Southwest Airlines on Wednesday flagged softer August leisure bookings and joined two other US airlines in warning of higher fuel costs in the third quarter due to a jump in crude prices.
The largest US domestic carrier said August bookings were at the lower end of its expectations, in part due to seasonal trends, but maintained that overall leisure demand and yields remain healthy.
Shares of Southwest fell 4% premarket, before paring some losses to close down 2.6% at $29.97.
The forecast comes as early signs emerge of domestic travel demand weakening, with inflationary pressures hurting consumers even as carriers hand out costly contracts to retain workers.
United Airlines and Alaska Air Group also warned of higher fuel costs in the current quarter as crude oil prices rose for a third straight month in August, amid signs of tightening supply.
In a regulatory filing, United said jet fuel prices have climbed over 20% since mid-July.
The carrier also said it had no imminent plans to move its headquarters to Denver from Chicago after buying 113 acres of land there. Finance Chief Gerald Laderman at the TD Cowen Transportation Conference said the first order of business is the expansion of the flight training center in Denver.
Southwest said it continues to forecast a “solid (third-quarter) profit,” but trimmed its expectations for revenue per available seat mile – a proxy for pricing power – to a 5% to 7% fall, compared with a 3% to 7% fall forecast earlier.
Alaska Air expects a quarterly adjusted pre-tax margin of 10% to 12%, lower than its prior expectation of 14% to 16%.
US airlines do not generally hedge against fuel costs, making them vulnerable to price swings.
“The relatively quick up move in fuel has given the industry little time to respond through fares,” Citi Research analyst Stephen Trent said in a note.
Ukraine’s representatives are preparing for renewed peace talks in the US, while dramatic footage has shown Russian tankers being hit by naval drones.
President Zelenskyy said a delegation headed by national security chief Rustem Umerov was on its way to “swiftly and substantively work out the steps needed to end the war”.
They are due to be greeted by US secretary of state Marco Rubio, Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff, and the US president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, a senior US official told Reuters news agency.
Image: National security chief Rustem Umerov is leading the delegation. Pic: Reuters
After the US-Ukraine talks, an American delegation is expected to travel to Moscow to meet President Putin.
It comes after Mr Trump released a 28-point proposal last week that would hand swathes of land to Russia and limit the size of Kyiv’s military.
It was widely seen as heavily favouring Russia and led Mr Zelenskyy to swiftly engage with American negotiators.
President Trump said on Tuesday his plan had been “fine-tuned”.
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1:05
Ukraine peace plan in 60 seconds
In his evening address on Saturday, the Ukrainian leader said: “The American side is demonstrating a constructive approach, and in the coming days it is feasible to flesh out the steps to determine how to bring the war to a dignified end.”
Mr Zelenskyy’s team in the US is without his former chief of staff and lead negotiator, Andrii Yermak, as he quit on Friday after officials raided his home amid a corruption scandal.
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What do we know about Ukraine’s corruption scandal?
Tankers hit by ‘Sea Baby’ drones
Ukrainian drones were shown hitting two of Russia‘s so-called “shadow fleet” oil tankers in the Black Sea in footage released on Saturday.
Friday’s attack was carried out by the country’s security service and its navy, an official told Reuters. They said both ships “sustained critical damage” that took them out of service.
A security source told Associated Press that domestically-made “Sea Baby” drones were used.
The tankers were under sanctions and heading to a Russian port to load up with oil destined for foreign markets, the official said.
They have been identified as the Kairos and Virat.
Image: The blasts hit tankers off Turkey’s Black Sea coast. Pic: Turkish Directorate General for Maritime Affairs/Reuters
The 274m-long Kairos suffered an explosion and caught fire en route from Egypt to Russia on Friday, Turkey’s transport ministry said. The crew was evacuated.
The Virat was reportedly struck about 35 nautical miles offshore.
It was attacked by unmanned vessels and sustained minor damage to its starboard side, the Turkish ministry said.
Russia deploys a fleet of often ageing, uninsured and unmarked tankers to circumvent sanctions on its oil exports, which continue to help pay for the Ukraine war.
Another Ukrainian attack halted operations at an oil terminal near the Russian port of Novorossiysk on Saturday.
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1:30
Russian drone and missile attack hits Kyiv
Andriy Kovalenko, from Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council, said special forces were responsible.
“Naval drones managed to destroy one of the three oil tanker berths of the Caspian Pipeline Consortium in the Novorossiysk area,” he wrote on Telegram.
Six killed in aerial attacks on Ukraine
Russia carried out another onslaught on the Ukrainian capital overnight into Saturday, firing 36 cruise and ballistic missiles and launching around 600 drones.
Officials said three people were killed in and around Kyiv, two in the Dnipropetrovsk region and one in a midday attack in Kherson region in the south.
Mayor Vitali Klitschko said 29 others were injured in Kyiv, largely due to falling debris from intercepted drones hitting buildings.
The attacks also hit Ukrainian energy facilities and left hundreds of thousands without power in the capital. Supplies have since been restored.
Targeting such infrastructure has become a familiar tactic from Russia over the winter, in what Ukraine officials say is the “weaponising” of the cold.
The US Nasdaq stock exchange is making SEC approval of its proposal to offer tokenized versions of stocks listed on the exchange a top priority, according to the exchange’s crypto chief.
“We’ll just move as fast as we can,” Nasdaq’s head of digital assets strategy, Matt Savarese, said during an interview with CNBC on Thursday, when asked whether the SEC could approve the proposal this year.
“I think what we have to really evaluate where the public comments come back in and then answer and respond to the SEC questions as they come through,” Savarese said. “We hope to kind of work with them as quickly as possible,” Savarese said.
Savarese says Nasdaq isn’t “upending the system”
The proposal, submitted by Nasdaq on Sept. 8, is requesting to allow investors to buy and sell stock tokens — digital representations of shares in publicly traded companies — on the exchange.
Savarese emphasized that Nasdaq is not trying to overhaul the way stocks are invested in when asked whether he expects other major exchanges to follow suit.
Nasdaq’s head of digital assets, Matt Savarese, spoke to CNBC on Thursday. Source: CNBC
“We’re not looking at upending the system; we want everyone to come along for that ride and bring tokenization more into the mainstream,” he said.
“We want to do it in that responsible investor-led way first, under the SEC rules themselves,” he added.
It was only in October that Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev said that tokenization will “eventually eat the whole financial system.”
The crypto industry is divided on tokenized equities
Savarese emphasized that Nasdaq is aiming to be an innovator in the ecosystem, noting that the exchange was the first to transition markets from paper-based trading to electronic systems.
Tokenizing stocks has been one of the most significant talking points in the crypto industry this year.
On Sept. 3, Galaxy Digital CEO Mike Novogratz said the company became the first Nasdaq-listed company to tokenize its equity on a major blockchain following its launch on the Solana network.
The conversation around tokenized equities has also drawn skepticism from the crypto industry.
On Oct. 1, Rob Hadick, general partner at crypto venture firm Dragonfly, told Cointelegraph that tokenized equities will be a significant benefit to traditional markets, but may not be a boon to the crypto industry as others have predicted.
Hadick said that if tokenized stocks use layer-2 networks, it creates “leakage” as value and may not flow back to Ethereum or the broader crypto ecosystem as much as hoped.
ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Julian Sayin threw three touchdown passes, including a 35-yarder to Jeremiah Smith on a fourth down in the second quarter, and No. 1 Ohio State beat No. 15 Michigan 27-9 in a dominant performance on Saturday.
The defending national champion Buckeyes (12-0, 9-0 Big Ten, No. 1 CFP) likely earned a first-round bye in the College Football Playoff. They can keep their top seed with a win against No. 2 Indiana (12-0, 9-0, No. 2 CFP) in the conference championship game Saturday night in Indianapolis.
Ryan Day should sleep well, a year after losing The Game when his team was favored by about three touchdowns. The upset extended his losing streak in the series to four games and sparked speculation he might also lose his job.
The Wolverines (9-3, 7-2) started strong with two field goals and an interception on the first three possessions of the game, but couldn’t generate pressure when Ohio State wanted to pass.
After throwing an interception on his second snap, redshirt freshman Sayin took advantage of the time and space he had to throw.
Sayin was 6 of 6 for 68 yards with two touchdowns on third and fourth down in the first half, including a 4-yard throw to Brandon Inniss with 16 seconds left that made it 17-9 at the break. He finished 19 of 26 for 233 yards and threw for at least three touchdowns for the sixth time this season.