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Tag: company activities and management

  • Meta’s stock falls 17% as its quarterly profit is cut in half | CNN Business

    Meta’s stock falls 17% as its quarterly profit is cut in half | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN Business
     — 

    Meta on Wednesday posted the second quarterly revenue decline in its history since going public and warned that it is making “significant changes” aimed at cutting costs ahead of 2023, as it confronts an economic downturn that is hitting its core online advertising business.

    For the three months ended in September, Meta

    (FB)     posted revenue of $27.7 billion, down 4% year-over-year and slightly above Wall Street analysts’ expectations. The Facebook parent company posted its first-ever quarterly revenue decline during the June quarter.

    The company reported net income of nearly $4.4 billion — less than half the amount it made during the same period in the prior year and below analysts’ projections.

    “We’re approaching 2023 with a focus on prioritization and efficiency that will help us navigate the current environment and emerge an even stronger company,” Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s founder and CEO, said in a statement.

    Meta’s stock fell almost 17% in after-hours trading Wednesday following the results.

    Demand for online advertising has declined in recent months amid rising inflation and fears of a looming recession. Tech companies like Google and Snap have also seen hits to their ad revenues. Meta CFO David Wehner said on a call with analysts following the report that the average price per ad across Meta’s platforms fell 18% during the quarter.

    At the same time, Meta’s user growth is slowing amid heightened competition from rivals like TikTok. Meta reported having 2.96 billion monthly active users on its core Facebook app at the end of the quarter, up 2% year-over-year. That’s down from the 6% growth rate it posted in the year-ago quarter. Daily active users on Meta’s family of apps grew 4% to 2.93 billion, down from the 11% increase it posted the year prior.

    Zuckerberg noted on the call that Instagram now has more than 2 billion monthly active users and WhatsApp has more than 2 billion daily active users.

    These challenges to its core business come as Meta is funneling billions of dollars into an ambitious new bet to build a future version of the internet called the metaverse that likely remains years away.

    Wehner said operating losses from the company’s metaverse ambitions, which are categorized under its Reality Labs unit, are expected to “grow significantly year-over-year” in 2023. Reality Labs lost nearly $3.7 billion in the September quarter, and has cost the company a total of $9.4 billion so far this year. Revenue from the Reality Labs unit also fell by nearly 50% year-over-year in the September quarter.

    Altimeter Capital, a Meta sharehoder, last week wrote an open letter calling on the company to reduce its headcount expenses by at least 20% and its annual capital expenditure by at least $5 billion, and to limit its investment in the metaverse to no more than $5 billion per year.

    In Wednesday’s report, Wehner said the company is “making significant changes across the board to operate more efficiently.” Executives said the company expects headcount at the end of 2023 will be roughly in line with or slightly smaller than the 87,314 it reported as of the end of September (an increase of 28% from the year prior).

    “We are holding some teams at in terms of headcount, shrinking others and investing headcount growth only in our highest priorities,” Wehner said. He also hinted that the company could shrink its physical office footprint.

    Zuckerberg said on the call that the three key areas of investment for the company in the coming year are its AI discovery engine that’s powering Reels and other recommendations, ads and business messaging, and its future vision for the metaverse. Meta earlier this month unveiled its newest virtual-reality headset, the Meta Quest Pro, and touted its potential for business customers.

    In the final three months of the year, Meta expects quarterly revenue between $30 billion and $32.5 billion. On the high end, the projection would mark a 3.5% year-over-year decline from the same period in the prior year.

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  • Clorox recalls 37 million bottles of Pine-Sol that could contain bacteria | CNN Business

    Clorox recalls 37 million bottles of Pine-Sol that could contain bacteria | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN Business
     — 

    Roughly 37 million bottles of Pine-Sol products have been recalled because they could contain a potentially harmful bacteria.

    Clorox said some of the affected Pine-Sol products might contain a bacteria called Pseudomonas aeruginosa, which can harm people with compromised immune systems or people with external medical devices because they pose “a risk of serious infection that may require medical treatment,” according to the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

    Eight different versions of Pine-Sol have been recalled, including Pine-Sol scented multi-surface cleaners (lavender clean, sparkling wave and lemon fresh scents), CloroxPro Pine-Sol all purpose cleaners (lavender clean, sparkling wave, lemon fresh, and orange energy scents) and Clorox Professional Pine-Sol lemon fresh cleaner.

    The CPSC says no injuries have been reported.

    The affected Pine-Sol products were made between January 2021 and September 2022. The described products were made at Clorox’s Forest Park, Georgia, factory. They were sold on Amazon and at several national retailers such as Walmart, Target, Sam’s Club, Kroger and Dollar Tree.

    Recalled bottles have date codes beginning with the prefix “A4” followed by a five-digit number less than 22249. The products are sold in bottles of varying ounces, ranging from 28- to 175-fluid ounces.

    If someone has a recalled Pine-Sol bottle, the agency says to throw it away and contact Pine-Sol for a refund. A special website has been set up for refunds.

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  • Elon Musk must close Twitter deal by end of this week or face trial | CNN Business

    Elon Musk must close Twitter deal by end of this week or face trial | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN Business
     — 

    The clock is ticking for Elon Musk to complete his deal to buy Twitter.

    The billionaire Tesla CEO has until 5 p.m. ET on Friday to close his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter or face a trial that was previously delayed to allow both parties to close the deal.

    The high-stakes countdown comes after a months-long battle over an acquisition that would put the world’s richest man in charge of one of the world’s most influential social media platforms, with vast potential impacts on the company’s employees, users and for online discourse generally.

    Musk in April agreed to buy Twitter

    (TWTR)     for $54.20 per outstanding share and then, weeks later, sought to terminate the deal. He initially cited concerns over the prevalence of bots on the platform and later added claims from a company whistleblower. Twitter

    (TWTR)     sued him to follow through with the acquisition.

    The two sides had been in the midst of a contentious litigation process preparing for trial to begin on Oct. 17 when Musk told Twitter he wanted to move forward with closing the deal at the originally agreed upon price. The judge overseeing the case, Delaware Chancery Court Chancellor Kathaleen St. Jude McCormick, gave the two sides until Oct. 28 to close the deal or face a November trial.

    In the weeks since the litigation was paused, Twitter has appeared to continue to take steps toward closing the deal. Bloomberg last week reported that the company had frozen employees’ stock accounts in anticipation of the deal’s closing, and that lawyers for both Musk and Twitter were preparing paperwork to close the deal. Musk, meanwhile, told Tesla shareholders that he was “excited” about Twitter even as he admitted to “obviously overpaying” for it.

    But there have been questions about whether the financing Musk had originally lined up to help fund the deal would come through as expected after he spent months disparaging the company and the overall market, including for social media stocks, has declined. Musk has turned to a mix of debt and equity financing for the deal, in addition to putting up his own money, much of it likely from sales of his Tesla shares.

    Some experts have suggested that Musk may need to sell billions of dollars worth of additional Tesla

    (TSLA)     shares to fund the deal, a move that became easier for the CEO after the company reported quarterly earnings last week – not to mention more costly following a recent decline in the car maker’s share price.

    With days to go before the deadline, there have also been some last-minute jitters among Twitter investors and employees.

    Twitter shares briefly dipped Friday morning following a Bloomberg report that Biden administration officials were in early discussions about possibly subjecting some of Musk’s ventures to national security reviews, including the planned Twitter takeover.

    However, asked by CNN, the administration pushed back on the report, which cited people familiar with the matter. “We do not know of any such conversations,” National Security Council Spokesperson Adrienne Watson said in a statement. Mergers and acquisitions experts have said that while such a review could complicate matters, it likely wouldn’t allow Musk to get out of the acquisition deal.

    Separately, Twitter was forced to address concerns among its employees about the fate of their jobs after The Washington Post reported on Thursday that Musk told prospective investors in the deal that he planned to get rid of nearly 75% of the company’s staff. (Representatives for Musk did not respond to a request for comment on the report, which cited internal documents and unnamed people familiar with the matter.)

    Following the report, Twitter General Counsel Sean Edgett sent a memo to staff saying the company does “not have any confirmation of the buyer’s plans following close and recommend not following rumors or leaked documents but rather wait for facts from us and the buyer directly,” according to a report from Bloomberg. A Twitter spokesperson confirmed to CNN the authenticity of the memo.

    Musk previously discussed dramatically reducing Twitter’s workforce in personal text messages with friends about the deal, which were revealed in court filings, and didn’t dismiss the potential for layoffs in a call with Twitter employees in June.

    Despite his reported plans to gut the staff, and his own remarks that he is overpaying for the company, Musk has tried to sound optimistic about Twitter’s potential.

    “The long-term potential for Twitter, in my view, is an order of magnitude greater than its current value,” he said on the Tesla conference call last week. He has floated several possible product updates and suggested Twitter will become part of an “everything” app called x, possibly in the style of popular Chinese app WeChat.

    But the most immediate change for users, if the deal goes through, could be limiting Twitter’s content moderation and restoring accounts that were previously banned from the platform, most notably that of former President Donald Trump.

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  • Apple’s industrial design chief to depart company three years after Jony Ive | CNN Business

    Apple’s industrial design chief to depart company three years after Jony Ive | CNN Business

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    CNN Business
     — 

    Apple’s industrial design chief who most recently oversaw the design of products including the iPhone, Apple Watch and Mac computers is leaving the company.

    Evans Hankey was one of two people promoted to oversee the design team after the departure of Apple

    (AAPL)    ’s longtime product designer, Jony Ive, in June 2019. Apple

    (AAPL)     told CNN that Hankey will remain at the company for a temporary period.

    “Apple’s design team brings together expert creatives from around the world and across many disciplines to imagine products that are undeniably Apple,” a spokesperson said. “The senior design team has strong leaders with decades of experience. Evans plans to stay on as we work through the transition, and we’d like to thank her for her leadership and contributions.”

    The departure, which was first reported by Bloomberg, comes at a time when many of Apple’s best-known products are mostly receiving incremental design updates while long-rumored products such as a mixed reality headset — a wearable device that’s said to be capable of both virtual and augmented reality — have yet to launch.

    Hankey stepped into the role after Ive left to start his own design company, LoveFrom. (At the time of his departure, Apple said it would become one of his clients but reportedly stopped working together earlier this year.) Ive worked closely with Apple co-founder Steve Jobs on a remarkable run of products, ranging from candy-colored iMacs to the iPod and the original iPhone, that revived Apple’s fortunes and eventually made it the most valuable company in the world. His work earned him design awards, a knighthood and the company of celebrities like U2’s Bono.

    In December 2021, Hankey and Dye offered Wallpaper, a design and lifestyle publication, a rare look inside how Apple’s design team approaches new products. Hankey detailed the methods Apple took to refine notifications and the “tap” on the Apple watch, and how it scanned thousands of ears to perfect the shape of AirPods.

    “So much of what we value for the team and for the company, really started in the early days of design at Apple,” Hankey said. “We cannot overstate how lucky we are to be at a company with such a rich and deep foundation. From the very early ‘think different’ mantra to Steve and Jony’s collective focus on craft, care and making tools, to their reverence for the creative process, this is what still drives us.’

    Apple has not yet announced Hankey’s replacement.

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  • Snap stock falls nearly 25% after revenue hit by shrinking advertiser budgets | CNN Business

    Snap stock falls nearly 25% after revenue hit by shrinking advertiser budgets | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    Snap’s bad year continues.

    Snap on Thursday reported revenue of $1.13 billion for the three months ending in September, a slight 6% increase from the year prior and less than Wall Street had expected, as the company confronts tightening advertiser budgets in an uncertain economy.

    In a letter to investors, Snapchat’s parent company said its revenue growth was slowed by several factors, including growing competition and jitters from the advertisers who make up its core business.

    “We are finding that our advertising partners across many industries are decreasing their marketing budgets, especially in the face of operating environment headwinds, inflation-driven cost pressures, and rising costs,” the company said in the letter.

    Shares of Snap fell nearly 25% in after hours trading following the earnings report.

    Snap’s report kicks off what is expected to be a sobering tech earnings period, as layoff announcements, hiring freezes and other cost-cutting measures have become increasingly common in the industry amid fears of a looming recession.

    Snap helped set off a wave of anxiety among tech investors when it warned in May that the economy had worsened faster than it expected, cutting into its revenue and profit forecast for the quarter. In late August, Snap announced plans to lay off some 20% of its more than 6,400 global employees, or more than 1,200 staffers.

    Like other tech companies, Snap has had to confront headwinds from rising inflation, a stronger dollar and broader economic jitters that are leading some advertisers and consumers to rethink their spending in the United States and abroad.

    Snap has also faced increasing competition from fast-growing competitors like TikTok, and is still navigating its digital ads business in the wake of privacy changes implemented by Apple that have made it more difficult for marketers to target users with ads.

    There were some glimmers of hope in Snap’s report, including that the number of daily active users grew 19% year-over-year to reach 363 million in the third quarter. Its net loss was also smaller than Wall Street had expected, but the company nonetheless lost $360 million in the quarter, compared to a loss of $72 million in the year prior. Much of that loss ($155 million) came from restructuring charges related to layoffs.

    Snap declined to provide financial guidance for the final three months of the year. In its letter to investors, the company said: “We expect that the operating environment will continue to be challenging in the months ahead and believe the actions we are taking provide a clear path forward for Snap.”

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  • Tech earnings are coming and they probably won’t be pretty | CNN Business

    Tech earnings are coming and they probably won’t be pretty | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN Business
     — 

    After months of layoffs, hiring freezes and other cost-cutting measures, big tech companies are set to provide the most detailed look yet at just how bad things have gotten for their businesses amid fears of a looming recession.

    Snapchat’s parent company, which tanked much of the tech sector in May with a warning about a worsening economy, is set to report third-quarter earnings on Thursday. Apple

    (AAPL)    , Amazon

    (AMZN)    , Facebook

    (FB)    -parent Meta, Microsoft

    (MSFT)    , Twitter

    (TWTR)     and Google-parent Alphabet

    (GOOGL)     will each report earnings results the following week.

    “People probably should be bracing themselves for these results,” said Scott Kessler, technology global sector lead at research firm Third Bridge Group.

    For years, the giants of Silicon Valley seemed almost immune to swings in the global economy. Even amid a pandemic, a trade war and other geopolitical uncertainty, the biggest names in tech only seemed to grow bigger and richer. But like other sectors in recent months, they have faced a variety of new challenges.

    Rampant inflation is eating away at consumers’ paychecks and reducing their ability to spend freely on tech products and services. Increased costs and recession fears have cut down on demand for online advertising and enterprise tech services. And other macroeconomic issues such as continued supply chain snarls and higher interest rates are stunting growth, analysts say.

    To make matters worse, tech companies must also confront the growing strength of the US dollar, which is currently trading at its highest level in two decades. That can mean sales made overseas are not worth as much, according to Angelo Zino, senior industry analyst at CFRA Research. A stronger US dollar may also make hardware products from companies like Apple less affordable for foreign consumers, which, as Zino points out, is problematic given “most of these companies are generating more than half their revenue outside the United States.”

    In a striking shift, most of the big tech companies are now expected to report slowing profit and revenue growth, or even year-over-year declines, for the three months ending in September, according to analyst estimates.

    Amazon

    (AMZN)    , which is projected to be in the best shape, is expected to post essentially flat sales from the year prior. Meta’s revenue is projected to fall 5% year-over-year, marking the company’s second consecutive quarterly revenue decline. Net income at Meta, Amazon

    (AMZN)    , Google and Snap is also expected to be down from the year prior.

    These dour projections come after many tech businesses were already showing signs of weakness in the prior quarter. Meta in July posted its first year-over-year quarterly revenue decline since going public in 2012 in large part due to decreased demand in the online advertising market that fuels its core business. Twitter

    (TWTR)    , Snap, Google, Apple and Microsoft all also reported that shrinking ad budgets had taken some toll on their June quarter earnings.

    “We compare investor negative sentiment on tech today to what we have seen only 2 other times in our decades of covering tech stocks: 2008 and 2001,” Wedbush analyst Dan Ives said in a note to investors this week, referring to two prior recessionary periods.

    Many of the issues currently weighing on tech companies are unlikely to let up anytime soon, which is why industry watchers will be paying close attention to the guidance these companies offer for the rest of 2022.

    “More than anything, people really want a good understanding about what to expect” from the final three months of this year, which has “historically been the most important quarter for these companies,” Kessler said. Investors will likely want to know, for example, whether the online ad market has begun to stabilize ahead of the crucial holiday season.

    Negative results or future outlook could lead to increased pressure on tech firms to focus on their core businesses and cut back on big bets that aren’t expected to quickly product returns. Some of that is already underway.

    In recent weeks, Google announced it would shut down its gaming service Stadia, Amazon said it would stop testing a home delivery robot and Meta shut down its newsletter product, Bulletin.

    Meta may be in a uniquely difficult position. Last October, Facebook rebranded as Meta and ramped up investments to build a future version of the internet called the metaverse, which isn’t expected to be fully realized for years, if ever. But the Wall Street Journal reported last month the company was quietly reducing staff — and some analysts expect more cuts to come.

    “I do think you’ll see them announce cost cuts. I think they’ll reduce the workforce,” Zino said. “Meta is really boxed in a corner here. Their core business is in an environment where they’re not going to see much growth at all … and they don’t have any major revenue center outside of advertising.”

    What a difference a year makes.

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  • The Fed isn’t about to back down from its inflation fight | CNN Business

    The Fed isn’t about to back down from its inflation fight | CNN Business

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    A version of this story first appeared in CNN Business’ Before the Bell newsletter. Not a subscriber? You can sign up right here. You can listen to an audio version of the newsletter by clicking the same link.


    London
    CNN Business
     — 

    Twelve days from now, the Federal Reserve will meet again, and expectations for the central bank’s next moves are firming up. The consensus among investors: Persistently hot inflation means the Fed will need to continue with its string of aggressive interest rate hikes, which is unprecedented in the modern era.

    What’s happening: Markets see a 99% probability that rates will rise by another three-quarters of a percentage point, reaching a range of 3.75% to 4%.

    A hike of that magnitude is now “a given,” Quincy Krosby, chief global strategist for LPL Financial, told clients on Wednesday. “Concern is now focused on December, and whether the Fed is prepared to transition to smaller rate hikes.”

    That’s up from a 60% probability one month ago. So what changed?

    Inflation, mainly. The US Consumer Price Index rose 8.2% in the year to September after rising 8.3% annually in August. While CPI peaked at 9.1% in June, that reading was still uncomfortably elevated and higher than economists had expected.

    The 6.6% annual uptick in shelter costs was of particular concern. It takes longer for housing expenses to come back down than some other categories, since renters tend to sign leases for 12-month periods. The monthly rise in core services costs (excluding energy) was the largest gain in three decades.

    The data underscored the need for the Federal Reserve to stay tough — while a strong jobs report for September will deliver confidence the central bank can do so without causing undue harm to the US economy.

    Fed officials have said as much. In an interview with Reuters on Friday, St. Louis Fed President James Bullard said inflation had become “pernicious,” which means that “frontloading” larger rate hikes is logical.

    The market impact: The S&P 500 kicked off the week with a 3.8% rally before dropping 0.7% on Wednesday. It’s still plodding along in a bear market, about 23% below its January peak. So long as the Fed signals its intention to keep the pressure on, boosting the odds of a US recession, volatility is expected to persist.

    Even relatively solid corporate earnings may not be sufficient to change the direction.

    “So far, the results are decent, but they’re being compared to consensus estimates that have been persistently lowered since early summer,” noted strategists at Charles Schwab.

    Tesla

    (TSLA)     posted a solid quarter of earnings and record revenue, but now says it will likely fall short of its target for a 50% growth in the number of cars it sells this year.

    Quick rewind: As recently as July, the company said it was still aiming for a target of 50% growth from the 936,000 cars it delivered in 2021.

    But with two quarters of disappointing deliveries caused by supply chain issues and Covid-related shutdowns in China, that goal has looked increasingly out of reach, my CNN Business colleague Chris Isidore reports.

    CEO Elon Musk said that the electric carmaker is not struggling with demand.

    “We expect to sell every car that we make, for as far in the future as we can see,” he said on a call with analysts on Wednesday.

    Instead, the company said it would “just” miss its target due to complications with delivery of cars from its factories to customers at the end of the year.

    Shares are down 5% in premarket trading on Thursday. They’ve dropped 37% year-to-date, compared to a 22.5% fall in the S&P 500.

    “This quarter was not roses and rainbows,” said Dan Ives, tech analyst for Wedbush Securities. “Competition is increasing. There are some logistical challenges.”

    America’s business leaders are becoming more pessimistic. The Conference Board recently reported a slide in its CEO confidence index, which it said had hit levels not seen “since the depths of the Great Recession.”

    Of the 136 CEOs who were surveyed, 98% said they were preparing for a US recession over the next 12 to 18 months — and 99% said they were bracing for a recession in Europe.

    Notably, the business community is not being quiet about its concerns.

    Amazon founder Jeff Bezos tweeted Tuesday that “the probabilities in this economy tell you to batten down the hatches.”

    He was responding to a clip of an interview with Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon, who told CNBC that “it’s a time to be cautious.”

    “You have to expect that there’s more volatility on the horizon now,” Solomon said. “That doesn’t mean for sure that we have a really difficult economic scenario. But on the distribution of outcomes, there’s a good chance that we have a recession in the United States.”

    American Airlines

    (AAL)    , AT&T

    (T)    , Dow, Nucor

    (NUE)     and Quest Diagnostics

    (DGX)     report results before US markets open. CSX

    (CSX)    , Snap

    (SNAP)     and Whirlpool

    (WHR)     follow after the close.

    Also today:

    • Initial US jobless claims for last week post at 8:30 a.m. ET.
    • Existing home sales for September follow at 10 a.m. ET.

    Coming tomorrow: Earnings from American Express and Verizon.

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  • How Covid prompted Asian startups to use tech in revolutionizing mental health support | CNN Business

    How Covid prompted Asian startups to use tech in revolutionizing mental health support | CNN Business

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    Singapore
    CNN Business
     — 

    Many Asian countries introduced tougher Covid-19 restrictions than in other continents, a reality that has caused concerns about elevated levels of stress, anxiety and isolation. Now, a number of young entrepreneurs are leveraging technology to provide greater access to mental healthcare there.

    In July, Singapore-based Intellect raised $20 million in its Series A funding, the largest amount raised by a mental health start-up in Asia.

    Founded in 2019, Intellect runs a mobile app that regularly checks in on users’ mood, provides rescue sessions and exercises that tailor to their needs, and allows them to connect with therapists in real time if needed.

    “The traditional form of therapy is in-person and on-on-one, and it is hard to scale,” said Theodoric Chew, the 26-year-old co-founder of Intellect. “When technology comes in, we can scale access to mental care to everyone.”

    The start-up now serves more than 3 million users across the Asia-Pacific region in 15 languages since services began in early 2020.

    Chew said he was inspired to try to popularize mental healthcare after battling a panic attack when he was 16 years old.

    “I saw first-hand how therapy and working with professionals helped me become better,” he said. “On the flip side, I saw a lot of people struggling across the region – not clinically, but not having the right tools or know-how to access care.”

    While Intellect was founded before the pandemic, it quickly grew in popularity as companies became aware of their employees’ mental health as Covid-19 related lockdown and quarantine measures were imposed.

    “A lot of people were thrown into an array of things – anxiety of the pandemic, being locked up, and getting stay-home notices,” he said. “What has changed fundamentally was that mental health is no longer just a nice-to-have element that companies should consider, it’s something that’s needed across the board today.”

    “It does benefit companies in very real ways … because if you’re not feeling well mentally, you tend to not perform as well,” he said.

    Justin Kim, CEO and co-founder of Ami, another digital mental healthcare start-up based in Singapore and Jakarta, agreed that there’s a need to scale mental health offerings.

    “Many companies are spending millions of dollars a year and paying for gym memberships. But why don’t people invest into their mental health the same way? It’s because there are no resources that are being offered to them, that’s just as accessible and affordable,” he added.

    Justin Kim is the CEO and co-founder of Ami. His start-up has received funding from Meta, the owner of Facebook.

    Since the start-up was founded in January this year, it has raised at least $3 million from a number of investors, including Meta, the owner of Facebook.

    Kim’s team has been working on developing an app that would allow users to text or call mental health coaches confidentially at any time – without having to make prior appointments. He said this allows users to seek professional help whenever they need it in the most efficient way.

    Both Chew and Kim are targeting employers in their business models – companies can pay for a subscription and workers will have unlimited access to their services, which are kept private from their bosses.

    Alistair Carmichael, an associate partner at McKinsey & Company, said employers will benefit from better mental health in their workforce. “The impacts of poor mental health outcomes are significant. … If we focus on the employment and organizational level, those impacts can be things like presenteeism, absenteeism, lost productivity, lost engagement and attrition,” he said.

    Depression and anxiety disorders have cost the global economy $1 trillion each year in lost productivity, the World Health Organization has estimated. And a report by the WHO in March showed the global prevalence of anxiety and depression increased by 25% during the first year of the pandemic.

    Chew said Intellect is attempting to close the gap by proactively safeguarding mental wellbeing before symptoms get worse. When employees open the app, the system asks them how they feel at the moment. Mini “rescue sessions” are also provided to users who are experiencing a rough time, while live therapy sessions are also available for those who require them.

    The app that Intellect developed proactively asks users how they feel at the moment. Mini

    The app features numerous learning programs for users to overcome mental roadblocks, such as self-esteem issues, depression or procrastination. A journal function guides users through writing what’s on their mind, while a “mood timeline” keeps track of their stress levels.

    Since launching the app, Intellect has served a number of high-profile corporate clients such as Dell, Foodpanda, and Singaporean communications conglomerate Singtel, Chew said, which allowed Intellect to expand from a team of two to 80.

    Kim, whose start-up has been building a prototype, said employers could also benefit by identifying trends and general concerns among their workforces.

    “With employees’ consent, we do share aggregated levels of data. And that offers employers a birds’ eye perspective of what their employees are actually struggling with, that they need to deep dive on,” he said.

    “But we never identify who said that, because we don’t want employees to feel like this isn’t a safe space where they can freely address concerns they have.”

    Karen Lau, a Hong Kong-based clinical psychologist with mental health initiative Mind HK, said addressing mental health in Asia comes with unique challenges.

    “In Asian contexts, many cultures tend to uphold values such as honor, pride, and a concept of face,” she said. “Mental illness is usually viewed and judged as a sign of weakness and a source of shame for the family.”

    “I think when it comes to mental health, just like your physical health, every issue is easier to prevent than fixed,” Kim said. “If people get out there and admit and celebrate the fact that they’re receiving coaching or services to invest in their mental health, it’s going to normalize the practice.”

    Chew said one of his goals is to break social stigma and build a new mental healthcare system for the Asia-Pacific region.

    “Mental health has long had a stigma across Asia, whereby traditionally we’ve seen it as a clinical issue, a crisis,” he said. “We see mental health just as important as physical health. You and I face things like stress, burnout, sleep issues, and relationship struggle as well. That’s where actually a lot of us should start working on our mental wellbeing.”

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  • The US is spending billions to boost chip manufacturing. Will it be enough? | CNN Business

    The US is spending billions to boost chip manufacturing. Will it be enough? | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    The United States government is pulling out all the stops to boost domestic semiconductor manufacturing, injecting billions of dollars into the beleaguered sector and flexing all policy muscles available to give it a leg up over competition from Asia.

    When the pandemic hit in 2020, firms initially curtailed orders for these micro building blocks needed for smartphones, computers, cars and many other products. Then, as people began working from home, demand soared for information and communication technology – and the chips that power them. A chip shortage ensued, and auto plants had to stop production because they could not obtain chips. This contributed to skyrocketing new and used vehicle prices, a major driver of the painful inflation Americans were feeling.

    In a statement earlier this year, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo dubbed the semiconductor shortage a “national security” issue because it exposed the dependency of US manufacturing on imports of semiconductors from abroad. Chips also serve critical military applications and are necessary for cybersecurity tools.

    The Biden administration and lawmakers rallied in response, passing the CHIPS and Science Act into law in August. The legislation includes $52 billion to strengthen semiconductor manufacturing in the United States. Of this, $39 billion is earmarked for manufacturing incentives, $13.2 billion for research and development and workforce training, and $500 million for international information communications technology security and semiconductor supply chain activities.

    Against that backdrop, several prominent companies have announced significant investments in US manufacturing. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), a powerhouse in the industry committed at least $12 billion to build a semiconductor fabrication plant in Arizona, with production expected to begin in 2024. At the start of the year, Intel said it planned to build a $20 billion semiconductor manufacturing plant in Ohio, and groundbreaking for the new chip plant took place just last month. And this month, Micron said it would invest up to $100 billion over the next two decades to build a massive semiconductor factory in upstate New York.

    In a flurry of tweets earlier this month President Joe Biden pledged: “America is going to lead the way in microchip manufacturing.”

    But the US has much catching up to do. US-based fabs, or chip manufacturing plants, currently only account for 12% of the world’s modern semiconductor manufacturing capacity, according to data from the Semiconductor Industry Association trade group. Some 75% of the world’s modern chip manufacturing is now concentrated in East Asia – a majority of that in geopolitically-vulnerable Taiwan. And even with these renewed efforts, the United States does not currently have the same talent and supply chain pipeline as some Asian markets do to support a robust homegrown industry.

    To complicate matters, the surge in public and private investments comes at a questionable time, as concerns over the global chip supply shortage have eased. Pandemic-related supply chain blockages are letting up somewhat and a worsening economic outlook has hampered demand.

    In an earnings call last week, TSMC CEO C.C. Wei warned it expects the “semiconductor industry will likely decline” in 2023. “TSMC also is not immune,” Wei added, but said it expects “to be more resilient than the overall semiconductor industry.”

    Promoting semiconductor manufacturing in the United States now may risk leading to overcapacity and excess supply. And with demand weakening, it isn’t immediately clear if government subsidies will be enough to overcome other obstacles the country faces in developing a competitive semiconductor manufacturing hub.

    To understand the latest US efforts, it’s important to be clear on where the country stands – not just in the overall chip industry, but in relation to specific, valuable pockets of it.

    “The US is very unlikely to increase its share of global production because even as the US brings online more fab capacity; TSMC, Intel and others are announcing fabs in other places and building them even more quickly,” said Scott Kennedy, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

    “But I don’t necessarily think that’s really a huge problem,” he added. He noted that measuring manufacturing based on pure output lumps together the lower-end chips and the cutting-edge, higher-end chips that are a more realistic and significant measure of chip manufacturing success. “The US does need to expand chip production for a specific kind of chips, that are directly related to American national security,” he said.

    The Biden administration last Friday imposed sweeping new export curbs designed to restrict China’s access to advanced semiconductors made with US equipment, in a move that targets the manufacturing of advanced weapons systems.

    While only “about 10% to 14% of chips sold [globally] come from US manufacturing facilities,” according to Columbia Business School professor Dan Wang, the United States does have other strengths. “In terms of design expertise, a lot of that still resides in the U.S.”

    Technicians inspect a piece of equipment during a tour of the Micron Technology automotive chip manufacturing plant Feb. 11, 2022, in Manassas, Va.

    Still, the shortcomings are real. “When it comes to foundries, which are the manufacturing side of semiconductors, the U.S. has not really been a major player for many, many years,” said Wang. While it very much used to be, manufacturing began migrating to Asia during the 1980s and ’90s, Wang said. “One of the big reasons for this is that the cost of labor is lower, and it’s just far cheaper to produce at a very massive scale, integrated circuits and chips, in those parts of the world,” Wang added. Morris Chang, the founder of TSMC, said that it costs 50% more to manufacture chips in the U.S. than in Taiwan.

    Now, simply having the facilities already set up to produce or expand chip manufacturing gives Asia a big advantage. Wang said he thinks that might be why you see the U.S. “axe-throwing so much money at companies to set up plants in the United States.” It’s not just to respond to demand and become more self-reliant, “but also because you need to get these things up and running very, very quickly, in order to even be in the race at all.”

    Building new chip fabs itself is a costly and time-consuming endeavor. “A modern fab is something like half a million square feet,” said Bob Johnson, an analyst at Gartner, and requires “monstrous clean rooms that have massive air handling capabilities.” He added that these massive buildings require “exceptionally strong foundations.” As he put it, “you cannot have any vibration in the fab because it can wreck the manufacturing process.”

    In addition, a single extreme ultraviolet lithography machine, required to map out the circuitry of chips, costs about $150 million, and Reuters reports “a cutting-edge chip plant needs 9-18 of these machines.”

    Moreover, the manufacturing of semiconductors requires a range of specialized inputs, including pure chemicals such as fluorinated polyimide, and etching gas, chip etching machines, and more. In places like Taiwan and Fukuoka, Japan, supply chains have developed where the providers of these products are located close to the semiconductor factories. There are also one or two companies that produce vital inputs and that have been trustworthy suppliers to companies in Asia for a long time. This is not yet the case in places like Arizona and Ohio, where plans to build massive chip manufacturing plants are already underway.

    You also need a labor force willing and able to do the work.

    In the United States, there is both a shortage of new graduates and experienced workers with the technical and engineering knowledge necessary to manufacture semiconductors. Many of those who might have the right experience instead prefer to work in trendier industries, according to Kennedy.

    “If we were to today, snap our fingers and have ten new fabs with the world’s leading chips, we probably wouldn’t have enough people to staff them,” Kennedy said. “That’s the biggest bottleneck to the expansion of America’s fab capacity, not capital.”

    Intel has tried to establish close relations with Arizona State University to recruit engineers, but it is unclear whether it and other companies building fabs in America will be able to hire enough trained engineers and technicians. If not, even the billions of dollars committed by the private and public sector may not be enough to reshore semiconductor manufacturing.

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  • With product innovation lagging, Silicon Valley bets on a fresh coat of paint | CNN Business

    With product innovation lagging, Silicon Valley bets on a fresh coat of paint | CNN Business

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    CNN Business
     — 

    When Google unveiled its new Pixel 7 smartphone lineup earlier this month, the devices looked largely the same as the year prior. But there was at least one subtle change: the colors.

    Whereas the Pixel 6 had come in sorta seafoam (a light blue) and kinda coral (a pale pink), the Pixel 7 now comes in lemongrass (a green) and snow (off-white). Google has also swapped the stormy black (a stormy black) option on the Pixel 6 for obsidian (still black) on the Pixel 7.

    The emphasis on a new color palette for devices isn’t unique to Google. As tech companies showed off their latest smartphones, tablets and laptops at splashy press events over the last two months, many of the products had only limited changes on the outside but boasted elaborately named color options.

    Microsoft launched its Surface Pro 9 tablet in shades such as sapphire (blue) and forest (green), and its Surface Laptop 5 comes in metal (silver), sage (green) and sandstone (tan). Apple’s new iPhone 14 lineup comes in Starlight (a champagne color) and midnight (black), and the company has previously unveiled two shades of green (“green” and “alpine green”) and purple (“purple” and “deep purple”).

    Purple, in particular, has been having a moment in tech. Earlier this summer, Samsung unveiled a “bora purple” color for its flagship Galaxy S22 smartphone — the word “bora” in Korean translates to “purple,” effectively dubbing the color “purple purple.”

    At a time when many of the biggest upgrades to smartphones and other gadgets are under the hood, drumming up consumer interest with a fresh coat of paint may be easier in some ways than getting people excited about faster processors.

    “The quality of all phones is so high, it’s getting difficult for consumers to even notice what ‘better’ is anymore,” said Kelly Goldsmith, professor of marketing at Vanderbilt University. “As a result, tech brands need to adopt new strategies. Introducing different, niche colors is just one way to do it.”

    For consumers, there can be a real value to a broader range of colors. “Devices — whether they’re smartphones, wearables, PCs, or tablets — are an extension of the user’s persona, both in terms of who they are and who they aspire to be,” said Ramon Llamas, an analyst at IDC Research. “Introducing a different color is a way for devices and their owners to distinguish themselves.”

    But just as basic black, white, gray and silver are the top colors in the automobile industry, these colors tend to resonate most with smartphone owners, according to Peggy Van Allen, a color anthropologist for the Color Marketing Group. Still, she noted, a shift has been underway toward stronger colors.

    The Pixel 7 comes in obsidian, snow and lemongrass. The Pixel 7 Pro is available in obsidian, snow and hazel.

    Apple famously brought “Bondi Blue” to its Mac line in the late 1990s after Steve Jobs’ return to the company (it was a huge success). More recently, it created a splash with the introduction of the rose gold iPhone in 2015.

    “Warm metallics went away and then came back in style, and rose gold really reached mass appeal,” Van Allen said. “It peaked at a time when social media influencers were gobbling it up, and the popularity of Millennial Pink also helped to usher it in.”

    Both pinks lasted longer than most forecasters would have predicted, she said. “It was carried along by other trends of the time that enforced the desire for personalization and female empowerment.”

    The names of more recent colors have become increasingly esoteric in the last year or so. This is also likely a strategic play, according to Barbara Kahn, a professor of marketing at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.

    “Color names that are descriptive but odd can spark positive reactions because the consumer likes being able to ‘solve the puzzle,’” she said. “Color names that are ambiguous also spark attention and customers work to figure out what the meaning might be.”

    But for all the varied colors out there, it’s important to remember customers still overwhelmingly keep their phones in a case, essentially covering up the color that once helped entice them to upgrade.

    “There are some transparent cases available from both first and third parties,” said Eric Abbruzzese, research director at market research firm ABI Research, “but at least anecdotally, they don’t seem as popular as regular cases.”

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  • Stocks try for another rally as big banks report earnings | CNN Business

    Stocks try for another rally as big banks report earnings | CNN Business

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    Retail sales data shows consumers are growing cautious about spending amid biting inflation

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  • High levels of toxic chemical found in sports bras, watchdog warns | CNN Business

    High levels of toxic chemical found in sports bras, watchdog warns | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN Business
     — 

    New testing on a variety of popular branded sports bras and athletic wear has revealed high levels of BPA, a chemical compound that’s used to make certain types of plastic and can lead to harmful health effects such as asthma, cardiovascular disease and obesity.

    Sports bras sold by Athleta, PINK, Asics, The North Face, Brooks, All in Motion, Nike, and FILA were all tested for BPA in the past six months, and the results showed the clothing could expose wearers to up to 22 times the safe limit of BPA, based on standards set in California, according to the Center for Environmental Health. The CEH, which conducted the testing, is a non-profit consumer advocacy group focused on exposing the presence of toxic chemicals in consumer products.

    Under California law — specifically Proposition 65, enacted in 1986 — the maximum allowable dose level for BPA via skin exposure is 3 micrograms per day.

    The group also tested athletic shirts from brands that included The North Face, Brooks, Mizuno, Athleta, New Balance, and Reebok and found similar results.

    The CEH said Wednesday it has sent legal notices to the companies, which will have 60 days to work with the center to remedy the violations before the group files a complaint in California state court requiring them to do so.

    To date, the watchdog said its investigations have found BPA only in polyester-based clothing containing spandex. “We want brands to reformulate their products to remove all bisphenols including BPA. In the interim, we recommend limiting the time you spend in your activewear by changing after your workout,” the group said.

    Athleta, Nike, Reebok, The North Face and Victoria’s Secret (which owns PINK) did not immediately provide a comment.

    BPA (Bisphenol A) is found in a large number of everyday products, from water bottles and canned foods to toys and flooring. In adults, exposure to BPA has been linked to diabetes, heart disease, cancer, obesity and erectile dysfunction.

    Premature death was also associated with BPA exposure, a 2020 study found. More recently, BPA has also been linked to asthma in school-age girls.

    “People are exposed to BPA through ingestion, from eating food or drinking water from containers that have leached BPA, or by absorption through skin,” Kaya Allan Sugerman, CEH’s illegal toxic threats program director, said in a statement.

    “Studies have shown that BPA can be absorbed through skin and end up in the bloodstream after handling receipt paper for seconds or a few minutes at a time. Sports bras and athletic shirts are worn for hours at a time, and you are meant to sweat in them, so it is concerning to be finding such high levels of BPA in our clothing,” Allan Sugerman said.

    Over the past year, the group has asked more than 90 companies, including Walgreens and socks and sleepwear brand Hypnotic Hats, to reformulate their products to remove all bisphenols, including BPA. Some have already agreed to do so.

    “Even low levels of exposure [to BPA] during pregnancy have been associated with a variety of health problems in offspring,” said Dr. Jimena Díaz Leiva, science director with CEH.

    Although CEH litigates under California’s Clean Drinking Water and Toxics Enforcement Act of 1986, it says the repercussions of its settlements extend beyond California “as it is most often economically infeasible for companies to reformulate for just the California market.”

    “Our legal action has been successful in pushing entire industries to remove certain chemicals from products like children’s candy or toys,” the group said in a statement to CNN Business. “These cases not only serve to protect California consumers but also consumers throughout the country.”

    – CNN’s Sandee LaMotte contributed to this story

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  • White-collar workers are feeling the brunt of the Fed’s rate hikes. Here’s why | CNN Business

    White-collar workers are feeling the brunt of the Fed’s rate hikes. Here’s why | CNN Business

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    A version of this story first appeared in CNN Business’ Before the Bell newsletter. Not a subscriber? You can sign up right here. You can listen to an audio version of the newsletter by clicking the same link.


    New York
    CNN Business
     — 

    September’s hotly anticipated jobs data ended up cooling markets on Friday. Stocks fell sharply as investors evaluated the report, which showed more jobs than expected were added to the US economy and indicated that more pain-inflicting interest rate hikes from the Federal Reserve lie ahead.

    But a breakdown of the numbers shows that the Fed’s plans to weaken the labor market to fight persistent inflation may already be working, just not for everybody.

    White-collar office workers appear to be feeling the brunt of the Fed’s actions: The financial and business sector saw a large decline in employment last month. Legal and advertising services also experienced drops. Service and construction workers, meanwhile, are still thriving.

    What’s happening: The US economy added 263,000 jobs in September, higher than analyst estimates of 250,000. The unemployment rate came in at 3.5%, down from 3.7% in August.

    Leading the gain in jobs was the leisure and hospitality industry, which added 83,000 jobs in September — and employment in food services and drinking places made up 60,000 of those jobs alone. Manufacturing and construction also came in hot, adding 22,000 and 19,000 jobs, respectively.

    The largest non-governmental losses in jobs came from the financial industry, which shed 8,000 between August and September. Large banks hire in cycles, extending offers to recent graduates in the early fall months. That makes this September’s drop particularly significant.

    Business support services — such as telemarketing, accounting and administrative and clerical jobs — are also bleeding jobs. The sector lost 12,000 in September. Meanwhile, legal services lost 5,000 jobs, and advertising services also dropped 5,000 jobs.

    What it means: The Federal Reserve’s hawkish policy appears to be cooling certain parts of the economy, but not others. Finance workers are likely beginning to worry as their industry depends on stock and lending markets which have been particularly hard hit by Fed actions.

    Friday’s numbers indicate that we’re beginning to see that impact in the employment data.

    What remains to be seen is whether the Fed can cool the economy just by loosening employment in white-collar industries or if these losses will trickle down to other industries, hurting lower-income workers.

    Coming up: Earnings season begins in earnest this week with big banks like JPMorgan, Citigroup

    (C)    , Morgan Stanley

    (MS)     and BlackRock

    (BLK)     reporting. Investors will be watching closely for any guidance on hiring and layoff plans.

    Two key inflation indicators, PPI and CPI are also set to be released. Expect markets to react poorly if inflation comes in hot.

    A panel of top US economists just released its economic outlook for the next year, and it’s not great.

    The panel of 45 forecasters, led by the National Association for Business Economics (NABE), said they expected slower growth, higher inflation, higher interest rates, and weakening employment in both 2022 and 2023 than they previously expected.

    Most of the worries come down to the Federal Reserve’s interest rate policy.

    “More than three-quarters of respondents believe the odds are 50-50 or less that the economy will achieve a ‘soft landing’,” said NABE Vice President Julia Coronado. “More than half the panelists indicate that the greatest downside risk to the U.S. economic outlook is too much monetary tightness.”

    NABE panelists downgraded their median forecast for real GDP for the fourth quarter of 2022 to a 0.1% increase, compared to a 1.8% increase in the May 2022 survey. The vast majority of respondents placed more than a 25% probability of a recession occurring in 2023, with the most likely start date in the first quarter.

    The latest report comes as a growing number of economists are predicting that recession is imminent. Former US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers told CNN on Thursday that it’s “more likely than not” the US will enter a recession, calling it a consequence of the “excesses the economy has been through.”

    Friday’s jobs report showed that the share of workers telecommuting or working from home because of the pandemic ticked lower — falling to just 5.2% in September from 6.5% in August.

    Fully remote work in the United States, which many predicted would remain the norm long after the pandemic, appears to be edging away, especially as the job market loosens for white collar workers and employees have less leverage.

    Last week, a KPMG survey of US-based CEOs found that two-thirds believed in-office work would be the norm within the next three years.

    Still, it may not be enough to help an ailing commercial real estate market, where the outlook is dire. New York City office properties declined by nearly 45% in value in 2020 and are forecast to remain 39% below their pre-pandemic levels long-term as hybrid policies continue, according to a recent study from the National Bureau of Economic Research.

    Looking forward: The Bureau of Labor Statistics has noted that while hybrid work may still be popular, Covid-19 is no longer fueling work from home trends. The October report will rephrase its telework questions to remove references to the pandemic.

    Since May 2020, each jobs report has asked: “At any time in the last four weeks, did you telework or work at home for pay because of the Coronavirus pandemic?”

    In May 2020, 35.4% answered yes.

    Starting next month, the question will be revised. “At any time in the last week did you telework or work at home for pay?” it will ask, limiting the timeline and eliminating any reference to the pandemic.

    The US bond market is closed for Columbus Day/Indigenous Peoples’ Day.

    Coming later this week:

    ▸ Third quarter earnings season begins. Expect reports from big banks like JPMorgan Chase

    (JPM)    , Wells Fargo

    (WFC)    , Citigroup

    (C)    , Morgan Stanley

    (MS)    , PNC

    (PNC)     and US Bancorp

    (USB)     and consumer staples like Pepsi

    (PEP)    , Walgreen

    (WBA)    s and Domino’s

    (DMPZF)    . 

    ▸ CPI and PPI, two closely watched measures of inflation in the US are also due to be released. 

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  • Elon Musk’s bumpy road to possibly owning Twitter: A timeline | CNN Business

    Elon Musk’s bumpy road to possibly owning Twitter: A timeline | CNN Business

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    CNN Business
     — 

    A board seat accepted and then rejected. A stunning $44 billion takeover offer with uncertain financing. And a surprise early morning tweet putting the deal on hold, temporarily.

    Even by the standards of Twitter, a company that has known plenty of chaos and dysfunction in its history, the weeks-long effort by billionaire Elon Musk to buy the company has proven to be uniquely tumultuous – and there’s no clear end in sight.

    Should the deal go through, it would place the world’s richest man in charge of one of the world’s most influential social media platforms. The acquisition has the potential to upend not just Twitter itself but politics, media and the tech industry. The Tesla and SpaceX CEO has repeatedly stressed that his goal is to bolster what he calls “free speech” on the platform, by which he means all legal speech that complies with local laws in the markets where Twitter operates. He has also said he would reverse Twitter’s ban of former President Donald Trump.

    But the attempt by Musk, a wildly successful entrepreneur with a history of erratic behavior, to buy Twitter has been viewed with some skepticism from the start. On the day he made his offer, Musk said: “I’m not sure I’ll actually be able to acquire it.” Some have questioned how he would finance the deal, especially as shares of Tesla

    (TSLA)    , which he’s partially using to back his financing of the Twitter deal, and the broader tech sector have declined in the weeks since.

    After Musk recently said he was temporarily pausing the deal so he could assess the amount of spam and fake accounts, it prompted speculation that the billionaire might be looking to renegotiate the deal – or back out of it entirely. His actions in the days that followed only reinforced that thinking.

    Here is a look back at the many twists and turns in one of the most high-profile tech deals in recent memory.

    Musk starts quietly buying up Twitter shares, building his stake in the company. But it would be months before he disclosed this fact to the public.

    Musk’s stake in Twitter tops 5%, but that fact is not disclosed until the following month. Musk was obligated to disclose his stake within 10 days of crossing the 5% threshold, but waited 21 days to do so. During that time, he continued building up his stake.

    The billionaire begins to make pointed statements about the platform from his account. “Twitter algorithm should be open source,” he wrote, with a poll for users to vote “yes” or “no.”

    The following day, Musk tweets out another poll to his followers: “Free speech is essential to a functioning democracy. Do you believe Twitter rigorously adheres to this principle?”

    Musk reaches out to Twitter cofounder and former CEO Jack Dorsey to “discuss the future direction of social media,” according to a company filing later put out by the company. The two tech founders are known to have a bit of a billionaire bromance on and off Twitter.

    Twitter’s board and some of its leadership team meet with representatives from Wilson Sonsini, a law firm, and J.P. Morgan to discuss the possibility of Musk joining the company’s board, according a later securities filing. Dorsey is said to have told the board that “he and Mr. Musk were friends,” according to the filing.

    In the meeting, the Twitter board discussed wanting Musk to agree to “‘standstill’ provisions”,” according to the filing. This would effectively “limit his public statements regarding Twitter, including the making of unsolicited public proposals to acquire Twitter (but not private proposals) without the prior consent of the Twitter Board.”

    Musk is revealed to be Twitter’s largest individual shareholder, with a more than 9% stake in the company.

    News of the purchase sends shares of the social media company soaring more than 20% in early trading and kicks off a wave of speculation about how Musk might push for changes on the platform.

    Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal announces Musk will join Twitter’s board of directors. “Through conversations with Elon in recent weeks, it became clear to us that he would bring great value to our Board,” Agrawal says in a post on Twitter.

    As part of the appointment, Musk agrees not to acquire more than 14.9% of the company’s shares while he remains on the board. His term on the board is set to go through 2024, according to a regulatory filing.

    Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal (left) and former CEO Jack Dorsey in an undated photo.

    Agrawal announces that Musk has decided not to join the board after all. “I believe this is for the best,” Agrawal writes in a letter to the Twitter team.

    The reversal opens the door for Musk to pursue a greater stake in the company – and frees him to tweet his many thoughts about the company.

    Musk stuns the industry by making an offer to acquire all the shares in Twitter he does not own at a valuation of $41.4 billion. The cash offer represents a 38% premium over the company’s closing price on April 1, the last trading day before Musk disclosed that he had become the company’s biggest shareholder.

    “I invested in Twitter as I believe in its potential to be the platform for free speech around the globe, and I believe free speech is a societal imperative for a functioning democracy. However, since making my investment I now realize the company will neither thrive nor serve this societal imperative in its current form. Twitter needs to be transformed as a private company,” Musk writes in his offer letter. “Twitter has extraordinary potential. I will unlock it.”

    Twitter’s board of directors adopts a “poison pill” provision, a limited-term shareholder rights plan that potentially makes it harder for Musk to acquire the company.

    Tesla CEO Elon Musk speaks during the official opening of the new Tesla electric car manufacturing plant on March 22, 2022 near Gruenheide, Germany.

    Musk lines up $46.5 billion in financing for the deal, including two debt commitment letters from Morgan Stanley and other unnamed financial institutions and one equity commitment letter from himself, according to a regulatory filing.

    The billionaire also reveals that he has not received a formal response from Twitter a week after his acquisition offer. He said he is “seeking to negotiate” a definite acquisition agreement and “is prepared to begin such negotiations immediately” — an apparent reversal from his statement in his acquisition offer letter that it would be his “best and final” offer.

    Although he is the richest person in the world, much of Musk’s wealth is tied up in Tesla stock, and some followers of the company speculate that it could be challenging for Musk to raise debt against the historically volatile stock.

    Twitter announces that it has agreed to sell itself to Musk in a deal valued at around $44 billion. At a conference later in the day, Musk describes his offer to buy Twitter in characteristically sweeping terms as being about “the future of civilization,” not just making money.

    At an all-hands meeting that afternoon, Twitter employees raise questions about everything from what the deal would mean for their compensation to whether former US President Donald Trump would be let back on the platform.

    Filings reveal Musk sold $8.5 billion of his Tesla stock in the three days after Twitter board agreed to the sale for an average of $883.09 per share. The filings did not disclose the reason for the sale, but Musk appeared to be raising funds to buy Twitter.

    Tesla cars sit in a dealership lot on March 28, 2022 in Chicago, Illinois.

    Musk raises another $7 billion in financing for the deal. The new investors include Oracle founder Larry Ellison, cryptocurrency platform Binance and venture capital firm Sequoia Capital, according to a filing.

    Musk aims to increase Twitter’s annual revenue to $26.4 billion by 2028, up from $5 billion last year, according to a New York Times report, citing Musk’s pitch deck presented to investors. To achieve that lofty goal, Musk intends to bolster Twitter’s subscription revenue and build up a payments business while decreasing the company’s reliance on advertising sales, according to the report.

    Musk confirms what many have assumed for weeks: he would reverse Twitter’s Trump ban if his deal to buy the company is completed.

    “I do think it was not correct to ban Donald Trump, I think that was a mistake,” Musk said. “I would reverse the perma-ban. … Banning Trump from Twitter didn’t end Trump’s voice, it will amplify it among the right and this is why it’s morally wrong and flat out stupid.”

    Former President Donald Trump looks at his phone during a roundtable with governors on the reopening of America's small businesses, in the State Dining Room of the White House in Washington, June 18, 2020.

    Twitter confirms to CNN Business that the platform is pausing most hiring and backfills, except for “business critical” roles, and pulling back on other non-labor costs ahead of the acquisition. In addition, Twitter says general manager of consumer, Kayvon Beykpour, and revenue product lead, Bruce Falck, are leaving the company.

    Musk tweets that the deal is on hold, linking to a Reuters report from nearly two weeks earlier, about Twitter’s most recent disclosure about its amount of spam and fake accounts. The figure cited in the report, however, is in line with prior quarterly disclosures.

    “Twitter deal temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of users,” Musk tweeted.

    Shares of the social media site plummet after Musk’s announcement, dropping more than 10% at market open. Two hours after announcing the hold, Musk says he remains set on purchasing Twitter. “Still committed to acquisition,” he wrote.

    Later in the day, Musk says his team is testing Twitter’s numbers and “picked 100 as the sample size number, because that is what Twitter uses to calculate

    Musk tweets out that Twitter’s legal team accused him of breaking a nondisclosure agreement when the billionaire revealed the platform’s sample size for automated user checks is allegedly just 100 users.

    “Twitter legal just called to complain that I violated their NDA by revealing the bot check sample size is 100! This actually happened,” wrote Musk.

    The standoff over bot accounts continues as Musk exchanges a series of tweets with Agrawal over the issue. After Agrawal carefully explains how Twitter attempts to combat and measure spam accounts, Musk responds with a poop emoji.

    Musk follows up with a somewhat more thoughtful question. “So how do advertisers know what they’re getting for their money?” Musk asked. “This is fundamental to the financial health of Twitter,” he added.

    Musk announces that his acquisition of Twitter “cannot move forward” until he sees more information about the prevalence of spam accounts, claiming that the social media platform falsified numbers in filings. Without citing a source, he claims in a tweet that Twitter is “20% fake/spam accounts” and suggests Twitter’s previous filings with the SEC were misleading.

    Later in the day, Musk posts a poll to his Twitter followers: “Twitter claims that >95% of daily active users are real, unique humans. Does anyone have that experience?” before calling on the SEC to evaluate the platform’s numbers. “Hello @SECGov, anyone home?” Musk tweets, in an apparent attempt to get the regulator to look into the matter.

    In a statement, Twitter says it remains “committed to completing the transaction on the agreed price and terms as promptly as practicable.” Later, the company says it intends to “enforce the merger agreement.”

    In a letter to Twitter’s head of legal, Musk threatens to walk away from his purchase of the platform, alleging that Twitter is “actively resisting and thwarting his information rights” as outlined by the deal.

    In the letter, an attorney for Musk accuses the social media company of breaching the merger agreement by not providing the data he has requested on Twitter spam bots, stating that the lack of information gives him a right “not to consummate the transaction” and “to terminate the merger agreement.”

    Musk moved to terminate the acquisition agreement. A lawyer representing him claimed in a letter to Twitter’s top lawyer that the company is “in material breach of multiple provisions” of the deal over its alleged failure to provide all the data Musk says he needs to evaluate the number of spam and fake accounts on the platform.

    “For nearly two months, Mr. Musk has sought the data and information necessary to ‘make an independent assessment of the prevalence of fake or spam accounts on Twitter’s platform,’” the letter reads. “This information is fundamental to Twitter’s business and financial performance and is necessary to consummate the transactions contemplated by the Merger Agreement. … Twitter has failed or refused to provide this information.”

    Twitter was not having it.

    “The Twitter Board is committed to closing the transaction on the price and terms agreed upon with Mr. Musk and plans to pursue legal action to enforce the merger agreement,” Twitter board chair Bret Taylor said in a tweet Friday, echoing earlier statements by the company that it planned to follow through with the deal. “We are confident we will prevail in the Delaware Court of Chancery.”

    Twitter sued the Tesla billionaire in Delaware court in an attempt to force him to complete the deal.

    The 62-page lawsuit, sprinkled with memes, tweets and a poop emoji, effectively highlighted the bizarre spectacle of the deal from the start. The company paints Musk as a non-serious potential owner — alleging at one point that he has “disdain” for the company, and at another saying, “Musk’s strategy is … a model of bad faith” — while seeking to compel him to become its owner. (Twitter’s board has an obligation to its shareholders to try to see the deal through if they believe it is in their best interest. The dispute could also end in a settlement.)

    Twitter’s lawsuit against Musk over his move to terminate their $44 billion acquisition agreement will go to trial on Oct. 17 and run for five days, a Delaware judge ruled.

    The decision came after Judge Kathaleen St. Jude McCormick, who is overseeing the case, previously ruled in Twitter’s favor that the proceedings could be expedited and take place in October. Twitter initially pushed for an October 10th start.

    Musk’s legal team had asked for the trial to take place in 2023. Twitter’s legal team argued it was necessary to expedite the case in order to limit the “harm” to its business and to ensure the deal can be completed before Oct. 24, the “drop dead” date by which the two sides had previously agreed to close the deal.

    Peiter

    Twitter whistleblower Peiter “Mudge” Zatko testifies before Congress in his first public appearance after his bombshell allegations against the social media company were reported in August by CNN and The Washington Post.

    In a whistleblower disclosure sent to multiple lawmakers and government agencies in July, Zatko accused Twitter of failing to safeguard users’ personal information and of exposing the most sensitive parts of its operation to too many people, including potentially to foreign spies. Zatko — who was Twitter’s head of security from November 2020 until he was fired in January — also alleged company executives, including CEO Parag Agrawal, have deliberately misled regulators and the company’s own board about its shortcomings.

    Zatko claimed in his testimony that Twitter is extremely vulnerable to being penetrated and exploited by agents of foreign governments, as well as detailed some of the personal information Twitter collects on users and alleged that the company does not know where the majority of its collected data goes.

    Days earlier, a judge allowed Musk’s legal team to add arguments based on the whistleblower disclosure to its case.

    Musk sends a letter to Twitter proposing to complete the deal as originally signed for $54.20 per share, citing people familiar with the negotiations. News of the letter, revealed in a security filing the next day, sends Twitter stock surging more than 20%, approaching the deal price for the first time in months.

    Such an agreement could bring to an end a contentious, months-long back and forth between Musk and Twitter that has caused massive uncertainty for employees, investors and users of one of the world’s most influential social media platforms.

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  • Micron to invest up to $100 billion to build chip factory in upstate New York | CNN Business

    Micron to invest up to $100 billion to build chip factory in upstate New York | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    Micron on Tuesday said it would invest up to $100 billion over the next two decades to build a massive semiconductor factory in upstate New York. The move comes in the wake of US government efforts to boost domestic chip production.

    The Idaho-based firm said it plans to build the “largest semiconductor fabrication facility in the history of the United States” in Clay, New York. Micron said the new facility, about 15 miles from Syracuse, will create nearly 50,000 New York jobs over the next two decades.

    The initial investment of $20 billion is planned “by the end of this decade,” the company said. Site preparation work will start in 2023, with construction slated to begin in 2024 and production output expected to “ramp up in the latter half of the decade, gradually increasing in line with industry demand trends,” according to the company.

    Shares for Micron rose nearly 5% Tuesday after the news was announced.

    In August, President Joe Biden signed into law the CHIPS and Science Act, which aimed to boost American chip manufacturing with a more than $200 billion investment over the next five years. The package included some $52 billion for chip manufacturing and research, providing companies incentives to build, expand and modernize US facilities and equipment. The legislation aimed to lessen a US dependency on offshore chip production from Asia, and came in the wake of a global shortage of these building blocks required for smartphones, autos and computers.

    In a statement Tuesday, Micron President and CEO Sanjay Mehrotra said he is “grateful to President Biden and his Administration for making the CHIPS and science Act a priority.”

    “This historic leading-edge memory megafab in Central New York will deliver benefits beyond the semiconductor industry by strengthening U.S. technology leadership as well as economic and national security, driving American innovation and competitiveness for decades to come,” Mehrotra added. (A fab refers to a semiconductor fabrication plant).

    The company said that the $5.5 billion in incentives from the state of New York over the life of the project, alongside anticipated federal grants and tax credits from the CHIPS and Science Act, “are critical to support hiring and capital investment.”

    New York Governor Kathy Hochul touted Micron’s investment in a statement, saying it “marks the start of something transformative in scale and possibility for our state’s economic future.” She added that this investment, which is the largest private-sector investment in state history, will help “usher the state into another Industrial Revolution.”

    Getting new semiconductor factories up and running in the US can take years. Ahead of the CHIPS legislation, the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company committed at least $12 billion to build a semiconductor fabrication plant in Arizona, with production expected to begin in 2024.

    Intel announced plans to build a $20 billion semiconductor manufacturing plant in Ohio at the beginning of the year, but then warned that this project could be delayed if lawmakers did not pass the CHIPS legislation. Groundbreaking for the new Intel chip plant took place just last month. Biden traveled to Ohio to celebrate the occasion.

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  • US Postal Service proposes new prices ‘to offset’ inflation | CNN Politics

    US Postal Service proposes new prices ‘to offset’ inflation | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The US Postal Service on Friday proposed increased prices “to offset the rise in inflation,” according to a statement from the agency.

    The price hikes, which have been approved by the Governors of the U.S. Postal Service, include a three-cent increase to purchase a stamp and a four-cent increase to mail a postcard. The changes amount to a 4.2% price increase for first class mail, according to USPS.

    The proposal must now be reviewed by the Postal Regulatory Commission.

    The announcement from the US Postal Service comes as consumers around the nation continue to grapple with rising prices for groceries, gas and other necessities. The US Postal Service has publicly struggled financially in recent years, and President Joe Biden signed a law earlier this year to overhaul the USPS’ finances and allow the agency to modernize its service.

    “As operating expenses continue to rise, these price adjustments provide the Postal Service with much needed revenue to achieve the financial stability sought by its Delivering for America 10-year plan,” US Postal Service said on Friday. “The prices of the U.S. Postal Service remain among the most affordable in the world.”

    Unlike other government agencies, the USPS generally does not receive taxpayer funding, and instead must rely on revenue from stamps and package deliveries to support itself.

    The Postal Service is also looking to increase fees for P.O. Box rentals, money orders and the cost to purchase insurance when mailing an item.

    If approved by the Postal Regulatory Commission the changes would take effect January 22, 2023, after midnight.

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  • Amazon debuts new shopping portal for customers on government assistance | CNN Business

    Amazon debuts new shopping portal for customers on government assistance | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN Business
     — 

    Amazon on Monday launched a new shopping portal called Amazon Access that is designed for shoppers receiving government assistance.

    The shopfront features SNAP EBT on Amazon, information about the Amazon Layaway program that all shoppers can use to pay for their orders over time and spotlights discounts and coupons for any customer on essential grocery items.

    Amazon already offers some services for low-income customers, such as discounted Amazon Prime membership. It also accepts Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or SNAP benefits for groceries purchased through Amazon Grocery, Amazon Fresh and Whole Foods. The company said the new portal is meant to be a centralized hub that puts these individual benefits all in one place.

    “Given the tough economic climate with many facing rising costs on essential needs, we want our customers to know about all the accessible offerings available on Amazon, no matter their circumstances,” said Nancy Dalton, head of community partnerships for Amazon Access.

    Amazon

    (AMZN)     also announced it has renamed its discounted Prime membership to Prime Access. Eligible customers can sign up for the service on Amazon

    (AMZN)     Access.

    Neil Saunders, retail analyst and managing director at GlobalData Retail, said the new portal could be useful for lower-income shoppers.

    “It is something positive Amazon can point to, which shows it is helping hard-pressed consumers during a more difficult economic period,” said Saunders, adding that Amazon “should be able to generate some incremental sales out of consolidating the benefits into a new shopfront.”

    At the same time, he didn’t think Amazon Access would help boost Prime membership numbers significantly.

    “Amazon sees this as a way of growing Prime at a time when it is near to saturation in the US, as there are still many lower income consumers who do not have access to the program,” said Saunders. Former Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said in an April 2021 letter to shareholders that the company has more than 200 million Prime members worldwide.

    Earlier this year, Amazon said the price of its annual Prime subscriptions would increase from $119 to $139 per year in the United States and its monthly subscription would also increase from $12.99 to $14.99.

    The company said it was increasing the cost because of “expanded Prime membership benefits,” such as added Prime Video content and expanded free same-day shipping, as well to compensate for the rising costs of labor and transportation in its distribution network.

    –CNN’s Clare Duffy contributed to this report.

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  • Amazon is always watching | CNN Business

    Amazon is always watching | CNN Business

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    CNN Business
     — 

    A TV that knows when you’re in and out of the room. A gadget that monitors your breathing pattern while you sleep. An enhanced voice assistant tool that highlights just how much it knows about your everyday life.

    At an invite-only press event last week, Amazon unveiled a long list of product updates ahead of the holiday shopping season that appear designed to further insert its gadgets and services into every corner of our homes with the apparent goal of making everything a little easier. But the event was also another reminder of just how much Amazon’s many products are watching us.

    During prior events, Amazon

    (AMZN)     raised eyebrows with blatant examples of surveillance products, including drones and Astro, the dog-like robot that patrols the home. But this year, Amazon

    (AMZN)    ’s advancements in everyday tracking were a bit more subtle.

    The new Halo Rise sleep tracking device, for example, sits on the nightstand and monitors a person’s breathing and micro-movements as they sleep without the need to wear a sleep tracker. The device is said to work even if the person is turned in the other direction, or covered up by pillows and blankets.

    On the new Echo Show 15 smart display, Amazon’s voice assistant Alexa can now rattle off a morning routine for each person in the home, provide calendar updates and highlight traffic reports for the commute to the office. There’s also an option to ask Alexa to turn off the lights up to 24 hours in the future if they won’t be home.

    Amazon continues to expand Astro’s features, too. It can now detect the faces of pets in the home and stream footage to owners when they’re out of the house. The robot can also make sure windows and doors are closed and it can perform deeper monitoring when the owner is away as part of a virtual surveillance subscription.

    Amazon is far from the only tech company offering products that monitor users or collect data with the promise of improved conveniences, productivity and safety. But Amazon, perhaps more than any of its peers, has created a sprawling suite of products and services that arguably track more of our daily lives in and around our homes.

    In the months leading up to the product event, Amazon made two big announcements that could expand its reach into our lives even more. Amazon agreed last month to acquire iRobot, the company behind the popular automated Roomba vacuums, some of which create maps of the inside of our homes. It also announced plans to broaden its reach in the health care market by buying One Medical, a membership-based primary care service.

    In the process, Amazon is possibly testing customers’ comfort levels with how much any single company should know about our lives, and perhaps shifting our tolerance, too.

    Jonathan Collins, an analyst at ABI Research, said the scope and breadth of the company’s consumer offerings may be a concern for some, but many may simply accept the tradeoff for conveniences.

    “By and large, negative consumer attitudes to data collection across smart home and other areas have largely been ameliorated by the services received in return,” he said. “Even if not explicit, there is a tradeoff between lower priced or free services and the data sharing and collection that supports their availability.”

    Stephen Beck, founder and managing partner of consultancy cg42, said the views of customers “will likely remain unchanged after Amazon’s event because items like a TV, smart speaker, or sleep tracker feel familiar and do not pose obvious, new threats to privacy.”

    Amazon has a history of being caught collecting user data without consumers knowing. In 2019, reports surfaced that Amazon was recording snippets of conversations from Alexa users that were sometimes reviewed by humans. In the wake of backlash, Amazon changed its settings so people could opt out of this.

    For its latest products, the company states on its website how Astro is designed to detect only the chosen wake word, and no audio is stored or sent to the cloud unless the device detects that word. It also emphasizes the sensor data that Astro uses to navigate the home is processed on the device itself and not sent to the cloud, and the robot only streams video or images to the cloud when a feature like Live View in the Astro app is in use.

    The Halo Rise sleep tracking device, meanwhile, encrypts the collected data and stores it in the cloud, according to the company. Users can later download or delete it.

    But Amazon’s continued rollout of products that can monitor customers to varying degrees comes at a time many Americans have more reason to be mindful of data collection given the shifting legal landscape around abortion. Digital rights experts have warned that people’s search histories, location data, messages and other digital information could be used by law enforcement agencies investigating or prosecuting abortion-related cases.

    “The danger of this tracking has never been so clear,” said Albert Fox Cahn, founder and executive director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project and a fellow at the NYU School of Law. “Far too few customers think about how the information they give to companies can be misused by governments, hackers, and more.”

    While some of the newly announced features, such as Astro’s increased monitoring of doors and windows, may be aimed at helping people feel more secure in their homes, Cahn worries these seemingly small updates also push people even deeper into Amazon’s ecosystem.

    “Thankfully,” Cahn said, “even if you can teach an old robotic dog new tricks, you can’t change one fact: It’s still creepy.”

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  • Wages are the most important number to watch in the jobs report | CNN Business

    Wages are the most important number to watch in the jobs report | CNN Business

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    A version of this story first appeared in CNN Business’ Before the Bell newsletter. Not a subscriber? You can sign up right here.


    New York
    CNN Business
     — 

    Investors, economists and members of the Federal Reserve will be poring over the September jobs report on Friday morning for clues about the health of the economy. But one figure may matter more than most…and it’s not the number of jobs added or the unemployment rate. It’s wage growth.

    Inflation is not just a function of the price of oil and other commodities and production costs like manufacturing and shipping. How much workers take home in their paychecks is also a big part of the inflation picture.

    When people have more money in their wallets (virtual or good old-fashioned leather ones), they tend to be more willing to spend it. That gives companies additional flexibility to raise prices.

    Average hourly wages rose 5.2% over the past 12 months according to the August jobs report. That’s down from a 2022 peak growth rate of 5.6% in March.

    So how aggressively will the Fed need to raise rates going forward? A lot will depend on whether wage growth continues to slow.

    Companies can’t raise prices as much if workers are making less or they risk big destruction in demand.

    The problem is that wage growth above 5% is still historically high. Before the pandemic, wages typically rose just 3% year-over-year. But labor shortages, due to Covid-19 and people dropping out of the workforce, shifted power from employers to employees when it came to worker pay.

    That’s another reason why companies have continued to raise prices: To offset rising costs.

    The government reported Friday that its preferred inflation metric, personal consumption expenditures (PCE), rose 6.2% from a year ago in August. That was lower than July’s reading.

    But the so-called core PCE figure, which excludes food and energy prices, rose 4.9% through August, up from a 4.7% increase in July.

    What’s more, the Fed typically is looking for just a 2% growth rate in the headline PCE number as a sign of price stability. That’s not going to happen anytime soon. In fact, the Fed’s latest forecasts suggest that the central bank thinks PCE will rise 5.4% this year, up from projections of 5.2% in June.

    “I don’t see anything in the near-term to give the Fed tons of comfort that inflation is on the trajectory to 2%,” said David Petrosinelli, senior trader with InspireX. “Wages will remain elevated and that will keep the Fed in a pickle.”

    But there’s another concern. Wages, while still rising, are not actually keeping pace with the increase in consumer prices. You don’t need to be a math genius to realize that 5.2% is less than 6.2%.

    “Wages are a real pain point. People are paying more but not making more,” said Marta Norton, chief investment officer of the Americas with Morningstar Investment Management. With that in mind, Norton said there is a “higher probability of stagflation.”

    Stagflation is the nasty economic combination of stagnant growth and persistent inflation.

    Retail sales have held up relatively well despite inflation pressures, but Norton warns that can’t last forever. American shoppers would eventually reach their breaking point and just start buying essentials. A slowdown in consumption will inevitably lead to lower prices…but also slower economic growth.

    “Inflation is its own cure. Consumers have the power to spend or not spend,” she said.

    The third quarter is mercifully over. It’s been another doozy for the market. September in particular was bleak. It was the worst month for the Dow since the start of the pandemic in March 2020.

    But even though we’re seemingly in a bear market for everything as bonds, gold and bitcoin have all tumbled this year as well, there are some hopeful signs for the next few months.

    The fourth quarter is typically a festive time on Wall Street. Investors tend to buy stocks in anticipation of robust consumer shopping during the holidays. Businesses typically spend more as well to flush out those yearly budgets. And major companies also often give rosy guidance in October about earnings expectations for the coming year.

    “October has been a turnaround month—a ‘bear killer’ if you will,” said Jeff Hirsch, editor-in-chief of the Stock Trader’s Almanac, in a recent blog post.

    Hirsch added that a dozen bear markets since World War II have ended in the month of October. And of those twelve, seven market bottoms happened during midterm election years.

    Traders will definitely be keeping close tabs on Washington this fall to see if Republicans gain control of the House. That could lead to more gridlock in DC, which investors tend to like.

    Whether or not Corporate America and investors are going to be so bullish this October is up for debate given the concerns about inflation, interest rates and the global economy. After all, October is also famous for huge crashes, most recently in 2008 but also in 1987 and, of course, 1929.

    So stocks definitely could take another turn for the worse. But experts are hopeful that the end of the bear market is in sight.

    “We’re nearer to a bottom,” said Christopher Wolfe, chief investment officer of First Republic Private Wealth Management. “A lot of quality companies are on sale. It’s a time to be patient and reposition.”

    Monday: US ISM manufacturing; China stock markets closed all week

    Tuesday: US job openings and labor turnover (JOLTS); Japan inflation; Australia interest rate decision

    Wednesday: US ADP private sector jobs; US ISM services; OPEC+ meeting

    Thursday: US weekly jobless claims; earnings from ConAgra

    (CAG)    , Constellation Brands

    (STZ)    , McCormick

    (MKC)     and Levi Strauss

    (LEVI)

    Friday: US jobs report; Germany industrial production; earnings from Tilray

    (TLRY)

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  • Tesla robot slowly walks on stage at AI Day | CNN Business

    Tesla robot slowly walks on stage at AI Day | CNN Business

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    Washington, DC
    CNN
     — 

    Tesla revealed on Friday a prototype of a humanoid robot that it says could be a future product for the automaker.

    The robot, dubbed Optimus by Tesla, walked stiffly on stage at Tesla’s AI Day, slowly waved at the crowed and gestured with its hands for roughly one minute. Tesla CEO Elon Musk said that the robot was operating without a tether for the first time. Robotics developers often use tethers to support robots because they aren’t capable enough to walk without falling and damaging themselves.

    The Optimus’ abilities appear to significantly trail what robots from competitors like Hyundai-owned Boston Dynamics are capable of. Boston Dynamics robots have been seen doing back flips and performing sophisticated dance routines without a tether.

    “The robot can actually do a lot more than we just showed you,” Musk said at the event. “We just didn’t want it to fall on its face.”

    Tesla also showed videos of its robot performing simple tasks like carrying boxes and watering plants with a watering can.

    Musk claimed that if the robot was produced in mass volumes it would “probably” cost less than $20,000. Tesla maintains that Optimus’ advantage over competitors will be its ability to navigate independently using technology developed from Tesla’s driver-assistance system “Full Self Driving,” as well as cost savings from what it has learned about manufacturing from its automotive division. (Tesla’s “Full Self Driving” requires a human that is alert and attentive, ready to take over at any time, as it is not yet capable of fully driving itself.)

    Tesla has a history of aggressive price targets that it doesn’t ultimately reach. The Tesla Model 3 was long promised as a $35,000 vehicle, but could only very briefly be purchased for that price, and not directly on its website. The most affordable Tesla Model 3 now costs $46,990. When Tesla revealed the Cybertruck in 2019, its pick-up truck that remains unavailable for purchase today, it was said to cost $39,990, but the price has since been removed from Tesla’s website.

    Tesla AI Day is intended largely as a recruiting event to attract talented people to join the company.

    Musk claimed the robot could be transformative for civilization. The robot displayed Friday, despite its limitations compared to competitors, was significantly ahead of what Tesla revealed a year ago, when a person jumped on stage in a robot suit and danced around.

    “‘Last year was just a person in a robot suit,” Musk said before the robot walked on stage. “We’ve come a long way. Compared to that, it’s going to be very impressive.”

    Tesla is not the first automaker to develop a humanoid robot. Along with Hyundai’s Boston Dynamics, Honda worked on robots dubbed “Asimo” for nearly 20 years. In its final form, Asimo was a child-size humanoid robot capable of untethered walking, running, climbing and descending stairs, and manipulating objects with its fingers.

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