Tesla Inc.’s TSLA new lithium refinery in Texas will break ground in May, Tesla executives said on a call late Wednesday after the EV maker’s first-quarter results. Tesla filed paperwork for the refinery in September, saying that the facility would be the first of its kind in North America. The refinery is in the Corpus Christi, Texas, area, nearby the major Corpus Christi port. Tesla has said it expects the refinery to reach commercial operations by the end of 2024. Tesla stock dropped 3% in the extended session after recent price cuts dented profit margins for the company in the first quarter. Commodity prices, lithium included, are expected to come down in the second half of the year, the Tesla executives said.
U.S. multi-state cannabis producer Curaleaf Holdings Inc. CURLF on Wednesday said it will have to tweak its sales or sales forecasts for its fiscal 2021 and 2022, following a review of transactions made through its wholesale business and “additional material weaknesses” discovered in its accounting protocols. Management said it expects the restatement of the sales figures will lower 2021 sales by around 1.25%, and lower expected sales for 2022 by approximately 0.75%. The company expects its fourth-quarter revenue to be around $352 million, and $1.337 billion for all of its 2022. The review, by the audit committee of Curaleaf’s board, concerned “certain purchases and sales of products through the Company’s wholesale channel to determine whether they had commercial substance, and to confirm the timing and appropriateness of the recognition of revenue from those transactions, mainly in the last quarter of 2021 and the first and second quarters of 2022.” The company said it was taking steps to improve its financial controls. Shares slipped 0.2% after hours on Wednesday.
Shares of casino operator Las Vegas Sands Corp. LVS jumped 4.9% after hours on Wednesday, after the company reported first-quarter results that beat expectations and called out a “robust” recovery in Macau and Singapore. The company reported net income of $145 million, or 19 cents a share, compared with $2.43 billion, or $3.31 a share, in the same quarter last year. Sales were $2.12 billion, up from $943 million in the prior-year quarter. Adjusted for expenses related to development and other matters, Las Vegas Sands earned 28 cents a share, contrasting with a 40-cent per-share loss a year ago. Analysts polled by FactSet expected adjusted earnings per share of 20 cents on revenue of $1.85 billion. “While travel restrictions and reduced visitation continued to impact our financial performance during the quarter, a robust recovery in travel and tourism spending across our markets is now underway,” Chief Executive Robert Goldstein said in a statement.
An employee for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau made an unauthorized transfer of consumer data to a personal email account, the agency said Wednesday. Roughly 256,000 consumers were impacted by the incident, and the employee is no longer employed by the CFPB. Their names and transaction-specific account numbers at a single institution were included on a spreadsheet sent to the personal email account. The numbers were used internally by the institution and cannot be used to gain access to consumers’ accounts, the CFPB said. There is no evidence the information was shared beyond the former employees email account. The CFPB has directed the former employee to delete the emails from their personal account, but the former employee has not complied with the demand.“The CFPB takes data privacy very seriously, and this unauthorized transfer of personal and confidential data is completely unacceptable,” a CFPB spokesperson told MarketWatch. “We have referred the matter to the Office of the Inspector General, and we are taking appropriate action to address this incident.”
The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday extended access to an abortion pill through Friday. Abortion opponents are seeking to roll back federal government approval of the drug, mifepristone. The Biden administration and drug maker Danco Laboratories want the high court to reject limits on the drug’s use. In an order last Friday, the Supreme Court put restrictions on hold through today to consider an emergency appeal.