6 Most Important Things in Business Today

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
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6 Most Important Things in Business Today

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Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ: TSLA) blew past earnings expectations. The company also said demand for its new Model 3 is robust. Car division revenue rose 93% year over year to $2.3 billion. Tesla’s stock soared.

Qatar Airways gave up on its effort to buy 10% of American Airlines Group Inc. (NASDAQ: AAL). American management had already turned down the bid.

The chance that Venezuela will default on some of its debt rose, The Wall Street Journal reported.

The government and state-owned oil company Petróleos de Venezuela, also known as PdVSA, together owe $5 billion in principal and interest payments due between now and the end of the year, according to Caracas Capital Markets. The country has $725 million due this month alone, the Venezuelan investment bank said:

The problem: Venezuela only has about $3 billion of its foreign reserves in cash, according to S&P Global Ratings. That means the country is dependent on oil exports to make up the difference.

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Amazon.com Inc.’s (NASDAQ: AMZN) jobs fairs drew thousands of people as the e-commerce company added to its warehouse staffs. According to the AP:

Thousands of people showed up Wednesday for a chance to pack and ship products to Amazon customers, as the e-commerce company held a giant job fair at nearly a dozen U.S. warehouses.

Although the wages offered will make it hard for some to make ends meet, many of the candidates were excited by the prospect of health insurance and other benefits, as well as advancement opportunities.

Amazon plans to hire 50,000 people to fill the positions.

Tens of thousands of people have canceled orders for Tesla’s Model 3. According to Recode:

Tesla is continuing to see demand for its first mass market car, the Model 3, with an average of 1,800 new orders a day.

But on its quarterly earnings call, CEO Elon Musk revealed about 63,000 people have cancelled their Model 3 pre-orders. The number of orders went from approximately 518,000 to 455,000, Musk said.

Lockheed Martin Corp. (NYSE: LMT) will build a state-of-the-art factory for satellite production. According to CNNMoney:

The defense and aerospace company announced Wednesday that it has started building a $350 million facility on its Waterton Canyon campus near Denver, Colorado. It’s a new 266,000-square-foot “factory of the future” that Lockheed Martin says will allow it to make satellites faster and for less money.

The company is a stalwart presence in the satellite and space industries. Right now, for example, it’s making GPS III satellites for the U.S. Air Force and a Mars lander for NASA.

But it’s touting the new campus, which will be finished in 2020, as a big leap forward. One reason is because the facility will bring key parts of satellite production under one roof.

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Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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