Bob Iger, CEO of The Walt Disney Company, left; David Zaslav, CEO and president of Warner Bros. Discovery, center; and Bob Bakish, president and CEO of Paramount Global.
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Companies and industries have ups and downs. The legacy media industry is in a valley.
The first half of 2023 has been a colossal disappointment for media executives who wanted this year to be a rebound from a terrible 2022, when a slowdown in streaming subscribers cut valuations for Netflix, Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramount Global roughly in half.
Instead, investors have once again become excited by Netflix’s future prospects as it’s cracked down on password sharing, potentially leading to tens of millions of new signups. Netflix shares have surged the past five months, outpacing the S&P 500.
Meanwhile, the legacy players can’t get out of their own way.
Netflix vs the S&P 500 over the past five months.
“When it rains it pours,” said LightShed media analyst Rich Greenfield. “It just keeps getting worse.”
It’s been a bumpy ride for Disney Chief Executive Officer Bob Iger since he returned to lead the company late last year. Disney recently finished laying off 7,000 employees. Chief Financial Officer Christine McCarthy stepped down last week. The company is pulling programming from its streaming services to save money. Its animation business is in a major rut, with its latest Pixar movie, “Elemental,” recording the lowest opening weekend gross for the studio since the original “Toy Story” premiered in 1995. Shares have struggled in the past five months.
Disney vs. the S&P 500 over the past five months.
Warner Bros. Discovery vs. the S&P 500 over the past five months.
Paramount Globalcut its dividend last quarter as streaming losses peak this year and a weak advertising market exacerbates a terminally ill cable network business. Wells Fargo released an analyst note Friday saying the bull case and the bear case for the company were the same: selling for parts. Warren Buffett, perhaps the most acclaimed investor in history, told CNBC that Paramount’s streaming offering “fundamentally is not that good of a business.”
Paramount Global vs the S&P 500 over the past five months.
Fox Corp. vs the S&P 500 over the past five months.
NBCUniversal has weathered the storm the best, shielded by its parent company, Comcast, which gets its revenue from cable and wireless assets. It’s also taken advantage of missteps from the aforementioned. MSNBC became the No. 1 cable news network this month for the first time in 120 weeks, dethroning Fox News for a week amid coverage of former President Donald Trump’s federal indictment. Universal’s “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” is by far the biggest box office hit of the year, yet shares haven’t moved much.
Comcast vs the S&P 500 over the past five months.
All of this is happening with an extended Hollywood writers’ strike going on in the background with no end in sight. The writers know the longer the strike lasts, the more pain will be inflicted on media companies, who will eventually run out of already-made scripted content. Zaslav recently gave a commencement address to Boston University and was drowned out by boos and chants of “pay your writers.”
This week may bring even more bad news. Film and TV actors are set to join writers on strike unless they reach a deal with Hollywood studios by Friday.
The beneficiary of Hollywood work shutdowns will likely be YouTube, TikTok, and Netflix, which continues to churn out international content that is unaffected by the strike, said Greenfield.
Legacy media may get a small reprieve if advertising jumps back as the 2024 U.S. presidential campaign heats up. But there’s still scant evidence investors will reward media companies for simply cutting costs. There’s currently no strong growth narrative for legacy media, and consolidation prospects are murky as regulators block media-adjacent deals such as Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision and Penguin Random House’s proposed purchase of Simon & Schuster.
The industry just wrapped up its annual advertising gala in Cannes, France. Legacy media executives still spent company dollars to make the trip to hang out on yachts and drink rosé. The backdrop was as beautiful as ever.
But the landscape is bleak.
Disclosure: Comcast owns NBCUniversal, which is the parent company of CNBC.
WATCH: WPP CEO Mark Read on the state of the advertising market, from Cannes Lions 2023
By midday Tuesday, bitcoin had passed the $105,000 level, ether jumped back above the $2,400 mark, and XRP climbed to $2.19.
The risk-on action in the markets, which also saw stocks rally on the Mideast de-escalation, wasn’t the only source of momentum, as Republican senators unveiled a major bill to set the rules of the road for crypto. Specifically, the legislation would define when crypto is a commodity or a security, allow crypto exchanges to register with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and reduce the Securities and Exchange Commission’s regulation of digital assets — a big reversal from the plans of President Biden’s SEC Chair Gary Gensler to closely regulate the crypto industry.
The new framework was introduced by Senate Banking Committee Chairman Tim Scott of South Carolina and Senator Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming, who heads the panel’s Digital Assets Committee. Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” that the regulatory development was important for the U.S. to regain the lead in the crypto industry, where he said it has fallen behind other markets, including Europe.
Last week, the senate passed a stablecoin bill, marking the first major legislative win for the crypto industry, which now heads to the House for consideration of its version of the bill. Both bills prohibit yield-bearing consumer stablecoins — but differ on agency regulatory oversight. Visa CEO Ryan McInerney weighed in on the advancement of the Senate version, the Genius Act, telling CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” that the credit card giant has been embracing stablecoins.
Meanwhile, investors increased their bets on crypto company Digital Asset, which raised $135 million in funding from several big names in banking and finance, including Goldman Sachs, BNP Paribas and hedge fund billionaire Ken Griffin’s Citadel Securities. The firm, which touts itself as a regulated crypto player, said it will use the funding to advance adoption of its Canton network, which is a blockchain for financial institutions, another sign of how major financial institutions are embedding themselves into the once obscure crypto world.
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Ambarella shares popped 19% after a report that the chip designer is currently working with bankers on a potential sale.
Bloomberg reported the news, citing sources familiar with the matter.
While no deal is imminent, the sources told Bloomberg that the firm may draw interest from semiconductor companies looking to improve their automotive business. Private equity firms have already expressed interest, according to the report.
Read more CNBC tech news
The Santa Clara, California-based company is known for its system-on-chip semiconductors and software used for edge artificial intelligence. Ambarella chips are used in the automotive sector for electronic mirrors and self-driving assistance systems.
Shares have slumped about 18% year to date. The company’s market capitalization last stood at nearly $2.6 billion.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang attends a roundtable discussion at the Viva Technology conference dedicated to innovation and startups at Porte de Versailles exhibition center in Paris on June 11, 2025.
The sales are worth nearly $15 million at Tuesday’s opening price.
The transactions are the first sale in Huang’s plan to sell as many as 600,000 shares of Nvidia through the end of 2025. It’s a plan that was announced in March, and it’d be worth $873 million at Tuesday’s opening price.
The Nvidia founder still owns more than 800 million Nvidia shares, according to Monday’s SEC filing. Huang has a net worth of about $126 billion, ranking him 12th on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Nvidia stock is up more than 800% since December 2022 after OpenAI’s ChatGPT was first released to the public. That launch drew attention to Nvidia’s graphics processing units, or GPUs, which were needed to develop and power the artificial intelligence service.
The company’s chips remain in high demand with the majority of the AI chip market, and Nvidia has introduced two subsequent generations of its AI GPU technology.
Nvidia continues to grow. Its stock is up 9% this year, even as the company faces export control issues that could limit foreign markets for its AI chips.
In May, the company reported first-quarter earnings that showed the chipmaker’s revenue growing 69% on an annual basis to $44 billion during the quarter.