Chinese tech giant Huawei said Monday its revenue rose 39% over a year earlier in the latest quarter, despite U.S. pressure on allies to shun its telecom technology as a security risk. Huawei, the biggest global maker of network equipment for phone and internet companies, on Monday reported revenue of 179.7 billion yuan ($26.8 billion) for the first three months of the year. Huawei gave no quarterly earnings but said its profit margin was 8%.That would be about 14.4 billion yuan ($2.1 billion). The revenue growth reported Monday was higher than the 19.5% gain reported earlier for 2018 annual revenue.

Early trading of ride-sharing company Lyft has not gone according to plan. Lyft’s share price has dropped nearly 19% since debuting late last month, prompting some investors to sue the company, alleging the ride-sharing service provider overstated its market position when it went public.Questions about growth and market share have also been raised thanks to multiple Wall Street analysts covering the stock, a trend that may continue when a host of firms initiate research coverage starting Tuesday.

After a rough couple of years, the solar industry has been an extremely hot segment of the stock market in 2019. First Solar (NASDAQ: FSLR), SunPower (NASDAQ: SPWR), Sunrun (NASDAQ: RUN), and Vivint Solar (NYSE: VSLR) are all up over 40% as of this writing, and Chinese manufacturer JinkoSolar (NYSE: JKS) has nearly doubled. Read More...

The United States is expected to announce on Monday that buyers of Iranian oil need to end imports soon or face sanctions, a source familiar with the situation told Reuters, triggering a 3 percent jump in crude prices to their highest for 2019 so far. Read More...

Privately-owned housings starts in the U.S. declined more than -14% year-over-year in March, as indicated by the latest data from the U.S. Census and Commerce Department . The seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.139 million was also -0.3% below the revised February estimate of 1.142 million.  The count of building permits for privately‐owned housing decreased by -7.8% year-over-year to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1,269,000 in March.

According to a Variety report, Netflix has inked a $60 million three-project deal with singer-songwriter Beyonce Knowles-Carter. Citing unidentified people familiar with the matter, the report suggests that the first of the three projects is “Homecoming,” which features a behind-the-scenes documentary about Beyonce’s 2018 Coachella performance."Homecoming" reportedly costs around $20 million, according to the Variety article citing the anonymous sources. However, a representative for the artist didn’t respond to Variety’s requests for comment.

Some investment banks have raised their outlook on China’s economic growth. Last week, the Chinese government announced that gross domestic product grew by 6.4% year-on-year in the first quarter of 2019.That seems to have led economists at some prominent investment banks to boost their growth expectations for China, as indicated by a CNBC report. According to the report, economists at Barclays increased their  China GDP growth forecast  for the full-year  to 6.5% from the previous estimate of 6.2 %, citing China’s first-quarter growth beat.

On Friday, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles announced that it is recalling more than 300,000 Dodge Dart compact cars in North America. The reason as cited by the company is that the cable connecting the shifter to the transmission might degrade and snap, thereby potentially causing the vehicles to roll away if the driver tries to shift for parking.Car owners will not have to bear any costs related to the replacement to follow, as mandated by recall law. Around 298,000 cars in the U.S.,  20,117 in Canada, 3,400 in Mexico and about 900 outside of North America are covered in the Fiat recall.

Hyundai Motor Co has named Jose Munoz as global chief operating officer and Americas chief.Munoz was was considered an ally and potential successor of Nissan Motor Co Ltd’s ousted Chairman Carlos Ghosn. The appointment comes at time when plunging sales in both China and the United States, the world’s two-biggest auto markets, has prompted a major management overhaul.

President Nicolas Maduro is funneling cash flow from Venezuelan oil sales through Russian state energy giant Rosneft as he seeks to evade U.S. sanctions designed to oust him from power, according to sources and documents reviewed by Reuters.   Read More...

The fourth-quarter earnings of Pier 1 Imports Inc PIR 26.25% fell far below analyst expectations. Read More...

Shares of footwear company Skechers (NYSE:SKX) slumped on Thursday following a first-quarter report that left investors wanting more.A combination of unfavorable currency translation effects, the timing of the Easter holiday, and what CFO John Vandemore called "challenging conditions" led to weak revenue growth that missed expectations. Read More...

Toyota, auto parts maker Denso and internet company SoftBank's investment fund are investing $1 billion in car-sharing Uber's technology unit. The Japanese companies said that Toyota Motor Corp. and Denso Corp. will together invest $667 million and SoftBank Corp.'s Vision Fund will contribute $333 million in Uber Technologies Inc.'s new entity, Advanced Technologies Group, or Uber ATG, which will try to develop and commercialize automated ridesharing services. The move comes as Toyota steps up such efforts, including investing $500 million in Uber, based in San Francisco, and setting up a $20 million joint venture with SoftBank to create mobility services, both announced last year.

U.S.homebuilding dropped to a near two-year low in March, pulled down by persistent weakness in the single-family housing segment, suggesting the housing market continued to struggle despite declining mortgage rates. Read more...

Uber’s autonomous vehicle unit has raised $1 billion from a consortium of investors including SoftBank Group Corp, giving the company a much-needed funding boost for its pricey self-driving ambitions on the eve of its public stock offering. Read More...

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell will introduce legislation to raise the federal minimum age to buy tobacco to 21 from 18, he announced Thursday. Read More...

ConocoPhillips on Thursday announced it has struck an agreement to sell its U.K. oil and gas operations for nearly $2.7 billion, setting up its exit from the North Sea. Read More...

Despite a 9% drop on the quarterly earnings, Morgan Stanley, the sixth largest U.S. bank, managed to marginally beat analysts’ estimates. Morgan Stanley's wealth management business salvaged earnings for the quarter, as it accounts for almost half of the bank’s revenue and helps maintain stability during weak periods for trading and investment banking -- the two segments that suffered during the first quarter due to subdued volatility.Despite this scenario, Morgan Stanley’s wealth management profit margin and its return on equity of 13.1% were comfortably within the targeted range.

Facebook will soon launch its own voice assistant to rival the likes of Amazon’s (AMZN) Alexa, Apple’s (AAPL) Siri and the Google (GOOG, GOOGL) Assistant. It has been working on this project since 2018 and is being spearheaded by the company’s augmented reality and virtual reality group, a division that works on hardware, based out of Redmond, Washington.Lead by Ira Snyder, director of AR/VR and Facebook Assistant, the team has been collecting information from vendors in the smart speaker supply chain for some time now. Even though it is not fully disclosed how exactly people will use the assistant, it is estimated that the assistant will be used on the company’s Portal video chat smart speakers or the Oculus headsets. However, the market for smart speaker is already being dominated by Amazon and Google with 67% and 30% shares in the U.S. in 2018, and Facebook’s foray into this segment will not be easy. Previously, the company had launched an AI assistant for its Messenger App

Recently, the company transitioned F-35 suppliers to long-term Performance Based Logistics (PBL) contracts and 12 Master Repair Agreements (MRA) to enhance repair capacity and speed. Replacing annual contracts, the new multi-year PBLs allow companies to make long term investments and actions towards improved efficiency and cost reduction.At present, the PBLs cover several contracts with BAE Systems, Northrop Grumman (NOC) and Collins Elbit Vision Systems; and the MRAs cover contracts with 12 separate suppliers including companies like Honeywell (HON), General Electric (GE) and Eaton (ETN). Not only are the initial multi-year contracts delivering positive results, the newer production aircraft are averaging more than 60% mission capable rates and is approaching the company’s 80% goal which amounts to reducing costs at $25,000 cost per flight hour by 2025.