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(Bloomberg) — Ford Motor Co. raised the starting price of its hot-selling electric F-150 Lightning pickup truck for the second time in about two months, again blaming rising material costs and supply shortages.

The F-150 Lightning Pro, the cheapest version of the battery-powered truck, now starts at $51,974, up 30% from the original starting price of $39,974 when the truck went on sale in May. Ford boosted the Pro’s price in August to $46,974, citing rising component costs.

See also: Ford Plunges After Warning on Inflation-Related Costs

“Ford is adjusting the MSRP on the 2023 F-150 Lightning Pro due to ongoing supply chain constraints, rising material costs and other market factors,” the company said Wednesday in a statement. “We will continue to monitor pricing across the model year.”

Only the Lightning Pro model, which is aimed at commercial customers, is getting a price increase in this round, Ford said. The Lightning XLT, which targets individual retail customers, continues to start at $59,474.

Customers who already have orders in for the truck will not be affected by the price hike, Ford said. Automotive News reported earlier on the increase.

The Lightning’s original sub-$40,000 starting price was a major brag point when Chief Executive Officer Jim Farley first unveiled the truck in 2021. Ford saved money developing the Lightning by repurposing much of the gasoline-fueled version the F-150 while stuffing a big battery underneath.

But Ford executives have said profits have evaporated on EVs as battery and other material costs have risen. And Farley is driving to boost profits throughout Ford’s lineup, which he has said is “under-earning.”

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(Bloomberg) — Zhejiang Leapmotor Technologies Ltd. has more than last week’s disastrous trading debut in Hong Kong to worry about. While the electric-vehicle maker’s T03 mini car is outselling the likes of Nio Inc. and Xpeng Inc. in China, it isn’t making a profit.

Sales of the compact four-seater EV are central to Leapmotor’s success, accounting for almost three-quarters of the startup’s total deliveries since inception.

In September, Hangzhou-based Leapmotor delivered 11,039 vehicles, a 200% jump from a year earlier, to rank third among China’s homegrown EV startups, behind Hozon New Energy Automobile Co. and Li Auto Inc.  

But despite its popularity, the affordable T03, which starts from 79,500 yuan ($11,200), is a loss leader, with Leapmotor’s gross margin for the second quarter coming in at negative 25.6%, versus around 11% to 21.5% for peers.

Leapmotor is trying to move up the value chain. Its C11 SUV and new C01 sedan have prices ranging from 180,000 yuan to 290,000 yuan and that larger, high-end EV market is the segment forecast to show the fastest growth in 2023, according to Frost & Sullivan. 

“Starting from so low a market position, I doubt it’s sustainable for Leapmotor,” said Jochen Siebert, managing director at JSC Automotive. “They have to go higher. That’s the only way they can survive.”

Boosting production won’t be easy. Leapmotor has just one 200,000-unit plant in Jinhua, while a second factory in Hangzhou won’t start production until late 2023. 

The company’s path to scale hinges on near-flawless coordination between product design, supply chain and production, with little wiggle room for unforeseen delays, according to Bloomberg Intelligence analysts Steve Man and Joanna Chen, who also see direct competition from a phalanx of other mass-market EVs from BYD Co., Volkswagen AG and other established automakers with stronger branding, wider sales networks and greater R&D and production capabilities.

A Leapmotor representative said via email that the company plans to “gradually ramp up our production capacity, alongside the growth of our sales volume.” About one-quarter of the around $800 million raised in Leapmotor’s Hong Kong stock listing will go toward “enhancing our production capacity and capabilities as we continue to scale up.”

Read more: Chinese EV Maker Leapmotor Tumbles in Hong Kong Trading Debut

Branching out beyond China may be another avenue of growth.

In September, Leapmotor made its first step overseas, exporting 60 T03 cars to Israel, and it’s also set its sights on Europe. Whether international consumers may be wary of the T03’s interactive digital assistant, which uses the 3.0 intelligent voice recognition system of Iflytek Co. — a tech firm blacklisted by the US — remains to be seen.

“That will not be a selling point,” said Siebert, adding that first, it was more important for Leapmotor to “get into the profit zone.”

Until then, however, Leapmotor looks like it will at least enjoy strong support from consumers in China.

The hatchback, which comes in a range of colors including pastel pink and pistachio green, targets customers at the lower-end mass market and those in smaller cities who desire a wallet-friendly EV that also comes with sophisticated in-car digital offerings. 

Despite its compact design, the T03 — a step up from SAIC-GM-Wuling Automobile Co.’s pint-size Hongguang Mini, which retails for about 32,800 yuan — is equipped with two dashboard screens with touch control, an AI voice assistant, preliminary autonomous driving technologies and phone-based connectivity features. 

The T03’s battery also gets about 250 miles (402 kilometers) per charge — comparable to much larger EVs.

Many buyers who have snapped up the car have posted about its cute features, battery performance and slate of digital amenities like unlocking the vehicle using facial recognition. “It’s the best for its buck within my budget,” Youthful Peach wrote to her 14,000 followers on Chinese lifestyle app Xiaohongshu.  

“The T03 is the best model you can get in the under 100,000 yuan price range,” said Zhang Xiang, an automotive analyst who’s also a visiting professor at Henan’s Huanghe Science and Technology College. “Its features are better than every other model in the low-end market. It just really stands out.”

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(Bloomberg) — Apple Inc. has been illegally threatening Oklahoma City retail workers in the lead-up to a unionization election next week, the Communications Workers of America alleged in a US labor board filing.

The company is violating federal labor law by engaging in surveillance and interrogation of employees, according to the CWA’s claim, which was filed with the National Labor Relations Board on Wednesday. Apple held mandatory “captive audience” anti-union meetings, threatened to withhold new perks from stores that unionized and told staff that supporting a union would be futile, the labor group said.

Apple, based in Cupertino, California, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The tech giant’s retail chain, which has about 270 stores in the US, has become a key target for union activists after years of evading organized labor. The Oklahoma City employees are slated to vote Oct. 13 and Oct. 14 on whether to join the CWA, making their store the company’s second unionized US location.

Retail staff at an Apple location in Towson, Maryland, voted in June to unionize with the International Association of Machinists, marking one of several recent labor wins at prominent US companies. Union drives have also made inroads at Amazon.com Inc., Starbucks Corp., Trader Joe’s and Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc.

On Friday, the NLRB’s general counsel issued a complaint against Apple in New York City, finding merit in allegations from the CWA that the company interrogated employees at a World Trade Center store about their workplace activism and discriminated against union supporters in enforcing a no-soliciting policy.

The agency’s complaint accused Apple of “interfering with, restraining and coercing” staff in their exercise of legally protected rights. The CWA has also filed a still-pending complaint with the NLRB in Atlanta. The labor group had petitioned in April for an election at a store in that city, but then withdrew the request a week before the scheduled vote, citing the company’s conduct.

Apple said following the New York City complaint that it disagreed with the allegations. “We are fortunate to have incredible retail team members and we deeply value everything they bring to Apple,” the company said in a statement Tuesday. “We regularly communicate with our teams and always want to ensure everyone’s experience at Apple is the best it can be.”

Claims unions file with the labor board are investigated by regional offices and — if found to have merit and not settled — can be prosecuted by the agency’s general counsel and heard by administrative law judges. The rulings can be appealed to NLRB members in Washington and from there can go to federal court. The agency can require remedies such as posting of notices and reversals of policies or punishments, but it has no authority to impose punitive damages.

While the NLRB has previously held that companies can require employees to attend anti-union meetings, the agency’s current general counsel, Jennifer Abruzzo, views such “captive audience” sessions as inherently coercive and illegal. Her office is pursuing cases that could change the precedent.

Apple employee Michael Forsythe, a leader in the Oklahoma campaign, said that the company has recently brought in several out-of-town managers so that his store’s usual bosses can spend their time holding group and one-on-one anti-union conversations.

In one meeting he attended, the store’s manager told employees that even if they unionized, their representatives would have no power to make Apple spend more money on their store. “The budget is the budget, and the only thing you can do is reallocate pieces of the pie,” the manager said, according to Forsythe.

Forsythe said he’s hopeful that the company will change its approach if the union prevails in next week’s vote.

“Regardless of what happens, we all still have to work together,” he said. “I hope it’ll be a much more cooperative path forward to a contract.”

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(Bloomberg) — SoftBank Group Corp. is considering a sale of its stake in Spanish-language TV broadcaster TelevisaUnivision, according to people familiar with the matter, as the Japanese conglomerate unloads assets amid a prolonged tech slump. 

No final decision has been made and the Tokyo-based company could opt to hold onto the stake, said the people, who asked to not be identified because the matter isn’t public. It’s not clear how much the stake is worth. 

A representative for SoftBank declined to comment. Representatives for TelevisaUnivision didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment. 

SoftBank took an in interest in TelevisaUnivision last year when it helped finance Univision’s purchase of rival Grupo Televisa SAB’s content and media assets, creating the new entity. The SoftBank Latin American Fund led a $1 billion preferred equity investment to support the deal, Bloomberg News reported at the time. 

The potential sale comes as SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son — grappling with the downturn in the technology market — cuts staff and sells assets including some of its stake in Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. to raise cash and bolster his balance sheet. 

Son has repeatedly said his primary focus is to take chipmaker Arm Ltd. public in the US, following the collapse of its sale this year to Nvidia Corp. 

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(Bloomberg) — The fake German heiress who talked her way into elite New York circles won her release from jail but at the cost of a total ban from all social media.

Anna Sorokin, who pretended to be an heiress named Anna Delvey, has been in US Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody for 17 months for overstaying her visa. An immigration judge ruled on Wednesday that she could be released from an Orange County, New York, facility while she fights deportation.

But the order required her to post $10,000 bail and remain in 24-hour home confinement with electronic monitoring,. She was also barred from accessing any social-media platform, including Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and TikTok.

Read More: Anna Sorokin Wants to Change ‘Scammer Persona’ by Selling NFTs

Sorokin, whose exploits were depicted in the Netflix series “Inventing Anna,” posted frequently on Instagram about her glamorous “VIP” lifestyle while stiffing banks, hotels and friends out of tens of thousands of dollars. She also tried to convince investors including Fortress Investment Group to give her millions of dollars to launch the Anna Delvey Foundation, a Soho House-like social club.

Convicted of fraud in New York state court and sentenced to 4-to-12 years in prison in 2019, Sorokin was released early for good behavior last year. But she was arrested six weeks later by ICE agents.

The government had argued Sorokin continued to pose a danger to the community. But her lawyer, John Sandweg, a former acting ICE director, said Wednesday the judge made the right decision.

“She hasn’t been accused of committing a crime since 2017,” Sandweg said. “And the evidence clearly demonstrated that any risk she does pose can be adequately managed through supervision, electronic monitoring, parole, and the supervision of ICE.”

The Russian-born Sorokin, who holds German citizenship, has been active on Instagram in recent weeks, posting on Sept. 12 that she stood with Ukraine against the Russian invasion. The next day she celebrated her return to Twitter after a yearlong absence while she was in ICE custody.

(Updates with order barring her from social media.)

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(Bloomberg) — The trial in Twitter Inc.’s lawsuit against Elon Musk remains on track to begin on Oct. 17 because the court has not yet received an agreement from the parties to put the case on hold, the Delaware judge overseeing the matter said in a letter Wednesday.

Musk on Monday revived his bid to buy Twitter at his original offer price of $54.20 a share. The billionaire had quit the accord in July and Twitter sued in Delaware Chancery Court to force him to go forward with the purchase. 

Twitter said Tuesday that it received Musk’s revived offer and intends to close the deal at the agreed-upon price, without commenting specifically on how it will respond to Musk. That same day, the judge asked both sides to come back to her with a proposal on how the case can now proceed.

“The parties have not filed a stipulation to stay this action, nor has any party moved for a stay,” Judge Kathaleen St. J. McCormick said in the Wednesday letter. “I, therefore, continue to press on toward our trial set to begin on October 17, 2022.”

She went on to order Musk and his legal team to produce additional discovery in the case and criticized them for not properly turning over communications that could be evidence in Twitter’s lawsuit, although she declined to impose any penalty at this time. She said that that the absence of text messages from two periods in May and June suggests that Musk used “other information channels not captured by text records” such as iMessage or Signal. 

While Musk said he never used Signal to communicate about the transaction after an exchange with venture capitalist Marc Andreessen in April, Signal messages with top aide Jared Birchall seem to suggest that Musk continued to use the service after that and used its auto-delete function, the judge said in the letter.

“I am forced to conclude that it is likely that Defendants’ custodians permitted the automatic deletion of responsive Signal communications between them and possibly others, and that those communications are irretrievably lost,” the judge said. “At this stage, it is unclear to me whether deletions occurred when defendants were under a duty to preserve documents. If defendants deleted documents after they were under a duty to preserve, some remedy is appropriate, but the appropriate remedy is unclear to me at this stage.”

(Updates with judge’s orders in fifth paragraph.)

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(Bloomberg) — Nexo Inc. officials rebuffed speculation that the crypto lender is headed for bankruptcy on the heels of other high-profile insolvencies in the digital-asset industry. 

The co-founders of Nexo addressed a series of inquiries during an ‘Ask-Me-Anything’ YouTube video on Tuesday. An anonymous user asked Antoni Trenchev and Kalin Metodiev whether their lending platform could be the next Celsius Network Ltd. or Voyager Digital Ltd., both of which filed for bankruptcy earlier this year.

“Insolvency, bankruptcy are nowhere in Nexo’s reality,” Metodiev said. “We work very hard that we deliver a very strong and sustainable future for our users for many years to come, enriched with a number of additional services and products through integration of technology and disruption of existing services.”

Trenchev reiterated that the company had “no exposure to the Terra and Luna debacle” and did not lend to the bankrupt crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital. The founders added that they are eyeing expansions into industries like trading as well as development of wealth and asset management solutions in traditional capital markets.

Last month, regulators from eight US states — California, Kentucky, Maryland, New York, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Vermont, and Washington — said Nexo was offering interest-earning accounts without registering the investment products as securities. The states filed cease and desist orders against Nexo, whose yield accounts were marketed and used by retail investors.

Asked about the cease-and-desist orders, Trenchev said they have been interacting with regulators to provide information in a timely fashion.

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(Bloomberg) — Investment manager Hamilton Lane Inc. is planning to deploy blockchain technology to make its private markets offerings more accessible to individual investors. 

The firm will be among the first in the $1.2 trillion private-credit market to make its funds available through tokenization — a method of purchasing securities in the form of digital tokens using blockchain, that operates similarly to shares. 

Hamilton is partnering with Securitize, a digital assets securities firm, which will oversee the process, according to a Wednesday statement. The idea behind tokenization is to help make the private markets — traditionally dominated by institutional and high-net worth investors — more accessible to individuals, too.

“We are at the beginning of a process through which individual investors can access the same kinds of opportunities as university endowments or sovereign wealth funds, and that is very exciting,” said Carlos Domingo, chief executive officer of Securitize.

Through the arrangement, investors will be able to access a trio of Hamilton Lane funds with exposure to equities, private-credit and secondary investments, via new tokenized feeder funds. 

The tokenized funds will be available for investment later in the fourth quarter. Early investors will be restricted for one year from selling the tokens. 

Private-credit has boomed over the last five years, doubling in size, as institutional investors such as pension funds, insurance companies, sovereign wealth funds and family offices searched for yield in what was a historically low interest rate environment. But over the last 12 months, many firms have launched funds to tap into the constituency of individual investors.

This week, Benefit Street Partners launched a fund focused on providing loans to US middle market companies that is open to individual investors. Earlier this year, private-credit firms such as Oaktree Capital Management, HPS Investment Partners and Apollo Global Management set up business development companies of their own, which are fund structures open to individual investors.

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(Bloomberg) — Stocks came way off session lows, but struggled to gain further momentum after a two-day rally from this year’s bottom.

“Around noontime a chunky derivatives trade hit the tape,” Wells Fargo & Co. strategists led by Christopher Harvey wrote. “Our desk characterized it as ‘one of the biggest trades I have seen in my career from a contracts perspective.’ The structure bought SPX Oct 31st and Mar Calls vs. selling Jan Calls. The Greeks of the trade are likely what gave a midday pop to the S&P 500.”

The US equity benchmark trimmed a slide that approached 2% earlier in the day, with energy giants joining gains in oil after OPEC+’s big production cut. Traders also weighed fresh economic data and Fedspeak. Treasury yields climbed with the dollar.

Even Stock Bears Are Still Too Scared to Cash Out of the Market

Investors got fresh economic insights Wednesday, with data showing strong growth at US service providers and companies hiring at a solid clip. They also assessed comments from Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco President Mary Daly, who sees a high bar for slowing the 75-basis-point pace of hikes as she watches data between now and the November meeting. Daly also said the anticipation of cuts next year is misplaced.

To Win Thin at Brown Brothers Harriman, the notion of any Fed pivot is just “wishful thinking” as Fed officials remain hawkish. He says another 75-basis-point hike next month is a “done deal.” The Fed has raised rates by three-quarters of a percentage point for three consecutive meetings and has signaled another 125 basis points of increases at its remaining two gatherings this year.

“Over the last few sessions, the market was too quick price in the ‘peak rate’ story in markets,” said Bipan Rai, head of North America currency strategy at CIBC. “Price pressures are set to remain sticky for some time and while the Fed might be closer to smaller incremental hikes than not, playing this via a ‘peak rate’ view is fairly dicey.”

Volcker Lesson to Generation QE: Stock Recoveries Can Take Years

All eyes will now be on the government’s payrolls report Friday that’s forecast to show another month of robust job creation and the unemployment rate holding near a 50-year low. To Charlie McElligot at Nomura Securities, Wednesday’s ADP employment print helped mitigate some of that “dovish vibe” that followed data showing a slide in US job openings, which lent credibility to the idea that the labor market could be moderating.

As the Fed intensifies its inflation fight, a report released Wednesday illustrated the abrupt swing in borrowing costs. US mortgage rates jumped to a 16-year high of 6.75%, marking the seventh-straight weekly increase and spurring the worst slump in home loan applications since the depths of the pandemic.

If history is any guide, “markets will need to experience more stress” before a pivot in monetary policy and an equity bottom, Harvey wrote. The Cboe Volatility Index is still trading below 40 — a threshold that in the past signaled a shift to monetary easing.

US stocks just posted a rare streak of quarterly declines and are in a bear market, but Citigroup Inc. quantitative strategists say they’re only just starting to reflect the risks of a recession. A team led by Hong Li said equities could come under further pressure as they continue to be “heavily driven” by heightened bond market volatility as well as concerns around persistent inflation and hawkish Fed. 

There’s “more downside risk for the market and the earnings season,” they wrote.

Retail investors, who helped push stocks to all-time highs, are now trying a different tactic: Betting against the market. 

From January to August this year, even before the most recent slump in stocks, the number of newly opened short positions on trading platform eToro was 61% higher than in 2021 and 41% higher than in 2020. Meanwhile, some of the biggest US exchange-traded funds that bet against popular indexes are raking in record amounts of cash. 

Investors’ uncertainty toward the health of US companies is rising — and their leaders haven’t done much to help. The lack of an accurate road map for the crucial earnings season is setting the stage for a slew of potential surprises when the reporting season kicks off in coming weeks.

Aside from those few providing cold, hard numbers, executives at the 1,000 largest US firms have spent the past three months voicing a similar message in their public remarks: They’re unsure about what’s ahead. They’ve mentioned “uncertainty” or its synonyms when describing the outlook 484 times during that time, the highest tally since the quarter ending March 2021, data compiled by Bloomberg show.

BofA Strategist Says US Stock Rally Has Set Off a Bullish Signal

Key events this week:

• Eurozone retail sales, Thursday
• US initial jobless claims, Thursday
• Fed’s Charles Evans, Lisa Cook, Loretta Mester speak at events, Thursday
• US unemployment, wholesale inventories, nonfarm payrolls, Friday
• BOE Deputy Governor Dave Ramsden speaks at event, Friday
• Fed’s John Williams speaks at event, Friday

Will earnings disappoint and push equities to new lows? This week’s MLIV Pulse survey asks about corporate earnings. It’s brief and we don’t collect your name or any contact information. Please click here to share your views.

Some of the main moves in markets:

Stocks

• The S&P 500 fell 0.2% as of 2:39 p.m. New York time
• The Nasdaq 100 fell 0.2%
• The Dow Jones Industrial Average was little changed
• The MSCI World index was little changed

Currencies

• The Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index rose 0.6%
• The euro fell 1% to $0.9884
• The British pound fell 1.2% to $1.1340
• The Japanese yen fell 0.3% to 144.54 per dollar

Cryptocurrencies

• Bitcoin fell 0.7% to $20,192
• Ether fell 0.8% to $1,350.53

Bonds

• The yield on 10-year Treasuries advanced 12 basis points to 3.76%
• Germany’s 10-year yield advanced 16 basis points to 2.03%
• Britain’s 10-year yield advanced 16 basis points to 4.04%

Commodities

• West Texas Intermediate crude rose 1.3% to $87.68 a barrel
• Gold futures fell 0.3% to $1,724.70 an ounce

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(Bloomberg) — SpaceX launched a crew of four on a NASA mission to the International Space Station, including a Russian cosmonaut and the first Native American woman to travel to space. 

The blast-off, scheduled for noon local time Wednesday from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, followed a series of delays that had pushed back the launch by several weeks. The astronauts are traveling aboard SpaceX’s Crew Dragon — the sixth time the space agency has relied on Elon Musk’s company to transport NASA personnel and international partners to the space station since Dragon’s inaugural crewed mission in May of 2020.

The multinational crew’s arrival at the station — planned for Thursday after a 29-hour journey — will begin a six-month-long stay in orbit. They include two NASA astronauts: Josh Cassada and Nicole Mann, a member of one of the Round Valley Indian Tribes in California, along with Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata, and Anna Kikina from Russia.

Kikina’s presence marks the first time a Russian cosmonaut has traveled to orbit on a Dragon spacecraft. Since SpaceX began launching crews to the ISS, NASA and Russia’s state space corporation Roscosmos have been working together on a crew-swap agreement. That has continued even as relations have deteriorated in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. 

In July, NASA decried the actions of three Russian cosmonauts aboard the ISS, who posed for pictures with flags considered to be anti-Ukraine propaganda. But the two sides have pushed forward and on Sept. 21, NASA astronaut Frank Rubio traveled to the ISS on a Russian Soyuz, along with two cosmonauts.

SpaceX CEO Musk stirred geopolitical tensions ahead of the launch with tweets earlier this week calling for a negotiated settlement between Ukraine and Russia. The unsolicited tweets outraged diplomats in Ukraine. 

Read More: Musk Sets Off Uproar in Ukraine by Tweeting His ‘Peace’ Plan 

The flight, called Crew-5, is the latest under a contract with NASA as part of the agency’s Commercial Crew Program. NASA has tapped SpaceX to fly as many as 14 crewed missions to the ISS in a deal worth about $4.9 billion.

NASA’s second Commercial Crew provider, Boeing Co., has yet to fly people to space on its craft, the CST-100 Starliner. Boeing is targeting February for its first crewed test flight to the orbiting lab.

Delayed Launch

Crew-5 has taken longer than anticipated to get off the ground. NASA already had pushed back the flight from early September to give SpaceX more time to repair hardware on the company’s resuable Falcon 9 rocket for the mission. This particular rocket, which hasn’t been flown before, was damaged during transport when it collided with a bridge. 

The booster successfully landed on a drone ship at sea about 10 minutes after the launch.

The flight was delayed again last week as NASA’s Kennedy Space Center braced for Hurricane Ian. The storm also forced NASA to roll back its massive Space Launch System moon rocket to its hangar, further slowing that rocket’s debut flight, a project unrelated to Wednesday’s ISS mission.

The Dragon plans to dock with the ISS on Thursday at 4:57 p.m. East Coast time. Astronauts now living on board the ISS, including those who launched to the station in April, intend to greet the new arrivals when the capsule’s hatch opens about one hour and 45 minutes later. 

The Crew-4 astronauts are slated to return back to Earth later this month in their own Dragon capsule which has been attached to the space station since their arrival. 

(Updates with duration of flight in third paragraph.)

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