Suspected Gunman Charged With Attempting to Assassinate President Trump

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

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Alex Ossola (0:33)

The suspect in the White House Correspondents' dinner shooting is charged with attempting to assassinate President Trump. Plus, consumers may be gloomy, but big American companies are raking it in.

Theo Francis (0:44)

Wall Street seems to think that this profit boom is not about to end. The energy shock this time didn't seem to push us into any really bad place. Wall Street is pretty optimistic.

Alex Ossola (0:54)

And welcome to the era of the $50 movie ticket. It's Monday, April 27th. I'm Alex Ossola for The Wall Street Journal. This is the PM Edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories that move the world today.

China has banned Meta's acquisition of AI startup Manus on national security grounds and ordered the deal to be unwound. Manus has its origins in China, but is based in Singapore. Meta paid $2.5 billion in December to acquire Manus, hoping the company would make it more competitive in the buzzy AI agents sector. Agents are AI tools that can carry out complex tasks with minimal human input.

Meta says that the transaction was legal and that the company looked forward to the inquiry being resolved. Our tech reporter, Megan Bobrowski, says China's ban could influence deals in the future.

SPEAKER_5 (1:48)

Yes, this is a really unprecedented situation. The founders already took steps to leave China, and so when this acquisition happened, the company Manus would argue that they were based in Singapore and they're not a Chinese company.

This is really testing the limits of China's control. How this plays out is going to be actually pretty critical to future deals. If you're a founder in China and you leave, are you still subject to Chinese regulations and rule in China?

Alex Ossola (2:21)

Matter reports earnings after markets close on Wednesday. In other deal news, United Airlines is dropping its effort to merge with rival American Airlines after American wouldn't engage. The deal would have brought together two of the world's largest airlines, but there was a lot of pushback, and not just from American. Industry officials have said it would be difficult for such a merger to get past antitrust enforcers, and lawmakers raised concerns about it being bad for travelers. United's stock closed down more than 1% today, while Americans fell almost 3.5%.

Despite the war with Iran and general consumer anxiety, big American companies are thriving. About a quarter of the S&P 500 companies have reported first-quarter earnings so far. Financial data firm LSIG has crunched the numbers and predicts that those results plus analyst expectations for the rest of the companies mean earnings per share growth of more than 16% and revenue growth of almost 10%.

That sales growth figure would be more than in any quarter since the fall of 2022 Special writer Theo Francis covers US companies and is here to help us understand what's going on. Theo, what is behind this disconnect between how consumers are feeling and how companies are doing?

Theo Francis (3:33)

Consumers are still spending, but it's clear that they really feel the pinch of higher prices. And the question is when that flows through to overall spending. Of course, higher income Americans are spending more. And so that can make up for some of the pullback if there is any at the lower end of the spectrum.

Alex Ossola (3:52)

The earnings that have already come out so far for the quarter, have they affected Wall Street's forecast for the rest of the companies that have not reported yet?

Theo Francis (4:00)

In general, what we're seeing is kind of an uptick. So at the beginning of the quarter, expectations were a little lower than where they are now, including the actual results. Companies like to come out ahead of Wall Street expectations. So that isn't unusual. We do tend to see this sort of upward drift in overall results. And I think we're seeing that again. So this may be a conservative view of where profits are going to go.

Alex Ossola (4:26)

Has there been anything unexpected about what's been reported so far?

Theo Francis (4:30)

We're used to tech really doing well. We're used to financials doing well. And it does seem to be broadening. Earnings growth is healthy beyond those two sectors. But this rosy picture isn't universal. Tech really is outperforming everybody. You're seeing a sector breakdown that, you know, puts tech and materials and financials out ahead. And then the consumer companies, communications, energy trailing.