its commentary on consumer spending – if it's seeing any pressure and where – could offer investors a view into the strength of the U.S. economy. Here's what analysts expect Walmart to report for the quarter, according to consensus estimates from LSEG: Earnings per share: 66 cents per share Revenue: $175 billion In the three months since Walmart last reported earnings, there's a new conflict in the Middle East, gas prices have soared and consumer sentiment has plummeted, falling to a fresh record low in May. The flurry of bad news comes on top of years of sticky inflation, higher interest rates and a global trade war that's pushed prices even higher. Walmart has long been among the best positioned to weather just about any economic storm, but given the wide consumer segments it caters to, it's uniquely positioned to see whether and where cracks in the economy are forming. Long a value play among lower-income shoppers, Walmart in recent years has been winning over more high-income consumers, which has helped fuel its growth and insulate it from economic shocks that have hit lower earners more acutely. When reporting earnings on Thursday morning, investors will want to know: Are higher-income shoppers still as resilient as they've been, or are higher gas prices having an impact? How much more pressure is the lower income shopper facing? If consumers start pulling back, leading to a greater concentration of lower-margin groceries over higher-margin discretionary goods, Walmart's additional revenue streams are expected to help offset those pressures. Its advertising and marketplace businesses are both high-margin revenu...
Liberal U.S. mayors team up with European counterparts to fight authoritarianism toggle caption Courtesy of the city of Bratislava/Courtesy of the city of Bratislava Right-wing populists in the U.S. have been building political ties across the Atlantic Ocean for years to support and learn from one another. Think President Trump, who developed a close relationship with former Hungarian Prime Minist...
Liberal U.S. mayors team up with European counterparts to fight authoritarianism toggle caption Courtesy of the city of Bratislava/Courtesy of the city of Bratislava Right-wing populists in the U.S. have been building political ties across the Atlantic Ocean for years to support and learn from one another. Think President Trump, who developed a close relationship with former Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. Now, 10 U.S. mayors from liberal cities are following suit, joining a group called the Pact of Free Cities , where they can share strategies with their European counterparts on how to defend democracy and fight authoritarianism. The American cities, including Boston, Chicago, San Antonio and Cincinnati, joined the pact virtually or in person last week for its annual meeting in Bratislava, Slovakia. Sponsor Message "I've joined the Pact of Free Cities because of the actions of the Trump administration that continue to not just have democratic institutions and democratic values backslide in our country, but also the destruction of long-standing relationships all over the world, but particularly with our European counterparts," said Cincinnati Mayor Aftab Pureval. The mayors of Bratislava, Budapest, Prague and Warsaw founded the group in 2019 to stand up for progressive values and brainstorm on how to deal with what they see as hostile national governments. How to defeat a right-wing populist toggle caption Courtesy: the city of Bratislava/Courtesy: the city of Bratislava At last week's meeting, Gergely Karácsony, the mayor of Budapest, shared lessons from the recent defeat of Orbán, who many political analysts say developed an authoritarian playbook that has informed some of Trump's efforts to undermine the U.S. system of checks and balances. Karácsony said one of the turning points came last year when the Hungarian government tried to ban the annual Pride parade in Budapest. "This was meant partly to intimidate people and partly to provoke a debate that woul...
An AI system will work with humans to make a Nobel prize-winning discovery within 12 months and tradespeople will be helped by bipedal robots in two years, according to the co-founder of Anthropic. Jack Clark described a “vertiginous sense of progress” in the technology and made a series of predictions, including that companies run solely by AIs would be generating millions of dollars in revenue w...
An AI system will work with humans to make a Nobel prize-winning discovery within 12 months and tradespeople will be helped by bipedal robots in two years, according to the co-founder of Anthropic. Jack Clark described a “vertiginous sense of progress” in the technology and made a series of predictions, including that companies run solely by AIs would be generating millions of dollars in revenue within 18 months, and that by the end of 2028, AI systems would be able to design their own successors. In a lecture at Oxford University on Wednesday, he also said there remained plausible scenarios in which the technology had “a non-zero chance of killing everyone on the planet” and that it was “important to clearly state that that risk hasn’t gone away”. Anthropic’s most popular model is called Claude, but it recently launched a version called Mythos that proved alarmingly capable at exploiting cybersecurity weaknesses. Clark told students it would be better if humans could slow the development of the technology “to give ourselves more time as a species” to deal with the implications of its powers. But he said this wouldn’t happen, in the breakneck development “by a variety of actors and a variety of countries, locked in a competition with one another, where commercial and geopolitical rivalries are often drowning out the larger existential-to-the-species aspects of the technology being built”. This was “not ideal”, he said. View image in fullscreen Jack Clark said he wanted to encourage humanity to prepare for a technology that would ‘soon be more capable than all of us collectively’. Photograph: Samuel Corum/Bloomberg/Getty Images Clark is one of the most senior figures at Anthropic, which was established by AI researchers who quit the rival firm OpenAI over disagreements on safety. The $900bn (£670bn) company has been accused by Donald Trump’s White House and other AI accelerationists of “fear-mongering” to encourage regulation that could cement its competitive positio...
New grads are about to enter a workforce where companies are replacing human intelligence with artificial intelligence. Meta employees stuffed their bags full of kombuchas and chargers this week before mass layoffs went down Wednesday. The social media giant let go 10% of its employees and is moving another 7,000 folks into AI-focused roles. Cisco said last week it plans to slash 4,000 jobs as it ...
New grads are about to enter a workforce where companies are replacing human intelligence with artificial intelligence. Meta employees stuffed their bags full of kombuchas and chargers this week before mass layoffs went down Wednesday. The social media giant let go 10% of its employees and is moving another 7,000 folks into AI-focused roles. Cisco said last week it plans to slash 4,000 jobs as it focuses spending on AI, while Microsoft reportedly made ~7% of its employees eligible for voluntary buyouts last month. Block laid off 40% of its employees in February, and CEO Jack Dorsey said Tuesday he wants the company to cut more layers from its organizational structure. Oracle, Amazon and Coinbase have also made major layoffs this year as tech-sector job cuts surge past 111,000, according to Layoffs.fyi. AI’s Funny Selfie Phase Is Over AI entered the zeitgeist as a fun way to create inedible recipes and anime-ified selfies. But with companies spending hundreds of billions on building the tech, it was bound to get serious. And as companies keep shedding roles both to fund AI and because of AI-driven efficiencies, the outlook for jobs could shift dramatically: The college-degree-to-office-job pipeline is over, according to recruiting firm Randstad, which found jobs in specialized trades are experiencing wage growth competitive with office work (up 30% in the US over the past four years). In another sign of an AI-driven shift away from the office, Standard Chartered’s CEO said his bank’s mass layoffs would replace “lower-value human capital” with AI (before he walked back the comment). Anthropic’s CEO said this year that AI could see GDP climbing (by his guess) 5% to 10% while unemployment reaches 10%. Other executives say AI costs more than human labor as spending on AI-powering tokens outstrips workers’ rates. At the same time, Randstad’s data found that graduates who can master AI can command higher salaries, and demand has risen for job applicants who bring emotional...
Billionaire Sajjan Jindal ’s automotive business has secured about 80 billion rupees ($826 million) funding line from India’s largest lender, keeping its plans for a new energy vehicle venture on track. The facility from State Bank of India , the country’s top lender, carries a tenor of more than 10 years, according to people familiar with the matter. It will partly fund JSW Motors Ltd. ’s “greenf...
Billionaire Sajjan Jindal ’s automotive business has secured about 80 billion rupees ($826 million) funding line from India’s largest lender, keeping its plans for a new energy vehicle venture on track. The facility from State Bank of India , the country’s top lender, carries a tenor of more than 10 years, according to people familiar with the matter. It will partly fund JSW Motors Ltd. ’s “greenfield manufacturing facility” in the western Indian state of Maharashtra, the company’s spokesperson said in response to a query from Bloomberg News. SBI may sell down part of the exposure to other lenders in the event of demand in the secondary loan market, the people familiar said, asking not to be identified as the details are private. A bank spokesperson did not respond to messages seeking comment. Trade journal Autocar Professional was the first to report on the facility. The funding is a boost for local vehicle manufacturing, and signals confidence from domestic lenders in India’s emerging EV ecosystem. The large-ticket financing is also expected to drive momentum in the credit market, where lending growth is projected to outpace deposit expansion in the fiscal year that began April 1. CareEdge Ratings estimates credit growth will reach 13% to 14.5% in the current fiscal period, compared with deposit growth of 11% to 12% as banks prioritize steady balance-sheet expansion. JSW Motors’ new vehicle will mark the country’s first homegrown brand in decades. Jindal’s group, which has interests spanning steel, cement and power generation, also has a joint venture with China’s SAIC Motor Corp. — JSW MG Motor India Pvt. — and a separate partnership with Chery Automobile Co. for new-energy vehicles. JSW Motors is focused on building a strong presence in the new energy passenger vehicle segment, the spokesperson said, adding that details about product lineup and launch timelines will be announced at the appropriate time. India’s electric and hybrid vehicles sector is expanding ra...
Alexander Zeldin’s characters often inhabit the margins, from zero-hours workers to apparently unremarkable wives and mothers. Here is another community of the socially invisible presented by the writer-director: a cohort of elderly people in a care home. Set in what seems like a locked dementia ward, this play is both an unwavering portrait of what it means to be old, and an indictment of a syste...
Alexander Zeldin’s characters often inhabit the margins, from zero-hours workers to apparently unremarkable wives and mothers. Here is another community of the socially invisible presented by the writer-director: a cohort of elderly people in a care home. Set in what seems like a locked dementia ward, this play is both an unwavering portrait of what it means to be old, and an indictment of a system that leads to such acute loneliness in this last leg of life. In the book Being Mortal, the writer-surgeon Atul Gawande asks: “Why, as you become older and sicker, should you give up your autonomy?” Zeldin explores this from the point of view of Joan (Linda Bassett, moving beyond measure), who thinks she has been admitted on a temporary basis. The opening scene shows her disorientation before her put-upon daughter Lynn (Rosie Cavaliero) comes to visit. Lynn’s emotions are hard to access (part of the character or Cavaliero’s sometimes flat performance?) but her sons, both astonishingly portrayed (William Lawlor and Ethan Mahony on press night), blaze with grief and anger. Beyond this family are the other residents, by turns silent or bearing jumbled up memories of the past, from Agnes (Ann Mitchell) who speaks of her husband and her beloved otter colony, to curmudgeon Paula (Diana Payan), who was once a midwife. Some merely shuffle on and off again. When they die, they join the audience. It is gruelling, intense and true, with darkly sublime performances from actors playing the residents. Initially, there is an edge of accidental humour as characters have confused, crisscrossing conversations, more with themselves than each other. The audience is amused and it threatens to tip over into laughing “at” these characters. It sometimes seems like a comic, retirement home version of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (an adaptation of which is being staged up the road at the Old Vic), with the ward’s senior carer, Hazel (Llewella Gideon), a kindly version of Nurse Ratched. But it p...
Mako Nishimura fought her way into the Japanese underworld, but drug addiction and the slow demise of organised crime gangs almost destroyed her In almost 40 years, Mako Nishimura never lost a fight. She told me this as if it were as obvious as night following day. Nishimura is 5ft-nothing and slight of build. She is also probably the only woman ever to have been a full-fledged yakuza, a member of...
Mako Nishimura fought her way into the Japanese underworld, but drug addiction and the slow demise of organised crime gangs almost destroyed her In almost 40 years, Mako Nishimura never lost a fight. She told me this as if it were as obvious as night following day. Nishimura is 5ft-nothing and slight of build. She is also probably the only woman ever to have been a full-fledged yakuza, a member of Japan’s feared and rule-bound criminal underworld. She must have defeated many male gangsters. How, I asked her, did she do it? “First the legs,” she said, hands clasped, maintaining the calm demeanour of a village priest. “You cut him down with a club or a plank of wood.” Then you get to work. Nishimura’s relaxed attitude to violence – you suspect, speaking to her, that it’s a little more than that – is what first caught the attention of yakuza members in 1986, when she was a 19-year-old runaway and former juvenile-prison inmate living in Gifu, a city near Nagoya. One night that year, Nishimura received a phone call. A pregnant friend named Aya was in trouble. Nishimura grabbed a baseball bat, ran down the street and found Aya surrounded by five men. When one of them kicked Aya in the belly, Nishimura yelled for her friend to run, then went for the attackers with her bat. Continue reading...
Think balance, diversity and routine “Our gut is a complex machine,” says Dr Ajay Verma, a consultant gastroenterologist at Kettering general hospital in Northamptonshire. “It is constantly providing us with the nutrition we need, initially to grow and develop, and then for us to survive, thrive and repair from injury and illness.” How can we keep it functioning well? Put simply: “Make sure what y...
Think balance, diversity and routine “Our gut is a complex machine,” says Dr Ajay Verma, a consultant gastroenterologist at Kettering general hospital in Northamptonshire. “It is constantly providing us with the nutrition we need, initially to grow and develop, and then for us to survive, thrive and repair from injury and illness.” How can we keep it functioning well? Put simply: “Make sure what you put into it is balanced, and that you clear out its waste products adequately,” says Verma. “In a general gastroenterology clinic, the most common conditions we see are irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), gastroesophageal reflux disease, inflammatory bowel disease and constipation,” says Dr Nisha Patel, a consultant gastroenterologist and interventional endoscopist at Imperial College healthcare NHS trust in London. “A healthy gut is built on three main things: balance, diversity and routine.” Give your gut a break The starting point for good gastric health is focusing on a diet that is high in fibre, fruit, vegetables, legumes and wholegrains, says Patel, and avoiding irritants: “alcohol, caffeine, fatty or spicy foods and artificial sweeteners. We know that large, late meals can also trigger gastrointestinal symptoms.” Ultimately it is about “everything in moderation and giving your gut a break sometimes”, says Verma. “If you’ve had a heavy, rich meal one day, then the next day have something a bit lighter, so it can recover from the excesses.” View image in fullscreen Kiwi is a great remedy for constipation. Photograph: Anne DEL SOCORRO/Getty Images “Studies have shown that a Mediterranean diet leads to better digestive health,” says Dr Nurulamin Noor, a clinical lecturer in gastroenterology at the University of Cambridge and Cambridge University Hospitals. “So eat plenty of fruit, vegetables and fish, and try to reduce or have a low intake of processed foods, high dairy foods and red meats.” What are some of the best things to eat to aid digestion? “Kiwi is one of the mo...
Who says hair can’t be art? We meet Taiba Akhuetie, who uses flowing human and synthetic locks to take brollies, tables, chairs, lampshades, handbags and more into a wild and wavy new dimension Taiba Akhuetie’s art is uncomfortable to look at. This is mostly because you’re not sure whether you’re in the presence of something alive or dead. She uses hair as her medium, constructing mundane items ou...
Who says hair can’t be art? We meet Taiba Akhuetie, who uses flowing human and synthetic locks to take brollies, tables, chairs, lampshades, handbags and more into a wild and wavy new dimension Taiba Akhuetie’s art is uncomfortable to look at. This is mostly because you’re not sure whether you’re in the presence of something alive or dead. She uses hair as her medium, constructing mundane items out of synthetic and human locks. Handbags, mirrors, rocking chairs and umbrellas are adorned with long, chunky braids and loose, pin-straight strands. The result is that these inanimate objects take on the eerie quality of taxidermy. Akhuetie, whose work is about to go on show at the Sarabande Foundation in London, has memories of being fascinated by hair in her childhood. “We used to go to my mum’s friend’s house …” She stops and quickly corrects herself. “My auntie’s – she would be called auntie, obviously.” Akhuetie would watch her “auntie” braiding her sister’s hair, taken aback by how quickly her fingers moved. She also remembers doing plaits for her friends at school in Kingston, Surrey, and feeling that she was naturally good at it. Continue reading...
After more than a decade of global consultation, polycystic ovary syndrome – which affects as many as one in eight women – has been renamed. The condition is caused by high levels of androgens, which can lead to symptoms such as excess hair, weight gain and irregular periods. To understand why campaigners wanted it renamed, and what its new name – polyendocrine metabolic ovarian syndrome (PMOS) – ...
After more than a decade of global consultation, polycystic ovary syndrome – which affects as many as one in eight women – has been renamed. The condition is caused by high levels of androgens, which can lead to symptoms such as excess hair, weight gain and irregular periods. To understand why campaigners wanted it renamed, and what its new name – polyendocrine metabolic ovarian syndrome (PMOS) – could mean for patients, Madeleine Finlay hears from the Guardian’s science correspondent, Nicola Davis, and Rachel, a campaigner from the charity Verity ‘Unprecedented’ global effort leads to renaming of polycystic ovary syndrome – and fresh hope for millions of women Support the Guardian: theguardian.com/sciencepod Continue reading...
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kyoshino/E+ via Getty Images 8:30 AM Housing Starts and Permits Housing starts measure the initial construction of single-family and multi-family units on a monthly basis. Affordability weighs on housing, with the consensus looking for starts down to a 1.410-million-unit rate from 1.502 million in March. 8:30 AM Jobless Claims New unemployment claims are compiled weekly to show the number of indiv...
kyoshino/E+ via Getty Images 8:30 AM Housing Starts and Permits Housing starts measure the initial construction of single-family and multi-family units on a monthly basis. Affordability weighs on housing, with the consensus looking for starts down to a 1.410-million-unit rate from 1.502 million in March. 8:30 AM Jobless Claims New unemployment claims are compiled weekly to show the number of individuals who filed for unemployment insurance for the first time. Claims are expected to continue edging up to 213K from 211K last week and 199K the week before that. 8:30 AM Philadelphia Fed Manufacturing Index The general conditions index from this business outlook survey is a diffusion index of manufacturing conditions within the Philadelphia Federal Reserve district. A retreat to a moderate 15.0 figure is the call, down from 26.7 in April and 18.1 in March. 9:45 AM PMI Composite Flash The flash Composite Purchasing Managers' Index, or PMI, provides an early estimate of current private sector output by combining information obtained from surveys of around 1,000 manufacturing and service sector companies. Manufacturing is expected at 53.5 versus 54.5 and services at 51.2 versus 51.0. 10:30 AM EIA Natural Gas Report The Energy Information Administration, or EIA, provides weekly information on natural gas stocks in underground storage for the U.S. and five regions of the country. 11:00 AM Kansas City Fed Manufacturing Index The Kansas City Fed index offers a monthly assessment of change in the region's manufacturing sector. 12:20 PM Thomas Barkin Speaks Richmond Federal Reserve Bank President Thomas Barkin speaks before the Urban Land Institute Triangle Capital Markets Lunch Event. 1:00 PM 10-Yr TIPS Auction The Treasury sells Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities, also known as TIPS, at regularly scheduled auctions. 4:30 PM Fed Balance Sheet The Fed's balance sheet is a weekly report presenting a consolidated balance sheet for all 12 Reserve Banks that lists factors supply...
Biotech company Imperagen announced on Thursday a £5 million ($6.7 million) seed round led by PXN Ventures, with participation from IQ Capital and Northern Gritstone. The company was founded in 2021 by Manchester Institute of Biotechnology scientists Dr. Andrew Currin, Dr. Tim Eyes, and Dr. Andy Almond and spun out of the university. The startup seeks to improve enzyme engineering by making it fas...
Biotech company Imperagen announced on Thursday a £5 million ($6.7 million) seed round led by PXN Ventures, with participation from IQ Capital and Northern Gritstone. The company was founded in 2021 by Manchester Institute of Biotechnology scientists Dr. Andrew Currin, Dr. Tim Eyes, and Dr. Andy Almond and spun out of the university. The startup seeks to improve enzyme engineering by making it faster, more efficient, and less costly than the slower, more physical, trial-and-error-focused process used now. Imperagen is using three core technologies as it seeks to redefine enzyme engineering. Specifically, it uses a quantum physics-based simulation instead of trial-and-error enzyme mutations in a lab. Imperagen predicts the behavior of enzyme variants on a computer using advanced quantum physics modeling that can explore millions of mutations, the company said. Then it translates this information into its custom AI models, trained on the enzyme problems Imperagen seeks to explore. Finally, to retain its AI models, Imperagen uses robots and automation to generate experimental data, which is fed back to the AI model, in a process called closed-loop simulation. Enzymes are incredibly important across many industries, especially in pharmaceuticals, as they are essential to drug development. Startups like Imperagen are hoping to speed up enzyme engineering because it can have a domino effect, making, for example, drug discovery faster and more efficient. Enzymes are also used in sectors like food, biofuels, and agriculture. Experts in sustainability are also looking to enzymes — and the AI technologies surrounding them — to make industrial production and manufacturing more sustainable. Others in this space include Biomatter, Cradle Bio, and Absci. On Thursday, Imperagen also announced that Guy Levy-Yurista will assume the role of CEO. Speaking to TechCrunch, he said that right now, the process of enzyme engineering is falling short, where even many new AI-powered technolog...
Lately, I often meet people outside Spain who praise the prime minister, Pedro Sánchez. In Britain, Italy or the US, friends, acquaintances or random people who learn I am Spanish offer admiring words about his positions on Gaza and Iran. It’s understandable. Sánchez spoke out against Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump earlier and more forcefully than most European leaders did, with a powerful me...
Lately, I often meet people outside Spain who praise the prime minister, Pedro Sánchez. In Britain, Italy or the US, friends, acquaintances or random people who learn I am Spanish offer admiring words about his positions on Gaza and Iran. It’s understandable. Sánchez spoke out against Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump earlier and more forcefully than most European leaders did, with a powerful message on international law. And the Spanish leader has been one of the clearest and most effective advocates for immigration in one of the fastest-growing countries in the west. Most Spaniards back Sanchez’s outspoken positions on Israel-Palestine and his economic case for immigration. So how can it be that his party, the centre-left PSOE, has just lost its fourth regional election in six months and appears headed for defeat in next year’s general election? The results in Andalucía, the most populous region in Spain and one of the nation’s poorest, are particularly devastating for the socialists, who governed there for almost 40 years. The party’s first prime minister after Franco’s death, Felipe González, is from the regional capital, Seville, and the PSOE’s national successes in the 1980s were deeply rooted in Andalucía. On Sunday, María Jesús Montero, a former minister in Sánchez’s government, delivered the party’s worst result in the region since the restoration of democracy in Spain, securing just 22.7% of the vote – about half the tally the party was securing at elections in the 2000s. The beneficiary of the socialists’ defeat is not just their traditional opponent, the centre-right Partido Popular (PP), but the far-right Vox, because the PP’s insufficient majority means it will need Vox support to govern. The PP’s own national corruption scandals and public health service mismanagement saw Andalucían president Juanma Moreno lose seats on Sunday too. Meanwhile the leftist, regionalist Adelante Andalucía emerged as the other unexpected winner of the election, going fro...
The Iran war is piling pressure on emerging Asian markets, pushing some currencies and bond yields toward levels once considered unlikely. As the conflict drags on, some analysts are mapping out more extreme bearish scenarios. That includes India’s rupee weakening to 100 per dollar, the Indonesian rupiah sliding to 18,000, and the Philippine peso depreciating to 65 as high energy prices fuel infla...
The Iran war is piling pressure on emerging Asian markets, pushing some currencies and bond yields toward levels once considered unlikely. As the conflict drags on, some analysts are mapping out more extreme bearish scenarios. That includes India’s rupee weakening to 100 per dollar, the Indonesian rupiah sliding to 18,000, and the Philippine peso depreciating to 65 as high energy prices fuel inflation and weigh on import-dependent economies. Bond markets are also feeling the strain. Benchmark yields in India may test peaks last seen in 2022, while the head of the money market association in the Philippines say yields may climb toward 8%, a multi-year high. Asia is reeling from a more than 40% surge in crude prices since the war broke out late February. The pain is being felt most acutely in India, Indonesia and the Philippines, which rely on foreign capital to fund current-account deficits. Rising US Treasury yields have further dent the appeal of emerging-market assets, pressuring central banks to tighten policy even as the economic fallout from the conflict deepens. Indonesia has already moved to defend the rupiah, with the central bank surprising markets on Wednesday with a larger-than-expected rate hike and a pledge to step up currency intervention. “The deterioration in import costs relative to export prices will continue to weigh on the currencies of net oil importers” if energy prices continue to rise, said Rajeev De Mello , global macro portfolio manager at Gamma Asset Management SA. Higher crude prices may also hurt bonds, as they stoke inflation or widen fiscal deficits where authorities absorb part of the shock through fuel subsidies, he said. The rupiah, rupee and the peso have been among the worst-performing emerging-market currencies, falling between 4.5% and 6.5% since the war began. Read More: India Mulls All Options, Including Rate Hike, as Rupee Slumps Aberdeen Investments and MetLife Investment Management are among those that see the possibility o...
J Studios/DigitalVision via Getty Images Shares of the Baldwin Insurance Group ( BWIN ) have been a very poor performer over the past year, losing nearly half of their value. The stock has been weighed down by its heavy debt load and a slowing of organic growth. Beyond that, AI disruption fears have pressured valuation. I last covered shares in February when I upgraded the stock to a "buy," given ...
J Studios/DigitalVision via Getty Images Shares of the Baldwin Insurance Group ( BWIN ) have been a very poor performer over the past year, losing nearly half of their value. The stock has been weighed down by its heavy debt load and a slowing of organic growth. Beyond that, AI disruption fears have pressured valuation. I last covered shares in February when I upgraded the stock to a "buy," given my view that AI fears had become excessive. This call has been premature, with shares losing a further 13% since then. With updated financials, now is a good time to revisit Baldwin. Seeking Alpha In the company's first quarter , Baldwin earned $0.63, which matched estimates as revenue grew 29% to $532 million. As a reminder, year-over-year comparisons were distorted by its acquisition of CAC, exaggerating revenue growth. Organic revenue growth, a much better indicator of how the underlying business is performing, grew a much more modest 2%. Its Medicare business was a 110bp headwind to revenue growth, and that should be gone by H2 as it laps the difficult comparisons. In the quarter, Baldwin generated $137 million of EBITDA. Margins were 25.8%, which was down 170bps from last year, primarily due to increased profit sharing and the CAR business. Baldwin Separately, I would note that, like many (but not all) companies, Baldwin excludes share-based compensation from its share count, a practice I dislike because this is still a true expense. BWIN's share-based comp is also fairly high; it was $12.8 million in Q1. Adding this expense back would reduce BWIN's EPS by about $0.07 to $0.56. I expect full-year share-based comp to have a ~$0.30 impact on EPS. Drilling into segment results, Insurance Advisory Solutions revenue grew 45% to $331 million, though organic growth was just 4%; the CAC acquisition significantly impacted results. Adjusted EBITDA grew 37% to $99 million as margins compressed 190bps to 30%. As the CAC acquisition is fully integrated, we should see margins improv...
PM Images/DigitalVision via Getty Images On May 8, private mortgage insurance provider Essent Group ( ESNT ) released its Q1 2026 financial results before the market opened. Earnings per share of $1.82 were 5.8% better than previous estimates and 7.7% ahead of the bottom line from Q1 2025. Revenue of $336.1 million was $23.2 million better than expectations. The market reacted with some relief as ...
PM Images/DigitalVision via Getty Images On May 8, private mortgage insurance provider Essent Group ( ESNT ) released its Q1 2026 financial results before the market opened. Earnings per share of $1.82 were 5.8% better than previous estimates and 7.7% ahead of the bottom line from Q1 2025. Revenue of $336.1 million was $23.2 million better than expectations. The market reacted with some relief as the stock was up about 2.5% during the trading day following the news release. Essent Group is a company that I have followed for some time. I wrote two articles about ESNT in 2025, with the first one last April coming with a rating of Sell . I raised my opinion of the stock to a Hold in September of last year, with my improved outlook based on the company 's share repurchase plan and the prospect for lower mortgage rates that could provide welcome tailwinds to the US housing market. Since my first article was published, ESNT has gained 14.7%, while the S&P 500 has risen 36.0%. Many investors are drawn to Essent and its peers in the private mortgage insurance industry because of their relatively low valuations. With a PE of just 8.3, ESNT would seem to fall into the category of either value stock or value trap. Unfortunately for its shareholders, it appears the latter description is more appropriate at this time. I see no reason to upgrade Essent Holdings based on its most recent quarterly results. Company Overview Based in Hamilton, Bermuda, Essent Group is one of four publicly traded companies that focuses almost exclusively on writing policies for private mortgage insurance, or PMI. The company also generates income from two other sources: mortgage reinsurance and title insurance. Essent is the second largest company in its peer group by market cap. Its valuation of $5.57 billion trails only Enact Holdings ( ACT ), which has a market cap just over $6 billion. The other two players in this space are MGIC Investment Corporation ( MTG ), which is similar in size to ESNT, an...