Food and entertainment specialist, Dave &Buster’s, just ended a difficult fiscal year but signs are hopeful for the year to come. This quarter the company benefited from favorable weather and calendar shifts that moved important holidays like Christmas and New Year from weekend to weekdays.Special mention goes to improved menu and popular menu items that brought market share gains. The video gaming sector also benefitted from its shift toward offering exclusive branded games, including hit virtual reality titles. ‘Dragon frost’VR joined ‘Jurassic World’, ‘Halo’, and ‘Connect 4 Hoops’ as customer traffic drivers.

Physical clothing, electronics, and home furnishing stores are taking a hit as online penetration led by the e-commerce giant Amazon proliferate in their sales. According to the estimates provided by UBS online sales growth is likely to rise to 25% by 2026 from 16% today, and this will lead to closures of roughly 75,000 physical stores, excluding restaurants. In a note to its clients this week, the investment firm said “store rationalization needs to accelerate meaningfully as online penetration continues to rise.” The estimate implies that for every 1% increase in online penetration, roughly 8,000 to 8,500 stores need to close.Additionally, 7,000 grocery stores may also close if online grocery penetration rises to 10%, from 2%, by 2026. In 2019, already over 5,000 store closures have been declared by retailers like Gap, Victoria’s

Defense Department spokeswoman Elissa Smith on Thursday announced that Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft are the only two companies that meet the minimum requirements for the U.S. Defense Department’s contract for cloud computing services,after IBM and Oracle have been ruled out. The deal, known as JEDI, will be awarded to one of the two companies in July 2019. U.S Defense Department eliminated IBM and Oracle from its cloud computing services contract that could be worth as much as $10 billion in the next 10 years.This is a major loss for IBM and Oracle as it would have helped them overtake Amazon and Microsoft in the public cloud market. However, the deal is only one element in the DOD’s overall mission to modernize information technology as the deal demands multiple clouds from multiple vendors. The Pentagon has allocated $61.9 million for JEDI in the budget for the 2020 fiscal year.

Prime Minister Theresa May has returned from Brussels with a Brexit extension that pushes the next deadline out to October 31. May has seen her preferred withdrawal from Europe rejected three times already but now has another six-and-a-half months to try to get some form of deal over the line.READ MORE...

Weight Watchers stock lost almost -10% at the opening of trading on Thursday, following a price target cut by a JP Morgan analyst. JP Morgan’s Christina Brathwaite lowered her estimates on the health fitness company’s stock price to $12 a share, citing a -40% year-over-year drop in daily average subscribers in the first-quarter .She also mentioned the possibility of the company being forced to make a prepayment on part of its $1.5 billion term loan as an additional factor behind the price target slash. Brathwaite maintained her underweight rating on Weight Watchers shares.

Revenue of $3.31 billion fell slightly short of analysts’ expectations of $3.33 billion. Same-store sales declined -1.4% in the quarter, compared to analysts' expectations of a decline around -1.3%. For the full fiscal year, the company incurred a loss of -$137.2 million, which is its first ever annual loss.Revenue fell -2.6% for the year. Looking ahead, Bed Bath & Beyond forecasts that its fiscal 2019 earnings would range between $2.11 and $2.20 a share, excluding certain charges.

Chipotle Mexican Grill  shares fell -1.2% Thursday, following a downgrade by Jefferies analysts. The analysts at Jefferies lowered their rating on Chipotle to hold from buy, as they anticipate that the stock may have reached its full valuation after rallying almost 70% year-to-date. "Although the company reached an impressive 1 million rewards members in barely 10 days, we think this key driver, along with the company's powerful digital drivers are now being better understood and discounted in the stock," Jefferies analyst Andy Barish said in a note to investors. Jefferies raised its price target on Chipotle stock to $700 from $600.

The winner will be announced as soon as July 2019, the New York Times said. Amazon’s cloud business, called Amazon Web Services (AWS), seems to be emerging as  a major growth driver for the company.Revenue from the unit exceeded $7.4 billion in the fourth quarter. Microsoft, on the other hand, does not disclose figures separately for its Azure cloud segment; but Morgan Stanley analysts led by Keith Weiss estimated that Azure generated more than $3 billion in revenue for Microsoft in the fourth quarter as mentioned in the analysts’ note to clients earlier this month. The Defense Department hasn't released any statement regarding the matter on its website as yet.

General Electric's (GE -1.1%) pension obligations total $92B, more than the company's $80B market cap, but UBS analyst Peter Lennox-King thinks the pension costs will fall in coming years, which should help earnings and please shareholders. Read More...

Chief executives of some of the largest U.S. banks faced off with the House Financial Services committee for the first time since the financial crisis on Wednesday armed with the healthy balance sheets, but lawmakers grilled executives more on social issues than business fundamentals. Read More...

Oil prices fell on Thursday after U.S. crude stockpiles surged to their highest levels in almost 17 months amid record production. Read More...

A bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers introduced legislation on Wednesday to expand the electric vehicle tax credit by 400,000 vehicles per manufacturer, a provision that would give a boost to Tesla Inc and General Motors Co before the existing credit comes to an end for them. Read More...

Layoffs hit their highest level for a first quarter in 10 years as 2019′s job market got off to a shaky start, according to a report Thursday from outplacement firm Challenger, Gary & Christmas. Read More...

Ford (F +1%) recalls 327K F-150 and Super Duty trucks due to a potential fire risk from faulty splicing on engine block heaters.The splice job was done after a prior recall. Read More...

GCP is the first cloud platform to offer NVIDIA one of its most versatile cloud GPUs. This step will allow GCP users to arrange next-generation computer graphics — including real-time ray tracing, AI, simulation and rasterization — from any location, on any device. Particularly, GCP users could make optimal use of AI capabilities to boost ray tracing and batch rendering. This move is not unprecedented as enterprises are increasingly turning to cloud based services to reduce costs of data centres.Additionally, it also gives employees better exposure to cloud computing and virtual workstations. Quadro VWS with RTX technology are particularly helpful for professionals who work on complex topics like rendering and simulation.

This was crucial after the celebrity-packed event on March 25 ended in a disappointment for Apple. The tech giant also disclosed three new subscription plans: a TV service, gaming bundle, and all-you-can-read magazine subscription. It also partnered with Goldman Sachs (GS) for credit card.But the company has much to prove as the TV subscription is seen as pricey and the credit card has limited reach. With uproar surrounding the event finally fading, the focus is also back on the iPhone,whose sales have suffered in recent times.

The bank has also zeroed-in on health-care cost increases for lower-paid employees. This step came only a day before, when the bank’s CEO along with the CEOs of other five banks including J.P Morgan Chase (JPM) were scheduled to testify before the Democrat-led House Financial Services Committee in Washington.Low wages is an pressing issue for the 2020 election and this step could be timely and strategic to diffuse any criticism in the near future. The issue is indeed alarming, owing to the gap between high salaried employees and the low waged ones like bank tellers.

WarnerMedia CEO John Stankey on Wednesday refuted news reports of parent company AT&T contemplating a sale of its HBO Europe unit to make good on debt obligations. On Wednesday, the Financial Times reported that there have been internal talks within AT&T about divesting HBO Europe (among other assets), although no final discussions with potential buyers had taken place yet." Stankey said, "We normally do not comment on speculation, but when a news outlet is advised that their reporting is factually incorrect and report it anyway, we feel compelled to set the record straight", while adding, “HBO Europe is a valuable asset for our growth plans in Europe.

Repeated tariff threats from U.S. President Donald Trump are hurting European economic confidence, according to European Central Bank (ECB)President Mario Draghi. The euro zone’s central bank held interest rates steady Wednesday, with Draghi warning that data analyzed by his team had confirmed “slower growth momentum” in the euro zone.READ MORE...

Delta Air Lines' first quarter results beat analysts’ estimates. The airline raked in earnings of 96 cents a share on an adjusted basis, compared to analysts’ expectations of 90 cents (based on Refinitiv survey).Revenue for the quarter came in at $10.47 billion, surpassing estimates of $10.42 billion. President Glen Hauenstein mentioned the company’s “customer-focused commercial initiatives” as a strong reason behind customer loyalty and revenue. Delta could avoid the fallout from the grounding of Boeing 737 MAX jets, which have forced other carriers to cancel flights and switch to other types of aircrafts. Hauenstein said that the company now expects full-year revenue growth of 5% to 7%, which is an upward revision from its prior projection.