Alberto Could Bring $1 Billion in Losses to U.S. Gulf Coast

Subtropical Storm Alberto weakened slightly as it neared Florida’s Panhandle, where it should come ashore Monday to spread heavy rains across the southern U.S., potentially causing more than $1 billion in economic losses.

Alberto was 50 miles (80 kilometers) south of Panama City, Florida, and moving north at 8 miles per hour, the National Hurricane Center in Miami said in an advisory at 11 a.m. New York time. The storm’s top winds fell to 60 mph and it’s expected to weaken further after it moves over land, gradually falling apart over the next 36 hours until it’s completely swallowed up by another weather system over Canada late this week.

Heavy rain has already fallen in southern states, and flood and flash-flood watches span the region, reaching as far north as North Carolina and Tennessee, the National Weather Service said. Parts of Florida, Georgia and Alabama could get from 4 to 8 inches (10 to 20 centimeters) with some areas receiving as much as a foot of rain. Governors in Florida, Mississippi and Alabama on Saturday declared states of emergency.

“From an economic standpoint most of the damage is already done, probably $600 or $700 million worth of lost economic activity due to rain, warnings and preparations,” said Chuck Watson, a disaster modeler at Enki Research in Savannah, Georgia. “Alberto might cause a couple hundred million in damage at worst when it does make landfall, and there is still flooding potential.”

Hardest hit will be small businesses that expected revenue from Memorial Day weekend tourists, Watson said.

#lazy-img-328081551:before{padding-top:66.63636363636364%;}

Subtropical Storm Alberto bearing down on Florida’s coastline Sunday. Credit: NASA

Source: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

While Alberto nears the shore, the warning area has been scaled back from the Suwannee River back west to the Florida-Alabama state line. A storm surge watch has been posted from the river to Mexico Beach, Florida.

On Friday, Exxon Mobil Corp. pulled non-essential personnel from its Lena oil production platform and Royal Dutch Shell Plc shut in its Ram Powell hub. Chevron Corp. stopped oil production and evacuated personnel from its Blind Faith and Petronius platforms Saturday.

But most other energy companies are leaving offshore crews in place while they watch 2018’s first Atlantic storm. Alberto formed several days ahead of the June 1 official start of the six-month Atlantic hurricane season.

Storms in the Gulf are closely watched because 5 percent of U.S. natural gas and 17 percent of crude-oil production comes out of the region, according to the Energy Information Administration. Onshore areas along the coast also account for about 45 percent of U.S. refining capacity and 51 percent of gas processing.

— With assistance by Sheela Tobben, David Wethe, Amy Stillman, Kevin Crowley, and Ben Sharples

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$283.57 Million in Sales Expected for CIRCOR International, Inc. (CIR) This Quarter

Analysts forecast that CIRCOR International, Inc. (NYSE:CIR) will report $283.57 million in sales for the current quarter, according to Zacks Investment Research. Three analysts have issued estimates for CIRCOR International’s earnings. The highest sales estimate is $285.70 million and the lowest is $280.80 million. CIRCOR International reported sales of $151.23 million during the same quarter last year, which indicates a positive year over year growth rate of 87.5%. The company is expected to issue its next quarterly earnings results on Friday, July 27th.

According to Zacks, analysts expect that CIRCOR International will report full-year sales of $1.16 billion for the current fiscal year. For the next year, analysts expect that the business will report sales of $1.21 billion per share, with estimates ranging from $1.20 billion to $1.22 billion. Zacks’ sales averages are an average based on a survey of sell-side research firms that follow CIRCOR International.

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CIRCOR International (NYSE:CIR) last issued its earnings results on Tuesday, May 1st. The industrial products company reported $0.40 EPS for the quarter, beating analysts’ consensus estimates of $0.32 by $0.08. The business had revenue of $275.58 million during the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $270.56 million. CIRCOR International had a positive return on equity of 6.05% and a negative net margin of 1.32%. CIRCOR International’s revenue was up 89.8% on a year-over-year basis. During the same period in the prior year, the company posted $0.32 earnings per share.

A number of research analysts recently commented on the company. ValuEngine upgraded CIRCOR International from a “strong sell” rating to a “sell” rating in a research note on Tuesday, May 8th. Zacks Investment Research lowered CIRCOR International from a “buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a research note on Thursday, May 3rd. SunTrust Banks restated a “buy” rating and issued a $56.00 target price on shares of CIRCOR International in a research note on Friday, March 2nd. Finally, Stifel Nicolaus reiterated a “buy” rating and issued a $54.00 price target (down from $61.00) on shares of CIRCOR International in a research report on Thursday, March 1st. Three research analysts have rated the stock with a sell rating, one has issued a hold rating and four have issued a buy rating to the company. The company currently has an average rating of “Hold” and an average target price of $57.50.

Shares of NYSE CIR traded down $1.01 during trading hours on Monday, reaching $48.36. The stock had a trading volume of 96,827 shares, compared to its average volume of 109,972. The company has a current ratio of 2.04, a quick ratio of 1.24 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.38. The firm has a market capitalization of $979.01 million, a price-to-earnings ratio of 28.28 and a beta of 1.70. CIRCOR International has a twelve month low of $39.84 and a twelve month high of $68.76.

A number of large investors have recently made changes to their positions in CIR. Miles Capital Inc. bought a new stake in shares of CIRCOR International during the first quarter worth $217,000. MetLife Investment Advisors LLC bought a new stake in shares of CIRCOR International during the fourth quarter worth $355,000. California Public Employees Retirement System grew its holdings in shares of CIRCOR International by 41.8% during the first quarter. California Public Employees Retirement System now owns 16,591 shares of the industrial products company’s stock worth $708,000 after purchasing an additional 4,891 shares during the last quarter. Pinebridge Investments L.P. grew its holdings in shares of CIRCOR International by 22.0% during the fourth quarter. Pinebridge Investments L.P. now owns 23,696 shares of the industrial products company’s stock worth $1,153,000 after purchasing an additional 4,281 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Arizona State Retirement System grew its holdings in shares of CIRCOR International by 224.8% during the fourth quarter. Arizona State Retirement System now owns 27,732 shares of the industrial products company’s stock worth $1,350,000 after purchasing an additional 19,194 shares during the last quarter. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 89.87% of the company’s stock.

CIRCOR International Company Profile

CIRCOR International, Inc designs, manufactures, and markets engineered products and sub-systems worldwide. It operates through three segments: Energy, Advanced Flow Solutions, and Fluid Handling. The Energy segment offers a range of flow control solutions and services, including valves, such as engineered trunion and floating ball valves; gate, globe, and check valves; and butterfly valves, as well as delayed coking unheading devices, and fluid catalytic converter and isolation valves.

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Today In Cryptocurrency: UK Regulators Confirm Investigation of 24 Crypto Businesses; Crypto Publici

Cryptocurrencies finished another difficult week Friday, with most major cryptocurrencies trading lower by more than 1 percent. Here’s a look at some of the headlines that were moving the cryptocurrency market today — and which currencies were on the move.

Headlines

One day after the U.S. Justice Department said it has launched a probe into potential price manipulation in the bitcoin market, the U.K. Financial Conduct Authority said Friday that it is investigating 24 businesses that deal with cryptocurrencies. The FCA said it has opened up seven new investigations this year thanks to whistleblower reports of potential misconduct.

A cryptocurrency publicity stunt turned deadly this week when a Nepalese Sherpa accompanying a group of Mount Everest climbers organized by Ukranian social network ASKfm died during a climb. ASKfm sponsored a group of four people to climb Everest and bury a hard drive containing an estimated $50,000 in digital tokens. The plan was to encourage other Everest climbers to claim the crypto prize, which has a value based on an “estimate of their value once the pre-sale and ICO launch,” ASKfm said.

On Thursday, the Anti-Phishing Working Group released a new study that found $1.2 billion in cryptocurrency has been stolen since the beginning of 2017. Cryptocurrency bulls often cite the security of the blockchain verification process, but the reports found that cryptocurrency investors have still lost billions to scams, hackers and frauds.

Price Action

The Bitcoin Investment Trust GBTC (OTC: GBTC) traded at $12.22, down 0.1 percent.

Here’s how several top crypto investments fared Friday. Prices are as of 3:45 p.m. ET and reflect the previous 24 hours.

Bitcoin declined 2.1 percent to $7,420; Ethereum declined 1.7 percent to $582; Ripple declined 4.8 percent to 60 cents; Bitcoin Cash declined 4.6 percent to $1,006; EOS declined 0.7 percent to $12.11.

The three cryptocurrencies with at least $1-million market caps that have made the biggest gains over the past 24 hours are:

Photon: $2-million market cap, 87.4-percent gain. MUSE: $17.4-million market cap, 42.9-percent gain. Carboncoin: $1.6-million market cap, 39.2-percent gain.

The three cryptocurrencies hit hardest in the past 24 hours were:

BunnyCoin: $1.9-million market cap, 69-percent decline. Jiyo: $3.8-million market cap, 31.4-percent decline. LiteDoge: $1.2-million market cap, 31.1-percent decline.

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Alberto Becomes First Named Storm, on Path to Drench U.S. South

Meet Alberto, the first named storm of 2018.

The sub-tropical storm off Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula is expected to bring heavy rain to western Cuba and much of Florida early next week, the National Hurricane Center in Miami said Friday.

Alberto will probably have little impact on Gulf of Mexico offshore oil and gas platforms as it scrapes by the production region, headed toward landfall early next week bringing needed rain to crops in the Mississippi River valley. Sub-tropical storms lack the complete structure needed to become classical tropical storms.

“There’s not enough time for it to have a significant impact,” said Matt Rogers, president of the Commodity Weather Group LLC in Bethesda, Maryland. “It is short lived, making landfall Monday or early Tuesday. And it is going to be a low-end tropical storm.”

The Atlantic hurricane season officially starts June 1 and storms in the Gulf are closely watched because 5 percent of U.S. natural gas and 17 percent of crude oil production comes out of the region, according to the Energy Information Administration. In addition, onshore areas along the coastline account for about 45 percent of U.S. refining capacity and 51 percent of gas processing.

Models track the potential storm north across the Gulf, bringing it into the coastline somewhere between Mobile Bay in Alabama and the Florida Panhandle region, Steve Silver, a meteorologist with Radiant Solutions in Gaithersburg, Maryland, said by telephone. On that path it won’t have “a major impact.”

Heavy rain will fall across Alabama, Georgia and Florida, which could cause some flooding in cotton and peanut fields in the region, but overall the storm will probably help farmers to the north and west, said Dale Mohler, a meteorologist with AccuWeather Inc. in State College, Pennsylvania.

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How an Alexa speaker recorded and shared a private conversation

Alexa has many talents. Amazon's voice assistant can play music, set timers, order a pizza, and send recordings of private conversations to random people in its users' contact list.

An Amazon Echo user in Portland, Oregon, says she was shocked to learn her Echo had recorded a conversation with her husband without them knowing, then sent the audio file to one of his employees in Seattle.

"My husband and I would joke and say I'd bet these devices are listening to what we're saying," the Echo owner Danielle told local news station KIRO 7. The news station did not report her last name.

She said the incident happened two weeks ago when the employee called them to say she'd received a strange voice recording of them.

"The person on the other line said, 'unplug your Alexa devices right now,'" she told KIRO. "'You're being hacked.'"

The audio recording included the couple talking about hardwood floors. Danielle said they turned off their multiple Echo smart speakers, contacted Amazon and spoke to an Alexa engineer, who apologized multiple times.

Amazon confirmed the error in a statement and explained the improbable series of events that took place for it to happen. It wasn't a hack or a bug with the device, but a case of Alexa's always-listening microphones mishearing a series of words and mistakenly sending a voice message.

"Echo woke up due to a word in background conversation sounding like 'Alexa.' Then, the subsequent conversation was heard as a 'send message' request," Amazon said in a statement. "At which point, Alexa said out loud 'To whom?' At which point, the background conversation was interpreted as a name in the customers contact list. Alexa then asked out loud, '[contact name], right?' Alexa then interpreted background conversation as 'right'. As unlikely as this string of events is, we are evaluating options to make this case even less likely."

The Echo only confirms a contact name if there are multiple people in an address book with the same or similar sounding names.

It's unknown if the couple had the volume turned all the way down on their device or if they just didn't hear Alexa's multiple spoken replies during the message process. The colored ring on Echo speakers also lights up when the device is active.

While voice technology is increasingly popular, there are lingering concerns about privacy issues associated with having an internet-connected microphone in the home. Companies like Amazon and Google say their devices only begin recording when their microphones hear a trigger word or phrase, like "Alexa" or "Hey Google."

Payouts to U.S. Power Generators Climb 83% in PJM Auction

Generators that provide capacity to the largest U.S. power grid are going to get paid a lot more for guaranteeing electricity when the market needs it.

Suppliers to PJM Interconnection LLC -- which serves more than 65 million people from Chicago to Washington -- will receive $140 a megawatt-day for the year starting in June 2021, up 83% from a year earlier, according to the results of a capacity auction earlier this month that were released Wednesday. Analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg since April ranged from $75 to $118.

The auction provides an early metric on generators’ competitiveness in three years -- when America’s power sector is expected to feel the impact of massive changes currently under way. After years of cheap wholesale power prices and flat demand, nuclear and coal-fired plant operators have announced a rash of closures that some argue could imperil the reliability of the nation’s grid. This year’s auction reflects, in part, whether a new generation of gas-fired power plants and renewables will be able to make up for at least 7 gigawatts of possible closures of coal and nuclear sites in PJM by 2021.

Generators with plant concentrations in particular parts of the grid -- the Chicago area and portions of southeastern Pennsylvania and New Jersey -- are expected to be most affected by the auction because supplies there are tighter. They include utility giants Exelon Corp. and Public Service Enterprise Group Inc., according to Goldman Sachs Group Inc. analysts in a May 14 note.

The auction results showed that the capacity price for the Chicago-area zone, known as ComEd, was $195.55 compared with $188.12 a year earlier, and the price for the Pennsylvania and New Jersey zone, known as EMAAC, decreased to $165.73 percent to from $187.87 a year earlier.

Vistra Energy Corp. may also be affected because of its April acquisition of Dynegy Inc., according to analysts at Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, who also pointed to NRG Energy Inc., American Electric Power Co. and closely held merchant-power generators Riverstone Holdings LLC, LS Power Group, ArcLight Capital Partners LLC and Energy Capital Partners LLC.

The U.S. Energy Department is weighing a March request from FirstEnergy Corp.’s competitive power unit -- now in bankruptcy -- for government aid to help keep money-losing nuclear and coal-fired power plants online.

PJM, based in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, has been at the center of the shale gas revolution that’s displaced coal as the nation’s number one fuel source. It serves people in 13 states. The capacity auction held each spring is designed to secure future generating capacity. Costs are passed along to households and businesses on their utility bills.

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Has PayPal Met Its Match?

In the company's first quarter, PayPal Holdings Inc�(NASDAQ:PYPL) continued its winning ways with more solid results: Revenue grew to $3.69 billion, a 24% increase year over year, while non-GAAP earnings per share jumped to $0.57, a 29% increase year over year. This growth was fueled by a 15% increase in active customer accounts and a 25% increase in the number of payment transactions across its platforms. PayPal account holders are also using their accounts more than ever as transactions per active account rose to 34.7, an 8% increase year over year.

It's not hard to see why PayPal is enjoying such success as it emerges as one of the obvious winners in two huge trends: e-commerce and m-commerce, or mobile commerce. While it has always enjoyed success as an online platform, its dominance in mobile commerce is more of a recent phenomenon, largely due to the success of its One Touch feature. Unfortunately for PayPal investors, though, this success has not gone unnoticed, and others in the payment industry are looking to mimic the service's success.

PayPal's One Touch feature allows consumers to easily make online and mobile purchases by skipping the annoying checkout process. Image source: PayPal Holdings Inc.

PayPal's mobile triumphs

PayPal's stunning success in mobile can't be questioned. In the company's first-quarter conference call, CEO Dan Schulman said PayPal processed $49 billion in mobile payment volume -- payments originating from a mobile device -- good for a 52% increase year over year. Mobile payment volume now accounts for 37% of the company's total payment volume.

The company continues to credit One Touch for its mobile success. One Touch is a feature that allows account holders to register a device with PayPal and then enables them to stay logged onto PayPal for all future purchases on that same device. This means no more retrieving credit cards and punching in numbers and expiration dates and billing addresses when trying to make purchases on small smartphone screens. Speaking from personal experience, I now get upset when making an online purchase on a website that doesn't offer this feature.

One Touch's ease of use is delivering results. A new comScore study�showed that PayPal checkout conversions had an 88.7% success rate, compared to the average digital wallet's 55.3% sales conversion rate. Sales conversions are defined as how likely consumers are to finalize a purchase once items have been placed in an online shopping cart. Among the consumers who have tried One Touch, 91% have given it a rating of "Very good" or "Excellent"; 99% gave it a rating of "Good" or better. That kind of customer satisfaction is hard to beat.

It is no wonder, then, that 92 million consumers and 8.6 million merchants, up 74% and 72% year over year, respectively, have now opted into the program.�That's phenomenal! Yet, it is this very success that has attracted competition from some of the payments industry's biggest players.

The credit card companies strike back

For years, the major credit card companies -- American Express Company (NYSE:AXP), Discover Financial Services (NYSE:DFS), Mastercard Inc (NYSE:MA), and Visa Inc (NYSE:V) -- have supported their own digital wallets with varying degrees of success. The problem is, none of them meaningfully appealed to the average consumer. After all, in my own physical wallet, I have one American Express card, one Mastercard, and one Visa. I have no desire to opt into three individual digital wallets to conveniently use the three cards when making online purchases, especially when PayPal's platform allows me to enter all of my credit cards, across banks and brands, into its own platform.

That is why all four major credit card companies have partnered to create a new e-commerce checkout standard, the goal of which is to rid the need to enter cumbersome data, such as lengthy credit card numbers when making online purchases. In Visa's first-quarter conference call, CEO Al Kelly described the effort:

Our vision is to create a consistent and secure digital shopping experience across browsers and devices that largely eliminates the need to enter card account numbers and passwords. Online shopping should be as simple as it is in the physical world, making the checkout process easy, with a single pay button. We aim to declutter the checkout page, to streamline the checkout process.�

Mastercard CEO Ajay Banga said in his company's conference call that the effort is "transformative for the industry as a whole, for the ecosystem." When asked for a timeline, Banga said you might begin to see the first fruits of this effort by the end of the year but to expect to see a "real push" by the beginning of next year.

Destination unknown

It's still not entirely obvious what this new standard will look like, but if it removes friction from the e-commerce process by eliminating the need for consumers to enter lots of information, it sounds an awful lot like PayPal's One Touch feature. While the credit card companies benefit from PayPal's One Touch -- after all, PayPal's platform is just another way to access the payment networks the credit card companies offer -- if they have a chance to take out another middleman in the process, namely PayPal, they will jump at the chance.

Will the credit card companies succeed? In a sense, I believe they will. Any effort to make facilitating online transactions easier and simpler will probably benefit consumers and vendors alike and experience major user growth. I am not entirely convinced, though, that this means PayPal will fail. For starters, the One Touch platform already has significant growth momentum and a budding network effect. Giving One Touch another year to grow virtually unchallenged will only help it solidify its place in the market.

E-commerce is big enough for more than one winner

In fact, this scenario reminds me of when Zelle, the major peer-to-peer (P2P) platform jointly supported by most major banks and financial institutions, first launched. Many wondered at the time if the new competition would derail PayPal's own P2P efforts. While Zelle has already been a success, PayPal's P2P payment volume continues to grow at a phenomenal rate. In the first quarter, P2P payment volume rose 50% year over year across all of the company's platforms to $30 billion.

Much like the P2P payment space, the online market place is enormous -- and growing. There is ample room for more than one digital payment winner. Since being spun off from eBay�in the summer of 2015, the digital payment platform has returned 115% to investors, walloping the S&P 500 index's returns of about 32% over the same time period.�While competition continues to emerge, eager to copy PayPal's success, I foresee more market-beating returns in PayPal investors' future. After all, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.