Fanatics logo is seen on the dugout wall before the game between the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Milwaukee Brewers at PNC Park on July 3, 2022 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. (Photo by Justin Berl/Getty Images)
Justin Berl | Getty Images
Fanatics has agreed to acquire the U.S. operations of PointsBet, marking the sports giant’s first major leap into U.S. sports betting.
The deal is worth about $150 million in cash. The companies announced the deal Sunday night soon after CNBC reported an agreement was reached.
“Fanatics and PointsBet are excited to enter into an agreement for Fanatics Betting and Gaming to acquire PointsBet’s U.S. business,” the companies said in a joint statement. “While there are still several steps in the process to complete the acquisition, both parties are confident in the outcome. Fanatics Betting and Gaming and PointsBet will provide further details of the proposed deal and timely updates in the coming weeks.”
Fanatics will gain access to at least 15 states with the deal, according to people familiar with the deal who declined to be named because discussions were private. Fanatics expects to have access to the majority of states where PointsBet operates by the start of the NFL season, according to one of the people.
PointsBet, whose shares are traded in Australia, is expected to hold a shareholder vote on the deal in late June. Only PointsBet’s U.S. assets are part of the deal. Fanatics will plan to fund some of the remaining cash flow burn from PointsBet, which has had to spend heavily on marketing to compete with larger rivals DraftKings and FanDuel.
PointsBet forecast a loss of between $77 million and $82 million for the second half of the year. Citing “very challenging” market conditions, the company said Sunday that it would need to raise additional capital at a “significant discount to recent market prices” in the near term if the deal with Fanatics somehow fell apart.
NBCUniversal will get proceeds from its previous deal with PointsBet and will no longer have an equity stake, according to PointsBet. NBC acquired a 4.9% equity stake in PointsBet in 2020.
Fanatics has been in talks with a number of different sports betting companies over the past year as it has plotted its path forward in mobile gambling.
“This is a 10-year journey,” Matt King, the CEO of Fanatics Betting, said at the SBC Conference earlier this month. “We’re going to move very methodically through that 10-year journey. And by doing that and taking that approach, it allows you to be a bit more considered in your decisions. You can kind of move slower, slightly slower today, in order to move fast later.”
Fanatics is a sports platform company with a private valuation of $31 billion. The company has forecast 2023 revenue of $8 billion.
Fanatics owns commerce assets, a sports trading card business, and is building out a sports betting division. The company acquired legendary trading card company Topps for $500 million last year.
Disclosure: NBCUniversal is the parent company of NBC Sports and CNBC.
Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon speaks at the Computex forum in Taipei, Taiwan, June 3, 2024.
Ann Wang | Reuters
Qualcomm said on Tuesday that it expects its push into new markets to generate an additional $22 billion per year by 2029.
Of that amount, roughly $4 billion will come from PC chips, Qualcomm said at its investor day on Tuesday. The chipmaker just introduced PC processors earlier this year, when it released Snapdragon X for Windows devices.
The latest forecast marks an important milestone for Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon, who took over the company in 2021 with a promise to get past a reliance on smartphones. In fiscal 2024, Qualcomm’s handset business reported $24.86 billion in sales, about 75% of its entire chip business.
Qualcomm also said on Tuesday that automotive revenues would rise about 175% by 2029 to $8 billion, of which 80% is tied to contracts that have already been secured.
“We have been on this trajectory realizing that the technologies we have developed over the many years can be very relevant to a number of different industries beyond mobile,” Amon said at the investor event.
Another $4 billion in revenue will come from industrial chips and $2 billion will come from chips for headsets, a category Qualcomm calls XR. About $4 billion of the forecast is a catch-all for other chip sales, like those for wireless headphones and tablets.
Qualcomm shares are up 16% this year, trailing the Nasdaq, which has gained 26%.
Qualcomm grew rapidly over the past decade as its modems and processors became essential parts for high-end smartphones, especially those running Google Android. Qualcomm also sells modems and related parts to Apple for its iPhones.
But the company has warned investors that Apple could choose to stop buying Qualcomm parts as soon as 2027. Qualcomm said on Tuesday that its growing businesses will more than offset any losses from Apple.
A Li Auto L9 electric vehicle (EV) is seen displayed at the Qualcomm booth during the first China International Supply Chain Expo (CISCE) in Beijing, China November 28, 2023.
Florence Lo | Reuters
Qualcomm’s strategy under Amon has been to use the technology its developed for its handset chips, like modems, processors, and AI accelerators, in new markets, including cars, PCs, and virtual reality. The investor event was the first time in years that the company has given a forecast for those new markets. Qualcomm said its total addressable market is as large as $900 billion.
“We put a strategy in ’21, and we’re not changing our strategy,” Amon said.
Laptop and desktop chips are currently dominated by Intel, which has over 70% percent of the market, according to Mercury Research. Intel reported $29 billion in PC chip sales in its 2023.
“The competitive landscape changed between the Windows and Macs,” Amon said, referring to Apple’s move in 2020 to switch from Intel to its own processors. “We saw that as an opportunity, especially as the ecosystem did not have confidence in the existing players to actually deliver a solution.”
The forecast for XR headsets also hints at the growth potential of the VR market over the next five years. Qualcomm supplies chips to many of the top headset makers, including Meta for its Quest and Ray-Bans products.
When it comes to artificial intelligence, Qualcomm calls itself an “edge AI” company, in contrast to cloud-based AI that’s typically powered by Nvidia processors. Company officials didn’t rule out introducing data center products in an interview with CNBC.
Qualcomm suggested that its mobile chips will be able to run the kind of advanced AI that’s restricted to large server farms today, an indication that that company may benefit from the AI boom down the road as the technology becomes more efficient.
“What you can run on the cloud last year, you can run on the device this year,” Durga Malladi, Qualcomm’s senior vice president in charge of planning, said at the event.
Options on BlackRock’s popular iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF (IBIT) began trading on the Nasdaq Tuesday, ushering in a new way to trade and speculate on the price of bitcoin.
IBIT traded 73,000 options contracts in the first 60 mins of trading Tuesday, Nasdaq told CNBC, placing the fund in the top 20 of the most active nonindex options.
Options trading allows investors to play bitcoin’s notorious volatility by letting them buy or sell an asset at a predetermined price based on whether they anticipate the price will rise or fall in a given period.
“Bitcoin has a lively derivatives market, but in the U.S. it is still tiny compared to other asset classes, and is largely limited to institutional players,” said Noelle Acheson, economist and author of the “Crypto is Macro Now” newsletter. “A deeper onshore derivatives market will enhance the growing market sophistication. This will reinforce investor confidence in the asset, bringing in new cohorts while enabling a greater variety of investment and trading strategies … [That] should, all else being equal, dampen both volatility and downside.”
The market for options contracts on major ETFs can be extremely active, and are widely used by more sophisticated traders. For example, over the past five business days, Interactive Brokers clients have more options orders on the Invesco QQQ Trust (QQQ) and the SDPR S&P 500 ETF Trust (SPY) than for the funds themselves, according to data from the brokerage.
The launch of the bitcoin ETF options will likely also lead to new funds that incorporate those options, said Todd Sohn, ETF strategist at Strategas.
“Grayscale already did a filing for a covered call [fund], and I’m sure BlackRock will come out with it too. And then we’re going to get buffers, and then we’re going to get whatever other trend-following-type strategy that folks think of. I think the ecosystem’s really going to start to fly here,” Sohn said.
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The stock prices for H&R Block and Intuit fell after a report Tuesday said Trump’s government efficiency team is considering creating a free tax-filing app.
Intuit, which makes the TurboTax tax-filing software, was down 5%, putting it on pace for its worst day since Aug. 23, when the company’s stock price fell nearly 7%. H&R Block was down 8% and on pace for its worst day since 2020.
President-elect Donald Trump’s “Department of Government Efficiency” has held “highly preliminary” discussions about creating the free tax-filing app, The Washington Post reported. The so-called DOGE will not be an official government department but an outside advisory commission. It will be led by billionaire Elon Musk and former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy and aims to slash government spending.
A DOGE tax-filing app would be a competitor of both H&R Block and TurboTax.
Intuit spokeswoman Tania Mercado didn’t directly address the prospect of a government tax-filing app, but told CNBC in a statement that, “For decades, Intuit has publicly called for simplifying the U.S. tax code so individuals, families, and small businesses can better understand their finances.”
George Agurkis, H&R Block’s director of government relations, said in an email that the company looks forward “to engaging with the new Administration and the Department of Government Efficiency on their ideas related to sound and efficient tax administration.”
It’s unclear where a new DOGE tax app would bridge with newer policies the Biden administration already implemented. Under the Biden administration, the IRS in March rolled out a pilot Direct File program in 12 states, allowing qualified taxpayers to file directly through a government portal. The IRS also offers free filing services through its Free File program for taxpayers who make an adjusted gross income of $79,000 or less.
While both Intuit and H&R Block have free filing options, neither have had stellar records when it comes to transparently offering those services.
The Federal Trade Commission in February filed an administrative complaint against H&R Block for deceptively marketing free filing products and wrongfully deleting users’ in-progress tax data. Intuit, meanwhile, agreed to pay $141 million in restitution “for deceiving millions of low-income Americans into paying for tax services that should have been free,” according to the office of New York Attorney General Letitia James.