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Tim Cook walks in the Paddock prior to the F1 Grand Prix of USA at Circuit of The Americas on October 23, 2022 in Austin, Texas.

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Elon Musk is as 'wrong as you can get' on Apple criticism, says Jim Cramer

Apple has remained a sleeping bear in the face of Musk’s provocations. It has not commented, nor has CEO Tim Cook, and while its app review moderation staffers may be talking to Twitter behind the scenes over questionable content, Apple hasn’t pulled the app. In fact, Twitter got an update through app review last week.

Twitter is not that important to Apple from a business perspective. It’s just one of a vast number of apps on the App Store, and it isn’t a huge moneymaker for Apple through in-app purchases.

But on Tuesday, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Ohio Senator-elect J.D. Vance, both Republicans, made remarks about Apple’s situation that show how Musk could put Apple in a tough spot.

Here’s one way it could go:

  • Musk makes a change to Twitter in order to bypass Apple’s 30% fees, such as allowing users to plug their credit cards in to the app to subscribe to Twitter Blue or other new features.
  • Apple pulls the app because of these violations.
  • Musk frames the dispute with Apple as an issue over free speech and content moderation, and Republican politicians agree.
  • Apple gets caught up in a nationwide debate over free speech and monopoly power focusing on its App Store.

How things could play out

On Tuesday, DeSantis said at a press conference that if Apple were to kick Twitter off, it would show that Apple has monopolistic power and that Congress should look into it. DeSantis framed it as an issue of free speech — many conservatives believe that social networks, including Twitter, generally discriminate against conservative viewpoints.

“You also hear reports Apple is threatening to remove Twitter from the App Store because Elon Musk is actually opening it up for free speech, and is restoring a lot of accounts that were unfairly and illegitimately suspended for putting out accurate information about Covid,” DeSantis said.

“If Apple responds to that by nuking them from the app store, I think that would be a huge, huge mistake, and it would be a really raw exercise of monopolistic power,” he continued.

Vance framed the situation similarly in a tweet, saying that if Apple pulled Twitter, “This would be the most raw exercise of monopoly power in a century, and no civilized country should allow it.”

In fact, Apple’s app review department is unlikely to pull Twitter over content. While Apple regularly bans apps over questionable content, they are rarely big brand names such as Twitter — they’re usually smaller, lesser-known apps. Apple’s rules for apps with significant user-generated content, such as Twitter, focus less on specific kinds of infringing content and more on whether the app has a content filtering system or content moderation procedures. Twitter has both, although Musk’s recent cuts to Twitter’s staff could hurt its ability to flag problem posts.

But Apple would be much more likely to pull the Twitter app if Twitter tries to cut Apple out of its platform fees.

It’s happened before. In 2020, Fortnite added a system inside its iPhone app that allowed users to buy in-game coins directly from Epic Games, cutting out the 30% of sales that Apple typically takes. Apple removed Fortnite from the App Store the same day. The episode kicked off a legal battle, which Apple won on most counts but is currently in appeals.

Google takes a similar cut for Android apps sold through its Play Store but also allows other Android app stores to exist and allows people to “sideload” apps directly onto their phones, while Apple has an exclusive lock on all iPhone app distribution.

Musk has good business reasons to pick this fight.

In particular, Musk wants Twitter to make much more money from direct subscriptions and not advertising. But Apple’s 30% cut of purchases made inside apps is a major hurdle for a company that is slashing costs and has a significant debt load.

So Musk could pull an Epic Games move and enable direct billing, spurring Apple to take action, while at the same time framing the debate around free speech. If that happened, as DeSantis suggested, perhaps Congress would start asking questions. Apple would become a football in political debates. Executives could be forced to testify or provide written responses.

At the very least, you’d have lawmakers such as Vance using the words “monopoly” and “Apple” in the same sentence. That’s a risk to Apple’s brand. Debate over these topics could reenergize pending regulation such as the Open Markets Act which threatens its control over the App Store and its significant profits.

The last time Apple pulled an app that was popular with conservatives for lack of content moderation was Parler in January 2021. It was restored in April.

In the interim, Apple faced official inquiries from Republican Sens. Ken Buck and Mike Lee about why Parler was removed from the App Store. Cook appeared on Fox News to defend the company’s decision.

Twitter is a significantly more important and well-known social network than Parler was and would grab more attention.

It’s probably most valuable for Apple if Twitter remains on the platform. The controversy-averse iPhone maker would probably like this whole Elon Musk narrative to go away.

Indeed, it could play out this way: Apple remains silent, working with Twitter behind the scenes on its app, and Musk tweets about the 30% cut when it irks him. Nothing really changes.

But Musk is unpredictable, and if he does really want to “go to war” over 30% fees, Apple could be forced into a tough spot.

Apple and Twitter did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

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Reddit shares soar 14% after company reports revenue pop in debut earnings report

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Reddit shares soar 14% after company reports revenue pop in debut earnings report

Reddit CEO Steve Huffman hugs mascot Snoo as Reddit begins trading on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York on March 21, 2024. 

Timothy A. Clary | AFP | Getty Images

Reddit shares rallied 14% in extended trading on Tuesday after the company released quarterly results for the first time since its IPO in March.

Here’s how the company did:

  • Loss per share: $8.19 loss per share. That may not compare with the $8.71 loss expected by LSEG
  • Revenue: $243 million vs. $212.8 million expected by LSEG

Revenue climbed 48% from $163.7 million a year earlier. The company reported $222.7 million in ad revenue for the period, up 39% year over year, which is a faster rate of growth than at its top competitors.

Digital advertising companies have started growing again at a healthy clip after brands reeled in spending to cope with inflation in 2022. Meta‘s ad revenue jumped 27% in the first quarter, followed by 24% growth at Amazon and 13% growth at Google parent Alphabet.

Reddit reported a net loss of $575.1 million. Stock-based compensation expenses and related taxes were $595.5 million, primarily driven by IPO charges.

For the second quarter, Reddit expects revenue of $240 million to $255 million, topping the $224 million expected by analysts, according to LSEG. The midpoint of the guidance range suggests growth of about 32% for the second quarter, up from $183 million from a year earlier.

Reddit, which hosts millions of online forums on its platform, was founded in 2005 by Alexis Ohanian and Steve Huffman, the company’s CEO. 

“We see this as the beginning of a new chapter as we work towards building the next generation of Reddit,” Huffman said in a release Tuesday.

Reddit began trading under the ticker symbol “RDDT” on the New York Stock Exchange in March. The company priced its IPO at $34 per share, which valued the company around $6.5 billion. When tech valuations were red hot in 2021, Reddit’s private market valuation reached $10 billion.

The stock climbed past $58 in after-hours trading on Tuesday before coming back a bit. Should the stock close above $57.75 on Wednesday, it would be at its highest since March 26, its fourth day of trading. The shares closed that day at $65.11, their highest yet.

The company reported 82.7 million daily active users for its first quarter, up from the 76.6 million expected by StreetAccount. Average revenue per user worldwide rose 8% to $2.94 from $2.72 a year ago.

Reddit will hold its first quarterly call with investors at 5 p.m. ET.

WATCH: Reddit shares climb after earnings

Reddit shares climb on revenue beat in first quarterly report since IPO

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Tesla Chairwoman Robyn Denholm has sold over $50 million worth of stock in 2024

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Tesla Chairwoman Robyn Denholm has sold over  million worth of stock in 2024

Robyn Denholm, chairman of Tesla Inc., speaks during an American Chamber of Commerce in Australia event in Sydney, Australia, on Wednesday, March 27, 2019.

Brendon Thorne | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Tesla Chairwoman Robyn Denholm has just sold $17.3 million worth of her shares in the electric vehicle maker, according to a filing Monday, bringing her total stock sales this year to more than $50 million.

Denholm, who joined Tesla’s board as an independent director in 2014 and became chair four years later, sold the shares as part of what’s called a 10b5-1 program put into place in October. She has now sold all of the 281,116 shares allowed in the agreement.

While Denholm still has the vast majority of the 1.66 million shares she owned as of the end of last year, according to the company’s proxy filing, her stock sales follow hefty selling from other big stakeholders. Former Tesla Senior Vice President Drew Baglino, who announced his resignation in mid-April, sold shares worth around $181.5 million soon after his departure, according to a filing.

Another Tesla board member, Kathleen Wilson-Thompson, set up a 10b5-1 trading plan in February 2024, for the potential sale of up to 280,000 shares by or before Feb. 28, 2025.

Tesla shares are down 26% this year, closing Monday at $184.76. The slide comes as the company faces increased competition, weakened demand for its EVs and a drop in first-quarter deliveries.

CEO Elon Musk has tried to focus investors’ attention on the company’s self-driving future instead of its core automotive business. He told investors on Tesla’s earnings call last month that those who doubt the company’s ability to deliver self-driving vehicles should stay away from the stock. For years, Tesla has been working to develop, but hasn’t brought to market, software that will make its existing cars autonomous, a dedicated robotaxi and humanoid robots capable of factory work.

“If somebody doesn’t believe Tesla’s going to solve autonomy, I think they should not be an investor in the company,” Musk said on the call.

In Denholm’s early years on the Tesla board, she served on the audit committee. She eventually replaced Musk as chair in November 2018, after the company struck an agreement with the SEC to settle civil securities fraud charges requiring Musk to relinquish that role temporarily, among other provisions.

The SEC had charged Musk and Tesla with securities fraud after Musk said, in a series of tweets in 2018 that he was considering taking the company private at $420 per share with “funding secured.” The tweets led to a stretch of volatility in Tesla shares.

Before joining the Tesla board, Denholm served in executive roles at Sun Microsystems, and in finance roles at Toyota in Australia and at accounting firm Arthur Andersen. Denholm is currently part of Tesla’s audit, compensation, nominating and corporate governance, and disclosure controls committees.

Denholm, who didn’t respond to a request for comment, is a named defendant in a shareholder lawsuit — Tornetta vs. Musk — that was decided in January. The judge in the Delaware case ruled that Tesla’s 2018 CEO pay plan, which was the largest in public corporate history, was only allowed by a board that was “beholden to Musk,” and should be rescinded.

In her opinion, Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick wrote that by serving on Tesla’s board, Denholm received “life-changing” compensation, which “far exceeded the compensation she received from other sources.”

Tesla's big gamble: Full Self-Driving in the wild

Denholm’s latest stock sales coincide with struggles at Tesla and a broad restructuring effort that’s included thousands of layoffs.

Demand for Tesla’s EVs slumped in the first quarter, and inventory levels have visibly swelled. Revenue in the period fell 9% from a year earlier, the steepest drop since 2012, while net income plunged 55%.

Musk said in an internal memo in April that Tesla was cutting more than 10% of its global headcount. He didn’t say which departments or locations would be most affected. In the earnings call, he referred to the restructuring as a “pruning exercise” and added, “We’re not giving up anything that is significant that I’m aware of.” He said that if the company organizationally is “5% wrong per year,” its cumulative inefficiency comes out to 25% or 30%.

Denholm and Musk are currently trying to convince shareholders to vote with directors and executives at Tesla on a number of proxy proposals.

The most material proposal asks shareholders to return to Musk his compensation package that was invalidated by the Delaware Chancery Court in the Tornetta decision. The pay package would be worth tens of billions of dollars in Tesla shares to Musk.

Tesla’s largest individual retail shareholder, tech billionaire Leo Koguan, has repeatedly called for investors to vote against the plan. In a post on X, Koguan recently wrote, “Don’t be a sucker, just vote NO.”

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Food startup Hungryroot uses AI to reduce waste, a major climate offender

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Food startup Hungryroot uses AI to reduce waste, a major climate offender

Food startup uses AI to cut food waste

Food waste is so prolific in the U.S. that roughly one-third of the amount produced ends up in landfills rather than in stomachs. That adds up to excess production, packaging, storage and delivery requirements, all negatively contributing to climate change.

A recent study published in the journal Science found that food production accounts for 26% of global greenhouse gas emissions.

Food delivery services like HelloFresh, Blue Apron and EveryPlate reduce that somewhat by sending consumers what they need for specific recipes.

A New York-based startup called Hungryroot is going one step further. The 9-year-old company — using artificial intelligence — is providing a more curated experience and delivering the precise amount of food a consumer will use.

Customers answer a slew of questions about their food likes and dislikes, allergies and health goals. They also answer questions on how and when they cook. Taking those answers, Hungryroot’s technology infers what recipes and grocery items are best for each customer.

“Hungryroot is entirely designed to give you just the foods that you’re going to need for your week,” Ben McKean, the company’s CEO, told CNBC. “And it gives you simple recipes, so you know exactly what to do with them, and as a result, food waste with our customers is significantly reduced.”

Hungryroot sends users a list of what’s in their weekly cart, allowing them to approve or change items.

The company can reduce its own waste as well. If it determines that a user has no preference between broccoli and Brussels sprouts, and the company happens to have more broccoli in its warehouse, that’s what they’ll recommend.

The company said these processes help lead to 80% less food waste at its facilities compared with a traditional supermarket.

Investors say the unique model is also good for its bottom line.

“They have been profitable for three or four years now, which is unusual for a lot of these e-commerce, food businesses,” said Jeremy Liew, a partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners. “They’ve been able to drive that through efficiency of spend, and because they have built a business that customers really love.”

In addition to Lightspeed, Hungryroot is backed by L Catterton, Crosslink Capital, KarpReilly and Lerer Hippeau. The company has raised a total of $75 million.

 — CNBC climate producer Lisa Rizzolo contributed to this piece.

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