3M Co. expects profit to grow this year as Chief Executive Officer William Brown works to advance his plan to turn around the sprawling manufacturer.

Adjusted earnings in 2025 should be $7.60 to $7.90 a share, the Maplewood-based company said Tuesday as it reported fourth-quarter results that were roughly in line with Wall Street expectations. Analysts surveyed by Bloomberg had projected $7.79, on average.

The forecast suggests Brown sees additional progress ahead after a year in which cost cuts and efforts to boost productivity helped lift per-share profit 21% to $7.30.

3M’s shares have soared since late July when Brown outlined a plan to improve the company’s sluggish sales growth by speeding the development of new products and cutting waste across 3M’s complex organization. 3M’s adjusted operating margin a key metric for investors was 19.7% in the fourth quarter, shy of the 20.1% expected expected by Wall Street.

Brown is focused on reinvigorating the company’s new-product pipeline, while moving past legacy issues such as exiting its “forever chemicals” business. 3M in December announced a licensing agreement with closely held US Conec Ltd, targeting data centers as a source of growth.

Adjusted sales this year should grow as much as 3% on an organic basis, 3M said. That compares to a 2.9% gain expected by analysts.

Brown has also changed 3M’s remote work policy, expecting those at director level and above to come into an office Tuesday through Thursday, which have been branded “collaboration days” by the company.

3M’s shares rose 4.2% Tuesday. The stock jumped 41% last year, outpacing the SP 500 Index.

— Bloomberg

Trump pardons Silk Road founder Ulbricht

President Donald Trump announced Tuesday that he had pardoned Ross Ulbricht, the founder of Silk Road, an underground website for selling drugs.

Ulbricht had been sentenced to life in prison in 2015 after a high-profile prosecution that highlighted the role of the internet in illegal markets.

Trump called Ulbricht’s prison sentence “ridiculous.”

He had promised to help Ulbricht during a speech at the Libertarian Party National Convention last May. Libertarian activists, who generally oppose criminal drug policies, have long believed that government investigators overreached in building their case against Silk Road.

Small businesses had a jolly holiday season

Small businesses had a merry December, as shoppers wrapped up their holiday shopping.

That’s according to the Fiserv Small Business Index.

In the U.S., the seasonally adjusted index for December was 146, up 3 points from November. The figure is derived from point-of-sale transaction data, including card, cash, and check transactions in-store and online across about 2 million U.S. small businesses.

Fiserv, a payment and financial services technology company, found that small business sales rose 4.9% and total transactions grew 5.5% from December the year prior.

That echoed trends at larger businesses. The National Retail Federation, the nation’s largest retail trade group, said holiday sales in November and December rose 4% to $994.1 billion compared with the previous year. For the holiday period in 2023, sales increased 3.9% compared with the previous two-month period. The holiday sales growth was above the group’s expectations for a 2.5% to 3.5% increase for the period.

Retail transactions at small businesses rose 5.8% in December. The strongest selling categories were general merchandise, clothing, shoes and jewelry retailers, furniture, electronics, appliances and grocery.

Restaurants, however, were weaker. Sales fell 3.4% from December a year ago, even though transactions rose 4.1%.

Netflix adds 19M subscribers in 4Q

Netflix added nearly 19 million subscribers during the holiday-season quarter to help propel its earnings beyond analysts’ projections, capping the video streaming service’s best year yet in a sign that its expansion into live programming is paying off.

The numbers released Tuesday covered a October-December period highlighted by Netflix’s streaming of a widely watched fight between YouTube sensation Jake Paul and former heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson in addition to two National Football League games on Christmas Day. Those marquee events helped Netflix to easily surpass the 13 million subscribers that picked up in the same quarter during 2023.

Netflix ended last year with more than 300 million worldwide subscribers.

— From news services