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Amazon Prime and UPS trucks are seen on a building in Washington DC, United States on July 12, 2024. 

Jakub Porzycki | Nurphoto | Getty Images

Shares of United Parcel Service plunged more than 17% Thursday after the company issued weak revenue guidance for the year and said it planned to cut deliveries for Amazon, its largest customer, by more than half.

The shipping giant said in its fourth-quarter earnings report that it “reached an agreement in principle with its largest customer to lower its volume by more than 50% by the second half of 2026.”

At the same time, UPS said it’s reconfiguring its U.S. network and launching multi-year efficiency initiatives that it expects will result in savings of approximately $1 billion.

UPS CEO Carol Tome said on a call with investors that Amazon is UPS’ largest customer, but it’s not the company’s most profitable customer. “Its margin is very dilutive to the U.S. domestic business,” she added.

“We are making business and operational changes that, along with the foundational changes we’ve already made, will put us further down the path to become a more profitable, agile and differentiated UPS that is growing in the best parts of the market,” Tome said in a statement.

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Amazon spokesperson Kelly Nantel told CNBC in a statement that UPS had requested a reduction in volume “due to their operational needs.”

“We certainly respect their decision,” Nantel said in a statement. “We’ll continue to partner with them and many other carriers to serve our customers.”

Amazon said before the UPS announcement that it had offered to increase UPS’ volumes.

UPS forecast 2025 revenue of $89 billion, down from revenue of $91.1 billion in 2024. That’s well below consensus estimates for 2025 revenue of $94.88 billion, according to analysts polled by LSEG.

For the fourth quarter, UPS missed on revenue, reporting $25.30 billion versus $25.42 billion analysts anticipated in a survey by LSEG.

Amazon has long relied on a mix of major carriers for deliveries, including UPS, FedEx and the U.S. Postal Service. But it has decreased the number of packages sent through UPS and other carriers in recent years as it looks to have more control over deliveries.

Amazon has rapidly built up its own logistics empire since a 2013 holiday fiasco left its packages stranded in the hands of outside carriers. The company now oversees thousands of last-mile delivery companies that deliver packages exclusively for Amazon, as well as a budding in-house network of planes, trucks and ships. By some estimates, Amazon’s in-house logistics operations have grown to rival or exceed the size of major carriers.

UPS has, for its part, taken more aggressive cost-control measures, including catering to more profitable delivery customers. In recent quarters, UPS has benefited from an influx of volume from bargain retailers Temu and Shein, which have rapidly gained popularity in the U.S.

Last January, UPS laid off 12,000 employees as part of a bid to realize $1 billion in cost savings.

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MongoDB shares sink after company issues weak guidance

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MongoDB shares sink after company issues weak guidance

Dev Ittycheria, CEO of MongoDB

Adam Jeffery | CNBC

MongoDB shares sank 16% in extended trading on Wednesday after the database software maker issued disappointing guidance.

Here’s how the company did in comparison with LSEG consensus:

  • Earnings per share: $1.28 adjusted vs. 66 cents expected
  • Revenue: $548.4 million vs. $519.6 million expected

Revenue increased about 20% from a year ago in the quarter that ended on Jan. 31, according to a statement. The company generated $15.8 million in net income, or 19 cents per share, which factors in stock-based compensation. In the same quarter a year ago, MongoDB had registered a net loss of $55.5 million, or 77 cents per share.

MongoDB added 1,900 customers in the quarter, bringing the total to 54,500. But the company ended the quarter with about $360 million in deferred revenue, below the StreetAccount consensus of $370.4 million.

MongoDB is seeing slower growth than it had hoped for in new applications using its Atlas cloud-based database service, Srdjan Tanjga, MongoDB’s interim finance chief, said on a conference call with analysts. Meanwhile, MongoDB is hiring rapidly to pursue more deals with large companies, while pulling back on mid-sized businesses, Tanjga said.

During the quarter, MongoDB acquired artificial intelligence startup Voyage for an undisclosed sum.

“We want to capitalize on a once-in-a-generation opportunity,” CEO Dev Ittycheria said.

For the fiscal first quarter, MongoDB called for 63 cents to 67 cents in adjusted earnings per share on $524 million to $529 million in revenue. Analysts surveyed by LSEG had expected 62 cents of per-share earnings and revenue of $526.8 million.

MongoDB said it expects adjusted earnings per share of $2.44 to $2.62 and revenue of $2.24 billion to $2.28 billion for fiscal 2026. That implies 12.7% revenue growth, which would be the slowest rate at least since the company went public in 2017. Analysts were anticipating $3.34 per share of earnings and $2.32 billion in revenue.

Prior to Wednesday’s after-hours move, MongoDB shares were up 13%, while the S&P 500 was down about 1%.

WATCH: MongoDB shares fall more than 10% as non-gross margins come in lighter-than-expected

MongoDB shares fall more than 10% as non-gross margins come in lighter-than-expected

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Digg founder teams up with former Reddit rival to buy and revive website

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Digg founder teams up with former Reddit rival to buy and revive website

Alexis Ohanian

David A. Grogan | CNBC

Content aggregator Digg is making a comeback with the help of an unlikely partner: Reddit co-founder and rival Alexis Ohanian.

Ohanian and Digg founder Kevin Rose acquired the platform for an undisclosed sum. The deal is backed by venture capital firms True Ventures, where Rose is a partner, and Ohanian’s Seven Seven Six. The partnership was announced Wednesday in a video post to the company’s X account in which Rose called the partnership a “team-up he would have never imagined 20 years ago.”

Digg was founded in 2004 and rose to prominence as a major outlet for trending news because it allowed users to rate stories. Rose made what became an infamously goofy appearance on the cover of Businessweek in 2006 as the kid who “made $60 million in 18 months.”

The company said in a release that it aims to differentiate itself in the social media market by “focusing on AI innovations designed to enhance the user experience and build a human-centered alternative.” Digg said it will also create a platform that “prioritizes transparency, rewards human effort, and fosters enriching discussions.”

Ohanian also teased the collaboration, telling X followers on Wednesday that he was “working on something new… but also old… but also very new” and is “excited” to be partnering with Rose.

At its peak in 2008, Digg was reportedly valued at about $160 million. But the rise of Facebook and other social sites caused traffic to Digg to plummet. Meanwhile, Reddit, which was founded a year after Digg by Ohanian and current CEO Steve Huffman, emerged as a direct rival to Digg by forming communities around types of content and letting users similarly rate news stories.

In 2012, Digg’s brand and website were acquired by tech incubator Betaworks for about $500,000.

Reddit has continued its ascent, reporting nearly 102 million daily active users at the end of the fourth quarter. The site gained widespread attention when it became the center of the 2020 meme stock craze as retail traders inflicted huge pain on hedge funds shorting stocks using a subreddit known as Wallstreetbets.

Reddit went public on the New York Stock Exchange last March at $34 a share and has seen its stock nearly quintuple. Shares are up about 1% year to date and added 4% during Wednesday’s session.

Ohanian has moved on to other projects since he stepped down from Reddit’s board in 2020. He’s currently partnering with billionaire Frank McCourt in a bid for TikTok after President Donald Trump extended the initial deadline for the company’s Chinese-parent ByteDance to sell the social media platform or face a ban.

Rose said in a post on X that he and Ohanian “dreamed up features that weren’t even possible with yesterday’s tech.”

“The new @digg brings some great nostalgia, but we’re not here to just rebuild the past or clone a competitor,” he wrote.

— CNBC’s Ari Levy contributed to this report.

WATCH: Reddit Co-founder Alexis Ohanian is going long on women’s sports

Reddit Co-founder Alexis Ohanian is going long on women's sports

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CrowdStrike slumps 9% on weak earnings outlook, overhang from outage costs

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CrowdStrike slumps 9% on weak earnings outlook, overhang from outage costs

CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz speaks at the Wall Street Journal Tech Live conference in Laguna Beach, California, on Oct. 21, 2019.

Martina Albertazzi | Bloomberg | Getty Images

CrowdStrike shares dropped 9% after issuing weak earnings guidance as the company signaled ongoing pressure from its global IT outage that rattled businesses in July.

The cybersecurity software provider said it expects fiscal first-quarter earnings to range between 64 cents and 66 cents per share, versus the average Factset estimate of 95 cents. CrowdStrike is projecting earnings for the year to range between $3.33 and $3.45 per share, excluding items. That fell short $4.42 expected by analysts polled by LSEG.

For the fiscal fourth quarter, CrowdStrike posted a net loss of $92.3 billion, or 37 cents per share, versus net income of $53.7 million, or 22 cents per share, in the year-ago period. The company also reported $21 million in costs from incident-related expenses and $49.9 million of tax expenses connected to acquisitions.

The company also said it anticipates another $73 million in expenses for the first quarter resulting from its July update that spurred a global information technology outage, grounded flights and disrupted businesses. CrowdStrike projects an additional $43 million in costs due to some deal packages offered in its wake.

The outage has also weighed on free cash flow margins, which CrowdStrike said on a conference call with analysts Tuesday it expects to return to 30% or more in fiscal 2027.

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Many on Wall Street expect headwinds from the July issue to start abating in the new fiscal year, with Bernstein’s Peter Weed expecting a pick up in CrowdStrike net retention rate in the new fiscal year.

“Although FY26 guidance marked a conservative start to the year, in our view, we expect management is setting the stage for a return to a beat-and-raise cadence we saw before the outage,” wrote JPMorgan’s Brian Essex.

CrowdStrike’s disappointing guidance offset better-than-expected fiscal fourth-quarter results. The company posted adjusted earnings of $1.03 per share on $1.06 billion in revenue and said that revenue grew 25% from a year ago.

Founder and CEO George Kurtz called the company a “comeback story” on the conference call.

“I’m extremely proud of the engagement we’ve had with customers, partners, prospects in the market navigating a year that tested CrowdStrike,” he said. “Q4 showcases the fruits of our labors, giving me strong conviction in our AI-native, single platform, excellent execution, and accelerating market opportunity.”

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