Shane
Roers came from the family business in Fargo to Dickinson, where Roers
West has made a mark developing new projects for businesses, apartments
and homes.
Now, they're trying to weather the slowdown.
"I
think that there's definitely not a fear factor like there was in the
past, but I can tell you there's people not pulling the trigger on
stuff," Roers said. "As oil gets up to 40 bucks, maybe that will start
easing. If we can get up to 50 bucks -- it's going to take some time. If
it jumped up to 60 bucks tomorrow, it's not going to happen right away.
It's going to have to level off and get some stability until people
feel comfortable with it."
In Williston, hotels have the
biggest challenges. Twenty-two were built during the boom, and even
that wasn't enough back then. Now they have 1,800 open rooms and are
running at just 20 to 25 percent capacity, Rolfstad said.
"They're actually more on the bleeding edge than anybody," he said.
That's
one reason some in Williston want to shut down the remaining crew camps
for oil workers, allowing hotels to benefit from workers still here.
With
about 3,200 vacant apartments in Williston, Rolfstad figures about
6,400 bedrooms are vacant. And rents are down by "half at least," he
said.
May 4, 2016: Tesla earnings will be out later today. Right now, on a "down" day for the market, TSLA is down 4% -- down about $10 on a $220/share comapny. CNBC is reporting:
Analysts expect Tesla to report a loss of 58 cents per share on $1.6 billion in revenue, according to a Thomson Reuters consensus estimate. Its loss is forecast to be larger than the one posted in the prior-year period.
The electric automaker's shares dropped 4 percent Wednesday as it confirmed Greg Reichow, its vice president of production, will take a leave of absence after it finds a successor. Tesla's vice president of manufacturing, Josh Ensign, is also expected to depart.
Ford-brand SUVs best-ever April sales; Explorer up 22%; SUV sales up almost 8%
Ford F-Series best April since 2005; truck sales up almost 15%;
Ford Transit up 32%; best April van sales since 1978 -- 1978? wow. I was not even aware Ford has been selling vans since 1978 -- that's like a century ago, isn't it? In "dog years" it's 266 years ago
Lincoln sales up 20%; Lincoln SUV sales up 53%; MKX sales almost double
To meet the demands for pre-orders in the first six months after the new Model 3 is released, Tesla will have to ramp up from 20,000 autos/year to 54,000 Tesla Model 3 deliveries/month to satisfy current demand (in the first six months after the first Model 3 is release).
**************************
#1 Song in January, 1978
How Deep Is Your Love, the Bee Gees
Where was I in '78? Travis AFB, Suisun, California. Our first daughter was born at Travis, early 1978. Hard to believe all the water under the bridge, as they say.
It's hard to say when "disco summer" was -- 1977, 1978, 1979? In 1978, the Gibbs had four #1 songs:
Halliburton Co, the world's No.2 oilfield services provider, reported a
higher-than-expected adjusted profit for the first quarter as deep cost
cuts helped cushion the impact of a drop in drilling and completion
activity.
Net loss attributable to
Halliburton widened to $2.41 billion (1.64 billion pound), or $2.81 per
share, in the three months ended March 31, from $643 million, or 76
cents per share, a year earlier.
The
bigger loss was due to $2.77 billion in charges for asset impairment
and other reasons amid the prolonged slump in oil prices.
Excluding
these charges, Halliburton earned 7 cents per share, higher than
analysts average estimate of 4 cents.
By "removing" all the things my wife and I bought over the past year that we did not need, and removing all the one-time charges associated with sushi dinners -- each of which were a one-time charge, we, too, kept in budget. In fact, we are ahead of where we expected to be at this time.
Our bank sees things a bit differently. Unfortunately.
The company reported a net loss of $8.27 million, or 5 cents a share, in the first quarter,
after a loss of $14.3 million, or 9 cents a share, in the year-earlier
period.
Adjusted per-share earnings came to 10 cents, ahead of the
FactSet consensus of 8 cents. Revenue fell 1.2% to $379.5 million from
$384.2 million.
The FactSet consensus was for revenue of $378 million.
The newspaper company said it added 67,000 net digital-only subscribers
to its new products, the most for a quarter in more than three years.
There are times I consider on-line subscriptions to The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, and The Boston Globe but then I regain my sanity.
Later, 7:52 p.m. Central Time: see first comment --
NY Times, Reuters, and Bloomberg all reported that February construction spending was revised up, and they were all wrong...
February
construction spending was originally reported at $1,144.0 billion
annually, and it has now been revised down to $1,133.6 billion annually,
and hence spending in March was below what was originally reported for
February...what happened was there was a large downward revision to
January spending, from the revised $1,150.1 billion figure reported last
month to $1,122.0 billion, and hence the downwardly revised February
spending was up from January, even though it was lower than originally
reported...reporters apparently took the change in the MoM percentage
change to mean there was an upward change in spending...
That
will at a minimum subtract 0.23 percentage points from revised 1st
quarter GDP, just about the opposite of what Barclays is alleged to have
forecast....
The GDPNow model forecast for real GDP growth (seasonally adjusted annual rate) in the second quarter of 2016 is 1.8 percent
on May 2, unchanged from April 29.
The forecasts for second-quarter
real residential investment growth and real nonresidential structures
investment growth increased after this morning's construction spending
release from the U.S. Census Bureau. These were offset by declines in
the forecasts of real equipment investment growth and real consumer
spending growth following the Manufacturing ISM Report On Business from
the Institute for Supply Management.
The European Commission told the euro area’s largest economies to
reduce debt and modernize labor markets as it again slashed its
inflation forecast and warned of slower-than-predicted growth across the
19-nation bloc.
France, Spain and Italy, which have persistently
failed to hit European Union budget targets, are still off track, the
Brussels-based commission said on Tuesday. Gross domestic product in the
currency area will increase by 1.6 percent this year and 1.8 percent in
2017 -- both 0.1 percentage point lower than the commission forecast in
February. Inflation will average 0.2 percent this year, below the
European Central Bank’s target.
China manufacturing PMI disappoints -- in contraction for 14th straight month. Despite a trillion dollars of credit spewed into the Chinese economy, manufacturing remains in a slump as April's China PMI tumbled to 49.4 after a brief bounce back up to 49.8 (from the 48.0 low in February). This is the 14th month in a row of contraction.
Okay, now that the bad news is out of the way, upward and onward.
Since June 2014, decreases in crude oil and natural gas prices have reduced household energy costs. According to initial figures from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the chained consumer price index for urban consumers (C-CPI-U) decreased by 1.2% from June 2014 to February 2016. Lower energy prices had a significant impact on this decrease in spite of increases in the food and shelter components of the overall index, which represent larger shares of household expenses. --- EIA
And that's despite the administration's best efforts to kill the US energy sector. Maybe Hillary can complete the task.
The EIA finding/report today comes close to a Geico Rock Award nomination.
The Colorado Supreme Court ruled Monday that municipalities can’t bar
hydraulic fracturing, a long awaited decision in a legal battle that
has rippled across this energy rich state.
In a pair of rulings,
Colorado’s high court found that measures passed by the cities of Fort
Collins and Longmont that sought to halt the controversial drilling
technique known as fracking “were preempted by state law and, therefore…
invalid and unenforceable.”
The decisions uphold lower court
rulings and come amid a long-running battle over fracking across
northeastern Colorado, which sits atop a large shale formation.
In
recent years, cities along the state’s fast growing Front Range have
sought to limit the practice amid concerns that drilling is taking place
too close to population centers and complaints from environmental
groups.
On Friday of last week, two more large E&Ps filed for Chapter 11 –
Ultra petroleum with $3.8 billion in unsecured debt and Midstates
Petroleum filing with a $2 billion debt-for-equity swap deal.
Over the
past 18 months there have been 65 E&P bankruptcies – mostly small
companies, but nine companies make up 75% of the $28 billion in total
debt exposure of all of these firms. This chaos in the oil, gas, and
NGL markets is having all kinds of financial and strategic
ramifications. One of the consequences of all of the turmoil could be a
wave of asset sales, demands for contract restructuring, and more
bankruptcy proceedings.
But there can be some real opportunities in all
this chaos if you know what to look for, understand where the needs and
pitfalls can lie, and especially to recognize that “the sun’ll come up
tomorrow.”
For the last decade, the U.S. oil and gas industry has been very
exciting. It continues to be very exciting. Of course, there are
different kinds of “exciting.”
There’s skiing in the Rockies, hurtling
down a steep slope at 35 miles per hour, with nothing between you and
disaster but your skill and your luck. That’s the kind of excitement
some look for on purpose. Then there’s driving home to Denver, hurtling
down I-70 at 70 miles an hour and finding an unexpected patch of ice on
a downhill curve. That’s not the kind of excitement you go looking for on purpose.
From the mid-2000s to 2014, the oil and gas industry was the first
kind of “exciting,” -- companies running and gunning to get out in front
of competitors, developing a resource that changed the world by
reducing the U.S. dependence on imported energy and pushing global
markets into oversupply, with a disastrous impact on crude oil prices.
So for the last 18 months or so, the industry has been experiencing the
second kind of excitement, the I-70-on-ice kind, where you depend on all
of your skill and luck just to keep you from hitting something or going
off a cliff. Like I-70, this is not the kind of excitement you seek
out.
Aeropostale is preparing to file for bankruptcy protection this week and close
more than 100 stores, according to people familiar with the matter, as
the teen-apparel retailer contends with mounting losses and falling
sales.
New York-based Aéropostale plans to seek chapter 11
protection in the next few days before May rent payments are due, the
people said. It is in advanced talks with specialty lender Crystal
Financial LLC on a loan to finance its operations in bankruptcy, they
added.
The retailer would close more than 100 of its roughly 800
stores soon after filing and potentially more later, the people said.
The company plans to reorganize around its remaining stores, but the
precise contours of its restructuring plan remain unclear.
New York supermarket chain Fairway Group Holdings Corp. said late
Monday it had filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, months after
warning of the possibility of breaching its loan agreement.
Fairway,
the parent company of the U.S. grocery chain Fairway Market, and some
of its units have filed a “joint prepackaged” chapter 11 plan of
reorganization to implement financial restructuring.
The
reorganization will eliminate about $140 million of senior secured debt
and provide financing to restructure the firm’s balance sheet, Fairway
said. It added that store operations were expected to continue with no
impact on customers, suppliers or employees.
Sports Authority, the struggling chain which filed for bankruptcy in March, is weighing a sale of its assets that could be end up closing most if not all of its 450 stores. [Update, May 19, 2016: Sports Authority will close all stores.]
Under its original bankruptcy filing, the chain had planned to close 140 stores and to keep the rest open under the Sports Authority name.
But attorneys for Sports Authority notified the federal bankruptcy court in Delaware last week that it could not win approval for that reorganization plan from its creditors and lenders.
But experts say it's now likely that the large majority, if not all, of the chain's stores will go away in relatively short order.
