In this Nov. 13, 2019 file photo, a Disney logo forms part of a menu for the Disney Plus movie and entertainment streaming service on a computer screen in Walpole, Mass.
From Wall Street to Silicon Valley, these are the top stories that moved markets and had investors, business leaders, and entrepreneurs talking this week on Cheddar.
Streaming Suits Disney Well
Thank goodness for streaming because other than that, the House of Mouse had some rough news in its latest earnings report. Pandemic-related theme park closures cost the company $2.6 billion dollars last quarter and it expects to lose another billion this year because of COVID. But fans have been tuning in: Disney+ more than doubled the number of its subscribers from a year ago to more than 94 million, ESPN+ subscribers are up 83 percent, and Hulu subscribers are up nearly a third. Though the company also beat expectations on income and revenue, the stock still dipped on Friday.
Cannabis Is the New GameStop
Pot rode the meme stock wave this week, with several of the biggest players, like Canopy Growth, Tilray, Aurora Cannabis, and Aphria seeing spikes early on — then precipitously falling. The Reddit crowd seems to be behind this latest market rollercoaster ride, and Congress has taken note. Next Thursday, the House Financial Services Committee will hold a hearing called “Game Stopped? Who Wins and Loses When Short Sellers, Social Media, and Retail Investors Collide.” Committee Chair Rep. Maxine Waters told Cheddar she expects it to be a "learning experience for everybody."
Bumble's Great First Date
Bumble, the parent company of the namesake female-first dating app joined the Nasdaq Thursday, and it looks like there was an attraction with investors. The stock rose, closing Friday at $75.46 per share. The company's 31-year-old founder and CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd is now a billionaire — the youngest woman to accomplish that feat by taking her company public. Tariq Shaukat, Bumble's president, told Cheddar the plan now is to grow users and the types of products the company offers.
Shopify Surge
E-commerce tech platform Shopify announced Tuesday that it has a new deal to help shoppers spend via social media. Its Shop Pay checkout option began rolling out immediately on Instagram and is expected to hit Facebook Shops in the next few weeks. This means shoppers will have the option to use Shopify to pay for items instead of PayPal or credit cards. $SHOP jumped on the news and continued trading at that level for the rest of the week.
Old Bank, New Currency
BNY Mellon, which has its roots as America's oldest bank, is definitely caught up here in the 21st century. It announced that it will begin dealing in crypto — holding, transferring, and issuing digital currencies for its asset-management clients. For those looking to spend, rather than save, this week Tesla announced that it bought about $1.5 billion in Bitcoin and is getting ready to accept it for its high-end vehicles.
Joe Cecela, Dream Exchange CEO, explains how they are aiming to form the first minority-controlled company to operate an exchange in U.S. history. Watch!
A Michigan judge is putting sponges in the hands of shoplifters and ordering them to wash cars in a Walmart parking lot when spring weather arrives. Genesee County Judge Jeffrey Clothier hopes the unusual form of community service discourages people from stealing from Walmart. The judge also wants to reward shoppers with free car washes. Clothier says he began ordering “Walmart wash” sentences this week for shoplifting at the store in Grand Blanc Township. He believes 75 to 100 people eventually will be ordered to wash cars this spring. Clothier says he will be washing cars alongside them when the time comes.
The State Department had been in talks with Elon Musk’s Tesla company to buy armored electric vehicles, but the plans have been put on hold by the Trump administration after reports emerged about a potential $400 million purchase. A State Department spokesperson said the electric car company owned by Musk was the only one that expressed interest back in May 2024. The deal with Tesla was only in its planning phases but it was forecast to be the largest contract of the year. It shows how some of his wealth has come and was still expected to come from taxpayers.
At 100 years old, the Goodyear Blimp is an ageless star in the sky. The 246-foot-long airship will be in the background of the Daytona 500 — flying roughly 1,500 feet above Daytona International Speedway, actually — to celebrate its greatest anniversary tour. Even though remote camera technologies are improving regularly and changing the landscape of aerial footage, the blimp continues to carve out a niche. At Daytona, with the usual 40-car field racing around a 2½-mile superspeedway, views from the blimp aptly provide the scope of the event.
You'll just have to wait for interest rates (and prices) to go down. Plus, this deal's a steel, the big carmaker wedding is off, and bribery is back, baby!
It’s a chicken-and-egg problem: Restaurants are struggling with record-high U.S. egg prices, but their omelets, scrambles and huevos rancheros may be part of the problem. Breakfast is booming at U.S. eateries. First Watch, a restaurant chain that serves breakfast, brunch and lunch, nearly quadrupled its locations over the past decade to 570. Fast-food chains like Starbucks and Wendy's added more egg-filled breakfast items. In normal times, egg producers could meet the demand. But a bird flu outbreak that has forced them to slaughter their flocks is making supplies scarcer and pushing up prices. Some restaurants like Waffle House have added a surcharge to offset their costs.
