Dropbox said Friday that it’s agreed to return over one quarter of its San Francisco headquarters to the landlord as the commercial real estate market continues to soften following the Covid pandemic.
In a filing, Dropbox said it agreed to surrender to its landlord 165,244 square feet of space and pay $79 million in termination fees. Under the amendment to its lease agreement, Dropbox will offload the space over time through the first quarter of 2025.
Since going remote during the pandemic three years ago, Dropbox has been trying to figure out what to do with much of the 736,000 square feet of space in Mission Bay it leased in 2017, in what was the largest office lease in the city’s history. The company subleased closed to 134,000 square feet of space last year to Vir Biotechnology, leaving it with just over 604,000 square feet.
In addition, Dropbox took a $175.2 million impairment on the office last year “as a result of adverse changes” in the market. That came after taking a $400 million hit in 2020.
San Francisco’s office vacancy rate stood at 30% in the third quarter, the highest level since at least 2007, according to city data.
“As we’ve noted in the past, we’ve taken steps to de-cost our real estate portfolio as a result of our transition to Virtual First, our operating model in which remote work is the primary experience for our employees, but where we still come together for planned in-person gatherings,” a company spokesperson told CNBC in an emailed statement.
While the move provides a financial benefit to the cloud software vendor, it signals that demand for office space in the city remains weak and suggests more pain may be ahead for companies that signed big leases before the pandemic, when venture funding and public investors were fueling a tech boom. In addition to the remote work trend, the tech industry has been in downsizing mode since early 2022, with industrywide layoffs.
Drew Houston, Dropbox’s co-founder and CEO, announced in April that the company was cutting its headcount by about 16%.
Dropbox’s 2017 lease for the brand new headquarters was for 15 years. Private-equity firm KKR bought the property in 2021 from its original developer, Kilroy Realty Corp., for over $1 billion.
“As a result of the amendment the company will avoid future cash payments related to rent and common area maintenance fees of $137 million and approximately $90 million, respectively, over the remaining 10 year lease term,” Dropbox said in Friday’s filing.
A short walk away from Dropbox, Uber has been trying to sublease part of its headquarters. The San Francisco Chronicle reported last week that Microsoft-backed OpenAI is close to taking space there.
Dropbox had tried working with its landlord to sublease space at the headquarters, but the real estate market deteriorated, finance chief Tim Regan, told analysts on a February earnings call.
BEIJING — Chip giant Nvidia has flagged heightened competition from Huawei, despite U.S. restrictions on the Chinese telecommunications company.
In an annual filing Wednesday, Nvidia listed Huawei among its current competitors, including it in the list for a second straight year. The company, blacklisted by the U.S. for national security reasons, did not feature among Nvidia’s competitors for at least three prior years.
Nvidia listed Huawei among its competitors in four of five categories, including chips, cloud services, computing processing and networking products.
“There’s a fair amount of competition in China,” Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang told CNBC’s Jon Fortt Wednesday.
“Huawei, other companies, are … quite vigorous and very, very competitive,” Huang said.
Huawei’s revenue exceeded 860 billion yuan ($118.27 billion) in 2024, state media reported, a 22% jump in revenue from 2023, and the fastest growth since a 32% increase in 2016, according to CNBC calculations of publicly released figures. Huawei typically publishes its annual reports in March.
The company’s revenue barely grew in 2020, and plunged by nearly 29% in 2021. Its consumer segment was hit hard, and even as revenue rose 17% year on year to 251.5 billion yuan in 2023, it was just over half of what the unit generated at its peak in 2020.
The telecommunications company started to make a comeback in the smartphone market in 2023 with the release of its Mate 60 Pro in China. Reviews indicated the device offers download speeds associated with 5G — thanks to an advanced semiconductor chip.
Illustration of U.S social network Instagram’s logo on a tablet screen.
Kirill Kudryavtsev | Afp | Getty Images
Meta apologized on Thursday and said it had fixed an “error” that resulted in some Instagram users reporting a flood of violent and graphic content recommended on their personal “Reels” page.
“We have fixed an error that caused some users to see content in their Instagram Reels feed that should not have been recommended. We apologize for the mistake,” a Meta spokesperson said in a statement shared with CNBC.
The statement comes after a number of Instagram users took to various social media platforms to voice concerns about a recent influx of violent and “not safe for work” content in their feeds.
Some users claimed they saw such content, even with Instagram’s “Sensitive Content Control” enabled to its highest moderation setting.
According to Meta policy, the company works to protect users from disturbing imagery and removes content that is particularly violent or graphic.
Prohibited content includes videos “depicting dismemberment, visible innards or charred bodies,” as well as content that contains “sadistic remarks towards imagery depicting the suffering of humans and animals.”
However, Meta says it does allow some graphic content if it helps users to condemn and raise awareness about important issues such as human rights abuses, armed conflicts or acts of terrorism. Such content may come with limitations, such as warning labels.
On Wednesday night in the U.S., CNBC was able to view several posts on Instagram reels that appeared to show dead bodies, graphic injuries and violent assaults. The posts were labeled “Sensitive Content.”
Teladoc Health Inc. signage on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange on Dec. 31, 2024.
Michael Nagle | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Teladoc Health shares fell in extended trading on Wednesday after the company reported a wider loss than analysts expected and issued disappointing quarterly guidance.
Here’s how the company did, compared to analysts’ consensus estimates from LSEG:
Loss per share: 28 cents vs. 24 cents expected
Revenue: $640.5 million vs. $639.6 million expected
Revenue at the telehealth company decreased 3% in the fourth quarter from $660.5 million during the same period last year, according to a release. Teladoc’s net loss widened to $48.4 million, or 28 cents per share, from a loss of $28.9 million, or 17 cents per share, a year ago.
Teladoc is in the middle of a deep slump, with its stock price dropping in each of the past four years due to hefty competition in remote health, challenges at mental health division BetterHelp and high operating costs.
When Teladoc acquired digital health company Livongo in 2020, the companies had a combined enterprise value of $37 billion. Teladoc’s market cap was around $1.9 billion as of market close on Wednesday.
“As we look forward in 2025, execution will continue to be a top priority as we advance efforts to unlock growth opportunities and position the company for long term success,” Teladoc CEO Chuck Divita said in the statement. “We will also remain focused on our cost structure, building on the significant improvements achieved in 2024 over the prior year.”
Teladoc reported adjusted earnings of $74.8 million in its fourth quarter, a 35% decrease from a year ago. Adjusted earnings for the company’s Integrated Care segment declined 5% to $53.2 million, and BetterHelp saw adjusted earnings drop 63% to $21.7 million.
For the first quarter, Teladoc said it expects revenue of between $608 million and $629 million, while analysts were expecting $632.9 million. The company said adjusted earnings will be between $47 million and $59 million for the period.
Earlier this month, Teladoc announced it will acquire preventative care company Catapult Health in an all-cash deal for $65 million. Teladoc said its outlook includes the anticipated contribution from the deal but not the effect of potential impairments or purchase accounting. Teladoc said the acquisition should close at the end of the month.
Teladoc will host its quarterly call with investors at 4:30 p.m. ET.
— CNBC’s Bertha Coombs contributed to this report.