Latest news with #Vail
Globe and Mail
6 days ago
- Business
- Globe and Mail
Why Vail Resorts Stock Soared on Wednesday
The return of a leader was the news driving Vail Resorts (NYSE: MTN) stock up toward a peak on Wednesday. The company's share price popped by almost 9% on the day after this development hit the headlines, comparing most favorably to the S&P 500 's (SNPINDEX: ^GSPC) 0.6% decline. The former and current leader Just after market close on Tuesday, Vail announced that its onetime CEO Rob Katz is stepping back into that leadership role. In doing so, Katz replaces Kirsten Lynch, who vacated the position but will serve as an advisor to the company for an unspecified transitional period. Katz was Vail's executive chairperson at the time of his reappointment, and will continue to fill that role. In his first tenure as the company's CEO, he served for 16 years. In its press release officially announcing the transition, the company quoted the lead independent member of its board of directors Bruce Sewell as saying that Katz "has a strong track record of driving innovation and executing consistent performance at Vail Resorts, and has played a critical role in the development of Vail Resorts' operations and long-term strategy for over the past three decades." Guidance mostly unchanged In the release, Vail felt compelled to update its guidance for the entirety of its current fiscal year. It now expects earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) to land at the lower end of its previously stated range of $841 million and $877 million. It did not address its net income forecast, which had been set at $257 million to $309 million for the year. Although it's always comforting when a familiar executive returns to the CEO chair, naturally his real impact will be reflected in the company's future performance; we'll have to wait and see how Vail performs in the coming quarters to better judge his work. Should you invest $1,000 in Vail Resorts right now? Before you buy stock in Vail Resorts, consider this: The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and Vail Resorts 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 $653,389!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $830,492!* Now, it's worth noting Stock Advisor 's total average return is982% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to171%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 May 19, 2025
Yahoo
7 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Why Vail Resorts (MTN) Stock Is Up Today
Shares of luxury ski resort company Vail Resorts (NYSE:MTN) jumped 13.2% in the morning session after the company announced the return of Rob Katz as CEO, replacing Kirsten Lynch. Katz, who previously held the chief executive role from 2006 to 2021 and currently serves as executive chair. For investors, Katz's leadership is likely to inspire confidence, given his history of driving growth and expanding Vail's resort portfolio. Is now the time to buy Vail Resorts? Access our full analysis report here, it's free. Vail Resorts's shares are not very volatile and have only had 9 moves greater than 5% over the last year. Moves this big are rare for Vail Resorts and indicate this news significantly impacted the market's perception of the business. The biggest move we wrote about over the last year was 12 months ago when the stock dropped 14.3% on the news that the company reported weak first quarter 2024 results. Its EPS missed and its revenue fell short of Wall Street's estimates. Management attributed the weakness to "a combination of unfavorable conditions and broader industry normalization post-COVID following record visitation in the U.S. during the 2022-2023 ski season." These challenges drove the 3.2% decline in Skier visits during the quarter. Overall, the results could have been better. Vail Resorts is down 3% since the beginning of the year, and at $169.91 per share, it is trading 13.1% below its 52-week high of $195.44 from December 2024. Investors who bought $1,000 worth of Vail Resorts's shares 5 years ago would now be looking at an investment worth $851.25. Today's young investors likely haven't read the timeless lessons in Gorilla Game: Picking Winners In High Technology because it was written more than 20 years ago when Microsoft and Apple were first establishing their supremacy. But if we apply the same principles, then enterprise software stocks leveraging their own generative AI capabilities may well be the Gorillas of the future. So, in that spirit, we are excited to present our Special Free Report on a profitable, fast-growing enterprise software stock that is already riding the automation wave and looking to catch the generative AI next. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
CTV News
16-05-2025
- Politics
- CTV News
Federal judge strikes down workplace protections for transgender workers
The emblem of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is shown on a podium in Vail, Colorado, Feb. 16, 2016, in Denver. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski, File) A federal judge in Texas struck down guidance from a government agency establishing protections against workplace harassment based on gender identity and sexual orientation. Judge Matthew J. Kacsmaryk of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas on Thursday determined that the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission exceeded its statutory authority when the agency issued guidance to employers against deliberately using the wrong pronouns for an employee, refusing them access to bathrooms corresponding with their gender identity, and barring employees from wearing dress code-compliant clothing according to their gender identity because they may constitute forms of workplace harassment. Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act protects employees and job applicants from employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex and national origin. The EEOC, which enforces workplace anti-discrimination laws, had updated its guidance on workplace harassment in April of last year under President Joe Biden for the first time in 25 years. It followed a 2020 Supreme Court ruling that gay, lesbian and transgender people are protected from employment discrimination. Texas and the Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank behind Project 2025, in August challenged the guidance, which the agency says serves as a tool for employers to assess compliance with anti-discrimination laws and is not legally binding. Kacsmaryk disagreed, writing that the guidance creates 'mandatory standards ... from which legal consequences will necessarily flow if an employer fails to comply.' The decision marks the latest blow to workplace protections for transgender workers following President Donald Trump's Jan. 20 executive order declaring that the government would recognize only two 'immutable' sexes — male and female. Kacsmaryk, a 2017 Trump nominee, invalidated all portions of the EEOC guidance that defines 'sex' to include 'sexual orientation' and 'gender identity,' along with an entire section addressing the subject. 'Title VII does not require employers or courts to blind themselves to the biological differences between men and women,' he wrote in the opinion. Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts commended the decision in an emailed statement: 'The Biden EEOC tried to compel businesses — and the American people — to deny basic biological truth. Today, thanks to the great state of Texas and the work of my Heritage colleagues, a federal judge said: not so fast.' He added: 'This ruling is more than a legal victory. It's a cultural one. It says no — you don't have to surrender common sense at the altar of leftist ideology. You don't have to pretend men are women." Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton also touted the victory against 'Biden's 'Pronoun Police' Rule" in a Friday press release, saying: 'The federal government has no right to force Texans to play along with delusions or ignore biological reality in our workplaces.' The National Women's Law Center, which filed an amicus brief in November in support of the harassment guidance, blasted the decision in an emailed statement. 'The district court's decision is an outrage and blatantly at odds with Supreme Court precedent,' said Liz Theran, senior director of litigation for education and workplace justice at NWLC. 'The EEOC's Harassment Guidance reminds employers and workers alike to do one simple thing that should cost no one anything: refrain from degrading others on the job based on their identity and who they love. This decision does not change the law, but it will make it harder for LGBTQIA+ workers to enforce their rights and experience a workplace free from harassment.' Kacsmaryk offered a more narrow interpretation of Bostock v. Clayton County, the landmark Supreme Court case that established discrimination protections for LGBTQ+ workers, saying in his decision that the Supreme Court 'firmly refused to expand the definition of 'sex' beyond the biological binary,' and found only that employers could not fire workers for being gay or transgender. Employment attorney Jonathan Segal, a partner at Duane Morris who advises companies on how best to comply with anti-discrimination laws, emphasized that legal minds may disagree on the scope of Bostock, and Kacsmaryk's decision is just one interpretation. 'If you assume that a transgender employee has no rights beyond not being fired for transgender status, you are likely construing their rights too narrowly under both federal and state law,' which would put employers in a risky position, Segal said. And regardless of whether explicit guidance is in place, employers still need to address gender identity conflicts in the workplace, according to Tiffany Stacy, an Ogletree Deakins attorney in San Antonio who defends employers against claims of workplace discrimination. 'From a management perspective, employers should be prepared to diffuse those situations,' Stacy said. The EEOC in fiscal year 2024 received more than 3,000 charges alleging discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity, and 3,000-plus in 2023, according to the agency's website. The U.S. Department of Justice and the EEOC declined to comment on the outcome of the Texas case. EEOC Acting Chair Andrea Lucas, a Trump appointee, voted against the harassment guidelines last year but has been unable to rescind or revise them after Trump fired two of the three Democratic commissioners, leaving the federal agency without the quorum needed to make major policy changes. But earlier this month, Trump tapped an assistant U.S. attorney in Florida, Brittany Panuccio, to fill one of the vacancies. If Panuccio is confirmed by the Senate, the EEOC would regain a quorum and establish a Republican majority 2-1, clearing the path to fully pivot the agency toward focusing on Trump's priorities. 'It is neither harassment nor discrimination for a business to draw distinctions between the sexes in providing single-sex bathrooms,' Lucas wrote in a statement expressing her dissent to that aspect of the guidelines. In her four-month tenure as Acting Chair, Lucas has overhauled the agency's interpretation of civil rights law, including abandoning seven of its own cases representing transgender workers alleging they have experienced discrimination, and instructing employees to sideline all new gender identity discrimination cases received by the agency. The Associated Press' women in the workforce and state government coverage receives financial support from Pivotal Ventures. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP's standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at Claire Savage, The Associated Press
Business Mayor
15-05-2025
- Business
- Business Mayor
Datavant CTO: ‘In health-tech, security is paramount'
Datavant's Matt Vail discusses digital transformation and sustainability in the health-tech sector following the company's Irish expansion. Matt Vail is the chief technology officer (CTO) at Datavant, a US company that develops and maintains a digital ecosystem for the exchange of healthcare data. Recently, Datavant expanded into Ireland with the opening of a global R&D centre in Galway, with initial plans to create 125 jobs in engineering and technology. 'It was great to help introduce Datavant to the Ireland tech community at our launch event in Galway at the end of March,' said Vail, who was present at the launch. With more than 20 years of experience in designing and building software products, Vail first joined Datavant in 2020 as head of engineering in product development. In November 2023, he began his current role as CTO. 'My role is to ensure the integrity of the data we exchange and the optimal functionality of our technology infrastructure as we innovate to help our customers solve some of the most complex problems in healthcare,' he says. 'I am guided by the view that transforming human health starts by unlocking actionable insights from the world's vast clinical data.' What are some of the biggest challenges you're facing in the current IT landscape and how are you addressing them? The healthcare IT landscape is continuously evolving as the volume of data proliferates exponentially. Our team is focused on several areas that are core to our ability to do business. Security: This is a continually evolving landscape with cybercriminals constantly becoming more sophisticated and brazen. We continuously evaluate our security posture and invest heavily in our internal teams as well as the technologies we leverage to ensure we stay ahead of emerging risks. Talent acquisition: We are constantly striving to hire the brightest talent we can find across all sectors of technology: infrastructure, security, software development, data engineering, data science etc. Expanding into Ireland allows us to greatly broaden the talent pool from which we are hiring while also strengthening our global engineering presence. Regulatory and compliance complexity: Healthcare is a highly regulated space with varying regulations from customer to customer, state to state and country to country. Navigating this complexity, while ensuring compliance, poses additional challenges, especially as regulations continually evolve around data protection, interoperability standards and AI. We incorporate compliance considerations very early on in the software development life cycle and partner very closely with legal, data protection and security teams to ensure what we are delivering is both compliant today as well as flexible enough to adapt to potential changes in the future. What are your thoughts on digital transformation in a broad sense within your industry? How are you addressing it in your company? We have seen a seismic shift in healthcare over the last 10 years across care delivery, clinical research, payment operations, health system administration and patient experience, primarily driven through advances in technology, policy and cultural shifts. Healthcare organisations are investing in improving operational efficiencies through digitising their workflows involved in clinical care, revenue cycle management, health information management and overall administration. Datavant's digital connectivity solutions help manage and streamline data exchange between patients, providers, payers, attorneys, government organisations and many other entities safely and compliantly. With these secure digital connections, we are able to enhance and enable patient experiences and other products that help improve operations across the healthcare ecosystem. We also are leveraging advanced AI capabilities to solve defined problems with the goal of enhancing healthcare data interoperability and usability while maintaining high standards of data protection. Sustainability has become a key objective for businesses in recent years. What are your thoughts on how this can be addressed from an IT perspective? We take seriously our responsibility to minimise the environmental impact of IT operations while supporting Datavant's business objectives and promoting environmental, social and governance commitments. We are focusing our efforts across several priority areas: Cloud optimisations: We regularly monitor and optimise our cloud compute usage to reduce waste and improve efficiency. This effort requires continued investment in observability to track and attribute resource consumption at the service and product level. Recently, we hosted a cloud optimisation hackathon, completing 29 initiatives that collectively reduced our cloud footprint by approximately 6pc. Cloud migrations: We are in the process of migrating any remaining on-premises systems to our cloud hyperscaler providers. This transition is driven by both cost and energy efficiency benefits, as cloud providers typically offer more sustainable infrastructure through better server utilisation and access to renewable energy sources. AI solutions: We carefully monitor the compute and energy costs of our AI workloads. To minimise unnecessary usage, we tier models based on complexity and cost, using lighter-weight models to filter out low-value volume before engaging more resource-intensive models. This approach helps reduce both spend and energy consumption. Hybrid-remote workforce: Fewer emissions is a benefit of not requiring colleagues to commute to the office every day. In Galway, our employees will be asked to be in the office two to three days per week. What are your thoughts on how we can address the security challenges currently facing your industry? Security is not merely a technical challenge but a strategic imperative that underpins Datavant's mission in the health-tech sector. By adopting a holistic and proactive approach, we are confident in our ability to protect sensitive data, maintain the trust of our patients and partners, and ensure that security remains a strategic enabler as we scale. In health-tech, security is paramount. Datavant embraces a zero-trust model, emphasising verification at every access point. Identity and access management, third-party risk management and security awareness training are key components of our strategy. We exceed compliance standards and leverage automation to enhance threat detection and response. Our incident response program minimises breach impact and our security approach is tailored to our global footprint.
NBC News
14-05-2025
- Business
- NBC News
Funds from migrants sent back home help fuel some towns' economies. A GOP plan targets that
WASHINGTON — Israel Vail's entire life in the small western Guatemalan town of Cajolá is built off the money that his three children send home from the United States. The money from their construction jobs paid for the two-story white home where Vail now lives — and where his children, who are in the U.S. illegally, would also reside if they ever get deported. Vail, 53, invested some of the money in opening a local food shop, which he uses to keep his family afloat. In small migratory towns like Cajolá, it is not unusual for the entire economy to be built off remittances, the funds sent by migrant workers back to their home countries. 'People here, they don't live luxuriously, but they live off remittances,' Vail said. House Republicans have included in President Donald Trump's big priority bill a 5% excise tax on remittance transfers that would cover more than 40 million people, including green card holders and nonimmigrant visa holders, such as people on H-1B, H-2A and H-2B visas. U.S. citizens would be exempt. Trump also recently announced that he is finalizing a presidential memorandum to 'shut down remittances' sent by people in the U.S. illegally. White House and Treasury officials have not responded to requests for comment from The Associated Press on specifics of the presidential memorandum that Trump previewed in an April 25 Truth Social post and how it would work. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum shot back on the measure and called on Republican lawmakers to reconsider it, saying it 'would damage the economy of both nations and is also contrary to the spirit of economic freedom that the U.S. government claims to defend.' 'Remittances are the fruit of the efforts of those who, through their honest work, strengthen not only the Mexican economy but also the United States', which is why we consider this measure to be arbitrary and unjust,' she said in a morning press briefing. Remittance experts, local leaders and former migrants say that banning, limiting or adding a tax on certain remittances could damage communities that rely on them, prove burdensome to American citizens and firms and, paradoxically, end up causing even more illegal migration to the U.S. The influx of money provides an important economic lifeline to residents of poorer towns that often have little access to jobs or income. Remittances provide opportunities for people in their home country, making it less likely they would take the risk of migrating to the United States, the experts say. 'Any measure to reduce remittances will have a negative impact on the U.S. national interest,' said Manuel Orozco, director of the Migration, Remittances, and Development Program at the Inter-American Dialogue. 'It will have an effect on the homeland.' Proponents of efforts to target remittances say they are an effective tax on people in the U.S. illegally and could be a revenue generator for the U.S. government. Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates for less immigration, acknowledges that limiting, banning or taxing remittances would make it more difficult for immigrants in the U.S. illegally. 'One of the main reasons people come here is to work and send money home,' Krikorian said. 'If that's much more difficult to do, it becomes less appealing to come here.' Legislation to control remittances — through taxes on money transfers, both internationally and domestically — has been proposed in 18 states in the past few years. Almost all of those efforts have been voted down. The exception is Oklahoma, which in 2009 passed a tax on remittances: a $5 fee on any wire transfer under $500 and 1% on any amount in excess of $500. Steven Yates, who is now a senior research fellow at the Heritage Institute, wrote for the America First Policy Institute that every state should adopt this policy as a way to combat the impact of illegal immigration. Other high-ranking Trump administration officials have also supported efforts to tighten controls on remittances. Vice President JD Vance, as an Ohio senator in 2023, co-sponsored the WIRED Act, which would have imposed a 10% fee on remittances out of the U.S. The intention of the bill — which would allow people who could prove their citizenship to get the fee back as a refundable tax credit — was 'penalizing illicit activity, such as drug and human smuggling.' The bill did not make it out of committee. 'This legislation is a common sense solution to disincentivize illegal immigration and reduce the cartels' financial power,' Vance said at the time of the bill's introduction. According to the World Bank, remittances sent to home countries in 2023 totaled about $656 billion — equivalent to the gross domestic product of Belgium. The money that Mexican migrants send home to their relatives grew by 7.6% in 2023 to reach a record $63.3 billion for the year. Remittances are also a major factor in the global economy, often sent from American wire services rather than banks and credit unions. India, Mexico and China are the biggest recipients of those funds, according to the World Bank. In response to the proposal to tax remittances in the new Republican House bill, Orozco said, 'Some senders would find ways to send money differently, through unauthorized channels. Others would send less.' 'Sending less would have an impact on the receiving households, limiting the capacity to save, and in turn may increase the intention to migrate,' said Orozco, who also serves as a senior fellow at Harvard University's Center for International Development. In Cajolá, local leaders say the remittance flow has stopped young people from migrating because they see economic opportunities they otherwise wouldn't have. Vail said losing that lifeline would deal a devastating blow to families like his and even cause his small business to fold. 'There's a lot of fear,' Vail said. 'Fear that for the people that live here in Guatemala, there won't be work because the businesses will be all gone.' He said his business has already been struggling since Trump took office and his sales of things like eggs, beans, sugar and more have dipped. 'When Donald Trump won, many people stopped sending remittances or they began to save money,' he said. 'Business dropped off a lot.'
