The Daily Chase: Tesla climbs in the premarket; Canfor restructures B.C operations

Shares of Tesla are gaining ground in the premarket – up more than seven per cent – after the company reported record fourth-quarter revenue and topped profit expectations in Q4, in spite of some margin compression.

Well, it didn't take long for Canada's largest lenders to respond in kind to the Bank of Canada's latest rate increase. The Big Six were swift to match the central bank's quarter percentage point increase, responding in kind by matching said hike by boosting their own prime rates by 25-basis-points across the board to 6.70 per cent – the highest level since early 2001. The implications are clear for Canadian consumers who have already been facing a steep rise in the cost of borrowing, as the prime rate underpins a slate of lending products, including lines of credit and variable-rate mortgages.  CANFOR RESTRUCTURING B.C. OPERATIONS

The tough lumber-market conditions are again on full display over at Canfor. The company says its restructuring its British Columbian operations, permanently closing its Chetwynd sawmill and putting it Houston sawmill temporarily on ice to execute a “major” redevelopment on the site. Both facilities will be shuttered by the end of the second quarter, removing 750 million board feet from Canfor's annual production. The moves come in the wake of Canfor temporarily curtailing output at all of its solid wood facilities in B.C. in Alberta, which took about 150 million board feet of production offline.  NATURAL GAS FALLS BELOW US$3

What a wild ride on the gas markets over the last six months and change. Prices for U.S. natural gas have dipped below US$3 per million BTU this morning, falling below that mark for the first time since May 2021 (not to mention down 70 per cent or so from August 2022's highs.) Few factors at play here, namely the mild winter weather we've been seeing across the Northern Hemisphere so far this year, along with a longer-than-expected shutdown of that massive Freeport LNG export terminal in Texas constraining U.S. exports and keeping supplies on shore.  OTHER NOTABLE STORIES