Caroline Woods brings the latest business headlines from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange as markets close for trading Monday, April 15.
Full Video Transcript Below:
CAROLINE WOODS: I’m Caroline Woods reporting from the New York Stock Exchange. Here’s what we’re watching on TheStreet today.
Markets are reacting to strong retail sales data – retail sales rose 0.7 percent in March, above Wall Street estimates of 0.3 percent. While this signals strength in the U.S. economy, investors are concerned this could mean higher for longer interest rates.
Wall Street is also looking ahead to a big week of earnings – names like United Airlines, Bank of America, American Express, and Netflix are all slated to release quarterly results.
In other news - after a disappointing first quarter, Tesla is planning to lay off 10 percent of its global workforce. An internal memo from CEO Elon Musk notified employees of the move.
In the memo, Musk wrote quote “As we prepare the company for our next phase of growth, it is extremely important to look at every aspect of the company for cost reductions and increasing productivity. As part of this effort, we have done a thorough review of the organization and made the difficult decision to reduce our headcount by more than 10% globally.”
As of December 2023, Tesla had more than 140,000 employees.
Shares of Tesla are down more than 30 percent so far in 2024, and the company coming up short on first-quarter deliveries hasn’t helped. While the EV maker reportedly built 433,000 vehicles, it only delivered about 387,000 globally in Q1 of 2024 - an 8.5 percent drop from Q1 in 2023. That marked the first annual decline in deliveries since the start of the pandemic.
That’ll do it for your daily briefing. From the New York Stock Exchange, I’m Caroline Woods with TheStreet.