Tag Archives: Chemicals

World

Explosion rocks German chemicals site, killing one person and severely injuring workers

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The blast occurred at 9.40 a.m., causing a fire at a fuel depot at Chempark, an industrial park for chemicals companies including Bayer and Lanxess, Chempark operator Currenta said.

The search is still on for four people, Chempark manager Lars Friedrich told reporters shortly after the incident Tuesday. At least two of the 16 hurt workers were seriously injured, he added.

The fire has now been brought “under control,” Currenta spokesperson Maximilian Laufer told CNN. The search for five missing workers is ongoing, added Laufer. The reason for the explosion is so far unknown.

In the wake of the blast, which sent dramatic plumes of smoke into the air over the site, police asked nearby residents to remain indoors and keep doors and windows closed. Currenta said they should also turn off air conditioning systems while it measured the air around the site for possible toxic gas.

Sirens and emergency alerts on the German civil protection agency’s mobile phone app warned citizens of “extreme danger.”

Several nearby motorways were closed, and police said drivers should take detours to avoid the area.

More than 30 companies operate at the Chempark site in Leverkusen, including Covestro, Bayer, Lanxess and Arlanxeo, according to its website.

CNN’s Nina Avramova reported. Additional reporting from Reuters.

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Business

J&J Recalls Aveeno, Neutrogena Spray Sunscreens

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Johnson & Johnson said it was recalling some sunscreens from U.S. stores.



Photo:

Mark Lennihan/Associated Press

Johnson & Johnson is recalling Neutrogena and Aveeno spray sunscreens from U.S. stores after detecting benzene, a potentially cancer-causing chemical, in some samples.

J&J said Wednesday that consumers should stop using and discard the spray sunscreens. The company said it also was notifying distributors and retailers to stop selling the products, and arranging for the return of the products.

A company spokesman said the effort would include removing products from shelves.

The New Brunswick, N.J., company said it doesn’t use benzene in the manufacturing of the spray sunscreens and is investigating the cause of the contamination. The company didn’t say whether the recall will also impact other countries.

J&J, one of the world’s biggest sellers of consumer-health products by sales, didn’t say how many bottles were affected and what the exact benzene levels were, though J&J said the levels were low and not expected to cause health issues.

The spray products affected, J&J said, are sold as Neutrogena Beach Defense, Neutrogena Cool Dry Sport, Neutrogena Invisible Daily, Neutrogena Ultra Sheer and Aveeno Protect + Refresh aerosol sunscreens.

“Out of an abundance of caution, we are recalling all lots of these specific aerosol sunscreen products,” the company said.

Benzene is a chemical that can cause cancer after high levels of exposure. High levels of exposure can also have more immediate effects, including dizziness, confusion and rapid or irregular heartbeats.

Write to Felicia Schwartz at felicia.schwartz@wsj.com

Copyright ©2021 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

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Business

‘Day of reckoning’ is coming for high-flying tech stocks: Wells Fargo

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Wells Fargo Securities’ Chris Harvey is doubling down on his Big Tech warning, saying a “day of reckoning” is ahead.

He’s urging investors to take profits in light of risks associated with rising interest rates.

“The premium that you’re paying is still exceptionally high,” the firm’s head of equity strategy told CNBC’s “Trading Nation” on Friday. “We believe that premium has got to compress. Two, we think that the next 25 basis point move in the 10-year [Treasury Note yield] is… up not down.”

After a surge earlier this year, the 10-year yield is trending lower. It ended the week at 1.43% on Friday, down almost 17% over the past three months. The drop has been benefitting growth stocks, particularly Big Tech.

But Harvey warns a significant reversal is virtually unavoidable, citing the fundamental economic backdrop. Rising rates will set the stage for a double-digit pullback in momentum growth stocks. He predicts it could happen later this summer or early fall.

“The tech companies and the growth companies that are selling at very high multiples,” he noted. “Even though they have high growth rates, the high multiples are what’s going to do them in.”

Harvey called the March rebound in Big Tech a “head fake” on “Trading Nation” in late April. He’s sticking with the call and is signaling more concern now with stocks in rally mode.

On Friday, the tech-heavy Nasdaq closed at all-time highs. It closed at 14,639.33, up 121% since the Covid-19 low on March 23, 2020. The broader S&P 500 and Dow also closed at fresh record highs.

If tech’s high-flyers correct, Harvey expects the fallout to affect the broader market due to the group’s dominance.

However, he’s maintaining his bullishness on market names tied the economic recovery.

“They’ve managed their earnings expectations quite well, and they’ve been much more conservative than we thought they would be,” said Harvey. “We think this cycle lasts longer than many people expect and many people believe.”

His top cyclical picks include large money center banks, chemical and aerospace companies.

“Many of the cyclical companies still have mid-single-digit to double-digit upside from here on a relative and absolute basis,” Harvey added.

Harvey has an S&P 500 year-end price target of 3,850, which implies a 12% dip from Friday’s close.

Disclaimer

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Business

Fire at Giant Auto-Chip Plant Fuels Supply Concerns

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TOKYO—A fire at a factory of one of the world’s leading auto chip makers has added to the troubles of car makers that already have slashed production because of a semiconductor shortage.

The fire Friday left a swath of charred equipment in the factory owned by a subsidiary of Renesas Electronics Corp. in Hitachinaka, northeast of Tokyo. The company said it would take at least a month to restart the damaged operations.

Shares of Japan’s three leading car makers— Toyota Motor Corp. , Nissan Motor Co. and Honda Motor Co. —all fell by more than 3% on Monday, worse than the overall market, while Renesas shares were down 4.9%.

Renesas said heat from an electrical problem inside a single piece of equipment caused the fire and contaminated clean rooms needed to make semiconductors. It said two-thirds of the chips made at the fire-affected factory were automotive chips.

Renesas’s chief executive, Hidetoshi Shibata, said Sunday the impact on global chip supplies would be significant. Mariko Semetko, a credit analyst at Moody’s Japan, said the fire was likely to damp the recovery of global auto production this year, while auto makers said they were still assessing the impact.

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Science

Scientists Detect 55 Chemicals Never Before Reported in People – 42 “Mystery Chemicals” Whose Sources Are Unknown

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Scientists at University of California San Francisco have detected 109 chemicals in a study of pregnant women, including 55 chemicals never before reported in people and 42 “mystery chemicals,” whose sources and uses are unknown. 

The chemicals most likely come from consumer products or other industrial sources. They were found both in the blood of pregnant women, as well as their newborn children, suggesting they are traveling through the mother’s placenta. 

The study was published on March 16, 2021, in Environmental Science & Technology. 

“These chemicals have probably been in people for quite some time, but our technology is now helping us to identify more of them,” said Tracey J. Woodruff, PhD, a professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive sciences at UCSF.

A former U.S. Environmental Protection Agency scientist, Woodruff directs the Program on Reproductive Health and the Environment (PRHE) and the Environmental Research and Translation for Health (EaRTH) Center, both at UCSF.  

“It is alarming that we keep seeing certain chemicals travel from pregnant women to their children, which means these chemicals can be with us for generations,” she said. 

The scientific team used high-resolution mass spectrometry (HRMS) to identify human-made chemicals in people.  

But, while these chemicals can be tentatively identified using chemical libraries, they need to be confirmed by comparing them to the pure chemicals produced by manufacturers that are known as “analytical standards.” And manufacturers do not always make these available. 

Recently, for example, chemical manufacturer Solvay stopped providing access to a chemical standard for one perfluorooctanoic acid (PFAS) compound that has emerged as a replacement for phased-out PFAS compounds. The researchers have been using this chemical standard to evaluate the presence and the toxicity of the replacement PFAS. 

“These new technologies are promising in enabling us to identify more chemicals in people, but our study findings also make clear that chemical manufacturers need to provide analytical standards so that we can confirm the presence of chemicals and evaluate their toxicity,” said co-lead author Dimitri Panagopoulos Abrahamsson, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow with UCSF’s PRHE.  

The 109 chemicals researchers found in the blood samples from pregnant women and their newborns are found in many different types of products. For example, 40 are used as plasticizers, 28 in cosmetics, 25 in consumer products, 29 as pharmaceuticals, 23 as pesticides, three as flame retardants, and seven are PFAS compounds, which are used in carpeting, upholstery and other applications. The researchers say it’s possible there are also other uses for all of these chemicals.  

The researchers report that 55 of the 109 chemicals they tentatively identified appear not to have been previously reported in people:  

  • 1 is used as a pesticide (bis(2,2,6,6-tetramethylpiperidini-4-y) decanedioate) 
  • 2 are PFASs (methyl perfluoroundecanoate, most likely used in the manufacturing of non-stick cookware and waterproof fabrics; 2-perfluorodecyl ethanoic acid) 
  • 10 are used as plasticizers (e.g. Sumilizer GA 80 – used in food packaging, paper plates, small appliances) 
  • 2 are used in cosmetics 
  • 4 are high production volume (HPV) chemicals  
  • 37 have little to no information about their sources or uses (e.g., 1-(1-Acetyl-2,2,6,6-tetramethylpiperidin-4-yl)-3-dodecylpyrrolidine-2,5-dione, used in manufacturing fragrances and paints—this chemical is so little known that there is currently no acronym—and (2R0-7-hydroxy-8-(2-hydroxyethyl)-5-methoxy-2-,3-dihydrochromen-4-one (Acronym: LL-D-253alpha), for which there is limited to no information about its uses or sources 

“It’s very concerning that we are unable to identify the uses or sources of so many of these chemicals,” Woodruff said. “EPA must do a better job of requiring the chemical industry to standardize its reporting of chemical compounds and uses. And they need to use their authority to ensure that we have adequate information to evaluate potential health harms and remove chemicals from the market that pose a risk.” 

Reference: “Suspect Screening, Prioritization, and Confirmation of Environmental Chemicals in Maternal-Newborn Pairs from San Francisco” by Aolin Wang, Dimitri Panagopoulos Abrahamsson, Ting Jiang, Miaomiao Wang, Rachel Morello-Frosch, June-Soo Park, Marina Sirota and Tracey J. Woodruff, 16 March 2021, , Environmental Science & Technology.
DOI: 10.1021/acs.est.0c05984

Authors: Joining Woodruff and Panagopoulos Abrahamsson in the study were Aolin Wang and Marina Sirota, of UCSF; Ting Jiang, Miamiao Wang and June-Soo Park of the California Environmental Protection Agency; and Rachel Morello-Frosch of UC Berkeley. 

Funding: This study was funded by NIH/NIEHS grant numbers P30- 870 ES030284, UG3OD023272, UH3OD023272, P01ES022841, 871 R01ES027051 and by the U.S. EPA grant number 872 RD83543301.



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Business

Toyota, Honda Shut U.S. Factories as Perfect Storm Disrupts Supply Chains

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Toyota Motor Corp. , Honda Motor Corp. and Samsung Electronics Co. said supply-chain problems were complicating their businesses, as freak weather, port blockages and the continued impact of Covid-19 combine to disrupt global supply chains.

Toyota and Honda said Wednesday that they would halt production at plants in North America because of a squeeze in crucial supplies, including plastic components, petrochemicals and semiconductors. Honda also blamed port backlogs and severe winter weather that has frozen plants and pipes across the central U.S. for the disruption.

Separately, Samsung, the world’s largest maker of smartphones, said a severe global shortage in chips would hurt its business into the next quarter. The South Korean company also said it might withhold launching a new model of one of its most popular handsets, though it said the move was aimed at keeping it from competing with an existing handset.

The disruptions underscore how a number of forces are coming together to squeeze the world’s supply chains: from the pandemic-driven rise in consumer demand for tech goods to a backlog of imports at clogged California ports and U.S. factory outages caused by severe weather. The timing is particularly concerning for manufacturers because the U.S. and some other economies are beginning to reopen thanks to vaccination campaigns.

“Automotive companies initially had to bear the brunt of these shortages, but now it has spread to pretty much all parts of the consumer-electronics sector,” said Sanjeev Rana, senior analyst at investment bank CLSA in Seoul.

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Business

Betting on the post-pandemic boom? Bank of America has 17 stock recommendations

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Here’s one possible all-clear signal. COVID-19 is no longer a “tail risk” for investors, the first time since February 2020, says Bank of America in its latest fund manager survey. A tail risk is an unlikely event that could cause outsize losses or gains.

Scroll down for that chart.

Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve’s two-day policy meeting begins on Tuesday, and investors will be on the lookout for any hawkish signals that could take some steam out of stocks. The premarket is showing some mixed action after some disappointment over retail sales.

But many remain stuck into the idea of a post-pandemic boom, at least in the U.S. as vaccinations roll out.

Read: Value stocks are making a comeback. Don’t get left behind, these analysts say

That has kept the records coming for the Dow Jones Industrial Average
DJIA,
+0.53%
and S&P 500
SPX,
+0.65%
and those stocks geared toward a recovery. Our call of the day comes from strategists at Bank of America, who offer up 17 stocks to buy for the three R’s they see coming — recovery, reflation and rerating.

Strategists Jill Carey, Savita Subramanian and Ohsung Kwon say the economy has reached the mid-cycle phase, where inflation typically is strongest. In prior such phases, excluding the technology bubble, small-caps have outperformed larger ones, and value has beaten growth.


Uncredited

The Bank of America team says there are two reasons to like those stocks: many of the companies they highlight are still not expensive, and active funds aren’t positioning for that rising inflation, with heavier exposure to mega than smaller caps.


Uncredited


Uncredited

Onto the stocks (nearly half are small-to-midcap companies)…

Alcoa
AA,
-1.49%
— BofA has a share price target $37 for the miner. Aluminum prices could go either way, but global demand growth is a plus for Alcoa.

Axalta Coating Systems
AXTA,
-0.70%
— Share price target £37 for the global coatings group. The pace of automobile recovery will be key and a stronger dollar and lower raw material costs could be a boost.

Broadcom
AVGO,
+4.34%
— Share price target $550. Risks for the semiconductor company include sensitivity to U.S.-China trade relations and competition in networking, smartphone and other markets.

Hess
HES,
-1.40%
— Share price target $95. Among the energy company’s risks are oil and gas prices, as well as slowing developments in drilling.

Marriott International
MAR,
+2.24%
— Share price objective $150. Economic weakness and worse-than-expected spending by businesses and consumers are among the risks for the hospitality company.

Walt Disney
DIS,
-0.20%
— $223 price objective for the entertainment giant that has “best in class assets.” Downside risks include slowing ESPN growth from people deciding not to keep a cable television subscription, weaker consumer confidence, and low theme park attendance. Also watch out for potential film flops.

As for the rest, they like CNH Industrial
CNHI,
+0.59%,
Comcast
CMCSA,
+0.77%,
Emerson Electric
EMR,
-1.39%,
Herc Holdings
HRI,
+1.98%,
Knight-Swift Transportation
KNX,
-0.67%,
Occidental Petroleum
OXY,
-4.34%,
Parker Hannifin
PH,
+0.75%,
Principal Financial
PFG,
-0.45%,
Robert Half International
RHI,
-1.11%,
Union Pacific
UNP,
-0.66%
and World Fuel Services
INT,
+0.08%.

The chart

Here’s that “tail risk” chart from the latest BofA monthly fund manager survey. Bigger risks are higher-than-expected inflation and a “tantrum” in the bond market.


Uncredited

The markets

Dow and S&P futures
YM00,
-0.06%

ES00,
+0.08%
are flat, while Nasdaq-100 futures
NQ00,
+0.52%
are up. European stocks are higher
SXXP,
+0.62%.
It was also an up day for Asian markets. Elsewhere, oil
CL.1,
-1.39%
and the dollar
DXY,
-0.06%
are weak and bitcoin
BTCUSD,
-2.98%
is backing further away from the $60,000 hit over the weekend.

The buzz

Retail sales dropped a bigger-than-expected 3% in February, though they surged a revised 7.6% in January. Import prices rose 1.3%. That data will be followed by industrial production and a National Association of Home Builders index. Aside from the Fed meeting kickoff, investors will also be watching the outcome of a an auction of 20-year Treasury bonds.

Ray Dalio, the founder of Bridgewater, the world’s biggest hedge fund firm, declares investing in bonds as “stupid” and investors should stick to a “well-diversified portfolio.”

AstraZeneca
AZN,
+0.72%

AZN,
+3.37%
shares are higher after Jefferies upgraded the drug company to buy from hold. AstraZeneca has been in the hot seat as several European countries suspend its COVID-19 shots over reports of blood clots from inoculations.

Finnish telecoms group Nokia
NOKIA,
+0.52%

NOK,
+1.90%
is cutting up to 10,000 jobs to save $716 million over two years.

A team from the U.S. government’s highway safety agency is headed to Detroit to investigate a “violent” crash after a Tesla
TSLA,
+2.05%
vehicle drove under a semitrailer, leaving two people critically injured.

Random reads

Office nostalgia — Redditers swap coworkers-from-hell stories.

When a hacker gets all your texts for $16.

Need to Know starts early and is updated until the opening bell, but sign up here to get it delivered once to your email box. The emailed version will be sent out at about 7:30 a.m. Eastern.

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Business

Stocks Fall, Led Lower by Tech Shares

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The Dow Jones Industrial Average inched down 0.1% after closing Wednesday at an all-time high. The S&P 500 fell 0.3%, and the Nasdaq Composite lost 0.6%.

Stocks have wobbled the past week as investors have grappled with a sharp rise in bond yields. The shift, which money managers have broadly attributed to bets on inflation and growth picking up, has tempered enthusiasm for some of the pricier sectors of the stock market.

The S&P 500 technology sector lost 0.5% Thursday, among the worst-performing sectors in the index. Meanwhile, sectors of the market thought to benefit most from rising economic growth, like financials and energy, were higher for the day.

The KBW Nasdaq Bank Index, which tracks the performance of 24 lenders, added 0.6%.

“The market is jittery. The bond yields’ rising is putting equities, especially growth stocks, under pressure,” said

Sebastien Galy,

a macro strategist at Nordea Asset Management. “There is a bit of a risk reduction broadly.”

One group of stocks that bucked the trend: “meme” stocks that have surged in popularity among individual investors this year.

In a wave of volatility reminiscent of last month’s rally,

GameStop

jumped 50%, while

AMC Entertainment

climbed 14%. The two stocks had soared in overnight trading as well.

The moves show “there is still liquidity and a lot of access to speculative bets,” said Sophie Chardon, cross asset strategist at Lombard Odier. “We have to be prepared to live with this kind of targeted bubble, but I wouldn’t see it as a threat to the global equity market.”

Meanwhile, government bond prices fell, with the yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note ticking up to 1.460%, from 1.388% Wednesday.

“The rise in yields is supportive for banks, higher oil prices are supportive for energy. It is a change of leadership,” Ms. Chardon said.

Overseas, the pan-continental Stoxx Europe 600 edged up 0.2%.

Among individual equities, beer maker

Anheuser-Busch InBev

fell almost 6% after its fourth-quarter profit came in below estimates.

Traders worked on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange on Wednesday.



Photo:

Nicole Pereira/Associated Press

British packaging company

DS Smith

jumped over 6% on reports that rival Mondi is exploring a takeover.

Investors have also been selling European government bonds in recent weeks as they look for higher returns. The yield on French 10-year bonds, which moves inversely to the price, ticked up above zero for the first time since June and reached as high as 0.024%.

In Asia, most major benchmarks finished the day up.

The Shanghai Composite Index added 0.6% and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index climbed 1.2%. South Korea’s Kospi Index rallied 3.5% after its central bank kept interest rates at historic lows.

Write to Anna Hirtenstein at anna.hirtenstein@wsj.com and Akane Otani at akane.otani@wsj.com

Copyright ©2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

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Business

Apple, Tesla and Facebook ready to report record sales in busiest week of earnings

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U.S. companies have barely managed to eke out positive earnings growth so far in this quarterly results season, but the big test arrives in the week ahead.

Nearly a quarter of the S&P 500
SPX,
-0.30%
is set to report results, with those companies representing 39% of the index by market value, according to calculations based on FactSet data. Given that the S&P 500 is weighted by market capitalization, this roster of companies will have an outsize impact on the profit trajectory for the index.

Earnings are expected to decline for the fourth consecutive quarter once all results are in for the latest period, but those companies that have reported thus far have been beating expectations in aggregate.

The FactSet consensus now models a 5% earnings decline for the index, compared with the 6.3% drop projected a week ago. If profit growth for the S&P 500 ultimately ends up positive, it would mark an end to the current earnings recession, which takes place when corporate profits drop for two or more consecutive quarters.

Apple Inc.
AAPL,
+1.61%
and Facebook Inc.
FB,
+0.60%
are among the highlights of next week’s slate, along with Tesla Inc.
TSLA,
+0.20%,
which will deliver results for the first time since it became a member of the S&P 500. All three high-profile companies are scheduled to report Wednesday afternoon and expected to have produced record revenue in the holiday quarter.

The holiday quarter is always crucial for Apple, which releases new iPhones in the fall. With a slightly later launch than usual this year due to the pandemic pushing sales into the period, Apple is widely expected to post its largest quarterly revenue total ever and its first ever total above $100 billion. The technology giant likely also continued to see benefits from remote-work and remote-schooling trends, which have driven strong iPad and Mac sales throughout the COVID-19 crisis.

Full preview: Get ready for Apple’s first $100 billion quarter in history

Facebook is also expected to post what should easily be a record quarter given strong digital advertising trends during the holiday period. Still, the company will face questions about user engagement and a decision to ban Donald Trump from the platform indefinitely over his role in inciting the violent riot at the U.S. Capitol. Bernstein analyst Mark Shmulik points to “continued usage fatigue” across social media as well as a “conversation skewed towards unmonetizable political events.”

Full preview: Facebook earnings still flourishing amid pandemic, economic slowdown and antitrust scrutiny

Tesla already disclosed delivery numbers for the full year that came in ahead of analyst expectations, and all eyes will be on the company’s outlook for 2021. RBC Capital Markets analyst Joseph Spak anticipates a delivery forecast of 825,000 to 875,000 million units for the full year, even though Chief Executive Elon Musk said on Tesla’s last earnings call that an analyst was “not far off” for expecting 840,000 to a million deliveries during 2021.

Full preview: Can Tesla’s sales growth match stock’s rise?

Here’s what else to watch for in the week ahead, which brings reports from 117 members of the S&P 500 and 13 Dow Jones Industrial Average
DJIA,
-0.57%
components.

Up in the air

Boeing Co.’s
BA,
-0.76%
journey remains turbulent even as the company’s 737-MAX jets were recertified after being grounded for almost two years. Though the company began deliveries of these aircraft, “the pace of delivering all 450 parked 737-MAX will be dictated by airline customers ability to absorb aircraft as well as air traffic demand,” according to Benchmark Company analyst Josh Sullivan.

Boeing’s Wednesday morning report will offer perspective on the company’s recovery expectations amid the pandemic, though Sullivan sees volatility ahead stemming from a recent equity offering and the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on airlines.

The fourth-quarter reports from U.S. airlines have been bleak so far, and American Airlines Group Inc.
AAL,
-0.06%
and Southwest Airlines Co.
LUV,
-0.80%
offer more on Thursday morning.

Can you hear me now?

Verizon Communications Inc.
VZ,
+0.35%
leads off a busy week of telecommunications earnings Tuesday morning, followed by AT&T Inc.
T,
+0.35%
Wednesday morning and Comcast Corp.
CMCSA,
-0.92%
Thursday morning.

For the wireless carriers, a key issue will be the impact of iPhone 12 promotions on recent results. Investors will also be looking for information about a recent wireless auction offering spectrum that will be crucial for 5G network deployments. Though the bids haven’t been made public yet, the auction drove record spending and AT&T and Verizon are both expected to have paid up handsomely to assert their standing. The question for investors is what impact these bids will have on the companies’ financial positioning.

Full preview: AT&T earnings to kick off a defining year for telecom giant

AT&T and Comcast have more media exposure than Verizon, and those two companies have been trying to contend with the new realities brought on by the pandemic. Both companies have made moves to emphasize streaming more with their film slates given theater closures, and the financial implications of these moves will be worth watching.

Paying up

The evolving situation with the pandemic is reflected perhaps no more clearly than in the results of Visa Inc.
V,
-1.52%,
Mastercard Inc.
MA,
-1.63%,
and American Express Co.
AXP,
-1.01%,
which have a pulse on the global consumer spending landscape. The companies should provide insight on a travel recovery toward the end of the year, as well as the impact of recent lockdowns.

Susquehanna analyst James Friedman wrote recently that his Mastercard revenue projection of $3.97 billion is slightly below the consensus view, though he also asked: “does anyone really care about Q4 2020?” Friedman is upbeat about mobile-payments and online-shopping dynamics that suggest “positive trends ahead” for Mastercard, which reports Thursday morning. Visa follows that afternoon, while American Express kicks of the week with its Tuesday morning report.

The chip saga continues

Advanced Micro Devices Inc.
AMD,
+1.38%
is poised to keep benefiting from Intel Corp.’s
INTC,
-9.29%
stumbles, which analysts expect to last for some time even as Intel prepares for a new, technology-oriented chief executive to take the helm.

“We have low confidence that Intel will be able to close that transistor gap quickly, and therefore expect it to continue to lose share for the foreseeable future,” Jefferies analyst Mark Lipacis wrote after Intel’s latest earnings report. AMD will show how that dynamic has played out on its side of the equation when it posts numbers Tuesday afternoon.

Full preview: If Intel gets its act together, can AMD maintain swollen valuation?

Other chip makers reporting in the week ahead include Texas Instruments Inc.
TXN,
-1.31%
on Tuesday afternoon; Xilinx Inc.
XLNX,
+1.26%,
which is in line to be acquired by AMD, on Wednesday afternoon report, when it will be joined by chip-equipment maker Lam Research Corp.
LRCX,
-0.06%
; and Western Digital Corp.
WDC,
-5.23%
on Thursday afternoon.

Busy week for the Dow

Among the 13 members of the Dow Jones Industrial Average
DJIA,
-0.57%
set to report this week are 3M Co
MMM,
-0.96%.
, Johnson & Johnson
JNJ,
+1.13%,
American Express, Verizon, and Microsoft Corp.
MSFT,
+0.44%,
all of which report Tuesday.

“Near term, we see the company’s COVID-19 vaccine readout as a key upcoming catalyst and believe efficacy in the 80%+ range would suggest a clear role for the product in the market,” J.P. Morgan analyst Chris Schott wrote of Johnson & Johnson.

Cowen & Co. analyst J. Derrick Wood sees tough comparisons for Microsoft especially in its Azure and server businesses, though he expects a more favorable situation going forward.

Full preview: SolarWinds hack may actually be a good thing for Microsoft

Wednesday brings results from Boeing and Apple, while Thursday features McDonald’s Corp.
MCD,
-0.07%,
Dow Inc.
DOW,
-0.10%,
and Visa. Honeywell International Inc.
HON,
-1.45%,
Chevron Corp.
CVX,
-0.30%,
and Caterpillar Inc.
CAT,
-0.13%
round out the week Friday morning.

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