Apple CEO Tim Cook attends the “Senior Chinese Leader Event” held by the National Committee on US-China Relations and the US-China Business Council on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Leaders’ Week in San Francisco, California, on November 15, 2023.
Carlos Barria | AFP | Getty Images
Apple has offered to give rivals the ability to access and interoperate with its contactless payment tech in an effort to appease antitrust regulators in Europe.
Apple Pay, the company’s mobile wallet feature, allows users to make purchases by simply tapping their iPhones, which run on Apple’s operating system called iOS. Since Apple controls this operating system exclusively, third-party mobile wallet developers’ access to its payment technology has previously been restricted.
In 2022, the European Commission found that since Apple Pay is the only option available to iPhone users, “such exclusionary conduct may restrict competition in the market for mobile wallets on iOS devices.” As a result, Apple proposed a series of commitments to address the Commission’s concerns.
Apple said it will allow third-party developers to gain access to the mobile payment technology, provide new features for users like defaulting to preferred payment apps and apply “non-discriminatory eligibility criteria” for rival developers.
“Through our ongoing discussions with the European Commission, we have offered commitments to provide third-party developers in the European Economic Area with an option that will enable their users to make NFC contactless payments from within their iOS apps, separate from Apple Pay and Apple Wallet,” an Apple spokesperson told CNBC in a statement.
The Commission said Friday that the changes would remain in place for 10 years. It is looking for feedback on the solutions Apple has proposed.
If Apple’s commitments assuage European regulators’ competition concerns, the Commission will adopt them and legally require Apple to implement the changes. If the company fails to comply, it could face a fine of up to 10% of its total revenue.
Apple is also facing pressure from antitrust regulators in the U.S., as the Department of Justice is reportedly shoring up a case against the company, according to a report from Bloomberg. The DOJ’s case reportedly centers around software and hardware limitations on iPads and iPhones that restrict competition.
The DOJ could reportedly file the suit against Apple within first quarter, the report said.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg appears at the Meta Connect event in Menlo Park, California, on Sept. 25, 2024.
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Meta’s AI assistant now has 1 billion monthly active users across the company’s family of apps, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Wednesday at the company’s annual shareholder meeting.
The “focus for this year is deepening the experience and making Meta AI the leading personal AI with an emphasis on personalization, voice conversations and entertainment,” Zuckerberg said.
The artificial intelligent assistant’s 1 billion milestone comes after the company in April released a standalone app for the tool.
The plan is for Meta to keep growing the product before building a business around it, Zuckerberg said on Wednesday. As Meta AI improves overtime, Zuckerberg said “there will be opportunities to either insert paid recommendations” or offer “a subscription service so that people can pay to use more compute.”
In February, CNBC reported that Meta was planning to debut a standalone Meta AI app during the second quarter and test a paid-subscription service akin to rival chat apps like OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
“It may seem kind of funny that a billion monthly actives doesn’t seem like it’s at scale for us, but that’s where we’re at,” Zuckerberg told shareholders.
During the Meta shareholder meeting, investors voted on 14 different items related to the company’s business, nine of which were shareholder proposals covering topics such as child safety, greenhouse gas emissions and a proposed bitcoin treasury assessment.
Shareholder proposal 8, for example, was submitted by JLens, which is an investment advisor and affiliate of the Anti-Defamation League, and called for Meta to prepare an annual report detailing and addressing hate content, including antisemitism, on its services following January policy changes that relaxed content-moderation guidelines.
Early voting results on Wednesday showed the proposals that Meta’s board did not recommend were unlikely to pass, including one calling for the company to end its dual-class share structure, which gives Zuckerberg significant voting power. Meanwhile, the voting items that the board favored, including those pertaining to approving the company’s board of director nominees and an equity incentive plan, were likely to pass, based on the preliminary results.
Meta said final polling results will be released within four business days on the company’s website and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff participates in an interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Jan. 22, 2025.
Chris Ratcliffe | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Salesforce shares were volatile in extended trading on Wednesday after the sales and customer service software maker reported upbeat fiscal first-quarter results and guidance.
Here’s how the company performed relative to LSEG consensus:
Earnings per share: $2.58 adjusted vs. 2.54 expected
Revenue: $9.83 billion vs. $9.75 billion expected
Salesforce’s revenue grew 7.6% year over year in the quarter, which ended on April 30, according to a statement. Net income of $1.54 billion, or $1.59 per share, was basically flat compared with $1.53 billion, or $1.56 per share, a year ago.
President Donald Trump announced sweeping tariffs on goods imported into the U.S. in early April. Co-founder and CEO Marc Benioff sounded positive about the company’s results for the quarter anyway, pointing to its plan, announced on Tuesday, to buy data management company Informatica for $8 billion.
It would be Salesforce’s priciest acquisition since the $27.1 billion Slack deal in 2021. Slack marked the top end of the buyouts Salesforce had made under Benioff. Activist investors raised concerns about all the spending, in addition to slowing revenue growth.
Salesforce sprung into action, slashing 10% of its headcount. Benioff proclaimed that the board’s mergers and acquisitions committee had been disbanded. The company’s finance chief at the time said it would reach a margin expansion goal two years early. And Salesforce started paying dividends to shareholders.
Initial reception to the Informatica announcement was generally favorable. “Salesforce is paying a reasonable multiple for the asset, in our view, and the deal should be more easily digested by investors than some of the company’s large deals in the past (i.e. Slack),” Stifel analysts led by J. Parker Lane wrote in a note to clients. The investment bank has a buy rating on Salesforce shares.
During the fiscal first quarter, Salesforce introduced the AgentExchange marketplace for artificial intelligence agents.
Management sees $2.76 to $2.78 in adjusted earnings per share on $10.11 billion to $10.16 billion in revenue for the fiscal second quarter. Analysts polled by LSEG had expected $2.73 in adjusted earnings per share on $10.01 billion in revenue.
Salesforce bumped up its full-year forecast. It called for $11.27 to $11.33 in adjusted earnings per share and $41.0 billion to $41.3 billion in revenue, implying revenue growth between 8% and 9%. The LSEG consensus included net income of $11.16 per share and $40.82 billion in revenue. The guidance in February was $11.09 to $11.17 in adjusted earnings per share, with $40.5 billion to $40.9 billion in revenue.
As of Wednesday’s close, the stock had slipped about 18% so far in 2025, while the S&P index was unchanged.
Executives will discuss the results with analysts on a conference call starting at 5 p.m. ET.
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HP reported second-quarter results that beat analysts’ estimates for revenue but missed on earnings and guidance, in part due to President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs. Shares sank 15% after the report.
Here’s how the company did versus analysts’ estimates compiled by LSEG:
Earnings per share: 71 cents adjusted vs. 80 cents expected
Revenue: $13.22 billion vs. $13.14 billion expected.
Revenue for the quarter increased 3.3% from $12.8 billion in the same period last year. HP reported net income of $406 million, or 42 cents per share, down from $607 million, or 61 cents per share, a year ago.
For its third quarter, HP said it expects to report adjusted earnings of 68 cents to 80 cents per share, missing the average analyst estimate of 90 cents, according to LSEG. Full-year adjusted earnings will be within the range of $3 to $3.30 per share, while analysts were expecting $3.49 per share.
HP said its outlook “reflects the added cost driven by the current U.S. tariffs,” as well as the associated mitigations.
“While results in the quarter were impacted by a dynamic regulatory environment, we responded quickly to accelerate the expansion of our manufacturing footprint and further reduce our cost structure,” HP CEO Enrique Lores said in a statement.
Lores told CNBC’s Steve Kovach that HP has increased production in Vietnam, Thailand, India, Mexico and the U.S. By the end of June, Lores said the company expects nearly all of its products sold in North America will be built outside of China.
“Through our actions, we expect to fully mitigate the increased trade-related costs by Q4,” Lores said in the interview.
HP will hold its quarterly call with investors at 5 p.m. ET.