By Vansh Agarwal and Shreyaa Narayanan

(Reuters) -Pinterest Inc beat estimates for quarterly revenue on Thursday, making it a rare bright spot in an otherwise downbeat social media sector and sending the image-sharing platform’s shares 15% higher in after-hours trading.

A decline in advertising budgets because of decades-high inflation has roiled earnings of online players from Alphabet Inc to Meta Platforms Inc and Snap Inc.

But Pinterest’s results show its ads business stayed resilient amid the wider industry downturn and people were still engaging with its image-sharing platform for inspiration to take up activities such as home renovation and recipe-based cooking.

Pinterest returned to user growth in the July-September period after three straight quarters of decline, with its global monthly active users rising 2.8% sequentially to 445 million, above Factset estimates of 437.4 million.

Part of the growth was fueled by an update to Apple Inc’s iOS 16 in September, finance chief Todd Morgenfeld said on a call with analysts.

He added the resilience in ad sales was driven by the fact that a large portion of Pinterest’s ad sales come from e-commerce and consumer goods.

“What hurt Pinterest before (during the pandemic) is helping them now,” said D.A. Davidson analyst Thomas Forte, referring to the company’s focus on retail and consumer goods.

“The bigger opportunity going forward is to find a way to drive incremental engagement on the platform and get monthly active users growing again and improve monetization since growth is slowing.”

Pinterest’s third-quarter revenue rose 8% to $684.6 million. While the pace of growth was its slowest in nearly two years, the figure came in well above analysts’ average estimate of $666.7 million, according to Refinitiv.

The company’s global average revenue per user jumped 11% to $1.56. It earned an adjusted profit of $0.11 per share, above analyst estimates of $0.06 per share.

(Reporting by Vansh Agarwal, Shreyaa Narayanan and Eva Matthwes in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D’Silva and Shinjini Ganguli)

By Chen Aizhu

SINGAPORE (Reuters) -Asia’s largest oil and gas producer PetroChina Co Ltd reported a 60% year-on-year rise in nine-month net profit to record highs, lifted by stronger global energy prices, even as weaker domestic fuel consumption continued to drag on earnings.

Net profit for the January to September period reached 120.3 billion yuan ($16.66 billion), the company said in a statement.

Domestic crude oil output increased 2.7% during the first nine months versus a year earlier to 577 million barrels, while gas output was up 5.1% to 3,296 billion cubic feet.

PetroChina, which is also China’s second-largest oil refiner, processed 1.8% less crude oil than a year earlier at 896 million barrels in the first nine months, or 3.28 million barrels per day.

Domestic fuel consumption has been weighed down by Beijing’s lengthy COVID restrictions that crimped mobility and economic activities, forcing refiners to cut operations.

Highlighting weakened domestic fuel demand, PetroChina’s gasoline output dropped 12% on the year during the period and that of aviation fuel tumbled 33%.

However, the firm’s gas business benefited from a 6.6% increase in domestic natural gas sales at 147 billion cubic meters, resulting a 30% growth in operating income in the gas marketing segment.

“As a result of the recurrence of COVID19 in some areas, the demand for refined oil in domestic market declined, while the demand for natural gas in domestic market has been growing,” the firm said in a filing to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

Its Hong Kong listed shares have dropped 4.9% year-to-date, versus a 34% fall in the Hang Seng index.

($1 = 7.2220 Chinese yuan renminbi)

(Reporting by Chen Aizhu; Editing by Jan Harvey and Bernadette Baum)

By Stephen Culp

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq posted losses on Thursday, as investors contended with solid economic data and a mixed bag of corporate earnings.

The price-weighted Dow advanced, held aloft by industrials, while weakness in market-moving tech and tech-adjacent megacaps depressed the S&P 500 and Nasdaq in the wake of downbeat quarterly results and dour guidance.

“It’s very much a bifurcated market, a tale of two cities,” said Tim Ghriskey, senior portfolio strategist Ingalls & Snyder in New York.

“There’s lot of pressure on tech and tech-plus names, higher growth names,” Ghriskey added. “On the flipside you’re seeing a lot of strength in other sectors, in particular consumer staples, energy, financials, industrials and utilities.”

After the bell, Amazon slumped 12%, erasing over $100 billion of its stock market value after the retail and tech heavyweight forecast a slowdown in sales growth for the holiday season, disappointing Wall Street and warning that inflation-wary consumers and businesses had less money to spend.

That sent S&P 500 futures down 0.5% and Nasdaq futures down 0.6%, showing traders expect Wall Street to open lower on Friday.

During Thursday’s trading session, Meta Platforms plunged 24.6% after the Facebook parent followed the trend set by Microsoft Corp and Alphabet Inc by providing gloomy forward guidance.

But heavy equipment maker Caterpillar Inc reported better-than-expected quarterly profit, sending its shares jumping 7.7% and providing the most muscle to the Dow’s advance.

A third-quarter GDP reading showing the U.S. economy returned to growth in the July-Sept period, along with steady quarterly core inflation helped take the sting out of earnings. (Graphic: GDP, https://graphics.reuters.com/USA-STOCKS/mopakmqxopa/gdp.png)

Investors continue to scan the economic horizon for evidence that the barrage of aggressive interest rate hikes from the Federal Reserve, begun in March, are beginning to have the desired effect by cooling down the economy.

While a 75 basis point rate hike at the conclusion of its Nov. 1-2 policy meeting is all but assured, the likelihood of a smaller, 50 basis point hike in December was 55%, according to CME’s FedWatch tool.

“The overriding theme is really the Fed. The Fed is going to control the direction of this market over the coming months,” Ghriskey added.

At Thursday’s close, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 194.17 points, or 0.61%, to 32,033.28, the S&P 500 lost 23.3 points, or 0.61%, to 3,807.3 and the Nasdaq Composite dropped 178.32 points, or 1.63%, to 10,792.68.

Among the 11 major sectors of the S&P 500, industrials had the biggest percentage gain, with communication services, weighed by Meta, down the most.

Third-quarter reporting season forges ahead at full speed, with 227 of the companies in the S&P 500 having reported. Of those, 74% have beaten consensus estimates.

Analysts now see aggregate S&P earnings growth of 2.5%, down from 4.5% at the beginning of October.

“In general we’ve seen earnings come in at or slightly above expectations,” Ghriskey said. “But those expectations have been lowered throughout the quarter.”

McDonald’s Corp gained 3.3% after the fast food chain beat quarterly same-store sales estimates.

Shares of Southwest Airlines Co rose 2.7% after the carrier’s quarterly profit topped consensus estimates.

Also after the bell, Intel rallied 5% after the chipmaker cut its full-year profit and revenue forecast and said it was targeting $3 billion in cost reductions in 2023.

Advancing issues outnumbered declining ones on the NYSE by a 1.18-to-1 ratio; on Nasdaq, a 1.10-to-1 ratio favored decliners.

The S&P 500 posted 23 new 52-week highs and 12 new lows; the Nasdaq Composite recorded 93 new highs and 119 new lows.

Volume on U.S. exchanges was 11.36 billion shares, compared with the 11.59 billion average over the last 20 trading days.

(Reporting by Stephen Culp; Additional reporting by Amruta Khandekar and Shreyashi Sanyal in Bengaluru and by Noel Randewich in Oakland, Calif.; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)

By Gram Slattery

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Seeking to stem expected losses in the midterm elections, almost a dozen Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives have in the past week rolled out or seen supporters launch ads trying to bolster their positions on crime.

At least 11 Democrats in competitive House races from Virginia to Oregon have benefited from the new advertisements highlighting their support for law enforcement, according to data supplied by campaigns and political action committees.

Already fighting from behind, Democrats’ chances of keeping the House have slipped further in the last month. Among the reasons, Democratic strategists and campaign officials told Reuters, has been an onslaught of Republican ads labeling their opponents as anti-police – messaging that has stuck even after supporters of Donald Trump assaulted police officers at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in an attempt to overturn the Republican president’s election defeat.

In a letter to Democratic colleagues on Thursday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called on House members to make a point of defending their record on crime.

“I write to convey the importance of emphasizing Democrats’ unyielding commitment to public safety — which is at the heart of our People Over Politics Agenda,” the letter read.

“There’s definitely a number of Democrats trying to make clear that they share voters’ concerns about crime and that they’ll do everything they can to make sure law enforcement has the resources they need,” said Pia Carusone, managing director at political consultancy SKDK, who is working on multiple competitive House races.

Republicans are not letting up, though. Republican groups including Citizens for Sanity, headed by former aides to Trump, poured money in recent weeks into ads criticizing Democrats as weak on crime and illegal immigration. 

The group, a “dark money” organization not required to disclose donors, has spent $33 million on ads in October, according to AdImpact, a tracking firm, making it the eighth biggest spender nationwide for that period. 

Citizens for Sanity aired spots during Major League Baseball playoffs in recent weeks highlighting a Las Vegas stabbing attack allegedly committed by an immigrant in the United States illegally. Another ad portrayed immigration as an economic and cultural threat.

In a March memo seen by Reuters, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the Democrats’ House campaign arm, warned members they should prepare for Republican attacks tying them to “Defund the Police,” an activist slogan that became common following the 2020 murder of George Floyd, a Black man, by a white Minneapolis police officer.

In many districts, Democrats are heeding that advice and have emphasized their law enforcement bona fides for months.

“For me the message has always been the same: Let’s support public safety,” Dan Kildee, a Michigan Democrat up for re-election in a competitive district, told Reuters. “The idea of defunding the police is just a ridiculous notion.”

Still, strategists and campaign officials said, the focus on crime has sharpened as the visibility of other issues has faded Among issues losing traction among voters in some areas is the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision in June, which weakened constitutional protections for abortion. In a Reuters/Ipsos poll released Tuesday, respondents were twice as likely to list crime, rather than abortion rights, as the country’s biggest problem.

“With Dobbs and Jan. 6 receding and gas prices going up and down, the Republicans have been able to go on the offensive,” said Matt Bennett, co-founder of center-left think tank Third Way, who has argued Democratic leaders have been slow to focus on voters’ concerns about crime.

Shield PAC, a Third Way-affiliated political action committee, launched ads on Monday promoting the law enforcement records of Virginia’s Elaine Luria and Minnesota’s Angie Craig, both endangered Democrats.

(Reporting by Gram Slattery, Additional reporting by Ted Hesson; Editing by Scott Malone and Daniel Wallis)