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“Post-IPO, our Canadian business will trade exclusively on the Toronto Stock Exchange, and our U.S. business will trade exclusively on a U.S. exchange,” said CEO Kurt MacAlpine, seen here on Dec. 20, 2019. Tijana Martin/Tausi Insider CI Financial Corp. says it plans to file for a stock offering for its U.S. wealth-management business later this month, the next step in a plan to divide the company into two businesses, one on each side of the border. The plan includes delisting the current company’s shares from the New York Stock Exchange, chief executive officer Kurt MacAlpine told CI investors Thursday as part of the company’s earnings call. “Post-IPO, our Canadian business will trade exclusively on the Toronto Stock Exchange, and our U.S. business will trade exclusively on a U.S. exchange,” Mr. MacAlpine said. “The listings will be reflective of the primary market that each business operates in.” CI said the plan also may include selling a larger proportion of the U.S. business th...

Hydro One Ltd. H-T reported a third-quarter profit of $307-million, up from $300-million in the same quarter last year. The power utility says the profit amounted to 51 cents per diluted share for the quarter ended Sept. 30. The result compared with a profit of 50 cents per diluted share in the third quarter of 2021. Revenue for the quarter totalled $2.03-billion, up from $1.91-billion in the same quarter last year. Revenue, net of purchased power, was $1.07-billion, up from $980-million a year ago. Hydro One is Ontario’s largest electricity transmission and distribution provider. https://www.tausiinsider.com/hydro-one-reports-307-million-third-quarter-profit-up-from-300-million-a-year-ago/?feed_id=427565&_unique_id=649b208e0dec3

SpaceX has bought an advertising package on Twitter for its satellite internet service Starlink, said Elon Musk, who owns the rocket company and the social media platform that is seeing an exodus of advertisers. “SpaceX Starlink bought a tiny – not large – ad package to test effectiveness of Twitter advertising in Australia & Spain. Did same for FB/Insta/Google,” Musk tweeted on Monday. Twitter TWTR-N, which generated more than 90 per cent of its second-quarter revenue from ad sales, has seen advertisers flee on fears that Musk would change the company’s content moderation rules. Companies including General Motors Co, General Mills , Mondelez International and Volkswagen AG paused advertising on the platform after Musk acquired it last month. “At the moment, most clients are suspending their activities (on Twitter) because they’re worried about extreme content and content moderation on the site,” S4 Capital’s Martin Sorrell said. The chief executive of Tesla Inc and SpaceX had la...

Stelco Holdings Inc. says its net earnings for the third quarter ended Sept. 30 were down by almost 74 per cent year-over-year to $158-million, or $2.33 per diluted share. The Hamilton-based steelmaker says challenging market conditions in the third quarter, which are expected to continue, included lower steel prices and inflationary pressure. The company’s revenue was $217-million for the quarter, down 38 per cent from last year and down 18 per cent from the second quarter. The company says its revenue decrease was primarily due to a 36 per cent decline in average selling price per net ton, as well as lower shipping volumes and lower non-steel sales, all compared to last year. However, executive chairman and chief executive Alan Kestenbaum says despite inflation and downward steel pricing trends, the company saw shipping volumes increase over last quarter. The company reiterated its fourth-quarter guidance that lower prices and shorter lead times will continue to affect results thro...

NFI Group Inc. NFI-T reported a loss of US$42.6-million in its latest quarter compared with a loss of US$15.4-million in the same quarter last year as its revenue edged higher. NFI chief executive Paul Soubry says the results reflect the ongoing impacts of unreliable supplier performance, associated production inefficiencies and heightened inflation on input costs. The bus maker, which keeps its books in U.S. dollars, says the loss amounted to 56 cents per share for the company’s third quarter compared with a loss of 22 cents per share a year earlier. Revenue for the quarter totalled US$514.0-million, up from US$492.0 in its third quarter of 2021. On an adjusted basis, NFI says it lost 63 cents per share in its latest quarter compared with an adjusted loss of 16 cents per share in the same quarter last year. The company says it is in talks with Export Development Canada, the Manitoba government and other banking syndicate members regarding credit facility covenant relief and potentia...

The Cisco Systems headquarters in Issy-les-Moulineaux, France, on Aug. 6. SARAH MEYSSONNIER/Reuters Cisco Systems Inc CSCO-Q raised its full-year revenue and profit forecast amid easing supply chain hurdles and announced $600-million in severance and other charges related to a new restructuring, which could impact roughly 5 per cent of its work force. Shares of the company rose nearly 5 per cent in extended trading on Wednesday. The company said the restructuring plan will begin in the second quarter of fiscal year 2023. “This is not about reducing our work force – in fact we will have roughly the same number of employees at the end of this fiscal year as we had when we started,” Cisco said, adding it would focus its resources on its enterprise networking and security businesses. The restructuring comes at a time when most companies including Amazon.com Inc and Facebook’s parent Meta Platforms Inc are making deep cuts to their employee base to navigate a potential downturn in the ec...

Elon Musk said on Monday that Apple Inc AAPL-Q has mostly stopped advertising on Twitter, the most high-profile company to pull ads from the social media platform over concerns about content moderation policies under its new owner. The move aligns the iPhone maker with a rising list of firms from General Mills Inc to luxury automaker Audi of America that have stopped or paused advertising on Twitter since the billionaire’s $44-billion buyout last month. “Apple has mostly stopped advertising on Twitter. Do they hate free speech in America?,” Musk said in a tweet. He later tagged Apple Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook’s Twitter account in another tweet, asking “what’s going on here?” Musk said “yes” in response to a user question on whether Apple was threatening Twitter’s presence in the App Store or making moderation demands. Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The world’s most valuable firm spent an estimated $131,600 on Twitter ads between Nov. 10 and Nov. 16...

BRP Inc. DOO-T reported its third-quarter profit and revenue rose compared with a year ago and raised guidance for its full year. The Ski-Doo and Sea-Doo maker says it earned $141.6-million or $1.76 per diluted share for the quarter ended Oct. 31, up from $127.7-million or $1.53 per diluted share in the same quarter last year. Revenue for the quarter totalled $2.71-billion, up from $1.59-billion a year earlier. On a normalized basis, BRP said it earned $3.64 per diluted share in its latest quarter, up from a normalized profit of $1.48 per diluted share in the same quarter last year. In its outlook, BRP said it expected revenue for its full year to rise 27 to 32 per cent compared with earlier guidance for growth between 26 and 31 per cent. Normalized earnings per share for the full year are now expected to be between $11.65 and $12, up from its previous forecast for between $11.30 and $11.65. “BRP delivered record fiscal 2023 third-quarter results, well ahead of expectations, driven b...

Analysts at Piper Sandler on Thursday cut their revenue and iPhone sales estimates for Apple Inc’s AAPL-Q December quarter, as Beijing’s strict lockdowns crimp production at the world’s biggest iPhone factory in Zhengzhou, China. The brokerage now expects $119-billon in revenue for the current quarter from an earlier projection of $127.3-billion, with iPhone unit sales of about 74 million against 83 million previously expected. “More than 50 per cent of assembled iPhones come from Foxconn’s Zhengzhou plant. Majority of the disruptions took place in the month of November where utilization for the plant may have fallen to 50 per cent or below,” the analysts said. China’s manufacturing and services activities shrank further in November to seven-month lows, official data showed, stung by the country’s zero-COVID policy and rising infections that analysts said will hurt the economy well into 2023. Production woes for Apple were heightened by a rare example of large-scale labour unrest in ...

Lululemon Athletica Inc LULU-Q said on Thursday inventories surged in the third quarter as consumers pulled back on spending. The athleisure apparel maker’s shares were down 10 per cent in extended trading. The company, however, raised its full-year revenue and profit forecasts, signalling strong demand from affluent U.S. consumers for its high-priced yoga pants, running shorts and belt bags. Consumers at the higher end of the income rung who have been undeterred by decades-high inflation have shrugged off a hit from price increases from companies like Lululemon, helping consistent demand for its comfortable sportswear. The yogawear maker like many other U.S. companies had been raising prices on selective products to offset higher freight and manufacturing charges driven by lingering industry-wide supply chain challenges and the Ukraine war. The company now expects full-year 2022 revenue between $7.94 billion and $7.99 billion, up from prior forecast of $7.87 billion to $7.94 billion...

Twitter Inc will roll out new controls as soon as next week to let companies prevent their ads from appearing above or below tweets containing certain keywords, the social media platform told advertisers in an email on Thursday. The new controls are part of Twitter’s effort to reassure and lure back advertisers that have pulled ads off the platform since it was purchased in October by billionaire Elon Musk, amid reports from civil rights groups that hate speech has risen since the acquisition and after several banned or suspended accounts were reinstated. Twitter earns nearly 90% of its revenue from selling digital ads. Musk recently attributed a “massive drop in revenue” to civil rights organizations that have pressured brands to pause their Twitter ads. In a call on Thursday with an advertising industry group, a Twitter representative said the platform was considering bringing its content moderators, many of whom are contracted through third-party vendors, in-house, according to a ...

Lower expenses and higher revenue helped boost Laurentian Bank of Canada’s LB-T profits to $55.7 million for the fourth quarter. The Montreal-based bank said Friday the earnings worked out to $1.26 per share for the quarter ending Oct. 31, compared with a loss of $2.39 per share a year earlier when it took impairment and restructuring charges of $189.4 million or $3.40 per share. The charges last year were related to a strategic review of the bank’s operations and a writedown of its personal banking segment as the bank embarked on a turnaround plan that chief executive Rania Llewellyn said is going well. “I am extremely pleased that we exceeded all of our financial targets in this first year of our three-year strategic plan,” she said in a statement. Llewellyn said the results speak in part to the bank’s focus on cost discipline, with expenses down from last year when it took the charges, while adjusted non-interest expenses were up four per cent from last year but down two per cent ...

There’s still plenty of good news in the tech sector, despite the recent barrage of bad headlines. The Technology Fast 50 program, presented by Deloitte, celebrates the supersonic growth seen by Canada’s tech world in recent years. Meet two Canadian companies that are changing the tech world For 25 years, the Technology Fast 50 program has ranked the three-year revenue growth of 50 Canadian tech companies in a broad range of sectors from real estate to health care, to finance and semiconductors. Each of the winners saw growth of more than 400% in the past three years, with Nobul Corp., a real estate marketplace site for agents and hopeful home buyers, grabbing the top spot with an eye-popping 72,944% growth rate. To be eligible for the program, companies must be headquartered in Canada; invest a minimum of 5% of gross revenue in research and development; own proprietary technology sold to customers in products or services that contribute to a majority of the company’s operating reven...

Construction workers use a lift along a wall of bitcoin mining at Bitfarms in Saint Hyacinthe, Quebec. Bitcoin was born from the 2008 financial crisis. Now crypto has its own crisis. LARS HAGBERG/AFP/Getty Images There’s a certain irony in the saga of the FTX Trading Ltd. cryptocurrency exchange – an irony that, perhaps, might be a good thing for the industry. Bitcoin, the original cryptocurrency and progenitor of the industry, was created in the wake of 2008 financial crisis. Its creation was fuelled by a disdain for what the banks did, their questionable accounting practices and rampant risk-taking that caused the crisis. Bitcoin, which envisions a currency system without intermediaries or overseers, had wanted to cut out the financial institutions, central banks and governments. The utopia promised was a world in which a financial crisis could not happen (and if one did, the ones responsible would not be rewarded with bailouts). Now, though, FTX, a leading institution in crypto, s...

Italy’s Chiesi Farmaceutici said on Sunday it will acquire Ireland-based drugmaker Amryt Pharma Plc, which has products and drugs in development for treating rare diseases, in a deal valued at $1.48 billion. The total value of the all-cash deal represents a 107 per cent premium over Dublin, Ireland-based Amryt’s ADS closing price of $7.00 on Jan. 6, the companies said in a joint announcement. Amryt shareholders will receive $14.50 per ADS cash upfront, plus Contingent Value Rights (CVR) of up to an additional $2.50 per ADS based on achievement of certain milestones by Filsuvez, a drug approved in Europe for an inherited skin disease called epidermolysis bullosa. “This addition of the Amryt portfolio, as well as their expertise, will help us on our journey to bring medicines to patients, no matter how rare their condition may be,” Chiesi Group Chief Executive Marco Vecchia said in a statement. For first nine months of 2022, Amryt reported $188.8 million in revenue, and reaffirmed its ...

Jane Software co-founders Alison Taylor and Trevor Johnston at the company's headquarters, in North Vancouver. DARRYL DYCK/Tausi Insider It was August, 2021, and the technology sector was overheating. Companies were going public at a torrid clip. Each week another Canadian startup became a “unicorn” valued at US$1-billion. Investors fired money bombs at young enterprises seemingly with abandon and scant diligence. Revenue mattered more than profit, which didn’t matter at all. Alison Taylor was unimpressed by the unicorn mania. She had another way of describing her North Vancouver, B.C., company, Jane Software Inc., whose online platform is used by health professionals such as massage therapists and psychologists to run their practices. The co-chief executive called Jane a camel – “a company that can sustain itself through the market’s ups and downs,” she explained in an interview at the time. “Camels can walk through the desert with ample storage of what they need to make it thro...

A sign outside AstraZeneca's North America headquarters, in Wilmington, Del., on March 22, 2021. Rachel Wisniewski/Reuters AstraZeneca AZN-Q said on Monday it had struck a deal to buy U.S.-based drug developer CinCor Pharma Inc CINC-Q for up to $1.8-billion to increase its stock of heart and kidney drugs. Core to the deal is CinCor’s experimental therapy baxdrostat, which is in development to treat conditions including high blood pressure and chronic kidney disease. AstraZeneca aims to combine baxdrostat with its own Farxiga, a diabetes drug whose sales ballooned after it was also shown to benefit patients with heart failure and kidney disease. Farxiga, whose sales jumped by almost 50 per cent during the first nine months of 2022 to reach $3.2-billion, belongs to a highly competitive class of drugs that includes rivals such as Boehringer Ingelheim and Eli Lilly’s Jardiance. AstraZeneca gets about a third of its revenue from cancer drugs, but its heart, kidney and diabetes medicin...

Oil tanks at a terminal near the port city of Nakhodka, Russia, on Aug. 12, 2022. TATIANA MEEL/Reuters A price cap and European Union embargo on most Russian oil have cut into Moscow’s revenue from fossil fuels, but the Kremlin is still earning substantial cash to fund its action in Ukraine because the US$60-per-barrel cap was “too lenient,” researchers said Wednesday. The combination of the cap by the Group of Seven major democracies and the EU ban are costing Russia an estimated €160-million ($231-million) per day, the Helsinki-based Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air said in a study of the first weeks of the sanctions, which took effect Dec. 5. But the group’s figures showed that Russia was still taking in €640-million a day from fossil fuels, down from €1-billion daily from March to May, 2022, just after the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine on Feb. 24. Russia would lose an additional 120 million a day starting Feb. 5, when the EU bars imports of refined oil products such...

American Airlines planes sit on the tarmac at LaGuardia airport, in New York, on Jan. 11. ED JONES/AFP/Getty Images American Airlines Group Inc AAL-Q on Thursday forecast a higher fourth-quarter profit on strong demand for travel during the key holiday season, sending its shares up more than 5 per cent in premarket trading. The upbeat forecast comes at a time when a worsening economic outlook coupled with high inflation has sparked concerns about consumer demand. Shares of other airlines including Delta Air Lines Inc DAL-N, Southwest Airlines Co LUV-N and United Airlines Holdings Inc UAL-Q were also up between 1 per cent and 3 per cent premarket. The fourth quarter was difficult for several U.S. carriers as an industry-wide pilot shortage made it tougher for carriers to ramp up capacity and capitalize on a booming travel demand. During the fourth quarter, American Airlines’ capacity was down 6.1 per cent versus the fourth quarter of 2019, and near the midpoint of its prior guidance o...