U.S. private payrolls rose by 98,000 in June, below the 110,000 Wall Street Journal consensus cited in market coverage and down from 122,000 in May. The miss puts Friday's official payrolls release and Fed rate-risk pricing back at the center of cross-asset trading.
EcoPro BM (247540.KQ) disclosed a KRW 1.1999999988T rights offering with 9,900,990 new shares at KRW 121,200 each. KRW 915B is earmarked for securities acquisition tied to the BNSI nickel smelter project in Indonesia.
Rocket Lab $RKLB agreed to acquire Iridium $IRDM for about $8.0B in enterprise value, with $54 per share split between $27 cash and $27 stock. The offer represented a 24% premium to Iridium’s prior close.
$DLR fell 5% after agreeing to buy Blackstone’s blended 64% equity interest in three Northern Virginia data centers for $3.5B. The assets carry a $7.8B gross value and 288MW of total IT capacity.
$AVAV rose 19% after hours after fiscal Q4 adjusted EPS of $1.84 beat the $1.46 LSEG consensus and revenue of about $642M beat the $559M estimate. Funded backlog reached $1.2B, up 65% from a year earlier.
Bridgepoint $BPT agreed to acquire Kayne Anderson Real Estate for about $1.393B, including $759M cash and roughly 189M newly issued shares. Reuters reported the stock up 9.3% after the announcement, while Bridgepoint said pro forma AUM would rise to about $117B.
Comcast $CMCSA rose 20% after saying it plans a tax-free spin-off of NBCUniversal and Sky into a separate public company. The company expects completion in about one year, subject to board, tax, regulatory and financing conditions.
Roughly $1B is the reported price for Bridgepoint’s talks to buy Kayne Anderson’s real estate arm. The unit would add about $22B of assets under management and expand Bridgepoint’s U.S. property platform.
Unilever $UL is exploring a bid for Thorne that could value the U.S. supplements maker at up to $4B, according to Financial Times reporting. Thorne is owned by L Catterton and is projected to generate about $650M of revenue this year.
WTI crude rose from a $69.23 settlement to $70.24 in after-hours trading after U.S. Central Command said it struck Iranian missile, drone-storage and coastal-radar sites. Brent moved from $71.99 to about $72.98 as traders repriced Strait of Hormuz risk.
Bio-Techne $TECH traded about 20% higher after Merck KGaA agreed to buy the company for $73 a share in cash, valuing it at about $11.3B. The offer is 36% above Bio-Techne's one-month VWAP and is expected to close in late 2026 or early 2027, subject to approvals.
The BEA said May headline PCE inflation rose 4.1% from a year earlier, while core PCE reached 3.4%. Monthly PCE prices increased 0.4%, keeping the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge well above its 2% target.