Business
India’s fuel exports fall 21% in October: Domestic demand surges; HPCL and Nayara hit by disruptions – The Times of India
India’s fuel exports dropped 21% month-on-month in October as refiners prioritised domestic demand during the festive season and redirected supplies to cover gaps caused by Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd’s (HPCL) refinery outage. Exports remained constrained for Nayara Energy due to sanctions.Fuel shipments fell to 1.25 million barrels per day (bpd) in October from 1.58 mbd in September, with exports of petrol, diesel, and aviation turbine fuel (ATF) all declining, according to Kpler, a global real-time data and analytics provider. Diesel, which makes up about half of India’s total fuel exports, decreased 12.5% month-on-month to 665,000 bpd.“The drop likely reflects stronger domestic demand, a greater share of output redirected to the local market, and operational constraints such as HPCL’s Mumbai refinery issues and ongoing maintenance at other sites,” said Sumit Ritolia, lead research analyst-refining and modelling at Kpler, as quoted by ET. “We may see a pickup in exports during November and December, as refiners rebalance runs and domestic demand eases slightly,” he added.HPCL had to shut one of its processing units after receiving contaminated crude from Hindustan Oil Exploration Company, creating tightness in fuel supply that private refiners helped ease.Reliance Industries and Rosneft-backed Nayara Energy experienced the most significant decline in exports. Nayara, affected by sanctions and unable to access traditional export markets, focused on the domestic market, supplying 90,000 bpd locally in October—50% higher than in September and the highest since January. Government support, including doubling train capacity for fuel transport, helped the company meet local demand.Domestic fuel consumption showed mixed trends in October. Petrol sales rose 7% year-on-year, driven by festive travel and vehicle purchases. Diesel sales fell slightly by 0.5% after a strong 6% rise in September. ATF sales increased 1.6%, while liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) sales grew 5.4%. Private refiners recorded higher sales velocity compared to state-run counterparts.
Business
Lucid misses Wall Street expectations, narrows production guidance
Brand new Lucid electric cars sit parked in front of a Lucid Studio showroom in San Francisco on May 24, 2024.
Justin Sullivan | Getty Images
DETROIT – Lucid Group missed Wall Street’s expectations for a second consecutive quarter as the all-electric vehicle maker continues to address problems with the launch of its new flagship Gravity SUV.
The company, for a second consecutive quarter, also cut the high end of its annual production guidance to around 18,000 vehicles from a previous forecast of between 18,000 and 20,000 units. Its original target for this year was 20,000 units. It also reduced the low end target of its capital expenditures by $100 million to between $1 billion and $1.2 billion.
Here’s how the company performed in the third quarter, compared with average estimates compiled by LSEG:
- Loss per share: $2.65 adjusted vs. a loss of $2.27 expected
- Revenue: $336.6 million vs. $379.1 million expected
Lucid reported a net loss for the quarter of $978.4 million, or $3.31 per share, compared with a net loss of $992.5 million, or $4.09 per share, in the same period last year. Adjusting for one-time items including restructuring, the company lost $2.65 a share.
The company’s adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization was a loss of $717.7 million vs. an expected loss of $597.4 million, according to estimates compiled by StreetAccount. That loss widened year-over-over by 17%. Its quarterly revenue increased roughly 68% from $200 million a year earlier.
Its quarterly revenue increased roughly 68% from $200 million a year earlier.
In addition to releasing its third-quarter results, Lucid said it has agreed to increase a delayed draw term loan credit facility from $750 million to roughly $2 billion from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, the company’s largest shareholder.
The company reported total liquidity of $5.5 billion to end the quarter, including the undrawn credit line. Its cash and cash equivalents were roughly flat from the end of last year at $1.6 billion, with a total financial runway into the first half of 2027, the company said.
Lucid also said it continues to evaluate finance and liquidity options outside of the PIF as it launches its Gravity SUV and develops an upcoming midsize vehicle, which isn’t expected to start production until at least late next year.
An autonomous robotaxi from Uber’s partnership with Lucid and autonomous vehicle startup, Nuro.
Courtesy: Nick Twork | Lucid
Regarding Gravity, Lucid interim CEO Marc Winterhoff said the company “remains intensely focused on ramping up production and addressing the significant supply chain disruptions impacting the entire industry.”
During the company’s last quarterly results in August, Winterhoff admitted there were problems with Gravity, saying the company planned to significantly increase production during the second half of the year.
Winterhoff told investors Wednesday that the company continues to believe it can achieve a significant increase in Gravity deliveries during the fourth quarter, despite the supply chain issues and an industrywide slowdown in EV demand.
Lucid CFO Taoufiq Boussaid said Gravity production increased quarter-to-quarter but remains at an unmeaningful level.
The earnings results come roughly a month after Lucid reported third-quarter vehicle deliveries of 4,078 units, which increased from a year earlier but also fell slightly short of Wall Street expectations.
Lucid has made several partnership announcements this year. In July, it signed a $300 million deal with Uber that included the ride-hailing platform acquiring and deploying more than 20,000 Lucid Gravity SUVs over the next six years that will be equipped with autonomous vehicle technology from startup Nuro. More recently, it announced an expanded partnership with Nvidia for autonomous vehicle technologies.
Lucid’s results are in stark contrast to fellow pure EV company Rivian Automotive, which on Tuesday reported third-quarter earnings and revenue that topped Wall Street expectations and drove the stock price up during intraday trading Wednesday.
Shares of Rivian — following near-record gains Wednesday — are up roughly 16% in 2025, while Lucid remains off more than 40%, including a 1-for-10 reverse stock split this summer.
Business
Retailers are raising prices to meet tariffs. Amazon is hiking more than others
The Amazon Prime logo on a package in Manhattan, New York City, on Sept. 16, 2023.
Michael Kappeler | Picture Alliance | Getty Images
Tariffs imposed by the Trump administration have given the country’s retailers another cost to manage during a period of persistent inflation.
While many are navigating the change with limited price increases, marketplace giant Amazon is hiking more than others.
Price increases are common for retailers trying to blunt higher costs from tariffs. Companies including Walmart and Target have said they are employing a portfolio approach to pricing following the tariff hikes, meaning they have raised prices on some items but not others.
But the companies rarely detail how much they’re increasing prices or on what items.
Amazon prices have risen 12.8% this year on average as of the end of September, according to an analysis of online pricing data from third-party research firm DataWeave. Prices at Target were up 5.5% since the start of the year, and prices at Walmart were 5.3% higher, according to the analysis.
DataWeave reviewed roughly 16,000 items each on Amazon’s, Walmart’s and Target’s websites to conduct its analysis. The firm says it continuously collects publicly available data and captures live product and pricing information. Its data spans categories, locations and time periods, according to DataWeave’s methodology.
While each of the three retailers increased prices throughout the year, the sharpest increase came from Amazon between January and February, when prices on the surveyed SKUs — a retail industry term meaning stock keeping units — rose 3.7%, according to DataWeave’s analysis.
That jump actually came ahead of the majority of President Donald Trump’s tariffs, announced in April, and could be the result of price normalization and a pullback in discounts after the 2024 holiday selling season, DataWeave found. However, Target and Walmart increased prices by an average of 0.97% and 0.85%, respectively, during the same time frame.
DataWeave’s pricing analysis compares each retailer to its own prices over time and not to competitors — and to be sure, lower initial prices could show a higher percentage increase — but there is a common trend.
“Together, these trends show a clear hierarchy: Prices rose fastest where consumers shop by choice, not necessity, and most cautiously where they shop by need,” Karthik Bettadapura, co-founder and CEO of DataWeave, said in a statement.
Apparel prices, for example, rose 11.5% on average between January and the end of September at Amazon, Target and Walmart. Indoor and outdoor home goods prices climbed an average of 10.8% across the three retailers. Prices for pet goods and consumable products increased by an average of 6.1%, and health and beauty items saw prices jump 7% on average. Prices for hardlines, a category that tends to include goods like electronics, furniture and appliances, rose 8.3%.
At Amazon, however, prices for those same categories rose more on average than at Target or Walmart.
Apparel prices increased 14.2%, indoor and outdoor home goods prices rose 15.3%, pets and consumables prices rose 11.3%, health and beauty prices rose 13.2%, and hardlines category prices rose 11.9%.
Guru Hariharan, founder and CEO of AI-driven e-commerce data platform CommerceIQ, told CNBC he’s not surprised to see larger price increases on the marketplace leader.
“Third-party sellers are far more exposed to tariff-driven cost increases,” Hariharan said. “They don’t have the scale, inventory flexibility or private-label leverage that large retailers like Walmart or Target can use to offset costs.”
As a result, marketplace sellers often have no choice but to pass higher costs onto the shopper, he said.
While Target and Walmart also have online marketplaces, third-party sales make up a much smaller percentage of their revenue than Amazon’s, according to executives and earnings reports.
Many economists say the full impact of tariffs has yet to be felt throughout the economy as retailers work through inventory that came into the country at lower tariff levels.
“If we consider Amazon as the bellwether for U.S. commodity goods pricing, this trend is obviously expected to have a significant impact to the holiday season and economy in Q4,” Hariharan said.
Amazon’s shoppers don’t appear to be fazed by the pricing. The company said its online store sales grew 10% in the third quarter compared to the same period last year. Third-party seller services — the revenue Amazon collects on third-party sales, including commission, fulfillment, shipping and advertising fees — increased 12% over that same time.
During the company’s third-quarter earnings call, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said, “We remain committed to staying sharp on price and meeting or beating prices of other major retailers.”
The company’s Chief Financial Officer Brian Olsavsky added, “Our sharp pricing, broad selection and fast delivery speeds continue to resonate with customers.”
In response to the DataWeave price analysis, an Amazon spokesperson told CNBC, “Across the selection of any large retailer, you can cherry pick products where prices have increased—if that’s what you’re looking for—and it’s just as easy to find products, in equally large volumes, that have decreased or stayed the same in price during the same time period.
“The reality is that we offer competitive, low prices for Amazon customers and, based on our comprehensive analysis of millions of popular products customers are purchasing, we have not seen increases in price outside of normal fluctuations,” the spokesperson said. “We continue to meet or beat prices versus other retailers across the vast selection of products in our store, and that’s why customers trust Amazon as a destination for low prices and why we continue to earn more sales from customers.”
Investors and shoppers will get their latest insights into how the largest U.S. retailers are handling pricing when Target and Walmart report their third-quarter results in mid-November.
Target has said on several occasions this year it would raise prices “as a last resort” as it combats rising costs. A company spokesperson, in response to the DataWeave findings, pointed CNBC to the example of holding prices on back-to-school items like crayons, notebooks and folders steady from 2024 to 2025.
Walmart told CNBC, “We will do everything we can to keep prices as low as possible for as long as possible.” The company noted it has permanently lowered prices on 2,000 items since February – as opposed to its temporary cuts known as Rollbacks.
In early September, Walmart CEO Doug McMillon said tariffs have created cost hikes for the company.
“We’ve seen a steady march up, kind of a gradual increase as it relates to our cost levels in general merchandise, which has created the single-digit inflation that we find ourselves dealing with now,” McMillon said at the Goldman Sachs global retailing conference.
The Federal Reserve estimates tariffs are contributing five-tenths or six-tenths to the core personal consumption expenditures price index, the central bank’s preferred measure of inflation, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said last week. Excluding tariffs, Powell said core PCE could be in the 2.3% to 2.4% range, rather than the 2.9% that was recorded in August.
The widely watched consumer price index, a broader measure of inflation, showed a 3% increase year over year for September. Direct CPI comparisons for the categories in DataWeave’s study are difficult to pinpoint, but prices for household furnishings rose 3.7% from January through September of this year. Personal care items increased 3.5% over the same period, and apparel prices were up 2.1%, according to CPI data.
— CNBC’s Nick Wells and Jodi Gralnick contributed to this report.
Editor’s note: This article has been updated to include Amazon’s full statement to CNBC in response to the DataWeave findings.
Business
Reform UK takes aim at pensions overhaul during pitch to business chiefs
Reform UK would look to overhaul public-sector pensions, the party’s deputy leader Richard Tice has said.
At an event in the City of London, Mr Tice told business chiefs the party also wants to lead a period of economic growth akin to the so-called Big Bang of the 1980s which happened under the Thatcher government.
Reform has been on a charm offensive with leaders from the world of business in recent weeks as the party aims to establish economic credibility after axing a series of promises to implement sweeping tax cuts made at the election.
Speaking at Bloomberg’s headquarters in central London, Mr Tice said: “We have to again ask really serious questions about the way we do pensions in this country.”
The liability for defined public sector benefit schemes is “growing at somewhere between £30 billion and £50 billion a year”, Mr Tice said.
“I don’t think it is unreasonable to sit down with the unions and to say ‘look, for new employees we can do this differently’.
“The private sector did this 25 years ago. But if we are not even prepared to have that discussion then we are just not going to make the progress that we need because that increasing liability … is completely unsustainable.”
Unions have reportedly warned that shifting towards defined contribution schemes, seen as less generous, could cost billions.
Mr Tice also set out his party’s aims at growing the economy and insisted regulatory reform was needed to see this through.
He said: “Here we are … 39 years on after the Big Bang. My contention to you is that now is actually the time for the big reform.
“We have to stand back and say, ‘How’s it going? What can we do better?’ and, in a sense, we’ve actually got a bit of time.
“We’re in early stages of an electoral cycle, so we can actually ask some really sort of big picture questions with a clean sheet of paper, almost like a sort of brainstorming session in the boardroom.”
The senior Reform MP also suggested politicians need to challenge the Bank of England more often, including the make-up of its monetary policy committee and whether it should be given a “mandate” for growth.
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