Lennar LEN, -0.77% raised its annual dividend to $2.00 a share, a 33% increase, and said the homebuilder’s board has authorized a $5 billion increase to its share-repurchase program. Based on the closing stock price of $148.16 on Tuesday, the dividend increase boosts the annual dividend yield to about 1.3%. “Given the strength of our balance sheet, our strong cash position and our operating strategy driving cash flow, we are focusing more of our capital allocation on maximizing total shareholder returns, ...

Shares of Intuitive Surgical Inc. ISRG, +0.52% rallied after hours on Tuesday after the maker of robotic surgical equipment said it expected fourth-quarter sales that were above Wall Street’s expectations, helped by a recovery in China. The company reported preliminary fourth-quarter revenue of around $1.93 billion, up 17% and above FactSet forecasts for $1.87 billion. Procedures involving da Vinci, its robotic surgical system, jumped 21% from a year earlier, when COVID-19 cases re-emerged in China and wei ...

Investment-management giant BlackRock Inc. plans to lay off around 3% of its staff, or around 600 employees, the company said on Tuesday, amid what executives described as a “rapidly changing” economic backdrop and shifts in client demands. In a memo to employees, Chief Executive Larry Fink and President Rob Capito said they still expected the company’s workforce to be bigger by the end of the year “as we continue adding people and building capabilities to support key areas of growth.” They also said m ...

Boeing Co.’s stock could continue to sell off over the near term, even if the latest 737 Max issues don’t affect the aerospace giant’s business very much, one investment manager said.Some Wall Street analysts said the drop in Boeing’s stock BA, -1.16% on the most recent 737 Max 9 news has created a good entry point for investors, since the financial impact for the company should be minimal.Jerry Braakman, chief investment officer of California-based First American Trust, which manages $2.3 billion, said whi ...

A group of seven of the most valuable publicly-traded U.S. companies are worth as much as the entire equity markets of Canada, Japan and the U.K. combined. Apollo economist Torsten Slok illustrated as much in a Tuesday missive to clients and the financial press where he shared a couple of charts meant to illustrate how the group of seven U.S. companies, better known as “the Magnificent Seven,” has come to dominate the landscape of the global equity market. With a market capitalization of roughly $2.8 trilli ...

Bowing to intensifying criticism that its products are addictive and harmful to young people, Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc. said Tuesday it will limit the type of content teenagers who use Facebook and Instagram are able to view. In a blog post, Meta META, +0.07% said the new protections are intended “to give teens more age-appropriate experiences on our apps.” The updates will limit users under 18 to more restrictive settings, prevent them from searching certain topics and prompt them to update t ...

The first U.S. commercial moon lander is facing a race against time after suffering a failure in its propulsion system just hours into its historic mission.Astrobotic Technology, which built the Peregrine lunar lander, is now attempting to get the spacecraft as close to the moon as possible before it loses power. Peregrine’s mission to reach the moon, which was expected to happen on Feb. 23, now appears doomed. “An ongoing propellant leak is causing the spacecraft’s Attitude Control System (ACS) thrusters t ...

Shares of Albertsons Companies Inc. ACI, -0.22% dropped 0.7% in premarket trading Tuesday, after the grocery-store chain reported fiscal third-quarter profit and sales that exceeded expectations but saw a drop in gross margins. Albertsons, which is in the process of being acquired by Kroger Co. KR, -0.17%, said net income for the quarter to Dec. 2 was $361.4 million, or 62 cents a share, after income of $375.5 million, or 20 cents a share, in the year-ago period. Excluding nonrecurring items, adjusted earn ...

Blackstone Inc. has raised $1.29 billion for its evergreen private equity fund for people with at least $5 million in investments as it builds up its third major pool for individual investors.Blackstone Private Equity Strategies LP, the fund that’s affiliated with Blackstone BX, +0.11%, on Monday disclosed the sales figure after reports surfaced last year that the fund had launched fundraising efforts.The fund’s portfolio consists of 17 investments and future commitments to acquire investments totaling up t ...

Terry Smith, the fund manager of the £23.7 billion ($30 billion) Fundsmith Equity Fund, is often called Britain’s answer to Warren Buffett. He’s coming off a year in which he underperformed his benchmark, the MSCI world index, which he attributed to weakness in Estee Lauder EL, +1.26%, McCormick MKC, -0.03% and Mettler-Toledo MTD, +2.99% among other holdings, though his annualized 15.3% return since 2010 is about 4 points ahead.In Smith’s annual letter to investors, he said the stock market has decided that ...