Here are five things you need to know this morning:
Ovintiv buys Montney assets for $3.3B: Ovintiv, the energy giant formerly known as EnCana, has agreed to buy some assets in Alberta’s Montney region from Paramount Resources for $3.3 billion. The assets are near the company’s current operations and will add about 70,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day of production. Separately, Ovintiv said it has agreed to sell “substantially all” of its Uinta Basin assets in Utah to FourPoint Resources for US$2 billion in cash.
Disney beats on profit and revenue despite some slowing: Walt Disney Co. posted fourth quarter earnings before the bell this morning, numbers that beat expectations on profit and revenue. Even better for the media company, they upgraded their forecast for earnings growth for the next three years. Earnings per share came in at US$1.14, ahead of the $1.10 forecast. Disney said it saw strength in its streaming business even though it forecasts a modest decline of subscribers next year, and the movie unit had strong results, notably from the latest Deadpool movie. The cruise business suffered from hurricane activity in and around Florida this summer. Disney shares are up about 10 per cent premarket.
Meta fined by EU: Meta Platforms Inc. was hit with an US$841 million fine this morning by European regulators on antitrust grounds, with the bloc alleging that the company abuses its dominance over classified ads via its Facebook Marketplace product. It’s the first even fine against Meta on antitrust grounds in Europe but just the latest in a series of attacks on Big Tech from both sides of the Atlantic by activist regulators trying to rein in their power and dominance. So far investors are mostly reacting with a shrug as Meta shares were down about half a per cent premarket.
Loonie swan dive continues: The Canadian dollar is continuing its slow plunge, trading hands at 71.34 cents US this morning. That’s the lowest level since May 2020, a time when it was climbing out from its pandemic trough of 68 cents. It’s not hard to deconstruct the rationale: the U.S. economy is booming, and an incoming Donald Trump administration is perceived to be likely to continue that trend and even perhaps drive more inflation. Contrast that with Canada where consumer spending and the economy are slowing, and the central bank is cutting rates swiftly. Most forecasters on BNN lately have been saying the same thing: that the loonie has not yet hit bottom, and as long as central bank rates in the two countries continue to be wide apart, that trend is likely to continue.
Taylgating: After what feels like interminable run-up, Taylor Swift kicks off her series of concerts in Toronto today, and the impact for the local economy is likely to be huge. Most estimates have the economic take in the hundreds of millions of dollars, which is a hard-to-believe tally but actually grounded in reality once you start crunching the numbers. Previous stints of her Eras Tour around the world have certainly made an impact even beyond tickets and venues, with travel related companies like Heathrow Airport and United Airlines both citing Swiftie demand for boosting their bottom line when she came to town. Whether or not all that spending is genuinely new spending or simply cannibalizing consumer dollars that would have gone elsewhere is up in the air, but tens of thousands of people flocking to the city to spend thousands on tickets and hundreds more on ancillary spending is a shot in the arm that local businesses will benefit from.