Diageo‘s sales unexpectedly rose in the latest quarter as growth in Africa and Latin America was enough to offset significant weakness in the US.

The maker of Johnnie Walker whisky and Guinness stout said Wednesday that organic net sales rose 0.3% in period, beating 2.3% slump expected by analysts surveyed by Bloomberg.

Diageo kept its guidance for this fiscal year unchanged, with organic net sales expected to decline between 2% and 3%.
Like rival drinks makers, Diageo is grappling with persistent weak demand for beer and spirits in critical markets, including the US. Consumers are moderating their alcohol intake to improve their health and in response to higher living costs from US President Donald Trump‘s trade tariffs and conflict in the Middle East.

The distiller is also trying to overcome self-inflicted errors such as poor service levels to some customers since Covid and an intense focus on premium drinks that has left the company underrepresented in growing parts of the market, like “ready-to-drink” canned cocktails.

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Swedish buyout group EQT said Tuesday that it submitted an improved takeover proposal for Intertek, valuing the provider of testing, inspection and certification services at 8.93 billion pounds ($12.08 billion).

In the new offer, the private-equity company values Intertek at 58 pounds a share in cash, or a 54% premium to its closing price on April 9, the day before the initial proposal was submitted. The proposal values the company as a whole at 8.93 billion pounds, based on share-count data provided by LSEG.

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E-commerce company Meesho narrowed its consolidated losses to Rs 166 crore in the March-ended quarter versus Rs 1,391 crore in the year-ago period, implying an 88% drop. The loss is attributable to the owners of the parent.

The company’s revenue from operations, meanwhile, rose 47% to Rs 3,531 crore versus Rs 2,400 crore posted in the corresponding quarter of the previous financial year.

The losses were lower on a sequential basis as well, falling from Rs 491 crore in Q3FY26, while the topline was flat quarter-on-quarter versus Rs 3,518 crore in the January-March quarter of FY26.

Meesho, which claims to be India’s largest e-commerce platform by Annual Transacting Users (ATUs) and orders placed, reported a net merchandise value (NMV) of Rs 11,371 crore in Q4FY26, up 43% YoY, with 717 million orders (+43% YoY), driven by continued new user onboarding and deeper engagement from existing cohorts.

For the full year FY26, Meesho continued to expand India’s e-commerce market, emerging as the most downloaded shopping app in India and the largest platform by Annual Transacting Users (ATUs) and placing orders. Its ATUs grew 33% YoY to 264 million, while orders increased 45% YoY to 2.67 billion.

NMV for the year stood at Rs 41,560 crores, up 39% YoY, with frequency improving to 10.1 transactions per user annually.

Management commentary

Founder & CEO Vidit Aatrey said FY2026 deepened the company’s conviction that the Indian e-commerce market has far more depth than most people assume. “In emerging markets like China, Southeast Asia, and Latin America, more than 80% of smartphone users shop online. In India, that number is around 30%, not because Indians don’t want to shop online, but because nobody has built an e-commerce that actually works for them. Every time we removed one of those barriers, the market got larger. That pattern has held for a decade,” he said.Also read: KPIT Technologies Q4 Results: Cons profit falls 33% YoY to Rs 163 crore despite 12% revenue uptick

Underscoring the importance of AI, he highlighted that more than 75% of orders on Meesho come from personalised feeds that infer what a user is looking for before they even type a query. “Vaani, our voice shopping agent, lets a user describe what they want in their own language and complete a purchase through conversation. GeoIndia decodes the landmark-based, vernacular addresses that conventional systems cannot parse. The result is that first-time buyers who had never placed an order online are now completing purchases on Meesho,” Aatrey said.

(Disclaimer: Recommendations, suggestions, views and opinions given by the experts are their own. These do not represent the views of The Economic Times)

Shares of Advanced Micro Devices surged nearly 13% on Wednesday after the chipmaker delivered stronger-than-expected quarterly results and issued an upbeat revenue forecast, reinforcing investor confidence that it is emerging as one of the strongest challengers to Nvidia in the artificial intelligence race.

The stock, which had already gained nearly 60% this year ahead of the results, extended its rally after the company projected second-quarter revenue of $11.2 billion, plus or minus $300 million—well above Wall Street estimates of $10.52 billion.

AMD also guided for adjusted gross margins of about 56%, ahead of analyst expectations of 55.4%, signalling stronger pricing power as demand for AI chips remains robust. For the March quarter, the company reported adjusted earnings of $1.37 per share on revenue of $10.25 billion.

The biggest upside came from AMD’s data centre business, where revenue jumped 57% year-on-year to $5.8 billion as cloud computing giants continued to ramp up spending on AI infrastructure.

The company is benefiting not only from demand for graphics processing units (GPUs) used to train AI models, but also from central processing units (CPUs), which are becoming critical as companies scale AI applications—a process known as inference. This positioning is helping AMD tap into a broader AI hardware opportunity as enterprises move from experimentation to deployment.

Earlier this year, AMD announced a landmark deal to supply up to $60 billion worth of AI chips over five years to Meta Platforms, a transaction that also gives the Facebook parent the option to take up to a 10% stake in the chipmaker.
The company also struck a separate AI partnership with OpenAI last year. Investors increasingly view AMD as the most credible alternative to Nvidia in AI chips, especially as hyperscalers look to diversify suppliers amid tight capacity and rising costs.AMD stock has significantly outperformed Nvidia this year. While AMD is up nearly 60% year-to-date, Nvidia has gained about 6%, while the broader Philadelphia Semiconductor Index has risen around 48%.

Still, competition is intensifying. Intel last month issued a strong revenue forecast of its own as it ramps up in-house manufacturing to meet rising CPU demand. Unlike Intel, AMD outsources chip production to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, exposing it to tight foundry capacity as global demand for advanced chips continues to surge.

(Disclaimer: Recommendations, suggestions, views and opinions given by the experts are their own. These do not represent the views of Economic Times)

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Q1: 2026-05-05 Earnings Summary

EPS of $4.56 beats by $1.07

 | Revenue of $1.67B (37.08% Y/Y) beats by $491.19M

Chord Energy Corporation (CHRD) Q1 2026 Earnings Call May 6, 2026 11:00 AM EDT

Company Participants

Bob Bakanauskas
Daniel Brown – President, CEO & Director
Darrin Henke – Executive VP & COO
Michael Lou – Executive VP, Chief Strategy Officer & Chief Commercial Officer

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Conference Call Participants

John Abbott – Wolfe Research, LLC
Hsu-Lei Huang – Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co. Securities, LLC, Research Division
Jack Kindregan – BMO Capital Markets Equity Research
Scott Hanold – RBC Capital Markets, Research Division
Neal Dingmann – William Blair & Company L.L.C., Research Division
Michael Furrow – Pickering Energy Partners LP
John Annis – Texas Capital Securities, Research Division
Phillips Johnston – Capital One Securities, Inc., Research Division
John Edelman – Jefferies LLC, Research Division

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Presentation

Operator

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Chord Energy First Quarter 2026 Earnings Call.

[Operator Instructions]

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This call is being recorded on Wednesday, May 6, 2026. I would now like to turn the conference over to Bob Bakanauskas, Vice President of Finance. Please go ahead.

Bob Bakanauskas

Thanks, Natasha, and good morning, everyone. This is Bob Bakanauskas, and today, we are reporting our first quarter 2026 financial and operational results. We are delighted to have you on the call. I’m joined today by Danny Brown, our CEO; and Michael Lou, our Chief Strategy Officer and Chief Commercial Officer; Darrin Henke, our COO; Richard Robuck, our CFO; as well as other members of the team.

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Please be advised that our remarks, including the answers to your questions, include statements that we believe to be forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to be materially different from those currently disclosed in our earnings releases and on conference calls. Those risks include, among others, matters that we have described in our earnings

‘Reduction of high-grade agricultural land’ flagged as more planning applications pour in

Food security will be under threat if planners and government continue to allow developers to eat up agricultural land for housing, some Cheshire East councillors and residents have warned.

It’s a view which has been expressed at various meetings, as housing applications flood in across the borough for development on agricultural land.

Knutsford councillor Tony Dean (Con) was the latest to voice his concerns at last week’s meeting of the strategic planning board, when members were discussing an application for up to 85 homes on 6.39 hectares of agricultural land off London Road at Nantwich.

As councillors struggled to find a reason to refuse the outline scheme – which eventually was approved – Cllr Dean told the meeting: “One of the things which is not yet considered to have any planning weight, but I’m sure it will do within the next 20 to 30 years, is the reduction of high-grade agricultural land.”

He said that particular Nantwich site was very good agricultural land.

“People will say, well, that’s tiny compared to all the farming land we have in the country, but the problem is, if you keep nibbling away at it, we’re not even self-sufficient in this country as it is, and we’ll get less and less self-sufficient,” said Cllr Dean.

“At the moment, that’s not an issue, but if we have any more issues like the Strait of Hormuz and certain other possible international problems, we could end up like we were in 1939, very short of food in this country.

“I am sure that, at some stage in the government, somebody will see that eating up our agricultural land is the worst thing we could possibly do.”

He said in Cheshire East it was accepted that solar farming and tree planting is not permitted on high-grade agricultural land.

“But houses seem to be the exception, and the planning system has yet to accept that eating away at high-grade agricultural land is the wrong thing,” he said.

Cllr Dean’s comments come a few months after a similar argument was put forward by Knutsford councillor Stewart Gardiner (Con) regarding a proposal for housing and a care home on land off Crewe Road at Sandbach.

That application was refused in October last year by councillors – with one reason being the proposed development would lead to the loss of best and most versatile agricultural land.

The applicant won the subsequent appeal after Cheshire East withdrew its objections.

But at the original October meeting, Cllr Gardiner had argued that that Sandbach land ‘is adding to the food security of this country which is a very significant point and officers, councillors and inspectors and even ministers of the Crown who fail to understand this, fail to understand the importance of food security’.

And at December’s full council meeting, objectors fighting the proposals for the Adlington new town – when it was still one of 12 areas being considered by government – had argued about the need for national food security.

One resident told the meeting: “What this means in practice is that nearly 2,500 acres of highly productive farmland producing 4.5 million litres of milk, more than 3,000 lambs and 115 tonnes of meat products per year, will be lost to urban sprawl.

“The loss of farming communities and the erosion of our national food security will be highly damaging in the long term and once this farmland has gone, it’s gone forever.”

To find all the planning applications, traffic diversions, road layout changes, alcohol licence applications and more in your community, visit the Public Notices Portal.