■AVIATION
Dreamliner further delayed
Boeing set a new schedule for its much-delayed 787 Dreamliner program on Thursday, with the first delivery to launch customer All Nippon Airways (ANA) to be made late next year, more than two years behind the initial timetable. “The first flight of the 787 Dreamliner is expected by the end of 2009 and first delivery is expected to occur in the fourth quarter of 2010,” Boeing said in a statement. Boeing on June 23 announced a fifth delay in the 787 Dreamliner program to fix a structural problem on the side of the aircraft, but had not provided a new schedule. ANA, which has ordered 55 of the 787 Dreamliners, said it was dismayed and frustrated about the latest delay to the delivery of the aircraft. Boeing launched the Dreamliner program in April 2004 and initially had planned to deliver the first airplane to ANA in the first half of last year.
■COSMETICS
L’Oreal profits plunge
L’Oreal, the world’s biggest cosmetics group, reported a sizable drop in first-half profits on Thursday, but said that sales were starting to pick up again. The French company said in a statement that net profits for the first six months of this year fell by 13.7 percent to 1.084 billion euros (US$1.559 billion) compared with the same period last year, in line with analysts’ forecasts. Net earnings per share, a key indicator used by the top beauty products maker, fell 1.5 percent to 2.08 euros. “The sales trend has remained positive overall and is reaccelerating in the new markets,” chief executive Jean-Paul Agon said in a statement. Operating profits fell 36 percent in the group’s luxury products division, and 8.3 percent overall, it said.
■OIL
OPEC strays from limits
The 11 OPEC nations bound by quotas increased crude oil supplies last month, straying further from their official limits, estimates from tanker-tracker PetroLogistics Ltd show. Those 11 OPEC members provided consumers with an average of 26 million barrels a day last month, up from 25.96 million a day in June, the Geneva-based consultant said. Supplies from all 12 members, including Iraq, rose to 28.6 million barrels a day from 28.3 million a day. OPEC, responsible for about 40 percent of global crude supplies, will meet on Sept. 9 in Vienna to discuss the impact of record production cuts to 24.845 million barrels a day announced last year. Oil has rebounded to above US$70 a barrel, encouraging members to pump more crude. The oil minister of Qatar, Abdullah bin Hamad Al-Attiyah, yesterday urged his counterparts in OPEC to keep production targets unchanged at next month’s gathering.
■MEDIA
Johnston ad revenue drops
British regional newspaper publisher Johnston Press reported a 32.7 percent drop in first-half advertising revenue as recruitment and property ad space shrank in tandem with the ongoing recession in the UK and Ireland. Total revenues fell 25.4 percent to £218.6 million (US$356 million) in the first half, but the company said it saw ad revenues stabilize with the rate of decline slowing to 26.1 percent in the first eight weeks of the second half. Operating profit fell 53 percent to £38.2 million and the company said it would not pay an interim dividend. Johnston said it remained strongly cash-generative and had agreed a new, three-year facility with its lenders, although the cost of borrowing had increased considerably.
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