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Snap shares climbed 15% on Wednesday after the company issued its third-quarter earnings, reporting revenue that beat analysts expectations and a $500 million stock repurchase program.

Here is how the company did compared with Wall Street’s expectations:

  • Earnings per share: Loss of 6 cents. That figure is not comparable to analysts’ estimates.
  • Revenue: $1.51 billion vs. $1.49 billion expected, according to LSEG 
  • Global daily active users: 477 million vs. 476 million expected, according to StreetAccount
  • Global average revenue per user (ARPU): $3.16 vs. $3.13 expected, according to StreetAccount

Snap also announced that it is partnering with the startup Perplexity AI, which “will integrate its conversational search directly into Snapchat.” The feature is set to appear in Snapchat starting in early 2026, Snap said.

“Perplexity will pay Snap $400 million over one year, through a combination of cash and equity, as we achieve global rollout,” Snap said in the letter. “Revenue from the partnership is expected to begin contributing in 2026.”

The partnership represents “a first step in Snap’s effort to make Snapchat a platform where leading AI companies can connect with its global community in creative and trusted ways,” the two companies said in their announcement.

In the company’s earnings call, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel said Perplexity will have “default placement in our chat inbox” and the startup will “control the responses from their chatbot inside of Snapchat.”

Although Snap will not be selling “advertising against the Perplexity responses,” Spiegel said that the integration “will help Perplexity drive additional subscribers, which I think is something that will be valuable to their business.”

“We have a really unique opportunity ahead to help distribute AI agents through our chat interface,” Spiegel said.

While Snapchat users will still be able to engage with the company’s My AI chatbot, the integrated Perplexity AI service will provide them with “real-time answers from credible sources and explore new topics within the app,” the companies said.

Regarding Snap’s expensive foray into developing augmented reality glasses, Spiegel said the company plans to create a separate subsidiary around the Specs AR glasses to speed up development with partners.

Snap said fourth-quarter sales will come in between $1.68 billion and $1.71 billion. That figure’s midpoint of $1.695 billion is slightly ahead of Wall Street expectations of $1.69 billion.

For the third quarter, Snap said sales grew 10% year over year while it logged a net loss of $104 million. During the same quarter last year, Snap recorded a net loss of $153 million.

The Snapchat parent said that third-quarter adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, or EBITDA, came in at $182 million, ahead of the $125 million that StreetAccount was projecting.

The company also said that its adjusted EBITDA for the fourth quarter will be between $280 million and $310 million, which tops StreetAccount’s projections of $255.4 million.

Snap shares were down 32% for the year, as of Wednesday’s close, compared to the Nasdaq’s 22% gain.

Although the company’s shares soared as high as 25% in after-hours trading on Wednesday, they began their descent after Snap finance chief Derek Andersen detailed some of the company’s sales-related challenges on the earnings call.

“The North America LCS segment remains the primary headwind to our overall revenue growth,” said Andersen, adding that the company is seeing more growth and demand for Snap’s ad products from small-to-medium sized businesses in other regions.

In a letter to investors, Snap said that government regulations like Australia’s social media minimum age bill and related policy developments “are likely to have negative impacts on user engagement metrics that we cannot currently predict.”

“While we remain committed to our goal of serving 1 billion global monthly active users, we expect overall DAU may decline in Q4 given these internal and external factors, and as noted above we expect particularly negative impacts in certain jurisdictions,” Snap said in the letter.

The Australian senate passed the bill in November 2024, and when the law comes into effect next month, companies like Facebook and Instagram parent Meta, TikTok and Snap will be penalized if they fail to adequately prevent children under 16 from possessing accounts on their respective platforms.

Snap also said in the investor letter that the “upcoming rollout of platform-level age verification” from companies like Apple and Google could also negatively impact user metrics in the future.  

Utah and California have signed online-child safety bills that put the onus on app store makers to verify user ages. Utah’s law is set to fully take effect in May 2026.

“We are also preparing for the upcoming rollout of platform-level age verification, which will use new signals provided by Apple — and soon Google — to help us better determine the age of our users and remove those we learn are under 13,” Snap said in the letter.

Snap’s warning to investors underscores how new laws, policies and regulations around the globe are beginning to impact tech firms.

In the letter, Snap also said that some of its efforts to improve monetization, such as its Snapchat+ subscription service, could result in “adverse impact on engagement metrics as these experiences are rolled out globally.”

Pinterest shares tanked on Tuesday after the company reported third-quarter results that missed on earnings per share and provided weaker-than-expected guidance. The company’s finance chief Julia Donnelly told analysts that Pinterest expects “broader trends and market uncertainty continuing with the addition of a new tariff in Q4 impacting the home furnishing category.”

Big tech companies like Meta, Alphabet and Amazon reported their latest quarterly earnings last week in which they posted solid digital advertising sales and hefty spending on AI-related computing infrastructure.

The Facebook-parent saw third-quarter sales boom 26% year-over-year to $51.24 billion, while revenue in Amazon’s online ad unit soared 24% year-over-year to $17.7 billion.

Alphabet said that its total advertising revenue for the third quarter rose 13% year-over-year to $74.18 billion, while YouTube’s online ad sales climbed 15% to $10.26 billion.

Reddit said last Thursday that third-quarter sales surged 68% year-over-year to $585 million. The company’s global daily active uniques increased 19% year-over-year to 116 million, surpassing estimates of 114 million. 

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SoFi’s stock drops on $1.5 billion share sale announcement

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SoFi's stock drops on .5 billion share sale announcement

Anthony Noto, CEO of SoFi, speaking with CNBC at the annual Allen & Co. Media and Technology Conference in Sun Valley, Idaho on July 10th, 2025.

David A. Grogan | CNBC

SoFi shares fell almost 6% in extended trading Thursday after the fintech company announced a $1.5 billion stock offering.

The company, which provides online loans and other banking services, said in a press release that it will use the proceeds for “general corporate purposes, including but not limited to enhancing capital position, increasing optionality and enabling further efficiency of capital management, and funding incremental growth and business opportunities.”

The announced offering comes after SoFi’s market cap almost doubled so far in 2025. The stock price is up more than sixfold since the end of 2022.

A company’s share price often drops on a planned share sale as the offering dilutes the value of existing holders’ stakes.

In its third-quarter earnings release in late October, SoFi reported revenue growth of 38% from a year earlier to $961.6 million, while net income more than doubled to $139.4 million. The company reported cash and equivalents of $3.25 billion.

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Apple announces departure of general counsel and policy chief

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Apple announces departure of general counsel and policy chief

Lisa Jackson, senior vice president of environment, policy and social initiatives at Apple Inc., speaks during the TechCrunch Disrupt 2017 in San Francisco, California, U.S., on Tuesday, Sept. 19, 2017.

David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Apple’s general counsel, Kate Adams, and its vice president for environment, policy, and social initiatives, Lisa Jackson, are retiring from the company, the iPhone maker announced on Thursday.

Jennifer Newstead, Meta’s chief legal officer, will become Apple’s new general counsel in March, and Jackson’s government affairs staff will report to her starting late next year, Apple said.

The two executives, who both reported to Apple CEO Tim Cook, are the latest members of senior leadership to exit the company. In recent weeks, Apple’s head software designer said he was leaving to join Meta, while Apple said its AI chief was retiring, along with its chief operating officer.

Adams joined Apple from Honeywell and became general counsel in 2017, and oversaw legal matters including litigation, global security, and the company’s privacy initiatives. Under Adams, Apple grappled with rising antitrust scrutiny and regulation around the world, including major lawsuits in the U.S. over the iPhone App Store’s restrictions and fees.

Jackson joined Apple in 2013, and led the company’s diversity programs as well as much of its policy work in Washington, D.C. Before that, she spent four years as administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, a position she was appointed to by President Barack Obama.

With her emphasis in areas like social justice and renewable energies, Jackson’s job lost relevance during the second Trump administration, which has publicly denounced diversity, equity and inclusion programs and slammed efforts to combat climate change.

Apple has faced increased tariffs from the Trump administration, and Cook has met with President Donald Trump several times to tout the company’s American manufacturing plans as part of an effort to influence policy.

Jackson was instrumental in Apple’s launch of its Racial Equity and Justice Initiative following the 2020 murder of George Floyd. She then helped expand the company’s equity and justice efforts to other countries, including the U.K., Mexico and New Zealand, according to a report published in 2023.

“At Apple, we pledge that our resolve will not fade,” Jackson wrote in a section of that report. “We won’t delay action. We will work, each and every day, on the urgent task of advancing equity.”

Jackson also worked on Apple’s environmental image. Her job “focused on reducing greenhouse gases, protecting air and water quality, preventing exposure to toxic contamination, and expanding outreach to communities on environmental issues,” according to her bio on the company’s website. She discussed Apple’s plans to become carbon neutral at iPhone launch events.

Jackson also accompanied Cook to several official functions in Washington, including state dinners.

Apple CEO Tim Cook and Apple Vice President Lisa Jackson arrive at the White House for a state dinner on April 10, 2024 in Washington, DC.

Tasos Katopodis | Getty Images

Newstead, who will become Apple’s top lawyer, has overseen Meta’s legal and regulatory matters pertaining to its family of apps like Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp since 2019. A Meta spokesperson said Newstead will be staying through the end of the year and that the company is actively searching for her replacement.

Prior to Meta, Newstead served as a Trump-appointed legal advisor at the State Department during the president’s first administration in 2019. 

Before that, she was a partner at Davis Polk & Wardwell and a general counsel of the White House Office of Management and Budget, among other roles in the U.S. government.

CNBC’s Jonathan Vanian contributed to this story.

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Microsoft will raise prices of commercial Office subscriptions in July

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Microsoft will raise prices of commercial Office subscriptions in July

A general view of the Microsoft office building is seen in Cologne, Germany, on November 18, 2025.

Nurphoto | Nurphoto | Getty Images

Microsoft said Thursday that it will increase the prices of Office productivity software subscriptions for commercial and government clients on July 1.

The company’s Office applications, which include Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook, have been facing increased competition in recent years from Google.

“We are continuously investing and innovating our platform for the future,” Nicole Herskowitz, corporate vice president for Microsoft 365 and Copilot, wrote in a blog post. “In the last year, we released more than 1,100 features across Microsoft 365, Security, Copilot, and SharePoint.” The new features have added value to the suites, she wrote.

Price hikes for commercial Office subscriptions have been infrequent. In 2022, Microsoft raised prices of its productivity bundles for the first time since launching the original Office 365 subscriptions in 2011. Microsoft changed the name of Office 365 to Microsoft 365 in 2020. In January, Microsoft announced a price hike for consumer Office bundles.

Microsoft offers Office 365 subscriptions for commercial use that include access to its productivity applications, along with higher-priced Microsoft 365 subscriptions that also include Windows operating system updates.

Here’s a breakdown of the commercial price changes:

  • For small and medium-sized businesses, Microsoft 365 Business Basic will cost $7 per person per month, up from $6.
  • Microsoft 365 Business Standard will be available for $14, up from $12.50.
  • Microsoft 365 Business Premium will continue to cost $22.
  • The entry-level Office 365 E1 offering for enterprises will still be sold for $10.
  • Office 365 E3 will jump 13% to $26 from $23.
  • The Microsoft 365 E3 package including Windows for enterprises will rise 8% to $39 from $36.
  • The full-featured Microsoft 365 E5 will increase to $60 from $57.
  • For front-line workers such as cashiers, Microsoft 365 F1 subscriptions will cost $3, up from $2.25.
  • Microsoft 365 F3 will be available for $10, up from $8.

The U.S. Defense Department and other government clients will face similar percentage price increases.

The various subscriptions all exclude access to the $30 Microsoft 365 Copilot add-on that draws on generative artificial intelligence models. Some companies have started widely rolling out Copilot, while others have held off on expanding their deployments, CNBC reported last week.

In many cases, organizations receive discounts off of list prices, but Microsoft has cut back on direct volume deals for some types of customers.

Almost 43% of Microsoft’s $77.7 billion in fiscal first-quarter revenue came from its Productivity and Businesses Processes segment, which includes Office. In October, the company said revenue from Microsoft 365 commercial cloud services jumped 17%, while seats increased 6%, mainly from products targeting small and medium-sized businesses and front-line workers.

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