Celestica Inc. (CLS) on Monday reported third-quarter earnings of $267.8 million.
The Toronto-based company said it had profit of $2.31 per share. Earnings, adjusted for one-time gains and costs, were $1.58 per share.
The results beat Wall Street expectations. The average estimate of three analysts surveyed by Zacks Investment Research was for earnings of $1.47 per share.
The electronics manufacturing services company posted revenue of $3.19 billion in the period, also exceeding Street forecasts. Three analysts surveyed by Zacks expected $3.02 billion.
For the current quarter ending in December, Celestica expects its per-share earnings to range from $1.65 to $1.81.
The company said it expects revenue in the range of $3.33 billion to $3.58 billion for the fiscal fourth quarter.
Celestica expects full-year earnings to be $5.90 per share, with revenue expected to be $12.2 billion.
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This story was generated by Automated Insights (http://automatedinsights.com/ap) using data from Zacks Investment Research. Access a Zacks stock report on CLS at https://www.zacks.com/ap/CLS
Shares of Cameco Corp. CCO-T +21.85%increase rose more than 20 per cent after the company and Brookfield Asset Management Ltd. BAM-T +0.99%increase announced a partnership agreement with the U.S. government to help build nuclear reactors in the United States.
Under the deal, the U.S. government will arrange financing and facilitate the permitting and approvals for at least US$80-billion ($111.6-billion) worth of new Westinghouse nuclear reactors in the U.S.
Brookfield and Cameco acquired Westinghouse in November, 2023.
“We expect that the new build commitments from the U.S. will bolster broader confidence in the durable growth profile for nuclear power, and support increased demand for Westinghouse’s and Cameco’s products, services and technologies,” Cameco chief executive Tim Gitzel said in a statement.
“This new partnership highlights the role that Westinghouse’s reactor technologies, based on fully designed, licensed and operating reactors, are expected to play in the planned expansion of nuclear capacity and diversification of global nuclear supply chains.”
Cameco shares were up $25.36 at $146.62 in trading on the Toronto Stock Exchange, while Brookfield Asset Management class A shares gained $1.50 at $77.91.
U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said the government is focused on ensuring the rapid development, deployment, and use of advanced nuclear technologies.
“This historic partnership supports our national security objectives and enhances our critical infrastructure,” he said in a statement.
The partnership agreement will see the U.S. government receive a participation interest, which, once vested, will entitle it to 20 per cent of any cash distributions in excess of US$17.5-billion ($24.4-billion) made by Westinghouse after its granting.
For the participation interest to vest, the U.S. government must make a final investment decision and enter into definitive agreements to complete the construction of at least US$80-billion in new Westinghouse nuclear reactors in the U.S.
The U.S. government will also be entitled under certain circumstances to convert the participation interest into a warrant to buy shares in an initial public offering by Westinghouse equivalent to 20 per cent of the public value of the company at the time after deducting US$17.5-billion.
Gold prices fell nearly 2% Monday, as hopes of easing U.S.-China trade tensions lifted risk appetite for equities, while investors awaited major central bank meetings this week for rate cut cues.
Spot gold was down 1.3% at $4,059.22 per ounce as of 0837 GMT. Prices hit a record high of $4,381.21 on October 20, buoyed by rising bets for U.S. rate cuts, and geopolitical and economic uncertainties, but have since fallen more than 5%.
U.S. gold futures for December delivery lost 1.6% to $4,072.40.
Asian stocks surged as signs of a detente in China-U.S. trade tensions buoyed risk appetite in a strong start to a week that will be headlined by central bank meetings and megacap earnings.
“A possible trade deal between the U.S. and China is supporting risky assets and weighing on gold, but we should also remember that potentially lower tariffs will allow the Federal Reserve to cut rates further,” UBS commodity analyst Giovanni Staunovo said in Zurich.
The U.S. and China are set to “come away with” a trade deal, U.S. President Donald Trump said, one day after top officials of the two countries hashed out a framework for Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping to decide on during their upcoming meeting in South Korea.
Meanwhile, the Fed is expected to cut rates by a quarter percentage point on Wednesday, a view supported by a softer-than-expected September inflation.
With a 25-bps cut already priced in, markets are looking ahead to any forward-looking remarks from Fed Chair Jerome Powell at the meeting.
“Lower real interest rates should still support demand for gold. The market consensus is looking for the Fed to cut rates by 25 basis points, so I don’t expect much movement around the FOMC meeting,” Staunovo added.
Non-yielding gold tends to benefit in a low-interest-rate environment.
Elsewhere, spot silver fell 1.3% to $47.96 per ounce, platinum eased 0.3% to $1,601.75 and palladium gained 0.1% to $1,429.61.
Oil prices fell on Monday, pressured by skepticism that a U.S. and Chinese trade deal framework would immediately boost oil demand and after Iraq’s oil minister confirmed an oilfield fire had not affected the OPEC member’s oil exports.
Brent crude futures were down 32 cents, or nearly 0.5%, to $65.62 a barrel at 1015 GMT. U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude futures were down 30 cents, also about 0.5%, to $61.20.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on Sunday U.S. and Chinese officials had hashed out a “substantial framework” for a trade deal that could avoid 100% U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods and achieve a deferral of China’s rare-earth export controls in trade talks this week.
This boosted global stock markets on Monday, while safe-haven gold and bonds retreated, along with oil.
Demand concerns
“Oil market participants are much more skeptical of trade deals than their equity counterparts. A bright negotiating atmosphere does not immediately mean demand,” said PVM Oil Associates analyst John Evans.
Concerns over lackluster demand have weighed on the market, with Brent falling to its lowest since May earlier this month, but renewed sanctions on Russia from the U.S. along with stronger-than-expected U.S. demand have helped buoy prices.
“The hope for bulls is that U.S. consumption continues to recover, otherwise it seems the drift lower seen so far today is likely to intensify,” said Chris Beauchamp, chief market analyst at IG Bank.
Meanwhile Iraq, OPEC’s biggest overproducer, was in negotiations over the size of its quota within its available capacity of 5.5 million barrels per day, oil minister Hayan Abdel-Ghani said at an oil conference on Monday.
OPEC and its allies have changed course this year by reversing previous production cuts to regain market share, helping to keep a lid on oil prices.
The fire at Iraq’s Zubair oilfield on Sunday did not affect exports from the country, the country’s oil minister added.
Last week, Brent and WTI rose 8.9% and 7.7%, respectively, on stepped-up U.S. and EU sanctions on Russia.
“There are likely some continued challenges for Russian oil to enter the market, but it depends on how sanctions will be enforced,” said Rystad analyst Janiv Shah.
The U.S. has formed a $1 billion partnership with Advanced Micro Devices to construct two supercomputers that will tackle large scientific problems ranging from nuclear power to cancer treatments to national security, Energy Secretary Chris Wright and AMD CEO Lisa Su told Reuters.
The U.S. is building the two machines to ensure the country has enough supercomputers to run increasingly complex experiments that require harnessing enormous amounts of data-crunching capability. The machines can accelerate the process of making scientific discoveries in areas the U.S. is focused on.
Energy Secretary Wright said the systems would “supercharge” advances in nuclear power and fusion energy, technologies for defense and national security, and the development of drugs. Scientists and companies are trying to replicate fusion, the reaction that fuels the sun, by jamming light atoms in a plasma gas under intense heat and pressure to release massive amounts of energy.
“We’ve made great progress, but plasmas are unstable, and we need to recreate the center of the sun on Earth,” Wright told Reuters.
“We’re going to get just massively faster progress using the computation from these AI systems that I believe will have practical pathways to harness fusion energy in the next two or three years.”
Wright said the supercomputers would also help manage the U.S. arsenal of nuclear weapons and accelerate drug discovery by simulating ways to treat cancer down to the molecular level.
“My hope is in the next five or eight years, we will turn most cancers, many of which today are ultimate death sentences, into manageable conditions,” Wright said.
The plans call for the first computer called Lux to be constructed and come online within the next six months. It will be based around AMD’s MI355X artificial intelligence chips, and the design will also include central processors (CPUs) and networking chips made by AMD. The system is co-developed by AMD, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL).
AMD’s Su said the Lux deployment was the fastest deployment of this size of computer that she has seen.
“This is the speed and agility that we wanted to [do] this for the U.S. AI efforts,” Su said.
ORNL Director Stephen Streiffer said the Lux supercomputer will deliver about three times the AI capacity of current supercomputers.
The second, more advanced computer called Discovery will be based around AMD’s MI430 series of AI chips that are tuned for high-performance computing. This system will be designed by ORNL, HPE and AMD. Discovery is expected to be delivered in 2028 and be ready for operations in 2029.
Streiffer said he expected enormous gains but couldn’t predict how much greater computational capability it would have.
The MI430 is a special variant of its MI400 series that combines important features of traditional supercomputing chips along with the features to run AI applications, Su said.
The Department of Energy will host the computers, the companies will provide the machines and capital spending, and both sides will share the computing power, a DOE official said.
The two supercomputers based on AMD chips are intended to be the first of many of these types of partnerships with private industry and DOE labs across the country, the official said.
Donald Trump says he won’t be meeting Prime Minister Mark Carney for some time after a falling-out between the two countries over an Ontario government TV ad that criticized the U.S. President’s protectionist tariffs.
Mr. Trump broke off trade talks with Canada over the ad and later announced he would boost punitive tariffs on Canadian imports by another 10 per cent after it ran during the first World Series game.
Both Mr. Carney and Mr. Trump attended the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in Malaysia this weekend but did not meet.
The U.S. President spoke to reporters en route to Japan Monday, where he was asked whether he intended to meet the Canadian leader at the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation Forum in South Korea this week.
“I don’t want to meet with him. I’m not going to be meeting with him for a long time,” Mr. Trump said.Video 2:23
U.S. President Donald Trump expressed confidence on Sunday over striking a trade agreement with Chinese President Xi Jinping, whom he is expected to meet next week.
Reuters
Mr. Carney, speaking to reporters in Kuala Lumpur Monday, said he hasn’t spoken to Mr. Trump since the President on Thursday terminated trade negotiations.
The Prime Minister said Canada and the United States had made considerable progress in trade talks before these ended.
Canada has been negotiating with the United States for more than six months and has made concessions in the talks including scrapping a digital sales tax that would have hit U.S. tech giants and repealing retaliatory tariffs on U.S. goods.
At a White House meeting with Mr. Carney earlier this month, Mr. Trump had even predicted Canada would be happy with the trade deal that resulted.
Asked Monday how the relationship with the U.S. President eroded so quickly, and whether Mr. Trump is in fact toying with Canada, Mr. Carney said: “That’s a question for him.”
He said he remains ready to talk to Mr. Trump.
Mr. Carney said he has contingency plans if the United States refuses to resume negotiations but added he would not divulge them.
However, he said, part of the response is efforts in Europe as well as ASEAN, and later APEC, to shift trade away from the United States to more reliable partners. On Monday he signed a letter of intent with Malaysia to deepen investment in liquefied natural gas, oil, nuclear power and renewables. Mr. Carney said by the end of the decade Canada will be producing 50 million tonnes of LNG annually.
Plus, he said, the Nov. 4 federal budget will contain “generational investments” to build the Canadian economy and make it more resilient.Video 2:13
APEC has laid the groundwork for a more connected global economy and led to the establishment of regional and inter-regional trade agreements. But analysts say geopolitical tensions threaten the bloc and its long term agenda.
Reuters
Mr. Carney said the Americans have an incentive to strike a trade deal with Canada because it would be inefficient to replace Canadian imports. He said Canada supplies about 60 per cent of U.S. aluminum needs – an energy-intensive metal to produce – and it would be costly for the United States to replicate this. It would require the power of 10 Hoover dams in the United States at a time when U.S. firms need increasing amounts of energy for artificial intelligence processing.
On Thursday, citing the TV ad, the President terminated trade talks with Canada – negotiations Mr. Carney has been hoping would reduce a slew of protectionist tariffs imposed on Canadian goods since Mr. Trump took office.
On Saturday, Mr. Trump said he was hiking tariffs on Canadian imports by another 10 per cent after the TV ad critical of his protectionist levies ran during the first game of the World Series.
The 60-second spot uses footage from nearly 40 years ago of former U.S. president Ronald Reagan decrying American protectionism, saying such trade barriers hurt every American worker and consumer.Video 1:00
The Government of Ontario released this TV ad which will be broadcast in the U.S. that uses a recording of Ronald Reagan to argue against tariffs.
Government of Ontario
Mr. Trump, who has said the Ontario ad misrepresents Mr. Reagan’s comments, said he was raising tariffs by 10 per cent because Canada did not immediately stop running the ad, as he wanted.
The President has not yet issued any executive order to enforce the threatened 10-per-cent hike. It’s not clear if this new levy would apply to all Canadian imports or a selection of them. And he has announced no date for this increase.
Speaking to reporters Monday, Mr. Trump couldn’t say when the extra 10-per-cent tariff would take effect.
“I don’t know when it’s going to kick in. We’ll see,” the President said.
After Mr. Trump said he would terminate trade talks, Ontario Premier Doug Ford, whose government paid for the ad campaign, said he would pull the ad after this weekend.
The ad is much shorter than Mr. Reagan’s original address. It is edited, with certain passages presented out of order.
In Mr. Reagan’s original speech, the former president defended imposing duties on Japan during a trade dispute over semiconductors. He alleged Tokyo was failing to penalize Japanese companies’ violations of a trade agreement with the U.S.
The Bank of Canada is widely expected to cut interest rates again this week, with the fragile business climate and a new bout of trade uncertainty predicted to outweigh concerns about an uptick in inflation.
After months on the sidelines, the central bank resumed monetary policy easing last month, citing a “weaker economy and less upside risk to inflation.” It lowered the policy rate by a quarter-percentage-point to 2.5 per cent.
Since then, the Canadian economy has thrown off mixed signals. There was a rebound in employment in September and a larger-than-expected jump in inflation that month, to 2.4 per cent from 1.9 per cent.
But exports remain weak, GDP growth is lacklustre and business sentiment is in the dumps.
In recent days, U.S. President Donald Trump has called off trade negotiations with Canada and threatened an additional 10-per-cent tariff on the country in anger over a Government of Ontario TV ad critical of protectionism.
Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem tipped his hand ever-so-slightly in a call with reporters at the end of a recent trip to Washington for the annual meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.
He said the bank wouldn’t put too much weight on the surprisingly robust September jobs numbers, and warned that economic growth is going to be tepid in the coming quarters.
“It’s going to be growth, but it’s going to be soft growth. It’s not going to feel very good, and it’s certainly not going to be enough to close the output gap,” Mr. Macklem said, noting that the bank is projecting GDP growth of around 1 per cent in the second half of the year.
Financial markets have picked up these dovish signals and now see a roughly 95-per-cent chance the bank proceeds with another cut on Wednesday, according to LSEG data.
“The market is leaning so heavily to a rate cut now that a decision to hold would lead to a nasty whipsaw in yields,” Bank of Montreal chief economist Douglas Porter wrote in a note to clients.
“While the bank is not going to let the market drive its decisions, the Governor chose to not lean against rate-cut pricing in his latest public remarks – quite the opposite, in fact. Accordingly, it appears that the die is cast for a [quarter-point] trim next week, and we expect a bit more later on given the ongoing and damaging uncertainty on the U.S./Canada trade front.”
The big question on Bay Street isn’t whether the bank will cut on Wednesday. It’s what happens after that, and what signals Mr. Macklem sends about the direction of monetary policy.
The bank will also publish a new forecastfor inflation and economic growth in its quarterly Monetary Policy Report – something it has avoided doing since January, opting instead to lay out upside and downside tariff scenarios.
The bank has already lowered interest rates significantly over the past year-and-a-half, and a cut on Wednesday would bring the benchmark rate to 2.25 per cent, the lower end of what central bank economists consider to be the “neutral range” for interest rates.
Many analysts and investors think the bank will stop there, and remain on hold through the next year – although some think more stimulus will be needed to stabilize Canada’s tariff-battered economy.
With all the downside risks to the Canadian economy from the trade war with the United States, it may seem surprising that financial markets aren’t pricing in more interest-rate cuts.
Mr. Trump has hammered Canada’s auto, steel, aluminum and lumber industries with double-digit tariffs, leading to layoffs and plant closures.
Most other goods remain exempt from the President’s blanket 35-per-cent “fentanyl tariff,” but there’s a risk that negotiations over the renewal of the United States-Mexico-Canada free-trade agreement could break down next year, exposing more of the Canadian economy to tariffs.
Mr. Trump’s threats over the weekend only add to the trade turbulence.
But central bankers have made it clear they don’t see monetary policy as the main lever for dealing with a trade war, which both weighs on economic growth and pushes up prices.
“This is the stagflation problem,” said Jeremy Kronick, vice-president of economic analysis and strategy at the C.D. Howe Institute, referring to the predicament of slow growth combined with high inflation that pulls interest rates in opposite directions.
“I’m in the camp, personally, that thinks the weakness in the economy is going to outweigh the inflationary effects, and I think we’re going to need cuts, probably more than just the one. But I also think that you have to be careful, certainly coming out of an inflationary episode like we’ve had for a couple of years,” Mr. Kronick said in an interview.
The latest numbers showed that inflation has not been entirely whipped.
Headline inflation was 2.4 per cent in September, led by an unflattering year-over-year comparison for gasoline prices and a 4-per-cent rise in grocery prices.
Core inflation measures, which capture underlying price pressures, remain at around 3 per cent – the upper end of the bank’s 1-per-cent to 3-per-cent inflation-control band.
Mr. Macklem has said monetary policy will play a supporting role to fiscal policy in helping the Canadian economy adjust to the structural shock caused by the abrupt end of continental free trade.
Less than a week after the rate decision, Prime Minister Mark Carney, Mr. Macklem’s old boss at the central bank, will release his first budget.
This is expected to show a sharp rise in the federal deficit, given a huge increase in spending on defence and infrastructure, as well as an attempt to reorient government expenditures toward capital projects and away from current consumption.
Dawn Desjardins, chief economist at Deloitte Canada, said there’s only so much monetary policy can do in a moment like this. What’s needed is a broader economic policy shift that improves business confidence and encourages investment in spite of the trade disruptions.
“For businesses, I think interest rates are sufficiently low. It’s more the uncertainty quotient. So how do we as a country … incentivize businesses to start to invest in their companies? That, to me, is not necessarily something that monetary policy, especially right now, is going to be able to do,” she said in an interview.
The Bank of Canada rate decision is happening the same day as a rate decision by the U.S. Federal Reserve.
The Fed is widely expected to cut interest rates for the second time in a row following a relatively benign U.S. inflation report on Friday.
Cenovus Energy CVE-T +0.50%increase on Monday further sweetened its bid for MEG Energy MEG-T +3.50%increase to $30 a share, winning long-sought backing from MEG’s largest shareholder, Strathcona Resources SCR-T +2.61%increase.
Earlier this month, Cenovus had already raised its offer for MEG to about $29.80 per share, and said it was its “best and final” offer, in an attempt to outbid Strathcona’s offer for Canada’s last large pure-play oil sands company.
Following the revised offer, Strathcona, which had raised its stake to 14.2 per cent in MEG and intended to vote against the Cenovus transaction, abandoned its takeover bid.
MEG said it now expects around 79 per cent of votes to approve the improved transaction, following Strathcona’s decision on Monday to back the deal with its 36.1 million shares.
The board had repeatedly urged shareholders to reject Strathcona’s bid, calling it “fundamentally unattractive,” and reaffirmed its support for Cenovus’s offer.
MEG’s Christina Lake oil sands project remains a coveted asset for its long reserve life, low operating costs and potential for production growth.
The shareholder meeting on the transaction is expected to be held on Oct. 30, which was postponed from Oct. 22. The deal requires approval by two-thirds of shareholders.
* Note: Several previously scheduled U.S. data reports could be be cancelled due to the ongoing federal government shutdown. Earnings dates are subject to change
Monday October 27
China industrial profits
ECB’s three-year CPI expectations
Germany business climate
(8:30 a.m. ET) Canadian wholesale trade for September.
(8:30 a.m. ET) U.S. durable and core orders for September.
Earnings include: Celestica Inc.; Morguard North American Residential; Nucor Corp.; TMX Group Ltd.; Waste Management Inc.; Welltower Inc.
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Tuesday October 28
Germany consumer confidence
(9 a.m. ET) U.S. S&P Cotality Case-Shiller Home Price Index (20 city) for August. Estimate is a decline of 0.1 per cent from July and up 1.2 per cent year-over-year.
(9 a.m. ET) U.S. FHFA House Price Index for August. Estimate is a decline of 0.1 per cent from July and up 1.7 per cent year-over-year.
(10 a.m. ET) U.S. Conference Board Consumer Confidence Index for October.
Also: U.S. Fed meeting begins.
Earnings include: Booking Holdings Inc.; Centerra Gold Inc.; First Quantum Minerals Ltd.; New Gold Inc.; NextEra Energy Inc.; PayPal Holdings Inc.; Southern Copper Corp.; Trican Well Service Ltd.; UnitedHealth Group Inc.; United Parcel Service Inc.; Visa Inc.
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Wednesday October 29
Bank of Japan’s policy meeting begins (through Thursday)
ECB monetary policy meeting
Euro zone GDP, jobless rate and economic and consumer confidence
Germany, GDP, unemployment and CPI
(8:30 a.m. ET) U.S. goods trade deficit for September.
(8:30 a.m. ET) U.S. wholesale and retail inventories for September.
(9:45 a.m. ET) Bank of Canada policy decision. Press conference follows at 1030 a.m. ET
(10 a.m. ET) U.S. pending home sales for September.
(2 p.m. ET) U.S. Fed announcement with Chair Jerome Powell’s press briefing to follow.
Earnings include: Agnico Eagle Mines Ltd.; Alamos Gold Inc.; Algoma Steel Group, Alphabet Inc.; Bausch + Lomb Corp.; Boeing Co.; Canadian Pacific Kansas City Ltd.; Capital Power Corp.; Caterpillar Inc.; Dayforce Inc.; Gildan Activewear Inc.; Ivanhoe Mines Ltd., Kraft Heinz, Meta Platforms Inc.; Methanex Corp.; Microsoft Corp.; NexGen Energy Ltd.; Parkland Fuel Corp.; Paramount Group, Starbucks Corp.; Suncor Energy Inc.; Tourmaline Oil Corp.; Verizon Communications Inc.
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Thursday October 30
U.S. President Donald Trump meets Chinese leader Xi Jinping at APEC in South Korea
(8:30 a.m. ET) Canada’s payroll survey for August.
(8:30 a.m. ET) U.S. initial jobless claims for week of Oct. 25.
(8:30 a.m. ET) U.S. real GDP and price index for Q3.
Japan jobless rate, retail sales and industrial production
Euro zone CPI
Germany retail sales
(8:30 a.m. ET) Canada’s monthly real GDP for August. The Street expects a flat reading month-over-month
(8:30 a.m. ET) U.S. personal spending and income for September.
(8:30 a.m. ET) U.S. core PCE price index for September.
(9:45 a.m. ET) U.S. Chicago PMI for October.
Also: Ottawa’s budget balance
Earnings include: AbbVie Inc.; Canadian National Railway Co.; Chevron Corp.; Energy Fuels Inc.; Exxon Mobil Corp.; Imperial Oil Ltd.; Lumine Group Inc.; Magna International Inc.; Sprott Inc., Telus
