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About The Bulletin. (Bend, OR) 1963-current | View Entire Issue (July 13, 2022)
A11 B USINESS THE BULLETIN • WEDNESDAY, JULY 13, 2022 q DOW 30,981.33 -192.51 BRIEFING Ladd Group earns honors in real estate sales The Ladd Group, with Cascade Hasson Sothe- by’s International Realty, earned the number one ranking for a midsize real estate team in Oregon on the 2022 RealTrends America’s Best Real Estate Professionals. The ranking means The Ladd Group of Bend is in the top 1.49% of more than 1.6 million licensed Realtors nationwide, ac- cording to a press release RealTrends rates real es- tate brokers and teams in the country annually and has been providing insight into the real estate mar- ket since 1987. The Ladd Group achieved more than $200 million in real estate investments in 2021 alone, making it the top produc- ing real estate team in Central Oregon. The Ladd Group spe- cializes in relocation, re- sort communities, luxury homes and investments properties. Peloton to stop making its own bikes, treadmills Peloton will stop mak- ing its own interactive stationary bikes and treadmills, outsourcing those duties to a Taiwan- ese manufacturer as it attempts to revive sales that surged during the pandemic. The New York City company, which recorded its only profitable quar- ters during the pandemic, is seeking to lower costs after sales slid when gyms began to reopen and cheaper knockoffs entered the market. It will suspend man- ufacturing operations at the Tonic Fitness Technol- ogy plant in Taiwan for the rest of the year. In February the com- pany announced a major restructuring and aban- doned plans to open its first U.S. factory in Ohio, which would have em- ployed 2,000. Boeing sees good delivery month Boeing said Tuesday that it delivered 51 pas- senger and cargo planes in June, the aircraft mak- er’s best month for deliv- eries in more than three years, as airlines saw de- mand recovering from pandemic lows. Boeing Co. shares rose about 8% in afternoon trading. The company, which recently moved its head- quarters to Arlington, Virginia, said it delivered 43 of its 737 Max airlin- ers, one 737 modified for the U.S. Navy, and seven larger planes that will be used to haul cargo. The deliveries were spread across about two dozen airlines, cargo carriers and aircraft leasing com- panies. However, Boeing again delivered none of its best-selling two-aisle plane, the 787, which has been plagued by pro- duction problems. The company is trying to win approval from federal regulators to resume de- liveries, which are an im- portant source of cash for Boeing. Boeing took new or- ders for 50 commercial jets in June, but custom- ers canceled orders for 35. Of those, Boeing said, 28 cancellations stemmed from Norwegian Air Shut- tle reshuffling its order book while keeping or- ders for 50 of the planes. — Bulletin staff and wire reports q NASDAQ 11,264.73 -107.87 bendbulletin.com/business q S&P 500 3,818.80 -35.63 q 30-YR T-BOND 3.13% -.05 q q CRUDE OIL $95.84 -8.25 GOLD $1,723.30 -6.70 q SILVER $18.90 -.17 q EURO $1.0045 -.0019 Self-employment level at highest since ’08 BY ALEX TANZI Bloomberg The share of the U.S. workforce that is self-employed has climbed to the highest level since the Great Recession, as the pandemic jobs shake-up spurred many Americans to try working for themselves. About 16.8 million people were clas- sified as self-employed in June, accord- ing to Bloomberg calculations based on the latest data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That’s an increase of 1.4 million workers over the past two years, representing more than one- third of the expansion in the labor force during that period. Many Americans were pushed into trying self-employment when millions of jobs vanished almost overnight in the early weeks of the pandemic. Oth- ers have taken the decision voluntary, quitting their jobs and no longer seek- ing to work for others. The so-called quits rate has surged in the past two years, with 4.3 million workers leaving in May alone. There’s a wide range of reasons un- derlying the growth of self-employ- ment. For many women, the deci- sion likely reflects the need for more flexibility because child-care became harder to get in the pandemic. The spread of remote work and the reloca- tion of many employees also offered new opportunities. The construction industry is where the largest number of self-employed Americans work, and their ranks con- tinued to grow in the pandemic, ac- cording to data from the Federal Re- serve Bank of St. Louis. There’s also been an increase in the real-estate and transportation industries. Running on fumes BY DAVID WELCH Bloomberg Automakers have an- nounced a whopping $526 billion collective investment in electric vehicles through 2026, more than double the amount they mapped out over a similar forward time frame a couple years ago. Since the industry isn’t doubling its total capital spending, all that investment in EVs — tallied by consult- ing firm AlixPartners — will come at the expense of devel- opment dollars for new and redesigned internal combus- tion engine vehicles. Makes sense, right? The hot growth is in EVs. But hang on. General Motors has said it aspires to go all-electric by 2035, and other compa- nies are saying 2040 or later. That means consumers will be able to buy a brand new gasoline-burning vehicle for another 15 or 20 years. If models running on fuel will be available that far into the future, but most of the in- vestment is going into EVs, auto dealers will be selling some very stale sets of wheels in the coming years. What will those cars look like? For starters, automakers will not be investing in spruc- ing up their powertrains. En- gines and transmissions are going to get awfully long in the tooth, since automakers can now see a point at which they’ll be phasing them out altogether. Changes to powertrains will be done for reasons of ef- ficiency and to meet tougher emissions rules, not to make cars faster or smoother. Styling also could take a back seat. As carmakers watch sales of their com- bustion models decline, they’re more likely to tweak on the margins, rather than go through the rigmarole of complete redesigns. Mark Wakefield, who runs Alix- Partners’ auto industry prac- tice, said some vehicles could get the kind of freshening that costs $100 million or so. All-new models tend to cost $1 billion or more. Carmakers start plans to curb combustion engine manufacturing Balint Porneczi/Bloomberg A claw crane operates over a stack of crushed automobiles at the Boudou Recycling scrapyard in Salles- La-Source, France. If automakers spend less on their traditional models, those cars could eventually become more of a bargain hunter’s option for consumers who can’t afford EVs, or don’t have plentiful access to charging infrastructure. BofA Global Research re- cently forecast in its closely watched Car Wars report that by 2026, the U.S. market will have about 135 different EVs for sale, and an equal num- ber of internal combustion vehicles. If automakers spend less on their traditional models, those cars could eventually become more of a bargain hunter’s option for consum- ers who can’t afford EVs, or don’t have plentiful access to charging infrastructure. Oregon hotels, restaurants find footing, at last Inflation is a threat, however BY MIKE ROGOWAY The Oregonian The pandemic clobbered Oregon’s bars, restaurants and hotels, with extended shutdowns and wiping out more than 70,000 hospitality jobs in COVID-19’s early days. The sector was also among the slow- est to recover, as successive outbreaks of disease and intermittent restrictions con- strained operations and job growth well into 2021. Oregon hospitality jobs lagged far behind the national recovery at the beginning of last year. Over the past 12 months, though, the industry has picked up the pace. Oregon hospitality employment is nearly 94% of what it was prior to the pandemic, roughly on par with national trends. That’s a hopeful sign heading into the summer travel months. “I do think the worst is definitely be- hind us, and if we can get inflation under Dave Killen/The Oregonian Bars, restaurants and hotels found ways to adapt to COVID-19 — but now face new pressures from inflation. wraps a little bit, then I think the story for Oregon is quite bright in the years ahead,” said Jason Brandt, CEO of the Oregon Restaurant & Lodging Association. Oregon has roughly 200,000 tour- ism jobs, according to May data from the Oregon Employment Department. Roughly three-quarters of those jobs are in bars and restaurants. The loss of that work was especially hard on Oregon’s coastal communities, which rely on tourism for an outsize share of their economic activity, and on younger workers, who do many of the sector’s entry-level service jobs. Federal stimulus payments and beefed-up unemployment benefits blunted layoffs’ financial toll for many workers, of course. Their spending, plus billions in business subsidies, buoyed many bars and restaurants that oth- erwise would have succumbed to the shutdowns. But lasting damage remains, with lives and careers disrupted and scores of popular dining and drinking establish- ments gone forever. “We have both great stories and hor- ror stories all at the same time,” Brandt said. Businesses that endured were the ones that found ways to adjust, often by automating aspects of their operations or improving their to-go service to adapt to a decline in in-person dining. Twitter sues to force Musk to complete $44B deal BY MATT O’BRIEN Associated Press Twitter said Tuesday it has sued Elon Musk to force him to complete the $44 billion ac- quisition of the social media company. Musk and Twitter have been bracing for a legal fight since the billionaire said Friday he was backing off of his April agreement to buy the com- pany. Twitter’s lawsuit opens with a sharply-worded accusation: “Musk refuses to honor his obligations to Twitter and its stockholders because the deal he signed no longer serves his personal interests.” “Having mounted a pub- lic spectacle to put Twitter in play, and having proposed and then signed a seller-friendly merger agreement, Musk ap- parently believes that he — unlike every other party sub- ject to Delaware contract law — is free to change his mind, trash the company, disrupt its operations, destroy stock- holder value, and walk away,” the suit says. Twitter filed its lawsuit in the Delaware Court of Chancery . Musk alleged Friday that Twitter has failed to provide enough information about the number of fake accounts on its service. Twitter said last month that it was making available to Musk a “fire hose” of raw data on hundreds of millions of daily tweets. The company has said for years in regulatory filings that it believes about 5% of the ac- counts on the platform are fake. Musk is also alleging that Twit- ter broke the acquisition agree- ment when it fired two top managers and laid off a third of its talent-acquisition team. When Musk offered to buy the company and take it pri- vate in mid-April, the board initially tried to block him by deploying a financial maneu- ver that would have made the acquisition prohibitively expensive. By April 25, though, Twit- ter had reconsidered the of- fer, concluding that selling the company to Musk for $54.20 a share was in the best inter- est of shareholders. In a joint press release, Musk pledged to “unlock” the social media company’s potential by loos- ening restrictions on speech and rooting out fake accounts. But his confidence didn’t last long. Tesla’s stock — Musk’s primary source of wealth — plummeted amid a broader stock market selloff in May, and Musk soon seemed less enthusiastic about owning Twitter. Twitter’s suit calls Musk’s tactics “a model of hypocrisy,” noting that he had emphasized plans to take Twitter private in order to rid it of spam ac- counts. Once the market de- clined, however, Twitter noted that “Musk shifted his narra- tive, suddenly demanding ‘ver- ification’ that spam was not a serious problem on Twitter’s platform, and claiming a burn- ing need to conduct ‘diligence’ he had expressly forsworn.”
