Business category, Page 108
How to pay for an expensive summer move
Packing your things and moving to a new home is a financial hurdle even in the best of times, but higher demand for moving-related services in the summer can send prices skyrocketing. If you’re wondering how to pay for an upcoming move, there are financing options, including credit cards and...
Up in the air: The cost of auto repair, insurance climbing
Following suit with rising costs and inflation, the costs of automobile ownership, insurance and necessary repairs have soared in recent years and are expected to continue. Frank Ferra, president of Ferra’s Automotive Services in Sharpsburg, says expenses including wages, rent, taxes, equipment and insurance, along with the costs for parts,...
John Dorfman: CVS, Phillips 66 and Lear look good on this gauge
A good tool for spotting turnaround candidates is the price-to-sales ratio. Start with a company’s stock price. Divide it by the company’s sales (revenue) per share. If the number you get is less than 1.0, the stock is cheap; typically the company is straining for growth and profits. When you...
In-N-Out bans employees from wearing masks
California fast-food institution In-N-Out Burger announced that it will soon ban employees from wearing masks in five of the seven states in which it operates restaurants, according to an internal memo leaked Friday The exceptions? Workers in California and Oregon will still be able to mask, if they choose, to...
Americans bump up spending in June as inflation eases in a strong jobs market
NEW YORK — Americans increased their spending last month as inflation eased in many areas, and the job market remained remarkably strong. Retail sales rose 0.2% from May to June, following a revised 0.5% increase the previous month, the Commerce Department reported Tuesday. The figure matched the pace of consumer...
Fitch downgrades Heritage Valley’s rating
Fitch Ratings has downgraded its rating that assesses Heritage Valley Health System’s vulnerability of default to A+ from AA-. The downgrade of the hospital system’s reflects “several years of sizeable operating losses” and ongoing challenges that emerged before the covid-19 pandemic hit in 2020. The report cited pressures due to...
Base F-150 Lightning electric pickup will cost less than $50,000 as Ford slashes prices across line
The sticker prices for Ford’s F-150 Lightning electric pickup trucks are being lowered by thousands of dollars across the board, the company said Monday, due to increased plant capacity, falling costs for battery raw materials and internal efforts to scale production by the Detroit automaker. The price cuts across the...
Allegheny College’s new president says campus can overcome tough higher education market
Allegheny College didn’t have to look far to find its 23rd president. Ron Cole, 58, already had been named interim leader and then president with a short-term contract after Hilary Link announced her departure in September. Prior to that, he had been Allegheny’s provost since 2015 and a geology professor...
Ford slashes prices for F-150 Lightning electric vehicles due to cheaper raw materials, efficiencies
The sticker price on Ford’s F-150 Lightning electric pickup is being lowered by thousands of dollars due to increased plant capacity, falling costs for battery raw materials and internal efforts to scale production by the Detroit automaker. Ford Motor Co. said Monday that final upgrades at its Rouge Electric Vehicle...
Microsoft agrees to keep Call of Duty on Sony Playstation after it buys Activision Blizzard
NEW YORK — Microsoft has signed an agreement with Sony to keep the Call of Duty video game series on the PlayStation console after the tech giant acquires video game maker Activision Blizzard. The announcement was made Sunday in a Twitter post by Phil Spencer, who heads up Microsoft’s Xbox...
Teamsters president says he’s asked the White House not to intervene if UPS workers go on strike
NEW YORK — The head of the Teamsters said Sunday that he has asked the White House not to intervene if unionized UPS workers end up going on strike. Negotiations between the delivery company and the union representing 340,000 of its workers have been at a standstill for more than...
Editorial cartoonists’ firings point to steady decline of opinion pages in newspapers
NEW YORK — Even during a year of sobering economic news for media companies, the layoffs of three Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonists on a single day hit like a gut punch. The firings of the cartoonists employed by the McClatchy newspaper chain last week were a stark reminder of how...
Musk says Twitter is losing cash because advertising is down and the company is carrying heavy debt
Elon Musk says Twitter is still losing cash because advertising has dropped by half. In a reply to a tweet offering business advice, Musk tweeted Saturday, “We’re still negative cash flow, due to (about a) 50% drop in advertising revenue plus heavy debt load.” “Need to reach positive cash flow...
The unemployment rate is low. So why is the Fed worried about the economy?
The U.S. economy added 209,000 jobs in June. While it was a smaller increase than expected, it still lowered the unemployment rate to a solid 3.6%. For the Pittsburgh region, whose figures lag behind the national data, the unemployment rate dropped one-tenth of a percentage point to a 47-year-record low...
New Jersey gambling revenue up nearly 14%, but most casinos still trail pre-pandemic levels
ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. — New Jersey’s casinos, horse tracks that take sports bets, and the online partners of both those types of gambling won more than $457 million in June, an increase of nearly 14% from a year earlier. But the key metric for Atlantic City’s nine casinos — the...
IRS says it collected $38 million from more than 175 high-income tax delinquents
WASHINGTON — The IRS is showcasing its new capability to aggressively audit high-income tax dodgers as it makes the case for sustained funding and tries to avert budget cuts sought by Republicans who want to gut the agency. IRS leaders said they collected $38 million in delinquent taxes from more...
John Dorfman: Occidental Petroleum, Valero on Casualty List
Let’s postulate that the goal in stock investing is to buy low and sell high. If so, it makes sense to look at stocks that have been banged up, searching for ones that have recovery potential. That’s the goal of my quarterly Casualty List. Today, I’ll highlight two large energy...
Wilkins Starbucks workers seek to decertify union representation
Some workers at the Penn Center East Starbucks in Wilkins Township are petitioning the National Labor Relations Board to hold a vote to decertify the union representing employees at the coffee shop. Penn Center East joined Starbucks Workers United last year. The employee who submitted the petition, Elizabeth Gulliford, is...
OpenAI’s ChatGPT bot probed by FTC over consumer harms
The Federal Trade Commission has opened an investigation into OpenAI Inc., questioning whether its popular ChatGPT conversational AI bot puts consumers’ reputations and data at risk, according to a person familiar with the matter. The probe into the Microsoft Corp.-backed startup marks the first official inquiry into a technology that...
Hollywood actors join screenwriters in historic industry-stopping strike as contract talks collapseVideo
LOS ANGELES — Leaders of a Hollywood’s actors union voted Thursday to join screenwriters in the first joint strike in more than six decades, shutting down production across the entertainment industry after talks for a new contract with studios and streaming services broke down. Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, executive director of the...
Kia to invest $200M in Georgia plant to begin building electric SUV there, hiring 200
ATLANTA — Kia Corp. will invest $200 million in its Georgia factory to begin producing an electric-powered SUV, the company announced Wednesday. The South Korean company said it would hire an additional 200 workers to begin producing its large EV9 vehicle in West Point by early 2024. The company said...
Domino’s signs deal with Uber Eats in a bid to make more dough
If you can’t beat them, join them. In a major reversal, Domino’s Pizza said Wednesday it’s partnering with Uber Eats to make deliveries in the U.S. and 27 international markets. While franchisees in a handful of international markets like the Netherlands have been working with third-party apps for years, Domino’s...
Carnegie Mellon plans new robotics center at Hazelwood Green
Carnegie Mellon University is looking to build a new robotics center at the Hazelwood Green site in Pittsburgh. Plans for the robotics center were presented to Pittsburgh’s Planning Commission on Tuesday. The center would include a 150,000-square-foot research building with a two-story enclosure for testing on robots and drones and...
Pioneering Anchor Brewing Co. to halt operations after 127 years with beer sales in declineVideo
San Francisco’s 127-year-old Anchor Brewing Co. will shut down and liquidate after years of declining sales, citing tough economic conditions. Anchor was a trailblazer in the United States, brewing craft beers in the 1970s when most Americans were loyal to a handful of major brands. Its unique brewing techniques ignited...
U.S. inflation falls to 3%, lowest level in over 2 years, as price pressures ease
WASHINGTON — After two years of painfully high prices, inflation in the U.S. has reached its lowest point in more than two years — 3% in June compared with 12 months earlier — a sign that the Federal Reserve’s interest rate hikes have steadily slowed price increases across the economy....
