Category: Arkansas

J.B. Hunt Transport Services Inc. of Lowell said Thursday that its subsidiary, J.B. Hunt Mexico S.C., has opened an enterprise sales branch in Santiago de Querétaro, Querétaro, Mexico.

It’s the first such office in the country for the publicly traded company (Nasdaq: JBHT), which said the site will consolidate sales, operations and customer support for its intermodal and highway services there. 

J.B. Hunt has been in Mexico for more than 25 years, with offices in in Mexico City, Guadalajara, San Luis Potosi and Monterrey.

“We wanted to create something that was truly unique for Mexico, and this new office provides a hybrid of services that will help us better serve our customers and grow our client base,” Shelley Simpson, executive vice president, chief commercial officer and president of highway services, said in a news release. “We’re excited to join the rapidly growing business community in Querétaro.”

The Nasdaq is adding fake meat to its diet.

Beyond Meat, the purveyor of plant-based burgers and sausages, made its debut on the stock exchange Thursday. It’s the first pure-play maker of vegan “meat” to go public, according to Renaissance Capital, which researches and tracks IPOs.

Beyond Meat raised about $240 million selling 9.6 million shares at $25 each. That values the company at about $1.5 billion.

The 10-year-old company has attracted celebrity investors like Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and actor Leonardo DiCaprio and buzz for placing its products in burger joints like Carl’s Jr. It sells to 30,000 grocery stores, restaurants and schools in the U.S., Canada, Italy, the United Kingdom and Israel.

Beyond Meat CEO Ethan Brown said the IPO timing is right because the company wants to expand overseas. He also wants consumers to be able to buy shares since they have fueled the company’s growth.

“It really is a wonderful feeling to be able to welcome people in who have helped this brand,” Brown told The Associated Press.

Still, Beyond Meat has never made an annual profit; it lost $30 million last year. It’s also facing serious competition from other “new meat” companies like Impossible Foods and traditional players like Tyson Foods Inc. Tyson recently sold a stake in Beyond Meat because it plans to develop its own alternative meat.

The IPO comes amid growing consumer interest in plant-based foods for their presumed health and environmental benefits. U.S. sales of plant-based meats jumped 42% between March 2016 and March 2019 to a total of $888 million, according to Nielsen. Traditional meat sales rose 1% to $85 billion in that same time frame.

The trend is a global one. U.K. sales of meat alternatives jumped 18% over the last year, while sales of traditional meat and poultry slid 2%.

Even Burger King has recognized the appeal. Earlier this week, the fast food chain announced that it would start testing the Impossible Whopper, made with a plant-based burger from Impossible Foods, in additional markets after its monthlong test in St. Louis proved successful.

Brown says Beyond Meat’s ingredient list — it only uses natural ingredients that haven’t been genetically modified and doesn’t use soy — sets it apart from competitors. Its products are made from pea protein, canola oil, potato starch and other plant-based ingredients. Its burgers “bleed” with beet juice; its sausages are colored with fruit juice.

Unlike competitors, Beyond Meat products have also been sold in the meat section of groceries since 2016. That has broadened their appeal beyond vegetarians. Beyond Meat says a 26-week study last spring showed that 93% of Kroger customers who bought its burgers also bought animal meat during the same period.

Health comparisons are mixed. A four-ounce 92% lean burger from Laura’s Lean Beef has higher fat and cholesterol than a Beyond Meat burger, but Beyond Meat’s burger has higher sodium and carbohydrates and slightly less protein. The lean beef burger is 160 calories; a Beyond Meat burger is 270 calories.

Brown says Beyond Meat is working on reducing sodium, which is a natural byproduct of its manufacturing process. But he also points out that red meat and processed meat have been classified as possible carcinogens by the World Health Organization.

Beyond Meat also costs more. For $5.99, consumers can get two 4-ounce patties of Beyond Burger or four 4-ounce patties of Laura’s Lean Beef.

Brown said Beyond Meat has a five-year goal of getting at least one product — most likely beef — to cost less than the animal version. He expects the supply chain will grow as sales expand, which will lower the cost of raw ingredients like peas.

But Beyond Meat touts environmental benefits as well. The company says a plant-based burger takes 99% less water and 93% less land to produce than a beef burger, and generates 90% fewer greenhouse gas emissions.

Beyond Meat was founded in 2009 by Brown, a former clean energy executive. Brown’s family part-owned a Maryland dairy farm, so as a child, Brown spent weekends and summers on the farm. As he grew older, he began to question whether people really needed animals to produce meat.

Brown teamed up with two professors from the University of Missouri, Fu-hung Hsieh and Harold Huff, who had been developing soy-based chicken since the 1980s. By 2013, Beyond Meat was selling plant-based chicken strips nationwide at Whole Foods. (The company discontinued chicken earlier this year but says it’s working on a better recipe.)

For investors, the stock is not without risk. Amid its annual losses, Beyond Meat must also continue to spend heavily on research and development. The El Segundo, California-based company employs 63 scientists, engineers, researchers, technicians and chefs at its 30,000-square-foot lab. It also has manufacturing facilities in Columbia, Missouri.

Renaissance Capital, which has researched the company, says investors will likely tolerate the losses because the business is growing so quickly. Beyond Meat’s net revenue was $87.9 million last year, 170% higher than 2017.

In documents filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Beyond Meat says it will invest $40 million to $50 million in current and new manufacturing facilities and spend $50 million to $60 million on product development and sales. The rest will be used to pay down debt and fund operations.

(All contents © copyright 2019 Associated Press. All rights reserved.)

Global financial services company FIS of Jacksonville, Florida, and the Venture Center in Little Rock held a kickoff event late Wednesday and named the 10 startups selected to participate in the 2019 VC FinTech Accelerator program.

This is the fourth year for the 12-week accelerator, funded with $500,000 each from FIS and Arkansas discretionary funds.

This year’s program received 225 applications from startups across the United States and 31 other countries.

The 10 companies chosen for this year’s program are:

• Digital Onboarding of Boston, which offers an online platform that motivates bank customers or credit union members to adopt account-related services and fully use their new accounts;
• Gremlin Social of St. Louis, which offers offers organizational tools to help manage social media for banks;
• Sendmi of Lehi, Utah, which has created the employer-sponsored Transfer Savings Plan that allows employees to send money to international destinations faster, more securely and less expensively.
• ChangeEd of Chicago, which offers an app that automatically collects spare change and uses it to help pay off the users’ student loans;
• Voleo of Vancouver, which offers a social stock trading app for investment clubs;
• Neener Analytics of Sunnyvale, California, which uses an individual’s online life to determine the risk for a bank that is considering loaning money to that individual;
• Genivity of Chicago, which offers health and wealth planning products and services for financial advisors, to help them prepare clients for retirement and wealth transfer;
• Curu of Charlotte, North Carolina, which offers an online service that helps consumers build credit and increase their scores; 
• Highside of New York, which offers an online communications and files platform for employees to use that also has the cybersecurity features and compliance functionality required by executives and regulators; and
• Mimble of Portland, Oregon, which offers an app that incentivizes users to save through rewards from brands the startup has partnered with.

Each startup will receive in-depth mentoring and training from FIS and the Venture Center and a $75,000 investment. Startups will pitch their products or services to investors at a demo day on July 17.

Lynn Roche, executive vice president of IFS Leveraged Services at FIS; Mike Preston, executive director of the Arkansas Economic Development Commission; Little Rock Mayor Frank Scott Jr.; and Brian Bauer, managing director of fintech accelerators at the Venture Center, were among the speakers at Wednesday’s event.

“I really do believe this is all about the partnership: the partnership that we have with the state of Arkansas, the partnership with the Venture Center, and certainly the partnership we have with clients of FIS and our employees that help drive this program,” Roche said.

“We’ve created $28 million dollars in revenue out of the companies that have come out of this accelerator program. We’ve also created 450 jobs, so creating new jobs and new opportunities, that’s exciting,” she said.

The mayor said Little Rock is “on the cusp of greatness,” and Preston agreed, mentioning the governor’s coding initiative, which requires Arkansas public schools to offer coding classes. 

“We’re developing a pipeline of talent right here in Arkansas who are going to have the skills in computer science and computer coding to fill these jobs,” Preston said. “So, when you go through this accelerator program, you take your company public or you sell to FIS or whatever you might do and make a lot of money, we want your company to locate here. We want your subsidiary to locate here.”

Bauer said the accelerator “has hit a critical mass” and is all about offering the participants access to prospective customers and to industry experts, mostly FIS staffers. He also said the startups will connect with about 50 banks.

After divesting major Asian assets and raising its exploration stake in the Gulf of Mexico, Murphy Oil Corp. of El Dorado announced first-quarter financial results Thursday morning, including net income of $40 million and an adjusted net profit of $27 million excluding the discontinued operations and one-off items.

The adjusted total amounted to 15 cents per share of common stock.

Murphy announced it was divesting all its Malaysian assets in March for $2.1 billion in cash, and Thursday’s report listed all operations as “discontinued operations” held for sale for financial reporting purposes.

The first-quarter results were filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission before the opening of U.S. markets Thursday. After the first quarter’s end, Murphy agreed to acquire offshore oil fields in the Gulf of Mexico for $1.37 billion, using some proceeds from the Malaysian sale. The company also reported it had received regulatory approval to operate the Gulf assets acquired from Petrobras America Inc., an arm of the Brazilian national petroleum giant.

Total revenue was up considerably year over year, to $591 million, compared with first-quarter 2018 revenue of $375 million. The income and revenue numbers beat analysts’ predictions.

Murphy President and CEO Roger W. Jenkins said it was a busy quarter for the company.

“We demonstrated again that we are proven deal-makers by successfully executing agreements to divest our Malaysia assets, which are becoming gassier, followed shortly thereafter by an agreement to deploy the expected proceeds by acquiring oil-weighted, tax-advantaged Gulf of Mexico assets further enhancing our ability to generate cash flow,” Jenkins said in a company statement.

“While our lower than planned production across our North American business was disappointing, many of the causes were one-off events and are now behind us, with production stabilized as we move into the second quarter.”

He said the company would continue offering investors a competitive dividend, and would proceed with share repurchase plans, “all while keeping forward investment in our assets in line with cash flows.”

WASHINGTON — The Federal Reserve left its key interest rate unchanged Wednesday and signaled that no rate hikes are likely in coming months amid signs of renewed economic health but unusually low inflation.

The Fed left its benchmark rate — which influences many consumer and business loans — in a range of 2.25% to 2.5%. Its low-rate policy has helped boost stock prices and supported a steadily growing economy.

A statement from the Fed spotlighted its continuing failure so far to accelerate annual inflation to at least its 2% target rate. The Fed’s preferred 12-month inflation barometer is running at about 1.5%. In pointing to persistently low inflation, the Fed may be raising expectations that its next rate change, whenever it happens, could be a rate cut rather than a hike. The Fed cuts rates when it’s trying to stimulate inflation or economic growth.

The Fed also made a technical adjustment Wednesday to reduce the interest it pays banks on reserves as a way to keep its benchmark rate inside its approved range, rather than at the upper end of that range.

The central bank’s decision to make no change in the policy rate policy — approved on a 10-0 vote — had been expected despite renewed pressure from President Donald Trump for the Fed to cut rates aggressively to help accelerate economic growth.

The Fed expressed offered a more upbeat view of the economy, saying “economic activity rose at a solid rate.” In March, the Fed had said it appeared that growth had slowed from the fourth quarter of last year.

The generally brighter outlook for the economy and the stock market represents a sharp rebound from the final months of 2018, when concerns about a possible global recession and fear of further Fed rate increases had darkened the economic picture. Stock prices tumbled late last year, especially after the Fed in December not only raised rates for the fourth time in 2018 but suggested that it was likely to keep tightening credit this year.

Yet starting in January, the Fed engineered an abrupt reversal, suggesting that it was finished raising rates for now and might even act this year to support rather than restrain the economy. Its watchword became “patient.” And investors have responded by delivering a major stock market rally.

The market gains have also been fed by improved growth prospects in China and some other major economies and by the view that a trade war between the world’s two biggest economies, the United States and China, is nearing a resolution.

Last week, the government reported that the U.S. economy grew at a surprisingly strong 3.2% annual rate in the January-March quarter. It was the best performance for a first quarter in four years, and it far surpassed initial forecasts that annual growth could be as weak as 1% at the start of the year.

If economic prospects were to brighten further, could Fed officials rethink their plans to suspend further rate hikes and perhaps resume tightening credit?

Possibly. But investors don’t seem to think so. According to data tracked by the CME Group, investors foresee zero probability that the Fed will raise rates anytime this year. And in fact, their bets indicate a roughly 64% likelihood that the Fed will cut rates before year’s end.

One factor in that dovish view is that the economy might not be quite as robust as the latest economic figures suggest. The first quarter’s healthy 3.2% annual growth rate was pumped up by some temporary factors — from a surge in restocking of companies’ inventories to a narrowing of the U.S. trade deficit — that are expected to reverse themselves. If so, this would diminish the pace of growth and likely hold down inflation.

Indeed, for all of 2019, growth is expected to total around 2.2%, down from last year’s 2.7% gain, as the effects of the 2017 tax cuts and billions of dollars in increased government spending fade.

At the same time, the Fed is still struggling to achieve one of its mandates: To produce inflation of roughly 2%. This week, the government reported that the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge rose just 1.5% in March from 12 months earlier. Many analysts say they think the Fed won’t resume raising rates until inflation hits or exceeds its 2% target.

Too-low inflation is seen as an obstacle because it tends to depress consumer spending, the economy’s main fuel, as people delay purchases in anticipation of flat or even lower prices. It also raise the inflation-adjusted cost of a loan.

In the meantime, President Donald Trump has attacked the Fed leadership of Chairman Jerome Powell as being too restrictive toward rates and has pressed the Fed to cut rates — something few mainstream economists favor.

On Tuesday, Trump tweeted that the U.S. economy has “the potential to go up like a rocket” if the Fed would only slash rates and resume the emergency bond buying programs it unveiled after the Great Recession to ease long-term loan rates to stimulate spending and growth.

“Yes, we are doing very well at 3.2% GDP (growth in the first quarter), but with our wonderfully low inflation, we could be setting major records,” Trump tweeted on the first day of the Fed’s two-day policy meeting.

Powell has so far stuck to his long-standing position that the Fed will keep pursuing its goals of maximum employment and stable inflation without regard to outside influence.

In recent months, Trump tapped two conservative political allies for vacancies on the Fed’s influential board in hopes that they would push for lower rates and counter Powell’s influence. One of them, Herman Cain, has since withdrawn. The other, Stephen Moore, faces diminishing prospects but is aggressively campaigning for the board seat despite criticism of his qualifications and sometimes inflammatory writings. As recently as December, Moore was calling for Trump to try to fire Powell.

(All contents © copyright 2019 Associated Press. All rights reserved.)

WASHINGTON — American consumers are feeling more confident this month, though optimism hasn’t fully recovered from a period of roiling markets and slowed hiring early this year.

The Conference Board, a business research group, said Tuesday that its consumer confidence index rose to 129.2 in April, from 124.2 in March.

The index, covering the month through April 18, measures consumers’ assessment of current economic conditions and their expectations for the next six months. Both rose in April.

Economists pay close attention to the index because consumer spending accounts for about 70 percent of U.S. economic activity.

The index slipped in March as financial market bucked and a February employment report that showed hiring had tumbled. U.S. employers added only 20,000 jobs, the smallest monthly gain in nearly a year and a half.

A slowdown in manufacturing and retail, sluggish housing and construction activity and global pressures, including the ongoing trade war with China, had dampened expectations for economic growth.

Hiring rebounded in March as employers added a solid 196,000 jobs, showing that many businesses still want to hire. The unemployment rate remained at 3.8%, near the lowest level in almost 50 years, the government reported in early April.

“Overall, consumers expect the economy to continue growing at a solid pace into the summer months,” said Lynn Franco, the Conference Board’s senior director of economic indicators. “These strong confidence levels should continue to support consumer spending in the near term.”

The survey showed consumers’ assessment of current conditions improved in April, with respondents saying business conditions are “good” increasing to 37.3% from 34.7%. The short-term outlook also brightened, with the percentage of consumers expecting business conditions to be better six months from now rising to 19.9% from 17.2%.

A government report on Friday showed that the U.S. economy grew much faster than expected in the January-March quarter, indicating that the nearly decade-long expansion — the second-longest on record — still has room to run.

The worries that hung over the economy early this year appear to have lifted. In addition to quicker-than-expected growth, other recent signs have fed a growing view among many analysts that the economy faces little risk of slipping into recession anytime soon, as some had feared when the year began. Retail sales jumped in March. And with hiring solid and wages rising at a decent pace, consumer spending will likely strengthen in the coming months.

Business economists, in a survey out Monday, predicted that the economy will expand over the next year, although the pace of growth will decline. The polling from the National Association for Business Economics also foresees employers facing pressure to raise wages, spend more on worker training and automate tasks because of the low unemployment rate.

The potential for disruption from a yearlong trade tensions between the U.S. and China persists, however. The world’s two biggest economies are locked in a standoff over accusations from the Trump administration that Beijing steals technology and forces foreign companies operating in China to hand over trade secrets. China is pushing to make its companies world leaders in advanced industries like robotics and artificial intelligence.

President Donald Trump has imposed tariffs on $250 billion in Chinese imports, about half what the U.S. buys from that country. China has retaliated with tariffs on about $110 billion of U.S. goods.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Monday that he and other negotiators for the Trump administration should know this week or next whether they can reach a trade deal with China — or whether it’s time to “move on.” Mnuchin and Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer resumed talks in Beijing on Tuesday.

(All contents © copyright 2019 Associated Press. All rights reserved.)

The Stephens Group of Little Rock announced Tuesday that it finalized its acquisition of Sound Seal Holdings Inc.

Based in Agawam, Massachusetts, Sound Seal is a manufacturer of acoustical noise control solutions It makes products including soundproof doors and windows, noise curtains and barriers, fabric wrapped wall panels, ceiling panels and more.

The companies did not disclose a purchase price.

The Stephens Group is a private investment firm led by Witt Stephens Jr. and Elizabeth Campbell. Last month it announced that it had sold Kodiak Gas Services LLC of Houston.

Sound Seal’s divisions include IAC Acoustics, which makes metal HVAC silencers, acoustic louvers, metal soundproof enclosures and sound control doors and windows.

“We are very excited to add Sound Seal to our portfolio of world class companies,” said Clay Hunter, managing director at The Stephens Group. “Sound Seal is a leader in their industry with a strong and experienced management team in place. There are a number of long-term, systemic forces driving adoption of noise control products in almost every industry, and Sound Seal’s highly engineered products, scale, solutions-oriented reputation and its customer-centric culture uniquely position the company for success in this rapidly growing industry.”

WASHINGTON — American consumers were feeling less confident this month amid continued volatility in the financial markets.

The Conference Board, a business research group, reported Tuesday that its consumer confidence index fell to 124.1 in March from 131.4 in February.

The index, covering through March 14, measures consumers’ assessment of current economic conditions and their expectations for the next six months. Both declined in March.

The index had climbed in February amid a rebound in the stock market after Christmas and an end to the partial shutdown of the federal government, as well as signs of progress toward ending the trade standoff between the U.S. and China.

Economists pay close attention to the Conference Board index because consumer spending accounts for about 70 percent of U.S. economic activity.

“Consumers remain confident that the economy will continue expanding in the near term,” said Lynn Franco, the Conference Board’s senior director of economic indicators. “However, the overall trend in confidence has been softening since last summer, pointing to a moderation in economic growth.”

In addition to the markets’ swings, consumer confidence was suppressed in March by a weak employment report for February, issued by the government on March 8. It showed that hiring tumbled last month, with U.S. employers adding just 20,000 jobs, the smallest monthly gain in nearly a year and a half.

The hiring slowdown came amid signs that growth is slowing because of a weaker global economy and the trade war between the U.S. and China.

President Donald Trump is sending U.S. officials to China this week in an effort to resolve the trade dispute. Following the meetings in Beijing, the U.S. will host a delegation from China led by Vice Premier Liu He early next month.

Trump has imposed tariffs on $250 billion of Chinese imports, about half what the U.S. buys from that country. China retaliated with tariffs on about $110 billion of U.S. goods.

A slowdown in manufacturing and retail, sluggish housing and construction activity and global pressures, including the ongoing trade war with China, have dampened expectations for economic growth.

Reflecting the dimmer view of the economy as growth slows in the U.S. and abroad, the Federal Reserve last week left its key interest rate unchanged — and signaled that it won’t be raising rates anytime soon.

The nation’s business economists, in a survey out Monday, foresee a sharp slowdown in U.S. economic growth over the next two years. The finding from the National Association for Business Economics contrasts starkly with the Trump administration’s predictions that growth will accelerate this year and next.

Still, experts say, the economy remains on strong ground as its expansion — the second-longest on record — continues.

The economy, as measured by the gross domestic product, grew 2.9 percent last year, the fastest pace since 2015. The economy benefited from new tax cuts and increased government spending, the gains from which are now thought to be fading. Many economists forecast that growth could fall below 1 percent in the first quarter.

(All contents © copyright 2019 Associated Press. All rights reserved.)