ADRs End Slightly Higher; BT Group, Randgold and Novartis Trade Actively

International stocks trading in New York closed slightly higher Thursday.

The BNY Mellon index of American depositary receipts rose 0.5% to 154.43. The European index decreased 0.01% to 141.93. The Asian index gained 0.9% to 184.38. The Latin American index rose 2.9% to 259.13. And the emerging-markets index increased 1.5% to 337.67.

BT Group PLC (BT), Randgold Resources Ltd. (GOLD) and Novartis AG (NVS) were among those with ADRs that traded actively.

BT Group said Thursday it will cut 13,000 jobs over the next three years and will hire around 6,000 new employees to support network deployment and customer service. The British telecommunications and TV provider also will exit its central London headquarters to focus on 30 strategic sites. BT expects to deliver cost-savings of GBP1.5 billion. In the fourth quarter, the telecoms company made a pretax profit of GBP872 million compared with GBP440 million in the year-earlier period. Analysts forecast a pretax profit of GBP887 million. Quarterly revenue declined 2.5% to GBP5.97 billion from GBP6.12 billion a year earlier. Analysts expected revenue of GBP6.06 billion. For fiscal 2019, BT forecasts underlying revenue will fall 2% and adjusted Ebitda will be between GBP7.3 billion and GBP7.4 billion. ADRs of BT Group fell 9.6% to $14.70.

Randgold reported a 27% drop in first-quarter pretax profit due to decreased gold sales and higher production costs. The Africa-focused gold miner is keeping its 2018 production guidance for 2018 at 1.3 million to 1.35 million ounces of gold production that, after the expected weaker first quarter, implies it will need to average quarterly gold output of about 340,000 ounces for the rest of the year, notes SP Angel. ADRS of Randgold fell 4.5% to $78.61.

Novartis Chief Executive Vasant Narasimhan said the company "made a mistake" agreeing to pay Trump lawyer Michael Cohen $1.2 million for what Novartis has described as his insight into health-care policy. In an email to the Swiss drug company's employees on Thursday reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, Dr. Narasimhan said he felt "frustrated" by the arrangement, which was struck under a previous chief executive. Dr. Narasimhan, who joined the company in 2005, became chief executive in February. Novartis disclosed earlier this week that it paid Mr. Cohen's company Essential Consultants LLC $100,000 a month under the one-year contract, which ended in February. The private company was the same one Mr. Cohen used to direct $130,000 in October 2016 to a former adult-film actress, who goes by the name Stormy Daniels, to prevent her from discussing an alleged sexual encounter with Mr. Trump. Messrs. Trump and Cohen deny the encounter took place. ADRs of Novartis fell 0.2% to $76.94.

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(END) Dow Jones Newswires

May 10, 2018 20:02 ET (00:02 GMT)

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