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Terminally ill Wisconsin girl who loves dogs visited by nearly 40 K-9 officers

A young Wisconsin girl with an inoperable brain tumor and a love of dogs experienced quite the day when nearly 40 K-9 officers visited her at home.

In January, 7-year-old Emma Mertens was diagnosed with Diffuse Intrinsic Pontine Glioma, a rare brain tumor, as Fox 6 reported. Soon after her diagnosis, Mertens asked people for photos of their dogs.

During the time since, Mertens, of Hartland, roughly 25 miles west of Milwaukee, has received countless letters and photos from friends and supporters trying to cheer her up.

And on Saturday, she received an even bigger act of kindness when K-9 officers with the police force in Hartford — north of Hartland — stopped by her house.

"Today, just a few of us (roughly 40) stopped by to see Emma," the department wrote in a Facebook post. "She had no idea we were coming so she was VERY excited. What an amazing and strong little girl. It was such a great morning."

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Photos of the happy day show the officers and the K-9s lined up to see Mertens. Her family wrote online that," There are no words....Pure Joy!" in response to the 7-year-old's special visit.

"Thank you to everyone who took the time to organize and participate in this. Emma is still all smiles! Over 35 different departments and many more K9s and officers," her family wrote.

Source: Fox News National

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Rwanda court says defaming the president remains a crime

Rwanda's Supreme Court has upheld a law that says defaming the president is illegal, but it says drawing cartoons or producing writing that "humiliates" a government official is no longer a crime.

The Rwanda Journalists Association had challenged parts of the penal code that criminalized the publishing of such cartoons with punishment of up to four years in prison.

A three-judge panel decided the provisions contravene freedom of expression.

The association's executive secretary, Gonza Muganwa, welcomed the ruling, telling The Associated Press it removes a major obstacle to press freedom in the East African nation.

Defaming the president remains illegal, with a punishment of five to seven years in prison and a fine.

Source: Fox News World

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UK marketing spending rises despite Brexit, uncertainty clouds forecast: survey

FILE PHOTO: The Canary Wharf financial district is seen at dusk in London
FILE PHOTO: The Canary Wharf financial district is seen at dusk in London, Britain, March 26, 2019. REUTERS/Marika Kochiashvili/File Photo

April 16, 2019

(Reuters) – British companies spent more on marketing in the opening quarter of 2019 despite uncertainty around Brexit, but their budgets for the rest of the year could be the most subdued since after the financial crisis, a survey showed.

The IPA Bellwether survey, conducted by IHS Markit, showed on Wednesday that 21.6 percent of marketing executives raised their budgets during the quarter, while just under 12.8 percent of executives who took part in the survey cut their marketing budgets.

“This sharp increase following Q4 2018’s flatlining signals that UK marketing budgets have received a much-needed kiss of life in an economy gripped by Brexit uncertainty,” IPA Director General Paul Bainsfair said.

Bainsfair, however, added that the forecast for the year ahead was uncertain given the seemingly endless negotiations around Britain’s exit from the European Union.

The report showed that cautious undertones were still apparent in budget plans for the current financial year, with panelists providing only modest growth expectations in available marketing spend.

Brexit was postponed by a late-night agreement in Brussels last week that gave Prime Minister Theresa May until Oct. 31 to persuade parliament to approve the terms of the country’s departure.

“A return to growth in marketing budgets during the opening quarter of 2019 may come as a surprise given that the uncertainty that shrouds the UK political and economic climate has only built further,” said Joe Hayes, economist at IHS Markit.

A six-year run of marketing spending growth at British companies ended in the final quarter of 2018 as uncertainty over Brexit led companies to clamp down on costs.

While Brexit uncertainty continued to prompt belt tightening and a delay in decision-making, some companies pushed resources into their brands in the first quarter, the report showed.

The survey found that the best performing category was internet with its net balance seen at a growth of 17.2 percent in the quarter.

The rise in marketing spend was supported by demand for big ticket advertising campaigns such as those on TV and radio. The survey also flagged that marketing executives expect further growth in traditional media advertising through the year.

Around 300 UK marketing professionals, primarily from Britain’s top 1,000 companies and across all key business sectors, were interviewed for the survey.

(Reporting by Samantha Machado and Noor Zainab Hussain in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D’Silva)

Source: OANN

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China Experiencing Worst Economic Growth in 30 Years

China is trying to stem an economic slowdown, including rising unemployment, continuing into the first two months of 2019 after documenting its worst year of economic growth in nearly 30 years in 2018.

Beijing is trying to counter the slowdown by spending more on infrastructure project and encouraging banks to extend loans to small businesses, reported The Wall Street Journal Thursday.

China’s economic health indicators were released Thursday and encourage far less optimism than they did this time last year. Home sales by value rose 4.5 percent in January and February from a year earlier, compared with a 14.7 percent increase at the same point in 2018, according to The WSJ. And the country’s value-added industrial output, which “measures the economy’s manufacturing, mining, utilities and other output,” had a 5.3 percent year-over-year increase as of the January-February period compared to a 5.7 percent year-over-year increase in December.


Huawei is being used by China to spy on America, even prompting the Pentagon to remove all its products that the military may be using.

Unemployment numbers also indicate a slowdown. A national urban survey unemployment rate grew from 4.9 percent in December to 5.3 percent in February, according to The WSJ.

Some experts predict the Chinese economy will hit its adjusted economic-growth target of around 6 percent. China is likely to exceed 6 percent in coming quarters because it has “the capacity to boost growth if needed,” Philippe Ithurbide, global head of research at Amundi, told Bloomberg in a video posted Thursday.

(Photo by kees torn / Wikimedia Commons)

The WSJ warned that “getting an accurate read” of China’s economy is hard in January and February because of the Lunar New Year holiday, prompting economists to combine data from the two months.

The new data comes as U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping are expected to meet in April after months of a tit-for-tat trade war. Trump announced in late February he was delaying tariffs on Chinese imports.

But the U.S. is not done with using tariffs to ensure China plays by its rules.

“We have to maintain the right to be able to, whatever happens to the current tariffs, to raise tariffs in situations where there’s violations of the agreement,” U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer told the Senate Finance Committee Tuesday according to Bloomberg. “I can’t predict success at this point, but we’re working hard and we have made real progress.”

China’s economy slowed dramatically during 2018, dropping to its lowest point in nearly 30 years as the communist country battled a prolonged tariff fight against President Donald Trump.


Infowars Europe’s Dan Lyman joins Owen Shroyer to discuss the reality that liberty is on the rise world wide.

Source: InfoWars

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Romania’s growing pains just keep coming back

Thousands of crows fly at dusk over the city skyline in Bucharest
FILE PHOTO: Thousands of crows fly at dusk over the city skyline in Bucharest November 27, 2012. REUTERS/Radu Sigheti

March 27, 2019

By Luiza Ilie and Marc Jones

BUCHAREST/LONDON (Reuters) – Almost every former Eastern Bloc country has suffered growing pains at some point over the last few decades. Romania’s just seem to keep coming back.

Fumbling attempts to bring in new bank, energy and telecoms taxes in recent months are the latest example of its struggle to assert itself as a fully functioning economy.

Two years ago, growth outpaced nearly all its European peers, spurring hopes it was finally harnessing the potential of its 20 million population — the second biggest in central Europe behind Poland — and its own oil and gas reserves.

But having been inflated by some potent fiscal stimulus, the expansion is now fading so fast again — to 4 percent last year from 7 percent in 2017 — that some analysts fear another boom and bust is playing out.

Expectations are dimming that equity index provider MSCI might promote Romania to emerging market status alongside peers like Poland and the Czech Republic as soon as this year, which would draw money into its undersized financial markets.

The IPO market is at a standstill and the new taxes worried S&P enough that it threatened to change Romania’s credit rating outlook to negative.

Bucharest averted that by promising to tweak the measures to preserve central bank independence. But the confusion has only added to a view that policymaking has become unpredictable.

“The frequency of legislative changes has been increasing and often seems to come out of the blue,” said Franklin Templeton’s Romania CEO, Johan Meyer, who manages the Fondul Proprietatea fund which has stakes in a slew of state-owned firms.

“Sometimes the decisions do get reversed or watered down, but at that point the reputational damage has been done.”

As the country gears up for four elections in 2019-20, Finance Minister Eugen Teodorovici had said the measures would help the economy “aggressively in the good way” by lowering borrowing costs and energy prices.

A ROAD TO NOWHERE

In the 12 years since it joined the European Union, Romania’s per capita national output has doubled, to roughly 60 percent of the euro zone average, while record low unemployment led to double-digit average wage growth in the last four years.

But income inequalities are among the bloc’s highest. One-third of the population lives in poverty and millions lack sufficient access to healthcare and basic amenities like indoor plumbing.

Its population is both shrinking and aging, while backsliding in the battle against chronic corruption has led to mass street protests.

“Investor confidence is being eroded by persistent legislative instability, unpredictable decision-making, low institutional quality and the continued weakening of the fight against corruption,” the European Commission said in February.

And while Romania is up 16 places on the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Index since joining the EU, Bulgaria, which also joined in 2007, has leapfrogged it.

Graphic: Poverty levels in EU interactive – https://tmsnrt.rs/2UR8cEa

This month, a businessman from northeastern Romania opened a one-meter-long motorway, built in a day and paid for by him, in protest at the state of the country’s roads.

Romania has only 800 kilometers of motorways, less than half that of Hungary even though it is more than double the size of its neighbor and has almost twice as many people.

Just 75 kilometers have been built in the last three years and none go border-to-border despite years of government promises.

Central Bank Governor Mugur Isarescu routinely uses roads to highlight poor infrastructure that impedes economic development.

“Romania will be ready to join the euro when it has a motorway crossing the Carpathian mountains,” he has said.

Graphic: Romania motorways interactive – https://tmsnrt.rs/2Ol8Abt

PATCHY IMPROVEMENTS

A series of International Monetary Fund-led aid deals in 2009-2015 helped Romania shrink its budget and current account deficits, seen as a key weakness of the economy, and it won back its investment-grade rating in 2014. Its debt to debt-to-GDP is low, in line with the Czech Republic’s at around 38 percent.

But those twin deficits are rising again after tax cuts and wage and pensions hikes that have inflated consumption.

The external shortfall was 4.7 percent of GDP in 2018, a decade high, although the government has kept the budget deficit under the EU’s 3 percent ceiling by postponing investments.

“Policies focused on raising public sector wages and pensions have widened imbalances and at some point their adjustment will be unavoidable,” said the head of Romania’s fiscal watchdog Ionut Dumitru.

“The current account deficit is at a level that can no longer be ignored.”

Graphic: Romania’s boom and bust cycles – https://tmsnrt.rs/2OfoiEO

PROMOTION PROSPECTS

Its financial markets are lagging too. Bucharest’s main stock market has only 16 companies and the tax changes have knocked banking and energy firms, leaving it with the lowest price-to-earnings ratio in the region.

Privatisations of firms like power utility Hidroelectrica, which were supposed to broaden and deepen the market and help its prospects of an MSCI promotion, have not materialized.

“They (Romania) are always remain on our radar screen. But so far it hasn’t reached the market classification framework requirements,” MSCI’s Sebastien Lieblich said, citing the small number of listed stocks.

Franklin Templeton’s Meyer blames government foot-dragging and a system whereby company directors can serve for just a few months, so that turnover at board level can hamper the six-to-nine month process of preparing a firm for the stock market.

He reckons up to five state-owned firms could easily be floated but sees none happening soon.

“It is like any promotion,” Meyer said of MSCI. “If you only do the bare minimum in your job you don’t get it.”

Graphic: Price-to-earnings ratio of Romania’s stock market – https://tmsnrt.rs/2OaW3Hr

(Reporting by Luiza Ilie in Bucharest and Marc Jones in London; Additional reporting by Karin Strohecker in London; Editing by Catherine Evans)

Source: OANN

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EU-China summit preparations stumble over trade, human rights

An attendant walks past EU and China flags in Beijing
FILE PHOTO: An attendant walks past EU and China flags in Beijing, China June 25, 2018. REUTERS/Jason Lee

April 5, 2019

By Robin Emmott and Philip Blenkinsop

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Tensions over trade, investments and minority rights may prevent China and the EU from agreeing a joint declaration at a summit next week, four diplomats in Brussels said on Friday, sapping a European push for greater access to Chinese markets.

Alarmed by potential Chinese dominance of strategic European industries, EU leaders last month sought to prepare for the April 9 summit – flagged as an opportunity to cement bilateral ties – by agreeing what they said was a more assertive stance toward Beijing.

By diplomatic convention, joint statements are issued at the conclusion of high-profile bilateral summits to formalize policy.

According to an early draft of the final EU-China communique, the European Union aimed to bind Beijing into completing talks on an investment agreement and committing to remove what the EU says are unfair barriers to trade.

The EU also wanted to show the United States that the trade war route was not the only way to coax Beijing to open up.

But Chinese officials have removed or changed many of those references, the EU diplomats said, raising the embarrassing probability of no communique at all after Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and European Council President Donald Tusk have met.

“It’s a mess, so no we face the prospect of no statement,” one senior EU diplomat said.

Other EU references to reassure Europeans that China is committed to confronting attacks by computer hackers and improving religious freedoms for the Muslim Uighur minority are also proving very difficult, the diplomats said.

“We wanted to be clear on how we want to work with China, not issue a meaningless document,” a second diplomat said.

Another said China was stalling on important issues and there would be no statement without a change in stance from Beijing.

The Chinese foreign ministry was not immediately available for comment. Earlier this week Vice Foreign Minister Wang Chao told reporters both sides were working to reach a consensus.

A meeting of EU envoys in Brussels failed to find a solution on Friday morning, one EU official said. Another said negotiations with the Chinese would continue until Tuesday.

RE-EVALUATION

The intensification of EU diplomacy since March reflects frustration over China’s reluctance to allow foreign companies to set up there without restrictions while taking full advantage of the EU’s openness, EU diplomats say.

A surge of Chinese takeovers in critical sectors in Europe and an impression in Brussels that Beijing has not kept its promise to stand up for free trade and globalization have given the April meeting new urgency.

The EU-China relationship, which is bound by 1 billion euros ($1.12 billion) in daily trade, has survived previous spats, notably in 2016 and 2017 when differences over the South China Sea and trade meant there were no communiques.

However, after a collective re-evaluation of Chinese policy by EU leaders on March 21, the six-page April 9 statement was meant to coax Beijing into making good on promises to deepen trade ties.

In the EU’s draft, the two sides would “agree by summer 2019 on a set of priority market access barriers and requirements facing their operators.”

The statement also set 2020 as the goal for a special treaty to increase investment flows.

(Reporting by Robin Emmott; editing by John Stonestreet)

Source: OANN

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“This Country Has Gone To Hell”: Total Chaos In Venezuelan Oil Capital After Blackout

Venezuela’s oil capital, Maracaibo, was ransacked and looted in the midst of a blackout that hit the country around March 7. Even as the lights started to come back on, looting continued and residents overpowered disputed President Nichloas Maduro’s security forces. Store owners are just now starting to clean up, according a new Bloomberg article, which paints a picture of Venezuela as a country on the edge of total anarchy.

Enrique Gonzalez, an 18 year old bus conductor said: “If people made enough to make ends meet, we wouldn’t be trying to get by like this. This country has gone to hell.” His driver, at the time, was pillaging a Pepsi warehouse, where thousands of bottles had been looted in hours and where people were now ripping out spare copper wire and scrap metal.

Empresas Polar SA, a Venezuelan food giant, reportedly saw its Pepsi plant lose thousands of cases of beer and soda, 160 pallets of food, 22 trucks and five forklifts. A home improvement shopping center also saw its 50 stores looted by people who broke through its iron gates and glass doors. Travel agencies, cosmetic stands and snack shops were all pillaged among the chaos.

Bernardo Morillo, 60, who built and manages the mall told Bloomberg: “It’s hard to swallow. The national guard stood by as this vandalism happened and the firefighters didn’t even show.’’

Ricardo Costa, vice president of the Zulia state chapter of the Fedecamaras business group said: “…security forces were useless as people took anything of value, including cash machines, door frames, ovens, computers and surveillance cameras…”

The country’s Centro 99 food market saw looters pick its shelves clean. “They even carried off the lard and flour to bake bread in their bare hands,’’ the store’s manager said.

The looting started last Saturday afternoon after an ice company, on a hot day, demanded that it be paid in dollars. A crowd instead tore through its factory and then continued onto nearby pharmacies and stores. By the evening, the entire city was taken over by people seeking out life’s necessities by any means necessary.

The country’s blackout took an already flammable situation and threw a match on it. Maduro’s handling of the situation has prompted the U.S. and other nations to instead recognize opposition leader Juan Guaido as the rightful head of state. Maduro has concentrated his power, in the form of resources and troops, in Caracas, the country’s capital. But the recent chaos in Maracaibo, a city of 1.6 million, shows the rest of the country is in tumult and not even the largest cities are safe.

Maduro blamed the blackout on a U.S. cyberattack last week. 

When power was restored, many transformers and substations wound up bursting into flames. There were long lines of people at water trucks, streams and burst pipes. As far as protection, “a single municipal squad car was seen” during a day of looting in the city – and the officers within warned that “no protection” was on its way.

Costa continued: “How is it possible that a thousand guardsmen are deployed to repel 50,000 protesters, but when a thousand looters come to a mall only 50 were sent?’ You could say this began because people are hungry, but the looters didn’t take just food — it morphed into aimless vandalism.’’

“Everyone knows that working here means working in anarchy, that anything can happen to you at any moment,” one local watchman said while watching his store disintegrate in front of him.

“They’re pulling wires, air conditioners, pipes — they’re literally running off with the roof.’’

Source: InfoWars

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A worker walks on the roof of a new home under construction in Carlsbad
FILE PHOTO: A worker walks on the roof of a new home under construction in Carlsbad, California September 22, 2014. REUTERS/Mike Blake

April 26, 2019

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The U.S. economy is growing at a 2.08% annualized pace in the second quarter based on upbeat data on durable goods orders and new home sales in March, the New York Federal Reserve’s Nowcast model showed on Friday.

This was faster than the 1.92% growth rate calculated by the N.Y. Fed model the week before.

(Reporting by Richard Leong; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)

Source: OANN

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Extraordinary European Union leaders summit in Brussels
FILE PHOTO: Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte arrives at an extraordinary European Union leaders summit to discuss Brexit, in Brussels, Belgium April 10, 2019. REUTERS/Yves Herman

April 26, 2019

(Reuters) – Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said on Friday he had assured China’s Huawei Technologies that it would not face discrimination in the rollout of Italy’s 5G telecoms network.

Conte was speaking on a visit to China where he said he met Huawei’s chief executive, Ren Zhengfei. The prime minister’s comments were carried in Italy by TV broadcaster Sky Italia.

“I told him that we have adopted some precautions, some measures to protect our interests that demand very high levels of security … not only from Huawei but any company entering into the 5G arena,” he said.

Huawei, the world’s biggest producer of telecoms equipment, is under intense scrutiny after the United States told allies not to use its technology because of fears it could be a vehicle for Chinese spying. Huawei has categorically denied this.

(Writing by by Mark Bendeich; Editing by Angelo Amante)

Source: OANN

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U.S. President Trump departs for travel to Indianapolis from the White House in Washington
U.S. President Donald Trump talks to reporters as he departs for travel to Indianapolis, Indiana from the White House in Washington, U.S., April 26, 2019. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

April 26, 2019

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump on Friday was expected to announce his intention to revoke the United States’ status as a signatory of the Arms Trade Treaty, which was signed in 2013 by then-President Barack Obama but never ratified by Congress, two U.S. officials said.

Trump was expected to announce the decision in a speech in Indianapolis, to the National Rifle Association, the officials said. The NRA, a powerful gun lobby group, has long been opposed to the treaty, which was negotiated at the United Nations.

(Reporting By Steve Holland; Editing by Bill Trott)

Source: OANN

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A remote controlled robot for the 'Isotopium: Chernobyl' game is seen at the game's location in Brovary
A remote controlled robot for the ‘Isotopium: Chernobyl’ game is seen at the game’s location in Brovary, Ukraine April 25, 2019. REUTERS/Valentyn Ogirenko

April 26, 2019

By Margaryta Chornokondratenko

KIEV (Reuters) – A Ukrainian computer game that brings to life a town abandoned after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster may not sound like everyone’s idea of fun but has attracted 60,000 people globally since its launch in October.

Players of “Isotopium: Chernobyl” drive tanks around the ghost town of Prypyat near Chernobyl, knocking out competitors as they search for an energy source called isotopium and collecting points every time they find some.

While the game takes its theme from the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl in northern Ukraine, which marked its 33rd anniversary on Friday, it was also inspired by the 2009 science fiction film “Avatar”.

Newcomers to the game think they have entered a virtual world when in fact they are controlling a real robot, equipped with a camera and computer, which makes its way around a model of the town rendered down to the tiniest detail.

“When playing our game, for the first 5-10 minutes many players don’t understand that it is not fictional,” said the game’s co-founder Sergey Beskrestnov. “They message us saying: ‘You have cool texture, you have good graphics, your designer is good, well done. You have a cool operating system.’

“People then reply: ‘It is not an operating system, it is real,’ and the player can’t believe it is real,” said Beskrestnov, speaking mid-game from Prypyat city square as he towers over surrounding five-storey buildings.

Kiev-born Beskrestnov was just 12 years old when on April 26, 1986 a botched test at the nuclear plant in the then Soviet Union sent clouds of smoldering nuclear material across large swathes of Europe, forced over 50,000 people, including Beskrestnov’s family, to evacuate and poisoned unknown numbers of workers involved in its clean-up.

Beskrestnov and his partner Alexey Fateyev used Google maps and hundreds of pictures from the Chernobyl area to recreate Prypyat landmarks, including residential buildings, a hotel, concert hall, amusement park and a stadium.

The game’s real-scale model occupies a 180 square meter (1,938 sq. ft) basement of a residential building in the Ukraine city of Brovary, just 150 km (93 miles) from the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone and 30 km east of Kiev.

Miniature radioactivity warning signs, graffiti on the walls of abandoned buildings and tables and chairs left scattered inside a small cafe all add to the creepy atmosphere of a once lively town.

“It’s a really neat concept …,” Shaun Prescott wrote in a review of the game published by PC Gamer magazine in January. “Controlling the tanks is kinda cumbersome, but they are tanks, after all.”

An attentive player will notice at least one inaccuracy – the real Chernobyl nuclear power plant is not located in town as it is in the game.

It costs $9 to immerse in the atmosphere of a post-apocalyptic town for an hour but only 20 people at a time can play simultaneously. Beskrestnov’s company, Remote Games, said 62,615 people around the world have registered to play the game, including around 15,000 in France and 10,000 in the United States.

A camera fixed on top of a moving tank broadcasts high quality signal in real time, allowing players from as far apart as Australia and Canada enjoy the game without facing any time delay in delivering video signals.

Its creators next ambition is to devise a game featuring the colonization of Mars in which 1,000 people will be able to simultaneously control robots on different missions involved in the operation.

“Many people advise us to contact Elon Musk directly because it resonates his dreams and ideas,” Beskrestnov jokes.    

(Editing by Susan Fenton)

Source: OANN

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FILE PHOTO: A Starbucks sign is show on one of the companies stores in Los Angeles, California
FILE PHOTO: A Starbucks sign is show on one of the companies stores in Los Angeles, California, U.S. October 19,2018. REUTERS/Mike Blake/File Photo

April 26, 2019

(Reuters) – Initial optimism over first-quarter results from Starbucks Corp was waning fast on Wall Street on Friday, as analysts questioned the longer-term prospects of its new sales push given subdued overall customer traffic numbers especially in China.

The company on Thursday beat brokerage estimates for quarterly same-store sales on the back of demand for its new Cloud Macchiato, Matcha tea and cold brews in the United States.

However, BTIG’s Peter Saleh was one of a number of sector analysts who said while customers forking out for higher-priced new drinks had helped drive growth in same-store sales, “anemic” traffic at cafes remained a concern.

He and others pointed to a 1 percent decline in footfall at cafes in the Chinese market, viewed as crucial to the chain’s growth for the foreseeable future.

More broadly, transaction numbers, the substitute analysts use for customer traffic, were unchanged in all three of the company’s global regions.

Shares in the company, which hit a record high after the results on Thursday, fell 1 percent in morning trade.

“We remain cautious given near-term headwinds surrounding China, including cannibalization, increasing competition (and) a slowing economy,” Wedbush analyst Nick Setyan said.

Starbucks has also poured money into beefing up its delivery network in China as it battles with local startup Luckin Coffee, whose speedy growth led it to file for an IPO in the United States earlier this week.

New menu items and partnerships with delivery services, the heart of the company’s strategy to win back customers lost to artisanal coffee shops and cheaper fast-food rivals, did help Starbucks’ sales in its home market.

However, analysts said growth in China may continue to be subdued.

Wells Fargo analyst Bonnie Herzog said she expects store expansion in China to take priority over comparable sales growth.

She downgraded her rating on Starbucks’ to “market perform” from “outperform”, arguing that the company facing tough sales comparisons later on in 2019 from last year and the current rich valuation of shares meant the stock had limited room to rise.

“Investors will be hesitant to invest new money in a stock with a topline that, while still strong, is unlikely to meaningfully accelerate,” Herzog said.

Still, the company’s solid same-store growth in the United States, improving profit margins and a lower tax rate for the rest of the year led at least 6 Wall Street brokerages to raise their price targets on the stock to as high as $81.

11 of 29 brokerages rate Starbucks “buy” or higher, 17 “hold” and 1 “sell” or lower. Their median price target is $75.

(Reporting by Uday Sampath in Bengaluru)

Source: OANN

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