2025-04-29 21:20

NEW YORK, April 29 (Reuters) - U.S. electric utility Entergy (ETR.N) , opens new tab is looking to expand its nuclear power output by upgrading its existing plants across the U.S. South while it considers advanced nuclear technologies, company executives said on Tuesday. U.S. nuclear power, which is virtually carbon free, has been in high demand in recent years, particularly as Big Tech grapples with balancing growing electricity needs with climate-driven energy pledges. Sign up here. Entergy recently completed a refueling outage at its River Bend nuclear plant and plans work at the site that will clear the way for expanding the 967-megawatt St. Francisville, Louisiana, plant by about 40 MW, the company said on an earnings call with investors. The power company is considering adding 275 MW of nuclear electric capacity through other upgrades of its existing fleet. It has also secured a site permit for a new nuclear reactor in Mississippi and is in discussion with potential buyers of any power that would be produced from a potential plant. Advanced nuclear technologies, like small modular reactors, are untested in the U.S. New nuclear builds have typically faced cost overruns, with some being abandoned during construction due to regulatory restraints. Entergy is attempting to manage construction risk with any nuclear build, said Entergy CEO Drew Marsh on the call. "We need to be able to solve that commercial question up front to move forward with nuclear on a more rapid pace," Marsh said. https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/entergy-eyes-adding-more-nuclear-power-us-south-2025-04-29/

2025-04-29 21:18

Trump's order aims to boost U.S. access to critical minerals Environmental groups warn of irreversible biodiversity loss Congressional hearing shows partisan divide on deep-sea mining April 29 (Reuters) - Deep-sea mining firm The Metals Co asked the Trump administration on Tuesday to approve its plans to mine the international seabed, making it the first such company to seek the government's permission to operate outside U.S. territorial waters. Last week President Donald Trump signed an order aiming to jumpstart mining in both domestic and international waters in an attempt to boost U.S. access to critical minerals and reduce China's market control. Sign up here. The move ratchets up tension between Washington and the United Nations-backed International Seabed Authority, which has been crafting mining standards for more than a decade, while China objected to the order as a violation of international law. Parts of the world's oceans are estimated to contain large amounts of potato-shaped rocks known as polymetallic nodules filled with the building blocks for electric vehicles and electronics. Supporters of deep-sea mining say it would lessen the need for large mining operations on land, which are often unpopular with host communities. Environmental groups are calling for the activity to be banned, warning that industrial operations on the ocean floor could cause irreversible biodiversity loss. Any country can allow deep-sea mining in its own territorial waters, roughly up to 200 nautical miles from shore, and companies are already lining up to mine U.S. waters. Vancouver-based The Metals Co asked the U.S. Department of Commerce's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for a commercial recovery permit under the Deep Seabed Hard Mineral Resources Act of 1980 to operate in part of the Pacific Ocean between Hawaii and Mexico known as the Clarion-Clipperton Zone. The application was timed to coincide with a Tuesday hearing on deep-sea mining by a U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee at which Gerard Barron, CEO of The Metals Co, testified. "America has an urgent need for critical minerals. It needs to secure these metals," said Barron, who estimated the company could extract more than 1 billion nodules containing manganese, copper, nickel and cobalt that would supply U.S. needs for decades. Glencore (GLEN.L) , opens new tab has agreed to buy metals the company extracts from the seabed. The Metals Co expects an initial determination for whether the commercial application meets U.S. regulatory requirements within 60 days, after which an environmental and technical review of the full application would commence. It also applied for two exploration licenses in the zone. Representatives for NOAA were not immediately available to comment. Greenpeace's Louisa Casson said the application would be remembered as an act of disregard for international law and scientific consensus and encouraged other governments to defend international rules and cooperation against "rogue" deep-sea mining. Shares of The Metals Co lost 1.7% to $3.25 in Tuesday afternoon trading. HEARING The congressional hearing was organized by Republicans, many of whom support the nascent deep-sea mining industry. "(It) can significantly help America buck the supply chain yoke placed on us by China and re-establish mineral independence," said Representative Paul Gosar, an Arizona Republican. Democrats pushed back, calling deep-sea mining uneconomical and a form of "subsidized plunder" of the world's oceans. "The industry's financial models are based on wildly optimistic assumptions and fail to reflect the volatility and reality of global mineral markets," said Representative Maxine Dexter, an Oregon Democrat. Privately-held Impossible Metals, which has asked Washington to auction American Samoa's minerals, told the hearing it had no plans to operate without conducting more environmental testing. An engineering expert from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology told the hearing the effects of deep-sea mining may not be as severe as some people have speculated but added the practice requires robust regulation. https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/deep-sea-mining-company-asks-trump-officials-approve-international-permit-2025-04-29/

2025-04-29 21:06

ORLANDO, Florida, April 29 (Reuters) - TRADING DAY Making sense of the forces driving global markets Sign up here. By Jamie McGeever, Markets Columnist The 100-day (trade) war Unlike the day before, Wall Street extended the broad-based upswing across Europe and Asia on Tuesday as investors shrugged off a record high U.S. trade deficit in March, and took heart from signs that global trade tensions continue to ease. Washington says it is making progress in trade talks with several countries, although a direct line to China has yet to be established. Could Beijing 'weaponize' its stash of Treasuries as part of the trade war with America? Unlikely, and below I explain why, but first, a roundup of today's market moves. I'd love to hear from you, so please reach out to me with comments at [email protected] , opens new tab. You can also follow me at @ReutersJamie and @reutersjamie.bsky.social. If you have more time to read, here are a few articles I recommend to help you make sense of what happened in markets today. Today's Key Market Moves Do you want to make a deal? If it was a calm day in terms of headline stock, bond and currency moves on Tuesday, there was huge churn under the surface, particularly in the shares of firms reporting first-quarter results and attempting to give guidance for the quarters ahead. The overall picture on Tuesday was reasonably upbeat. European shares rose for a sixth day, lifted by banks like HSBC and Deutsche Bank, while British stocks rose for a 12th day, a record winning streak last seen in December 2016-January 2017. Wall Street eventually made up its mind late in the day to join the rally. If markets are beholden to the constant twists and turns in the newsflow on tariffs and trade deals, investors definitely latched onto the positive ones on Tuesday. China has waived the 125% tariff on imports of ethane and some other products from the United States, U.S. trade secretary Howard Lutnick said a deal with an unnamed country has been reached, and President Donald Trump is set to soften auto tariffs. So even though Trump and China's President Xi Jinping may not be talking to each other yet, negotiations elsewhere are well underway. But investors' optimism may be fragile and fleeting - about 40 companies have removed or lowered their forward guidance in the first two weeks of the first-quarter earnings season, a Reuters analysis showed. Among them are General Motors, Sweden's Electrolux and Volvo, and Germany's Adidas and Porsche, who have pulled or slashed their 2025 forecasts because they don't have the visibility required to invest, spend, or plan ahead. Meanwhile, oil heavyweight BP reported a near-50% slump in profits and UPS said it would cut 20,000 jobs to lower costs. Cracks are starting to appear in the U.S. economy - data on Tuesday showed that pre-tariff stockpiling pushed the trade deficit to a record high in March, while job openings fell more than expected this month. Wednesday's earnings calendar is packed with major Asian, European and U.S. reports. The pick of the bunch will likely be from U.S. 'Magnificent Seven' constituents Microsoft and Meta. Investors are lurching between optimism, caution and pessimism on a daily basis, which explains why markets have largely flatlined for the last couple of weeks. This is a big week for earnings and economic data, and longer-term policy developments too. The U.S. Treasury on Wednesday announce its debt auction sizes for the coming quarter, and on Thursday the Bank of Japan sets interest rates. Why China won't 'weaponize' its U.S. Treasuries stash China's 'nuclear' option in its financial war with the United States has long been assumed to be rapidly liquidating its outsized Treasury bond holdings, as this could crash the dollar, jack up interest rates and disrupt the U.S. economy. Concerns about this potential threat have returned in recent weeks, as all-out trade war has broken out between the world's two largest economies. But this fear of 'mutually assured financial destruction' is, and has always been, a notion based more in myth than reality. Dollar-denominated assets made up 55% of China's official currency reserves at the end of 2019, the last official confirmation of this figure by China's State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE), down significantly from the peak of 79% in 2005. It was also below the prevailing global average in 2019 of 61%, according to International Monetary Fund data. Some of this has likely been offset by increased dollar holdings among state commercial banks, whose foreign portfolios are thought to be much more weighted toward dollar assets. But, like other countries, China has been steadily reducing its relative exposure to the greenback over the past 20 years. This trend is even clearer with regard to China's official holdings of U.S. Treasuries, which stood at $784 billion in February, according to U.S. Treasury data. That's down from a peak of $1.32 trillion in 2013 and is less than 3% of the $28 trillion Treasuries market, a far cry from the high of 14% that China commanded in 2011. China does own Treasuries held in other countries like Belgium, but again, the trend is clearly moving in the direction of less exposure to the U.S. These figures suggest that China's power to inflict damage in the U.S. bond market has been diluted considerably over the last decade. COULD THEY DO IT? Nevertheless, the outflows it could potentially trigger by selling are still huge in nominal terms. Could China sell large chunks of its Treasuries stash? Of course, anything is possible, especially now that the established global economic, financial and political norms of the past several decades are being rewritten. But it certainly wouldn't be in China's interest to do so. The obvious reason is the most pertinent: dumping Treasuries would crush the value of its own holdings, landing a risk-averse state with heavy losses. Poking Washington in the eye is one thing, shooting oneself in the foot is another. From a practical standpoint, it would also be extremely difficult. The market would almost certainly get wind that something was up and sell to get ahead of the game, again leaving Beijing with significant capital losses. Moreover, any market dysfunction would also quickly be met with large-scale buying from the Federal Reserve to ensure financial stability. And the last thing China needs in the face of weak growth, deflation and a crippling trade war with the U.S. is a stronger currency. Beijing would not necessarily have to buy yuan with the proceeds from any Treasury sales. But in its current situation, it would be counterproductive for Beijing to try to undermine the U.S. by weakening the dollar, even temporarily. "100-YEAR HORIZON" Instead, China could 'move up the curve' by allowing the Treasury notes it holds to mature, reinvesting the proceeds in bills or other cash instruments. That's a dollar-neutral policy, but it could still push long U.S. yields higher. "We know the U.S. is having some trouble selling notes - China could make that even harder," says Brad Setser, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. Beijing could also make stronger tweaks to its non-U.S. custody holdings of Treasuries, or Chinese state commercial banks could reduce their holdings, as neither would appear in official FX reserves data. But ultimately, China is probably stuck with the Treasuries it has, and the route to lowering that exposure will be the same as it has been for years: passive and gradual. At an event hosted by the Institute of International Finance in Washington last week, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said he wants to see quick "results" in fixing global trade, economic and financial imbalances. "Some countries might have a 100-years perspective. We don't," he quipped, clearly nodding to China. China's economic horizon may not be quite that long, but it is longer than Washington's. And as China considers what to do with its U.S. debt or dollar holdings, it will likely leave the rash policymaking to Washington and continue to play the long game. What could move markets tomorrow? Opinions expressed are those of the author. They do not reflect the views of Reuters News, which, under the Trust Principles , opens new tab, is committed to integrity, independence, and freedom from bias. Trading Day is also sent by email every weekday morning. Think your friend or colleague should know about us? Forward this newsletter to them. They can also sign up here. https://www.reuters.com/markets/global-markets-trading-day-graphic-pix-2025-04-29/

2025-04-29 21:02

SAO PAULO, April 29 (Reuters) - Brazilian steelmaker Gerdau (GGBR4.SA) , opens new tab remains optimistic about the performance of its North American operations, given a high order backlog, despite concerns generated by the U.S. trade policy, executives said on Tuesday. Gerdau reported that it has not seen reductions in customer orders in the U.S., where President Donald Trump's administration seeks to stimulate the return of production chains from various sectors back to the country. Sign up here. However, Gerdau decided to cancel studies for the implementation of a special steel mill in Mexico amid the creation of the 25% steel import tariff by the U.S., according to Chief Executive Gustavo Werneck. Gerdau's North American operation was responsible for 49% of the group's operating results in the first quarter. "Of course, some sectors are more concerned than others (about import tariffs), such as the automotive industry, but in general, we understand that we have a robust level of activity," said Gerdau's Chief Financial Rafael Japur. https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/brazils-gerdau-remains-optimistic-about-steel-orders-us-2025-04-29/

2025-04-29 21:00

CEO Niccol pauses Siren System rollout China market stabilizes after previous declines Shares down 6% in extended trade April 29 (Reuters) - Starbucks (SBUX.O) , opens new tab faces challenges in reviving its business, CEO Brian Niccol said on Tuesday, after the coffee giant posted disappointing global comparable sales and profit with inflation and economic uncertainty driving up costs and dampening U.S. demand. Investors have placed their bets on Niccol's turnaround strategy for the brand, whose sales have fallen for four straight quarters, by reducing production and service times and investing in stores to improve customer experience. Sign up here. "Our financial results don't yet reflect our progress, but we have real momentum with our 'Back to Starbucks' plan," Niccol said in a statement. Starbucks paused rolling out its Siren System store revamp program, launched under former CEO Laxman Narasimhan, because it was capital heavy, said Niccol, who had helped revive Chipotle Mexican Grill (CMG.N) , opens new tab as CEO of the burrito chain. The company will focus on investing in improving front-end delivery instead of kitchen equipment, Niccol said on a post-earnings call. "The equipment doesn't solve the customer experience that we need to provide." Niccol said Starbucks was improving service speed with the right staffing and deployment, and that its refreshed marketing was resonating with customers. Starbucks will also review its U.S. store portfolio as it rolls out labor-focused technological changes including a pilot program that allows customers to schedule their mobile orders, he said. However, consumers are growing more cautious as U.S. President Donald Trump's erratic trade tariffs have created economic uncertainty and threaten to fuel inflation. U.S. restaurant visits and spending weakened in February and March. Starbucks' shares fell 6.5% in extended trading. The stock, which had surged in the months following Niccol's appointment as CEO, is down about 7% so far this year. North American same-store sales fell 1% for the fiscal second quarter ended March 30, worse than the 0.24% drop estimated by analysts in an LSEG poll. The company said sales in Canada returned to growth in the quarter. TURNAROUND TIMELINE It may take time for traffic to reaccelerate because changes in stores and reinstating its coffee house roots could take at least another three to six months, said Bernstein analyst Danilo Gargiulo. Starbucks is paring down promotions and discounts, and relying less on its loyalty program as it invests in broader marketing. The average ticket, or amount spent by customers per visit, was up 3% in the second quarter. The company said it will localize and move production as needed to mitigate the impact of U.S. tariffs on imports from China. The company's international business improved slightly, with sales unchanged in China, its second-largest market, after four straight quarters of decline. Starbucks said it was committed to growing business in China long-term. International comparable sales rose 2%, compared with estimates of a 1.13% drop. Gross margin fell 590 basis points in the quarter and the company reported adjusted earnings per share of 41 cents, missing estimates of 49 cents. Total same-store sales declined 1% in the second quarter, compared with analysts' average estimate of a 0.26% fall. Comparable sales had declined 4% in the preceding three-month period. https://www.reuters.com/business/starbucks-posts-bigger-than-expected-drop-global-sales-2025-04-29/

2025-04-29 20:59

April 29 (Reuters) - First Solar (FSLR.O) , opens new tab lowered its annual sales and profit forecast on Tuesday due to near-term tariff-related challenges amid the ongoing U.S.-China trade war and tepid residential demand in the United States, sending its shares down 11% in after-hours trading. U.S. residential solar demand has remained weak due to high interest rates and metering reforms in top market California, which have reduced the credits customers receive for feeding excess electricity back into the grid. Sign up here. Earlier this month, U.S. trade officials finalized steep tariff levels on most solar cells imported from Southeast Asia, after American manufacturers complained that companies from the region were flooding the market with unfairly cheap goods. Despite additional tariffs on foreign-made products, module prices in the United States have not increased as expected because of a surge in solar imports in 2023 has resulted in high inventory levels. "Despite the near-term challenges presented by the new tariff regime, we believe that the long-term outlook for solar demand, particularly in our core U.S. market, remains strong, and that First Solar remains well-positioned to serve this demand," said CEO Mark Widmar. The company expects current-year net sales to be between $4.5 billion and $5.5 billion, compared to its previous projection of $5.3 billion to $5.8 billion. The solar company forecast 2025 earnings in the range of $12.50 per share to $17.50 per share, compared with its earlier forecast of a profit between $17.00 per share and $20.00 per share. The company reported a net income of $209.5 million for the quarter ended March 31, down about 11.4% from last year. First Solar reported net sales of $844.6 million for the first quarter, marking an increase of 6.4% compared to the same period last year. It reported an average selling price of 30.5 cents per watt, down 2.6% compared to the year-ago quarter. https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/first-solar-lowers-annual-sales-profit-forecast-near-term-tariff-troubles-2025-04-29/