Connect with us

Published

on

Alain Jocard | AFP | Getty Images

Amazon’s online advertising business is getting bigger as the slumping digital ad market shows signs of improvement.

The online retail giant’s ad business brought in $10.68 billion in sales in the second quarter, which was a 22% jump from the previous year during the same period, the company said while reporting its latest financial results on Thursday. Amazon’s overall sales grew 11% year over year to $134.4 billion in the second quarter.

related investing news

Match Group shares can rally 30% thanks to a recovery in Tinder, says BTIG

CNBC Pro
These 'uber crowded' trades from hedge funds are up nearly 30% this year, according to Jefferies

CNBC Pro

Analysts polled by StreetAccount projected Amazon’s advertising business would bring in $10.4 billion in sales for the second quarter.

Amazon’s online advertising has developed into a lucrative business for the online retailer, representing about 7.3% of the worldwide digital ad market, according to Insider Intelligence. Alphabet and Meta are still the leading digital advertising companies, holding 28.8% and 20.5% of the global market, the research firm noted.

Over the past year, Amazon’s advertising business has been growing while Meta’s core digital ad business has been shrinking. With Apple’s 2021 iOS privacy update limiting the effectiveness of Meta’s online ad platform, some companies, particularly retailers, shifted their Facebook and Instagram ad budgets to Amazon’s platform in the belief that they could make more sales.

But Meta’s online advertising business could be on the mend with the digital ad market showing signs of a modest recovery.

Meta reported last week that its second-quarter revenue grew 11% year over year to $32 billion, marking the second-straight quarter of sales growth after three straight quarters of declines. The sales growth, driven in part by Meta’s efforts to improve its online advertising platform in the wake of Apple’s iOS update, has lifted the spirits of investors who are more optimistic about the social networking giant’s core business than they have been in nearly a year.

Alphabet shares rose 7% last week after the tech giant said its second-quarter sales grew 7% year over year to $74.6 billion. Google’s advertising revenue was up 3.3% year over year to $58.14 billion during the second quarter, while sales in the company’s YouTube advertising unit grew 4.5% year over year to $7.7 billion.

Earlier this week, Pinterest reported second-quarter sales that increased 6% year over year to $708 million while its costs and expenses rose 11% year over year to $781 million.

Snap, on the other hand, said last week that its second-quarter revenue dropped 4% year over year to $1.11 billion, which is the social messaging company’s second straight period of declining year-over-year revenue. 

Watch: Are the Threads unraveling?

Are the Threads unraveling? Meta looks into 'hooks' to keep users on Twitter rival

Continue Reading

Technology

Former Trump advisor Dina Powell McCormick leaves Meta board after eight-month stint

Published

on

By

Former Trump advisor Dina Powell McCormick leaves Meta board after eight-month stint

Dado Ruvic | Reuters

Dina Powell McCormick, who was a member of President Donald Trump’s first administration, has resigned from Meta’s board of directors.

Powell McCormick, who previously spent 16 years working at Goldman Sachs, notified Meta of her resignation on Friday, according to a filing with the SEC. The filing did not disclose why McCormick was stepping down from Meta’s board, but said her resignation was effective immediately.

Meta does not plan on replacing her board role, according to a person familiar with the matter who asked not to be named due to confidentiality. Powell McCormick is considering a potential strategic advisory role with Meta, but nothing has been decided, the person said.

Powell McCormick joined Meta’s board in April along with Stripe co-founder and CEO Patrick Collison. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a statement at the time that the two executives “bring a lot of experience supporting businesses and entrepreneurs to our board.”

Powell McCormick served as a deputy national security advisor to President Trump during his first stint in office and was also an assistant secretary of state during President George W. Bush’s administration.

She is married to Sen. Dave McCormick, R-Pa, who took office in January.

Powell McCormick is the vice chair, president and head of global client services at BDT & MSD Partners, which formed in 2023 after the merchant bank BDT combined with Michael Dell’s investment firm MSD.

With her departure, Meta now has 14 board members, including UFC CEO Dana White, Broadcom CEO Hock Tan and former Enron executive John Arnold.

WATCH: TikTok signs joint venture to create TikTok USDS Joint Venture.

TikTok signs joint venture to create TikTok USDS Joint Venture

Continue Reading

Technology

Musk’s $56 billion Tesla pay package must be restored as court rules cancellation was too extreme

Published

on

By

Musk's  billion Tesla pay package must be restored as court rules cancellation was too extreme

Elon Musk's 2018 Tesla pay package must be restored, Delaware Supreme Court rules

Elon Musk‘s 2018 CEO pay package from Tesla, worth some $56 billion when it vested, must be restored, the Delaware Supreme Court ruled Friday.

“We reverse the Court of Chancery’s rescission remedy and award $1 in nominal damages,” the judges wrote in their opinion.

In the decision, the Delaware Supreme Court judges said a lower court’s decision to cancel Musk’s 2018 pay plan was too extreme a remedy and that the lower court did not give Tesla a chance to say what a fair compensation ought to be.

The decision on the appeal in this case, known as Tornetta v. Musk, likely ends the yearslong fight over Musk’s record-setting compensation.

Musk’s net worth is currently estimated at around $679.4 billion, according to the Forbes Real Time Billionaires List.

Dorothy Lund, a professor at Columbia Law School, told CNBC that while the Friday opinion may restore the 2018 pay plan for Musk, it leaves the rest of the lower court’s decision unaddressed and intact.

“The court had previously decided that Musk was a controlling shareholder of Tesla and that the Tesla board and he arranged an unfair pay plan for him,” she said. “None of that was reversed in this decision.”

“We are proud to have participated in the historic verdict below, calling to account the Tesla board and its largest stockholder for their breaches of fiduciary duty,” lawyers representing plaintiff Richard J. Tornetta said in an e-mailed statement.

Tesla did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The Delaware Supreme Court issued the order per curiam with no single judge taking credit for writing the opinion and no dissent noted.

Read more CNBC tech news

Musk’s 2018 CEO pay package from Tesla, comprised of 12 milestone-based tranches of stock, was unprecedented at the time it was proposed. After it was granted, the pay plan made Musk the wealthiest individual in the world.

Tesla shareholder Tornetta sued Tesla, filing a derivative action in 2018, accusing Musk and the company’s board of a breach of their fiduciary duties.

Delaware’s business-specialized Court of Chancery decided in January 2024 that the pay plan was improperly granted and ordered it to be rescinded.

In her decision, Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick also found that Musk “controlled Tesla,” and that the process leading to the board’s approval of his 2018 pay plan was “deeply flawed.”

Among other things, she found the Tesla board did not disclose all the material information they should have to investors before asking them to vote on and approve the plan.

After the earlier Tornetta ruling, Musk moved Tesla’s site of incorporation out of Delaware, bashed McCormick by name in posts on his social network X, formerly Twitter, where he has tens of millions of followers, and called for other entrepreneurs to reincorporate outside of the state.

Tesla also attempted to “ratify” the 2018 CEO pay plan by holding a second vote with shareholders in 2024.

In November, Tesla shareholders voted to approve an even larger CEO compensation plan for Musk.

The 2025 pay plan consists of 12 tranches of shares to be granted to the CEO if Tesla hits certain milestones over the next decade and is worth about $1 trillion in total. The new plan could also increase Musk’s voting power over the company from around 13% today to around 25%.

Shareholders had also approved a plan to replace Musk’s 2018 CEO pay if the Tornetta decision was upheld on appeal. That plan is now nullified.

As CNBC previously reported, a law firm that currently represents Tesla in this appeal penned a bill to overhaul corporate law in Delaware earlier this year. The bill was passed by the Delaware legislature in March, and if it had applied retroactively, it could have affected the outcome of this case.

Read the Delaware Supreme Court’s ruling here.

Ron & Michael Baron on Elon Musk, Tesla and the next big, currently-overlooked opportunities in the market

Continue Reading

Technology

Cramer says Boeing is a buy here — plus, Wells Fargo and bank stocks keep rolling

Published

on

By

Cramer says Boeing is a buy here — plus, Wells Fargo and bank stocks keep rolling

Continue Reading

Trending