Bloomberg (October 25)
“Thanks partly to the plunging costs of renewable energy… coal is in rapid retreat all over the world.” It is “dying faster than anybody expected” and not just in America’s heartland. “The profitability of coal-fired power is plunging” in Germany and “demand is dying even in Southeast Asia, long seen as a sort of industry firewall.”
Tags: Coal, Costs, Germany, Heartland, Plunging, Profitability, Renewable energy, Retreat, Southeast Asia
The Economist (December 10)
“For the first time since oil prices plunged in 2014, Big Oil is putting its head above the parapet to seek substantial new sources of crude that will tide it through the 2020s.” While this signals renewed confidence, the players remain extremely cost conscious, with the aim of staying lean to maintain profitability even if oil stays stuck around $50 per barrel.
Tags: Big oil, Confidence, Cost conscious, Crude, Lean, Oil, Plunge, Prices, Profitability
Institutional Investor (September 19)
“A sense of dissonance” is overcoming global markets, according to the Bank for International Settlements. “Falling bond yields are normally associated with subdued growth…yet stock markets around the world have rallied even as corporate profitability has lagged.” Furthermore, the ten-year yield on many major sovereigns is “running well below the nominal rate of growth in gross domestic product, breaking a 65-year pattern in which the two have tracked each other closely.”
Tags: Bank for International Settlements, Bond yields, Dissonance, GDP, Global markets, Growth, Profitability, Sovereigns, Stock markets
Bloomberg (July 8)
“Since its commercial introduction in 2007, the Airbus A380 has brought a long-lost sense of glamour back to travel…. Financially speaking, it’s a disaster of similarly grand proportions.” Airbus has “acknowledged it will never recoup the €25 billion ($32 billion)” of initial development costs. If production falls below 30 planes a year, there’s also a chance production could go back into the red, after only one year of profitability. “Axing the A380 outright” still remains “hard to do. Besides the embarrassment of admitting defeat on the program,” write downs that would ripple through the company and much of Europe.
Tags: A380, Airbus, Development costs, Disaster, Embarrassment, Europe, Glamour, Planes, Production, Profitability, Recoup, Write-downs
