Business news in brief

Peco Energy Co. says it will surpass the 500,000 mark for natural gas customers this month, up about 20,000 customers, or 4 percent, since 2008. The new growth is attributed to a combination of new construction and conversions of customers along existing Peco gas mains, said Cathy Engel Menendez, the utility's spokeswoman. Gas utilities like Peco typically offer incentives to induce customers to convert, but one of the principal marketing pitches for the last five years has been the relatively low cost of natural gas compared with heating oil, propane and electricity. - Andrew Maykuth

The developer of the former YWCA Annex site, once considered a blight on the 2000 block of Chestnut Street in Center City, will formally break ground Wednesday for a 12-story mixed-use building with 110 apartments, retail space, and a lower level full floor leased by the Friere Charter School. Leonard S. Poncia, president of Aquinas Realty Partners, developer of the site, Darrell Clarke, City Council president, and Mayor Nutter are expected to attend. Aquinas Realty purchased the property from the Philadelphia Redevelopment Authority and will rename it AQ Rittenhouse. - Erin Arvedlund

Giant Food Stores and Peapod.com have added two more area stores where consumers can pick up grocery orders made online. The pickup service will now be available at the Giant stores at 4357 W. Swamp Rd., Doylestown, and 967 S. Township Line in Royersford. That will bring to 10 the number of area Giant and Peapod pickup centers. Consumers can go to Peapod.com, order groceries and have their order available at any of the 10 suburban locations. Giant and Peapod are both owned by Ahold, a Netherlands-

based retailer. - Chris Hepp

The Vanguard Group said it would stop providing administrative services for defined-benefit, or traditional, pension plans, saying the business line doesn't have the scale needed to justify further investment in it. The Malvern mutual fund giant said it provided defined-benefit administrative services to just a small number of its clients that also have defined-contribution pension plans. Vanguard will continue to sell investments, trustee and payment services, and investment advisory services to companies that have defined benefit pensions. - Harold Brubaker

Drivers will get the slightest of breaks on gasoline prices this summer, according to the Energy Department. The national average price is forecast to fall - by just one cent - to $3.57 per gallon between April and September, the months when Americans do most of their driving. Still, that would be the lowest average since 2010. For the year, the Energy Department's Energy Information Administration expects gasoline to average $3.45 per gallon, down from $3.51 last year and also the lowest since 2010. The average price in Southeastern Pennsylvania Tuesday was $3.65 per gallon, while the average in South Jersey, where taxes are lower, was $3.34, the AAA Mid-Atlantic auto club said. - AP

A U.S. jury ordered Japanese drugmaker Takeda Pharmaceutical Co. and its U.S. counterpart, Eli Lilly and Co., to pay $9 billion in punitive damages over a diabetes medicine linked to cancer. The drug companies said Tuesday they would "vigorously challenge" the decision. The U.S District Court in western Louisiana ordered a $6 billion penalty for Takeda and $3 billion for its business partner and co-defendant Eli Lilly. It also ordered $1.5 million in compensatory damages in favor of the plaintiff. The legal fight turned on whether Actos, which is a drug used to treat type-two diabetes, caused a patient's bladder cancer and by implication was responsible for other cases of the cancer. - AP

U.S. employers posted more job openings in February, a sign that hiring will likely improve in the months ahead. The Labor Department said employers advertised 4.2 million job openings, up 7.7 percent from January. That's the highest number of postings since January 2008, when the Great Recession was just beginning and the economy had yet to suffer the full shock of the downturn. There are roughly 2.5 unemployed Americans for each open job, the report shows. That average has slowly been approaching the 2 to 1 ratio is typical of healthier economies, after peaking at 6.7 unemployed people for each available job in July 2009, just after the recession ended. - AP

Alcoa Inc., of Pittsburgh, lost $178 million in the first quarter as revenue fell on lower aluminum prices, but profit beat expectations after excluding charges to idle capacity at aluminum smelters and mills. The company said the price it was paid for aluminum dropped 8 percent from a year ago. The weak prices are driving Alcoa, which is closing a smelter in New York state and another in Australia and cutting capacity at others in Brazil. When those moves are complete, Alcoa will have shed 28 percent of its smelting capacity since 2007. - AP