Delta Air Lines says it’s on pace to lose $25 million in revenue this month as federal employees and contractors remain grounded by the partial government shutdown and more in Tuesday’s Markets In Brief.
CEO Ed Bastian said Tuesday that the shutdown will also delay the airline’s ability to start using new Airbus jets that must be certified by safety regulators who have been furloughed since Dec. 22.
Bastian says customers are bearing the brunt of the shutdown, with longer lines at airport security checkpoints. An unusually high number of airport screeners have been missing work after they did not get paychecks last week.
Delta’s biggest hub is at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, where many passengers waited more than an hour in checkpoint lines during peak hours on Monday. Bastian says such delays are limited to a few airports.
MARKETS IN BRIEF
Two Charged with Hacking SEC Computers in Trading Scheme
Two Ukrainian men have been charged with hacking into computers of the Securities and Exchange Commission to steal quarterly and annual reports of publicly traded companies before their public release.
An indictment released Tuesday alleges Artem Radchenko and Oleksandr Ieremenko sold the information and used it to make stock trades in 2016 and 2017.
Both men are fugitives.
The SEC also filed civil charges Tuesday against Ieremenko and six others from the U.S., Ukraine and Russia.
Officials cited one example in which the group allegedly made more than $300,000 in about 30 minutes of trading. They allegedly made about $4 million in all.
The defendants allegedly sent bogus emails to SEC employees to try and get inside the federal agency’s network, and eventually created an automated program to extract documents.
JPMorgan Misses Estimates, Caused by Trading Troubles
JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s fourth quarter profits badly missed analysts’ expectations on Tuesday, caused by difficulties in the bank’s bond-trading business.
The nation’s largest bank said it earned $7.07 billion in the last three months of the year, or $1.98 per share, up from $4.23 billion, or $1.07 a share, in the same period a year earlier. Last year’s results were impacted by the passage of the Republicans’ new tax law, which caused many big banks to make accounting adjustments and write off billions of dollars in what are known as tax-deferred assets.
So while JPMorgan’s profits were up 67 percent from a year earlier, they still missed Wall Street’s expectations. Analysts surveyed by FactSet were looking for JPMorgan to earn $2.20 a share.
The turmoil that whipsawed the markets in December weighed heavily on JPMorgan’s results. While banks do like some volatility because it allows their traders to look for opportunities in markets, the movements in recent months were too nauseating even for Wall Street traders.
JPMorgan’s market and investor services division, which includes its stock, bond and commodity trading operations, reported revenue of $4 billion, down 11 percent from a year earlier. Bond trading revenue fell 18 percent on an adjusted basis.
The bank’s consumer banking division had a much better quarter than its investment bank, helped by last year’s rise in interest rates. Higher rates allow banks to earn more from lending. Profits in the division were $4.03 billion, up 53 percent from a year earlier.
JPMorgan shares were down 2 percent in pre-market trading. The bank’s stock is up 3 percent so far this year.
UnitedHealth Shares Move Higher on Earnings Beat
UnitedHealth is reporting that profits slipped in the fourth quarter but it still beat most expectations.
The country’s biggest health insurer on Tuesday posted a profit of profit of $3.04 billion, or $3.10 per share. Earnings, adjusted for amortization costs, came to $3.28 per share, which is 8 cents better than industry analysts expected, according to a survey by Zacks Investment Research.
Revenue of $58.42 billion also topped the $57.94 billion expected on Wall Street.
UnitedHealth Group Inc., based in Minneapolis, expects full-year earnings in the range of $14.40 to $14.70 per share.
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