Merz's €172 Billion Budget Hole Builds Pressure for Debt Reform
The shortfall, spread over the next four years, will be set out in the medium-term financial plan that the German cabinet is set to approve Wednesday, along with the budget for 2026.
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17 minutes ago
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Why Novo Nordisk Stock Slipped Today
Key Points It was a double miss for the Wegovy maker in its second quarter. It's been hammered not only by competing licensed drugs, but it also has to contend with copycats. 10 stocks we like better than Novo Nordisk › Novo Nordisk (NYSE: NVO) stock imitated the company's leading product on Wednesday by slimming down in price. The Danish pharmaceutical's shares lost nearly 4% of their value following its latest earnings release, comparing unfavorably to the modest (0.7%) gain of the S&P 500 index. Still growing, but... Novo Nordisk, famous for its Wegovy obesity drug (and its sibling, diabetes treatment Ozempic), unveiled its first half and second quarter of 2025 figures early Wednesday morning. For the quarter, the company booked 76.9 billion Danish kroner ($11.9 billion) in revenue, which was up only marginally on a sequential basis, and 13% higher compared to the same period of 2024. Net income, meanwhile, was down from the previous quarter but up from the year-ago quarter. It rose by 32% year over year to 26.5 billion kroner ($4.1 billion), or 5.96 kroner ($0.92) per share. Both headline numbers missed the consensus analyst estimates, although not by much. Pundits tracking the company were modeling the equivalent of just under $12 billion for revenue, and $0.95 per share on the bottom line. Although Novo Nordisk continues to post double-digit increases thanks largely to Wegovy and Ozempic, it has been in the investor doghouse so far this month. That's because at the end of July, it significantly cut its guidance for both total sales and operating profit. Withering competition Much of this has to do with the intense competition Novo Nordisk is facing due to the runaway success of those medications. These days, pharmacy sector powerhouse Eli Lilly is doing brisk business with a directly competing product, Zepbound, while third parties are copying Wegovy's semaglutide molecule for their own compounded products. The company announced no fewer than 14 new lawsuits on Tuesday, making a total of 146 across 40 U.S. states, to combat the latter. Should you invest $1,000 in Novo Nordisk right now? Before you buy stock in Novo Nordisk, consider this: The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the for investors to buy now… and Novo Nordisk wasn't one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years. Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $619,036!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $1,092,648!* Now, it's worth noting Stock Advisor's total average return is 1,026% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 180% for the S&P 500. Don't miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join Stock Advisor. See the 10 stocks » *Stock Advisor returns as of August 4, 2025 Eric Volkman has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool recommends Novo Nordisk. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. Why Novo Nordisk Stock Slipped Today was originally published by The Motley Fool
Yahoo
17 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Trump plans to meet Putin next week in Ukraine peace bid
President Donald Trump said Wednesday he plans to meet with Vladimir Putin as soon as next week in a fresh bid to broker a peace deal with Ukraine after U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff held a 'highly productive' meeting with the Russian president. Trump hailed the meeting as having made 'great progress,' but he didn't elaborate. A Kremlin spokesman said the meeting lasted three hours and was 'useful and constructive.' 'Everyone agrees this war must come to a close, and we will work towards that in the days and weeks to come,' Trump posted on his social media site. 'President Trump wants this brutal war to end,' added White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt. Trump told European allies about his plans to meet with Putin and his hopes to broker a three-man meeting between the two of them and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, several American and European media outlets reported. A face-to-face meeting between Putin and Zelenskyy could amount to a crucial crossroads in the war that Putin launched against neighboring Ukraine more than three years ago. In announcing his plans, Trump didn't mention his looming Friday deadline for Putin to start talking peace with Kyiv, raising obvious questions about whether the threat is still hanging over the Kremlin. Trump last week set a stricter deadline of '10 or 12 days' for Putin to wind down the war against Ukraine or start peace negotiations, threatening 'severe tariffs' and other economic penalties against Russia and its economic partners if it refuses. Zelenskyy, who also spoke with Trump on Wednesday, said Putin's agreement to meet could suggest that pressure from Trump is working, though he warned that the wily Kremlin leader could be raising hopes for peace as a negotiating tactic without any intention of agreeing to end the conflict. 'The main thing is that they do not deceive us in the details,' Zelenskyy said in his nightly address to the Ukrainian people. Moscow had so far shrugged off Trump's deadline as empty bluster, noting he has given numerous previous ultimatums on various issues that turned out to be toothless threats. Russia believes it has the upper hand on the battlefield, at least in the short and medium term, giving it little reason to agree to even a brief ceasefire. Its troops have made modest advances along the long front line in Ukraine's eastern Donbas region and ousted Ukrainian troops from a sliver of a Russian border territory that they had previously seized. Russia has also increasingly mounted deadly missile and drone attacks on Ukrainian civilian targets. Earlier on Wednesday, Witkoff took a morning stroll in Moscow with Kirill Dmitriev, the Russian president's envoy for investment and economic cooperation, which was captured in footage aired by a Russian news agency. Dmitriev played a key role in three rounds of direct talks between delegations from Russia and Ukraine, as well as discussions between Russian and U.S. officials, but the negotiations made no progress on ending the three-year war. Trump has recently flip-flopped to a much harsher stance on Russia after seeing Putin for months spurn his demands for concessions. Still, Trump has shown himself to be unwilling to take a firm stance of defending Ukraine and sticking to it, giving Putin an incentive to wait out any threats. The new deadline and threat to impose 'secondary sanctions' on nations that buy Russian energy, like India, China and Turkey, are particularly problematic because those economic powerhouses have no control over Russia's stance on Ukraine. They're unlikely to cut economic ties with Moscow in response to such U.S. demands, especially when Trump himself was cozying up to Putin just a few weeks ago. The White House announced it is tacking on a new 25% tariff on products imported from India, raising the total tax to 50%, which suggests it doesn't consider Putin has met the deadline.
Yahoo
23 minutes ago
- Yahoo
As Europe pushes towards its €1.5 trillion renewables target, companies like Ikea look for green power opportunities today
Swedish megabrand Ikea's affordable self-assembly furniture has made Scandi style the go-to look for homes, hotels and Airbnbs all over Europe. More than 30 million of its ubiquitous Poang armchairs, for example—curious-but-memorable names also being an Ikea speciality)—have been sold since launch in 1977, making it one of the most popular furniture products ever. But the company has another, less well-known claim to fame. Since 2009 it has invested over €4.2 billion ($4.9 billion) in renewable energy, which now provides 75% of the electricity used by the business to make, transport and retail all that furniture. 'Today, it turns out that we are also a mid-sized utility company, although to be honest that was not part of the strategy,' deadpans Jesper Brodin, CEO of Ingka (the largest Ikea franchisee, responsible for 90% of group sales). It's only half a joke: if their output was sold on the power market, the 49 wind farms and 26 solar parks owned by Ingka do produce enough low carbon electricity to meet the needs of 1.47 million EU households. The investment has certainly paid off in carbon terms. The firm's CO2 emissions—scope 1,2 and 3—are down 30% since the Paris Agreement of 2015, while sales have grown by 24% over the same period. Yet what started out as a desire to do the right thing for the planet and the brand (68% of Ikea customers think that climate change is the most serious global challenge, says Brodin) has morphed into an unexpected source of competitive advantage. $4.9 billion 'When we set out to invest, we were not sure that it would be smart from an economic point of view. But our energy bills are down 27% [from 2015] so we have saved a lot of money. Over a three-to-five-year period, renewables come out at about half the price [of fossil fuel generated power]. People think that renewable energy will come at a financial premium, but actually it's the opposite.' After the Russian invasion of Ukraine caused a two-year spike in wholesale gas prices, a similar change of emphasis has occurred in Brussels. The EU Commission's latest plan for its carbon economy—the Clean Industrial Deal, announced in February—has dropped previous appeals to the collective consciences of business leaders to help save the planet, in favor of focusing on the competitiveness advantages of further adopting renewable power across the continent. Commission president Ursula von der Leyen has said that the deal will 'cut the ties that still hold our companies back, and make a clear business case for Europe'. Alongside reforms to electricity and gas markets designed to cut energy costs, the Clean Industrial Deal aims to mobilize €100 billion of EU funding to support low-carbon manufacturing, particularly in hard-to-abate industries like metals, chemicals and cement that rely on hydrocarbons for their highly energy-intensive processes. The Commission predicts the policy program will create over 500,000 new jobs, and ample opportunities for European businesses looking to carve a competitive, low-carbon niche. Green steel start-up Stegra is one such company. It has raised a total of €6.5 billion (including a €250 million grant from the EU innovation fund) to build a plant at Boden in the north of Sweden which will use 100% renewable energy to produce 5 million tonnes of homegrown 'green' steel per annum by 2030, with a carbon footprint 95% smaller than a traditional 'brown' steel plant. Stegra's process uses renewable power to generate hydrogen, which is then used not as a fuel but as a chemical reagent. Production will begin at a lower level in 2026, and despite a 25%-30% price premium over brown steel, it is already proving popular: the firm has forward-sold around 1.25 million tonnes—half of its initial production target—to customers eager to get in on the green steel ground floor. 'Our customers are planning ahead, they see that brown steel will eventually be more expensive than green steel once the full cost of carbon is included. They are not buying it for branding or marketing purposes, it's pure economics,' says Henrik Henriksson, Stegra's CEO. High costs, big barriers If von der Leyen's vision of secure, green growth is to be realized at scale for more companies, Europe needs to ramp up the transition to renewables significantly, at the same time as bringing down costs. By the end of 2023, Europe (excluding Russia) had 786 gigawatts of installed renewable generation capacity, according to the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA). That's an increase of 79% since 2014, and the pace has continued since, with a record increase of 65.6 gigawatts in the EU alone last year and another record predicted this year. However, it still leaves a long way to go to reach the EU's ambitious targets of 69% of electricity consumption and 42.5% of total energy coming from renewables by 2030. According to the European Commission's 2022 REPowerEU plan to end reliance on Russian fossil fuels, the EU would need to nearly double its capacity to 1,236 gigawatts to achieve this goal. Some estimates suggest this will cost around €1.5 trillion. Then there's the need to update Europe's grids, not just to handle the greater peak loads from these investments, but also to cover the distance between the best sites for renewable generation (solar in southern Europe, wind in coastal western Europe) and distant urban centers. So far, network investment has considerably lagged investments in renewables themselves. 'Because of the variability of wind [and solar], there is an urgent need for more interconnectors, and more investment in grids,' says Christophe Zipf, spokesperson for WindEurope, the trade body for the EU wind energy industry. One such mooted project is the North Sea Renewables Grid, a £20bn project to link 400 wind turbines in the North Sea, to facilitate the exchange of wind power between countries on both sides of the water. 'Where there are such clusters it makes sense to link them to more than one country—the U.K., Denmark and Belgium for example,' Zipf says. But where will the money come from? Given the right regulatory environment, there is capital ready to move, says Francecso Starace, partner at EQT, the world's third largest private equity investor, which has invested €17 billion in renewables in Europe over the past 15 years. There is already quite an appetite for investment in the grid and distribution networks. The networks need to be restructured for the modern world, not for the world of 50 years ago when they were built. 'Regulators have a major role to play, but they need to understand that more money needs to be invested into the networks. Network operators need regulation that incentivizes investment rather than discouraging them from doing that, which has been the case for many years,' says Starace, a former CEO of Enel. In practice, pro-investment regulation can mean several things: improvements in investor returns, relaxation of planning restrictions and greater central coordination of national transmission upgrade schemes. Even if all that happens, what of the days when the sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing? Renewables may be homegrown, but their output is inherently unpredictable. 'Network operators need regulation that incentivizes investment rather than discouraging them from doing that, which has been the case for many years' As a result, Starace believes the next big thing will be grid-scale battery storage. 'We believe batteries will be the next source of explosive growth. Battery storage can deal with fluctuations, and batteries are becoming pervasively competitive and a compelling investment.' Battery infrastructure on this scale would also require substantial capital, of course, altogether making the idea of cheaper power by 2030 seem rather less likely: whether through bills or taxes, someone's got to pay. But relying on fickle global gas markets no longer seems an option once your main supplier turns into an adversary, and in the long term the economic logic is there: once the infrastructure is built, the marginal unit cost of renewable power is far lower. In the meantime, as companies like Ikea and Stegra are showing, European businesses are increasingly looking for opportunities from the transition itself, rather than just waiting for the light at the end of the tunnel. This story was originally featured on 登入存取你的投資組合
