Communications Sector

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>>> T-Mobile US, Inc. (TMUS), together with its subsidiaries, provides mobile communications services in the United States, Puerto Rico, and the United States Virgin Islands. The company offers voice, messaging, and data services to customers in the postpaid, prepaid, and wholesale and other services. It also provides wireless devices, including smartphones, wearables, tablets, home broadband routers, and other mobile communication devices, as well as wireless devices and accessories; financing through equipment installment plans; reinsurance for device insurance policies and extended warranty contracts; leasing through JUMP! On Demand; and High Speed Internet services. In addition, the company offers services, devices, and accessories under the T-Mobile and Metro by T-Mobile brands through its owned and operated retail stores, T-Mobile app and customer care channels, and its websites. It also sells its devices to dealers and other third-party distributors for resale through independent third-party retail outlets and various third-party websites. The company was founded in 1994 and is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington. T-Mobile US, Inc. operates as a subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom AG. <<<


https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/TMUS/profile/



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>>> Why Rumble Stock Skyrocketed to a 52-Week High Today


by Jon Quast

Motley Fool

December 23, 2024


https://finance.yahoo.com/news/why-rumble-stock-skyrocketed-52-162101100.html


After the market closed on Friday, technology company Rumble (NASDAQ: RUM) announced that Tether (CRYPTO: USDT) will invest $775 million. Considering Rumble was valued at around $2 billion when the investment was announced, the investment is massive. And that's why Rumble stock was up a stunning 66% as of 10:15 a.m. ET.

Rumble is losing money and appreciates Tether's help

How Tether has that much money lying around is another subject for another day. But when it comes to Rumble, investors are responding favorably to news of the investment because this business loses a ton of money and it could use the help.

Just consider its year-to-date numbers. Through the first three quarters of 2024, Rumble has lost nearly $102 million. And a big reason for this is its negative gross margin of 59% so far this year. In other words, it costs more to provide its services than it generates in revenue. And then it still has to pay for operating expenses.

Rumble did have $131 million in cash and equivalents at the end of the third quarter of 2024. But that only gave the company about one year of runway at its current burn rate. Tether's substantial investment gives it far more breathing room and it's why investors are sending shares higher today.

Rumble can breathe a little easier now

The investment isn't expected to come through until the first quarter of 2025 and there are some potentially confusing details here for Rumble's shareholders. Only $250 million is directly going to the company's business needs. The remaining $500 million will be used to buy stock at $7.50 per share from shareholders who wish to sell.

Now that the price is well over $7.50 per share, shareholders are unlikely to take the offer. But even assuming all of this money is used for this purpose, Rumble will still be left with $250 million to grow the business, which provides a couple of extra years of runway at its current pace. That's significant and does make Rumble stock an interesting one to watch.

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Xena, Yes, the mainstream health system is just big business in disguise. I talked to one recent medical school graduate and he said they had 1 lecture on nutrition in his entire time in med school. It's unbelievable. Things are starting to change a little, but Big Pharma basically controls medical education, and their pills are the treatment for everything. Prevention? Nutrition? They've never heard of it. And if a doctor veers away from the 'standard of care' (ie pills) they risk getting sued, losing their license, etc. I would stay way from the whole system, if at all possible.

Years ago I remember an interview with the oldest woman in the world, who lived in France and was something like 118 years old. They asked her what was her secret to such amazing longevity, and she said --> 'Stay away from doctors'. So some good advice.

Btw, that lady grew up in Arles, and actually remembered seeing Van Gogh walking to and from his daily outdoor painting sessions (!) She was just a little girl, but remebered that he was 'ugly and ill tempered', lol. But imagine being healthy for way over a century. There are actually places around the world like that, where a large percentage of people live past 100 and are remarkably healthy. Gundry talks about these 'blue zones', and one is a small town south of Naples called Acciaroli (below). The Mediterranean diet is believed to be a key reason for their great health and longevity.

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[XenaLives]

I was treated at UC Health and one of the doctors was a neurologist that I "fired" because he wouldn't treat me for Cipro toxicity. I found another doctor who woulld and followed her for years through three institutions before I finially was able to get close to "normal" again. She explicitly told me not to get gadolinum because of the mitochondrial damage caused by the Cipro. It was in my medical record, but my memory was wiped out due to the hypoxia. I only remembered it when another UC Health neurologist ordered a MRI with gadolinium this spring - it triggered the memory and it was confirmed when I looked at my medical record. I wish I could find an attorney that would sue the S.O.B. because he went on record taunting me and saying the Cipro toxicity was imaginary and that's why he gave me the gadolinium. I believe the statute of limitations has expired, but I think the fact that he wiped out my memory would probably allow an extension. I just don't know how to find a trustworthy attorney.

The whole system is F'd up to the max...

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Xena, Since he's no longer around, it might make sense to look into the CIA's various poisoning methods to see if any of your symptoms fit (link below). Arsenic used to be the method in old Hollywood movies, but the 'agency' likely has other less known agents. But if his handlers (CIA) had been wanting to 'off' you, they likey would have succeeded back then, so it may have been more his idea, and he used some non agency compound, but was not familiar enough to use a lethal dose.

But this whole idea is probably way off base, so not worth researching. Gadolinium toxicity seems most likely, especially since you had two exposures, and it coincided with your symptoms. Modern medicine has so many toxic compounds, it's surprising any of us are still here. I try to avoid the medical system as much as possible, and instead rely on diet, exercise, a few supplements, and info from Gundry.

GL with your quest to regain health. I'd check out Gundry's general approach, especially if you aren't currently able to eat a very healthy diet. Everything starts with the nutirents we eat, and a healthy microbiome.


https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP90-00552R000404120003-9.pdf



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[XenaLives]

He died a year or two after I told him he had to leave....

My current brain poisoning is responsible for my confusion. The Valley Fever started the decline, the Cipro and gadolinium will be my cause of death.

I am in this world because Spirt still seems to have some use for me.

Love & Light to you, the world needs all the Truth Tellers it can get.

As for Trump - I have real reservations - but he seems to be the lesser of two evils. I stayed home on election day this year, It all seemed like a bunch of nonsense.

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Xena, If the guy is still around then it may not be wise to be discussing the topic. Sorry for bringing it up, but it seemed like one possible origin for your health problems.

On the general pyschopathy topic, check out that video (previous post). He is a PhD researcher, and by chance had a PET scan done on himself, and was astounded to find out his pre-frontal cortex was almost totally switched off. While he was surprised, his family and friends had long realized he had some issues, and weren't surprised at all by the psychopathy diagnosis.

Here's another video exploring the topic (below). In addition to the lack of emotions / empathy, and relatively high intelligence, another aspect with psychopths is they tend to be impulsive. They can be incredibly controlling and calculating, but at times will just do whatever they feel like at the time, which sounds contradictory, but is part of the condition. Anyway, alot of these psychology topics got popular when Trump arrived on the scene, since he's a classic narcissist, but then people became curious about other topics like psychopathy and sociopathy. It's very interesting, and most people have met people with these conditions, and there is some overlap between the different categories -

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[XenaLives]

The health issues started in high school when an idiot dumped HCL on the bench in chem class and I inhaled it.

Your definition of psychopathy definitely fits....

We got back together for a while when he was living in Cheyenne WY and I was in Colorado... But I had to break it off because he was too messed up.

"Can't feel normal emotions" fits...

I was in sales, but it had to be ethical. I did very well selling Spirituality symbolic jewelry at the wholesale level, but I contracted Valley Fever ( coccidioidomycosis) at the Tucson Gem and Mineral Show, and medical malpractice followed. "Medical practice" in this country is largely B.S.

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Xena, Concerning your former boyfriend, if he was in fact involved in some way with 'wet work' in those days (1970s), the potential exists that your health problems may have arisen from being poisoned, by him or by his handlers, since you could have potentially 'known too much' and thus been a threat / loose end.

Anyway, you'd have to look at the chronology of when your health problems began, etc. From what you've said, the exposure to Cipro and Gadolinium seem like the likely causes, but if you were in an extended relationship with a 'hitman', it's not too big a stretch to suspect foul play. Hitmen are usually psychopathic, lacking empathy or remorse, but psychopaths can put up a good front and be superficially charming, and they tend to be highly intelligent (video link below).

Psychopathy is actually a fascinating topic, since the pre-frontal cortex of the brain is effectively 'switched off', so these people can't feel normal emotions, although they can learn how to fake it. Race car drivers, pilots, surgeons, salesmen, corporate CEOs -- in these professions it's common for people to be high on the psychopathy scale. A PET scan (Positron Emission Tomography) can easily reveal the underactive or 'switched off' activity in the prefrontal cortex. It doesn't mean these people (mostly guys) are deranged killers, but they just don't feel normal emotions. I figure it's an evolutionary adaptation that enhanced survival over the centuries of wars, hunting, fighting off sabre tooth tigers, etc. Those who felt no fear or emotions would have a clear survival advantage, become leaders, etc.

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[XenaLives]

The guy in question was a scuz ball... he did arrange "dates" on the hill.

My long time partner was ordered to participate in the hit but he told me he opted out because of the personal connection. That's all I know.

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Xena, My point was that Anderson in his 1977 article was trying to link that mysterious foreign 'restauranteur' who was murdered with the Shah of Iran's secret police organization, SAVAK. Back then the Shah had fallen out of favor with the US / CIA and we wanted him removed, which occured two years later in 1979. So Anderson is connecting the slain restauranteur with the Shah's Iran regime.

Some backround - the Shah had been installed in Iran by the US after we removed the previous ruler Mosaddegh (1953), who wanted to nationalize their oil industry. But the Shah eventually became wayward, wanting to build nuclear powerplants in Iran and have a nuclear program, and the clincher was when he balked at agreeing to the US Petrodollar deal, which was being implemented to save the dollar's global reserve status after the collapse of the Bretton Woods system. Anyway, the Shah had to go, and the CIA orchestrated his removal. The Islamic Revolution that removed the Shah was actually encouraged by the US, to not only remove the Shah, but to eventually destabilize and weaken the Soviet Union, since their southern regions have a large Islamic population. This was Zbigniew Brzezinski's idea (Jimmy Carter's Natl Sec Advisor).

But the point about journalist Jack Anderson is that he wrote spin articles for the CIA, in this case to demonize Iran and the Shah in the period before the Shah's removal. There were planty of other journalist on the CIA payroll, and entire newspapers, like the Wash Post, which has been described as the 'CIA's favorite newspaper'. The Post's editor Ben Bradlee had a US intelligence backround (ONI) , and many others in the press were former OSS. So one big happy family of spooks, who specialized in WW 2 wartime propaganda, and then continued the practice for decades after the war, and up to today. Btw, in 1945-46 my dad was in the ONI, which set him on the career path of doing classified engineering programs for the US govt / CIA -- reconaissance / spy satellites, etc. He rarely talked about this stuff, but it piqued my interest enough to research it on my own. It's an interesting rabbit hole.



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[XenaLives]

The person I was involved with was a U.S. citizen, CIA operative/

This was irrelevant....

Journalists like Anderson were on the CIA payroll, and routinely produced spin articles for the agency.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1977/05/29/fast-paced-life-of-prince-goodarzi/ab55e4c8-7c86-4bd8-86e9-128f90125b98/

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Xena, Anderson's 1977 article was written at a time when the US was wanting to demonize Iran, so it's not surprising Anderson moves his discussion into how the guy in question was likely a member of Savak, the notorious Iranian Secret Police. Journalists like Anderson were on the CIA payroll, and routinely produced spin articles for the agency.



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[XenaLives]

Fascinating discussion... Jack Anderson reported on a situation that I was personally involved with while living in D.C. in the early '70s.

I welcomed his candor, but that doesn't answer your question, does it?

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>>> The Journalist as Spy

He bribed, he blackmailed, he extorted, he lied. Was Jack Anderson a reporter or a spook?


Slate

By Jack Shafer

Sept 20, 2010


https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2010/09/he-bribed-he-blackmailed-he-extorted-he-lied-was-jack-anderson-a-reporter-or-a-spook.html


In his five decades as a muckraking Washington columnist, the late Jack Anderson broke scores of big stories about political scandals, Capitol Hill perfidy, the machinations of American foreign policy, and the abuse of power by the White House, the CIA, the FBI, the Pentagon, and corporations. But he accomplished these deeds with unscrupulous methods, as documented in Mark Feldstein’s superb new book Poisoning the Press: Richard Nixon, Jack Anderson, and the Rise of Washington’s Scandal Culture and short-formed in Howard Kurtz’s Washington Post feature about the book last week. (See disclosure below.)

Anderson observed some ethical limits in gathering material for his nationally syndicated “Washington Merry-Go-Round” column. He appears never to have employed physical force or physical coercion in pursuit of a story. He appears never to have framed anyone with a crime. But beyond those basic constraints, he did whatever he thought he could get away with. If dishonesty produced a great story, that was justification enough for him.

Anderson’s moral instructor—Drew Pearson—was one of the skuzziest journalists to ever write a story. Pearson started the “Washington Merry-Go-Round” column in 1932 and hired Anderson in 1947, who inherited it after Pearson died in 1969. The list of ethical transgressions by Anderson assembled in Poisoning the Press almost runs off the page. His office manager reportedly once donned a disguise as a cleaning lady to steal incriminating documents from a dishonest senator. The same office manager, Feldstein writes, took lovers who “doubled as sources, from high-level elected officials and military officers to prominent newsmen and lobbyists.” Anderson assigned legman Les Whitten to spy on FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and his aide and friend—and rumored lover—Clyde Tolson to gather intelligence on their private life. In 1958, Anderson and a private investigator were caught with bugging equipment in the Washington Sheraton-Carlton Hotel while recording a businessman who had bribed the president’s chief of staff. To get out of that jam, Anderson paid a witness in the case more than $1,000, according to an FBI informant.

In 1969, Anderson placed an undercover intern in the office of Speaker of the House John McCormack. During the Nixon administration, he arranged through a middleman the purchase of land from one of his greatest sources ever. Anderson later conceded that the purchase was a “payoff.” In 1970, Anderson helped Richard Nixon, of all people, smear political rival George Wallace. He accepted confidential IRS data about Wallace from a Nixon confidant and used them to publish a damaging story about Wallace’s financial affairs, all the while claiming that Nixon had had nothing to do with the leak. He took payoffs from a lobbyist, for whom he did favors. He blackmailed Senate Majority Whip Robert Byrd into opposing President Nixon’s nominee to head the FBI—and then provided Byrd with questions to ask the nominee in confirmation hearings.

Anderson’s ethical compass pointed wherever he wanted it to, and in this regard he behaved more like a spy than a reporter during his long career. A spy does not mince ethics as he steals secrets, cracks safes, breaks into offices, taps phones and hacks computers, recruits and pays operatives in the field, and blackmails his foes. He lies frequently and brazenly. He swaps information with sources and does favors for them. He sleeps soundly, as I’m sure Anderson did, because he believes his side is in the right.

The spy-investigative journalist parallel was not lost on Anderson. In an unpublished manuscript unearthed by Feldstein, Anderson writes:

[D]eceit is a constant companion in the quest for secret information about high officials, whether that questing is done by intelligence operatives to inform governments or by newspapermen to inform the public.

Anderson had no bosses, no legal counsels telling him what he could and couldn’t do. And until Seymour Hersh arrived on the scene in 1969, he pretty much owned investigative journalism. In running his operation like a spymaster—or a counterspymaster—Anderson didn’t so much ferret out secrets as much he penetrated the state to recruit agents of influence who would give him information. Then, like intelligence analysts at Langley, Anderson and his team had to make sense of the information and write up reports for their clients. In Langley’s case, the president has always been the client. In Anderson’s case, the clients were the newspapers that subscribed to his column and by extension the reading public.

Anderson’s natural disdain for authority—specifically the authority of the U.S. government, which he regarded as corrupt and craven—makes him an embryonic version of WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange. While Anderson always proclaimed his patriotism when publishing the nation’s secrets, the furtive Assange—who even looks like an evil spy in a James Bond movie—makes no such pitches. His fealty is to the truth or to humanity or to the planet, and he’s become an even bigger spy than Anderson was. He goes underground, he encrypts everything, and even more than Anderson, he has to worry about being shipped fake documents that will destroy his credibility. Both Anderson and Assange have acted as though their judgment about what should remain a state secret and what should be public was superior to the government’s. And in most of the instances described in Feldstein’s book, I think Anderson’s judgment was superior, even if his ends-justified-the-means practices make me cringe.

Other reporters have made like spies—or corrupt private investigators—and pretended that the usual rules or laws didn’t apply to them when they were on the hunt for information. Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, for instance, write candidly of their own ethical compromises in All the President’s Men. Bernstein asks a telephone company source for a list of calls made by one of his subjects, acknowledging in the book that it’s an outrageous request. He also asks a credit-card employee to provide information about the credit-card transactions of another. In both cases, the employees delivered. But Woodward and Bernstein seem like altar boys compared with Anderson and the rascals Tom Goldstein writes about in his 1985 book, The News at Any Cost: How Journalists Compromise Their Ethics To Shape the News.

My interpretation of Anderson as a spy grows out of the lengths that the Nixon administration, CIA, the FBI, and the Justice Department went to to stop his “spying” by spying on him. The Nixon White House even plotted to kill him at one point, which is the most extreme way to deal with a spy. In one comic spy vs. spy episode, Feldstein recounts how the CIA defied its own charter to put Anderson and his family under surveillance at home, at his church, and elsewhere to determine who had given Anderson classified material. To throw off the spooks, Anderson gave his children a counterintelligence assignment, dispatching them to photograph and otherwise harass the stakeout artists. Anderson also ridiculed the spooks in his column.

“Spies are, after all, very like journalists in their methods—but merely less reliable,” as U.K. journalist David Leigh once put it. Both journalists and spies recruit sources, collect and annotate information, verify it, interpret it, write it up in reports, and disseminate it. There the similarity ends. Journalists are supposed to stay on this side of the law, this side of libel and invasion of privacy, and this side of turpitude. Jack Anderson, who died in 2005 and considered himself some sort of sovereign, deliberately ignored those lines, which taints but still does not erase his contribution to investigative journalism.

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>>> Trump’s pick to run FCC is an ominous sign for Big Tech


Yahoo Finance

by Alexis Keenan

December 2, 2024


https://finance.yahoo.com/news/trumps-pick-to-run-fcc-is-an-ominous-sign-for-big-tech-090037028.html


The country’s tech titans might need to start fortifying defenses against the agenda of incoming Federal Communications Commission chair Brendan Carr.

Carr made that clear in the hour after President-elect Donald Trump announced his ascension to the FCC chairmanship seat last month.

"We must dismantle the censorship cartel and restore free speech rights for everyday Americans," Carr said on social media platform X.

Just days before he got that chairmanship appointment, Carr sent letters to Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and Apple CEO Tim Cook predicting "broad ranging actions to restore Americans’ First Amendment rights" once Trump takes office.

That might include "a review of your companies’ activities as well as third-party organizations and groups that have acted to curtail those rights," according to a copy of the letter Carr posted to X.

Many tech CEOs are trying to establish a good relationship with the incoming Trump administration, hoping to improve their standing in the nation's capital after years of aggressive oversight and antitrust lawsuits. Last week, for example, Zuckerberg met face-to-face with Trump at his Florida hotel and club Mar-a-Lago.

Carr has long called for a focus on reining in Big Tech. He has accused Alphabet-owned Google (GOOG, GOOGL) of manipulating search results and demonizing YouTube users, Meta-owned Facebook (META) of inconsistently tinkering with user content, and Chinese-owned TikTok of jeopardizing national security.

Carr has also outlined his vision for remaking the FCC in a right-of-center policy proposal known as Project 2025. Trump distanced himself from that document during the 2024 presidential campaign.

One specific focus for a new Republican-oriented FCC, Carr said in Project 2025, should be to do away with legal immunity known as the Section 230 protection that insulates social media companies from liability when they police third-party content.

Carr said dominant technology corporations abuse their dominant market position and Section 230’s legal protection to "drive diverse political viewpoints from the digital town square."

"Today, a handful of corporations can shape everything from the information we consume to the places we shop," Carr wrote in the chapter he authored on the FCC.

"They are not simply prevailing in the free market; they are taking advantage of a landscape that has been skewed — in many cases by the government — to favor their business models."

As a remedy, Carr said Congress should not only remove "carte blanche" Section 230 immunity but also impose transparency rules similar to those imposed on broadband providers.

That would require social media platforms to publish more specific terms of service and operate an appeals process for content creators to challenge companies that take down their posts.

Fight for the Future, a nonprofit group that advocates for online privacy, expressed concerns in an email to Yahoo Finance that Carr would upend net neutrality rules, which require internet service providers (ISPs) to treat all data on the internet equally.

Carr voted to end net neutrality rules in 2017.

Carr, in Project 2025, also said the FCC should do more to protect Americans against already identified national and personal security threats posed by the social media app TikTok and telecommunication equipment manufacturers, Huawei and ZTE.

TikTok’s platform, Carr said, provides Beijing "with an opportunity to run a foreign influence campaign" by curating news and information seen by millions of Americans.

Congress and President Joe Biden agreed months ago to outlaw TikTok from operating in the US under Chinese ownership.

However, Trump’s statements on the campaign trail suggested he may at least try to lessen the impact of a law signed by Biden in April that makes Chinese ownership of the app illegal.

Carr also has called for the FCC to do a better job at updating its "covered list" of telecommunications equipment manufactures that pose a risk to US national security.

Huawei and ZTE are included in that list. And a loophole, he said, should be closed so that companies such as China Telecom cannot operate unregulated data centers in the US.

Carr has said Big Tech should pay its "fair share" to the FCC’s $9 billion universal service fund that subsidizes affordable internet and rural connectivity programs.

Instead of relying on telecommunications consumers for the bulk of its funding, he said, Big Tech should pay because the federally supported networks are used to deliver the companies' products and services.

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>>> DJT stock extends massive rally as election odds shift in Donald Trump's favor


Yahoo Finance

by Alexandra Canal

October 14, 2024


https://finance.yahoo.com/news/djt-stock-extends-massive-rally-as-election-odds-shift-in-donald-trumps-favor-164614651.html


Trump Media & Technology Group stock (DJT) extended its massive rally on Monday, jumping as much as 9% as investors bet on former President Donald Trump's improved odds of winning the November election.

Over the weekend, both domestic and overseas betting markets shifted in favor of a Trump victory, with prediction sites like Polymarket, PredictIt, and Kalshi all showing Trump's presidential chances ahead of those of Democratic nominee and current Vice President Kamala Harris.

Separately, DJT announced the web launch of its Truth+ TV streaming service on Monday. The app is currently available to access on Android devices and will soon be released as a native Apple iOS app.

DJT shares traded at their lowest level since the company's debut following the expiration of the company's highly publicized lockup period last month. The stock has also been under pressure as previous polling saw Harris edging slightly ahead of the former president.

Trump's recent campaign momentum follows an appearance by Elon Musk at his rally in Butler, Pa., earlier this month. It was the same location where the former president survived an assassination attempt in July.

Tech billionaire Musk, who serves as the CEO of Tesla (TSLA) and SpaceX and also owns social media platform X (formerly Twitter), has been outspoken about his support of Trump ahead of next month's election. Trump has even said he would consider a Cabinet position for Musk but that the businessman likely would not be able to serve "with all the things he's got going on."

At the rally, Musk told the crowd that Trump is the only candidate who can "preserve democracy in America," adding this will be "the last election" if Trump does not win.

Meanwhile, Harris has recently embarked on a flurry of media appearances in which she was pressed on how she would fund some of her proposals surrounding the economy and immigration.

Trump founded Truth Social after he was kicked off major social media apps like Facebook (META) and Twitter, now X, following the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riots. Trump has since been reinstated on those platforms. He officially returned to X in mid-August after about a year's hiatus.

But as Truth Social attempts to take on the social media incumbents, the fundamentals of the company have long been in question.

In August, DJT reported second quarter results that revealed a net loss of $16.4 million, about half of which was tied to expenses related to the company's SPAC deal. The company also reported revenue of just under $837,000 for the quarter ending June 30, a 30% year-over-year drop.

Earlier this month, the company revealed that its COO had stepped down in September.

Trump maintains a roughly 60% interest in DJT. At current levels of around $27 a share, Trump Media boasts a market cap of about $5.5 billion, giving the former president a stake worth around $3.3 billion. Right after the company's public debut, Trump's stake was worth just over $4.5 billion.

Trump Media went public on the Nasdaq in late March after merging with special purpose acquisition company Digital World Acquisition Corp. But the stock has been on a bumpy ride since, with shares oscillating between highs and lows as the moves have typically been tied to a volatile news cycle.

Over the past six months, the stock has been off around 15% — a massive improvement on the heels of the rally after shares hit their lowest point last month.

Stakeholders, including the former president, were subject to a six-month lockup period before being able to sell or transfer shares. That lockup period expired on Sept. 19, although Trump said at the time that he would not sell his stake.

“I have absolutely no intention of selling,” the former president told reporters at a press conference prior to the lockup period expiration. “I love it. I use it as a method of getting out my word.”

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Crown Castle Intl - >>> EQT-backed Zayo, TPG vie for Crown Castle assets worth nearly $10 billion, sources say


Reuters

by Milana Vinn

October 2, 2024


https://finance.yahoo.com/news/exclusive-eqt-backed-zayo-tpg-140849905.html


By Milana Vinn

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Fiber network owner Zayo Group and buyout firm TPG are competing to acquire the fiber and wireless assets of Crown Castle, in a deal that could be valued at nearly $10 billion, according to people familiar with the matter.

Zayo, which is owned by buyout firms EQT AB and DigitalBridge, and TPG are the two remaining bidders for the assets, which include Crown Castle's fiber business and its small cell business, which provides wireless services and technology, the sources said, requesting anonymity as the discussions are confidential.

Both units are worth less than $5 billion each and it is possible that Crown Castle could choose to sell only one of the assets, one of the sources said. If both assets are sold, the deal is likely to be valued between $8 billion and $10 billion, the source added.

A deal is still several weeks away and not imminent, the sources said, cautioning that a transaction is not guaranteed. Another suitor could also approach Crown Castle, and it is possible that no deal with any party is reached, the sources added.

If the talks are successful, the transaction would come up at a time when dealmaking in the fiber industry is heating up, as the rapid growth of fiber broadband provides a major boost to infrastructure providers, making them attractive acquisition targets.

Crown Castle, TPG, EQT, and DigitalBridge declined to comment. Zayo did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Houston, Texas-based Crown Castle is a telecommunications infrastructure provider which operates more 40,000 cellular towers across the United States.

The company, which has a market value of roughly $52 billion, has grown its fiber business through several acquisitions since its foray into the sector in 2015. However, the high cost of building fiber infrastructure has weighed on its financial performance, forcing the company to consider a retreat from the business and slash spending.

Crown Castle, which rents out towers to wireless carriers such as Verizon and AT&T, is now looking to focus on growing its tower business, which is expected to benefit from the largest U.S. carriers upgrading their networks to 5G and increasing capacity to meet booming data demand.

The company has been exploring options for its fiber assets, after reaching a deal with activist investor Elliott Investment Management over shaking up its board.

In February, Crown Castle's co-founder Ted Miller told Reuters in an interview that the company could fetch as much as $15 billion by selling its fiber assets if it let him and his partners join its board of directors.

In June, the company cut its annual profit forecast and said it would lay off 10% of its workforce as a result of an operational review of its fiber business.

Boulder, Colorado-based Zayo was taken private in 2019 by EQT and DigitalBridge's infrastructure fund that was known as Digital Colony at the time. Zayo operates a 145,000-mile fiber network across North America and Canada that connects wireless carriers, cloud service providers, data centers, and large corporations.

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>>> Sirius XM Stock: Buy, Sell, or Hold?


by Dan Victor

Motley Fool

September 18, 2024


https://finance.yahoo.com/news/sirius-xm-stock-buy-sell-134500699.html


Sirius XM Holdings (NASDAQ: SIRI) investors have struggled to lock onto a signal from the satellite radio giant. The stock is down 55% this year amid disappointing results with concerns about whether the company can manage to move the dial toward stronger growth.

The good news is that the company remains a category leader with an audience of over 150 million listeners across its platforms. The potential that Sirius XM finally gets its strategy right highlights the attraction of the stock with a significant opportunity to monetize next-generation audio formats.

Let's discuss what investors should do with Sirius XM stock now.

The case to sell Sirius XM stock now

The way people consume media has rapidly changed in the past two decades. Unfortunately for Sirius XM, the company has been on the wrong side of the audio revolution as satellite radio largely fell behind the rise of streaming-music alternatives.

Recognizing the advantages of a satellite broadcast, particularly compared to terrestrial radio, the technology appears redundant next to the proliferation of broadband-mobile internet. It's been a tough sell for Sirius XM to convert listeners with its premium price point when most people are already connected to the internet via their smartphone device offering access to multiple audio options.

Despite partnering with global-auto manufacturers to feature Sirius XM as an in-vehicle audio option, the company's flagship radio service has been in decline for the last several years. Compared to a record 34.91 million subscribers in 2019, the company last reported 33 million paying users in the second quarter, down 100,000 in the past year.

The trends from the smaller-streaming Pandora segment and other off-platform services haven't been any better. The 6 million paid Pandora subscribers this past quarter was down by 41,000 from a year ago.

Similarly, financials have struggled. Q2 revenue declined by 3% year over year, while adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) were flat compared to 2023. For the full year, the company expects revenue to decline by around 2% with an adjusted EBITDA target for 2024 at $2.75 billion, down 3.2%. These dynamics help explain the fundamental challenges the company faces. Investors skeptical that Sirius XM can orchestrate a turnaround have plenty of reasons to sell the stock.

The case to buy Sirius XM stock

It's easy to get caught up in the poor headlines, but it's also important to consider the strong points of any outlook. Beyond the soft operating trends, Sirius XM remains profitable and generates significant free cash flow, expected to be around $1.2 billion this year.

The plan is to reduce the balance sheet debt position and invest toward growth. On Sep. 9, Sirius XM completed its split-off and merger transaction with Liberty Media which included a 1-for-10 reverse split. This means that shareholders of the stock received one new share for every 10 shares they owned.

The deal, announced last year, simplifies the equity structure and should provide the now independent Sirus XM Holdings Group more strategic flexibility that can hopefully translate into improved shareholder returns. The stock yields 4% through a quarterly dividend that management intends to maintain.

The business isn't growing as expected, but there is a sense of stability supported by a loyal listener base. Instead of attempting to compete with larger players like Spotify Technology for on-demand music streaming, Sirius XM differentiates itself with more curated content that is now available on a stand-alone mobile app separate from the in-vehicle satellite-radio product. The company is betting on a younger demographic growth audience seen as more willing to spend on multiple services.

The bullish case for the stock starts with the company's ability to expand advertising opportunities from its high-profile podcasts along with exclusive live sports broadcasting. With shares of Sirius XM trading at a forward price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio of 8, investors who are confident there are better days ahead can consider buying the stock at what appears to be a bargain level.

Decision time for Sirius XM stock

My prediction is that the number of uncertainties surrounding Sirius XM will keep shares volatile. With the stock already losing more than half its value this year, it's probably too late to sell since many of the negatives are already priced in. The big risk is if conditions deteriorate further. At the same time, it will likely take evidence sales and accelerating subscriber trends for the stock to sustain a big rally. I believe a hold rating makes sense for current shareholders while investors on the sidelines should avoid it for now.

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>>> Intuitive Machines, Inc. (LUNR) designs, manufactures, and operates space products and services in the United States. Its space systems and space infrastructure enable scientific and human exploration and utilization of lunar resources to support sustainable human presence on the moon.

The company offers lunar access services, such µNova, lunar surface rover services, fixed lunar surface services, lunar orbit delivery services, rideshare delivery services to lunar orbit, as well as content sales and marketing sponsorships; and orbital services, including satellite delivery and rideshare, satellite servicing and refueling, space station servicing, satellite repositioning, and orbital debris removal.

It also provides lunar data services, comprising Lunar data network, lunar south pole and far-side coverage, lunar positioning services, data relay, and data storage/caching.

In addition, the company offers propulsion systems and navigation systems; engineering services contracts; lunar mobility vehicles, such as rovers and drones; power infrastructure that includes fission surface power; and human habitation systems.

It serves its products to the U.S. government, commercial, and international customers. Intuitive Machines, Inc. was founded in 2013 and is headquartered in Houston, Texas.

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https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/LUNR/profile/


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>>> Why Intuitive Machines Stock Jumped Up 60% Today


by Rich Smith

Motley Fool

9-18-24


https://finance.yahoo.com/news/why-intuitive-machines-stock-mooned-140209941.html


Intuitive Machines (NASDAQ: LUNR) stock soared 60% in the first five minutes of trading Wednesday morning (up 60.4% through 9:35 a.m. ET) after NASA announced it is awarding a massive $4.8 billion moon contract to the rising space star.

The contract, dubbed "GEO to Cislunar Relay Services" covers communication services to the moon from the period of Oct. 1, 2024 through Sept. 30, 2029, and has the "option" of being extended by a further five years, through Sept. 30, 2034.

NASA + LUNR = better together

Specifically, NASA is hiring Intuitive Machines to provide communication services including "position, navigation, and timing capabilities, which are crucial for ensuring the safety of navigation on and around the lunar surface." The company will establish relays for communications between geostationary orbit (GEO, about 22,000 miles above Earth's surface) and the moon, which orbits Earth at a distance roughly 10 times that.

So basically, Intuitive will be in charge of making sure that messages sent from Earth to GEO satellites get the rest of the way to the moon, and vice versa. In its contract announcement, NASA notes that hiring the space company to handle this work will lighten the communications load on NASA's own Deep Space Network.

Is Intuitive Machines stock a buy?

And here's why this is important to investors: This contract isn't just a (much) bigger contract than the kind Intuitive Machines has been winning from NASA so far. It's an entirely new kind of work that NASA is hiring Intuitive to do.

Up until now, the space agency has hired Intuitive to land payloads on the moon for it. That's great work to have, and so far, Intuitive Machines is the only private company that's proven it's able to do it. Now the company is growing into a new field of business -- space communications -- and it looks very much like it could be a billion-dollar-a-year business for Intuitive Machines.

This is a clear-cut win for Intuitive Machines stock, and investors are right to be happy about it.

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Sirius XM - >>> The Most-Anticipated Reverse Stock Split of the Year Has Arrived -- and This Company Is a Screaming Bargain


by Sean Williams

Motley Fool

Sep 10, 2024


https://finance.yahoo.com/news/most-anticipated-reverse-stock-split-084100466.html


Since 2024 began, hype surrounding the artificial intelligence (AI) revolution has played a major role in lifting Wall Street's three major stock indexes to multiple record-closing highs. But AI isn't the only trend pushing the broader market higher. The euphoria surrounding stock splits has played an equally important role.

A stock split allows publicly traded companies to adjust their share price and outstanding share count by the same factor, without altering their market cap or underlying operating performance. It's a purely cosmetic maneuver that can have important consequences.

There are two varieties of stock splits, with investors decisively favoring one over the other. A reverse-stock split is geared at increasing a company's nominal share price, usually with the goal of ensuring it meets minimum continued listing standards for a major stock exchange. Conversely, a forward-stock split is designed to reduce a company's share price to make it more nominally affordable for everyday investors who can't purchase fractional shares through their broker.

Generally speaking, reverse splits are conducted by struggling businesses whose share price is floundering. Comparatively, companies completing forward splits are typically out-innovating and out-executing their peers. Unsurprisingly, most investors tend to focus on high-flying companies enacting forward splits.

Since late January, 13 prominent businesses have announced or completed a stock split -- 12 of which are of the forward-split variety -- including AI darlings Nvidia, Broadcom, and Super Micro Computer.

But it's the lone high-profile reverse-stock split that deserves the attention of Wall Street and investors today.

The most-awaited reverse-stock split of 2024 is now complete

In mid-December, Sirius XM Holdings (NASDAQ: SIRI) and Liberty Media's Sirius XM tracking stock, Liberty Sirius XM Group (NASDAQ: LSXMA)(NASDAQ: LSXMB)(NASDAQ: LSXMK), announced their intention to merge into a single class of shares. Liberty Media is the majority stakeholder in Sirius XM, and the variance in the price between Liberty Sirius XM Group's three classes of shares and the share price for Sirius XM stock has been head-scratching at times.

Last week, the final exchange ratio for this merger was announced, with Liberty Sirius XM Group stakeholders redeeming their shares "in exchange for 0.8375 of a share of common stock of New Sirius." Liberty Sirius XM Group stopped trading after the close of business yesterday, Sept. 9, which means today, Sept. 10, marks the first day of a single, non-confusing, class of Sirius XM shares.

But there's more to this combination than just getting the exchange ratio correct and ending the confusion of multiple shares classes.

In mid-June, Sirius XM announced that, upon consummation of the merger with Liberty Sirius XM Group, a 1-for-10 reverse-stock split would be conducted. This reverse split, which is now complete, has reduced the company's outstanding share count from well over 3 billion to an estimated 339.1 million shares.

What makes this reverse-stock split so unique is that it's not being executed out of weakness. In other words, Sirius XM was in no danger of delisting from the Nasdaq stock exchange.

Instead, it was enacted to increase its share price from the $3 to $6 range that it's hovered around for years to one that's more likely to attract institutional investors. Some money managers will avoid stocks priced below $5 for fear of increased volatility. Sirius XM's 1-for-10 reverse split eliminates this minor concern and should put the company back on the radar of top-tier money managers.

Sirius XM is a screaming bargain for opportunistic long-term investors

In addition to being Wall Street's only high-profile reverse-stock split of 2024, Sirius XM Holdings is, arguably, the top bargain among the 13 companies to have announced or completed a split this year.

Though I'll get to the figures that qualify Sirius XM as a "screaming bargain" in a moment, let me walk you through a few of the competitive advantages that make it a stock you can safely own for years to come.

To begin with, it's the only licensed satellite-radio operator. While this doesn't mean it's devoid of competition, it does convey that Sirius XM is a legal monopoly. As such, it affords the company exceptional pricing power with its monthly and annual subscriptions.

Another advantage to Sirius XM's operating model is its cost structure. While some of its expenses, such as royalties and talent acquisition, are going to fluctuate from quarter to quarter, transmission and equipment expenses typically don't change, regardless of how many subscribers the company has. If Sirius XM can expand its subscriber base, it should have a clear path to improve its operating margin over time, largely thanks to some of its costs being highly transparent and predictable.

A third competitive edge Sirius XM holds over traditional radio operators is the path by which revenue is generated. Online and terrestrial radio providers are overwhelmingly reliant on advertising to pay the bills. While this strategy works well during lengthy periods of economic expansion, it can lead to some big question marks when recessions inevitably occur.

Sirius XM has brought in less than 20% of its sales through the first six months from advertising. Comparatively, almost 77% of its revenue can be traced to subscriptions. There's a considerably lower likelihood of satellite-radio subscribers cancelling their service during a recession than there is of businesses cutting their ad spending. This tends to lead to more predictable cash flow for Sirius XM in any economic climate.

With these competitive advantages in mind, let me now address how historically cheap Sirius XM's stock is. Based on where shares closed on Sept. 6, Sirius XM can be scooped up by opportunistic long-term investors for 8.3 times forward-year earnings. This represents a 53% discount to its average forward price-to-earnings (P/E) multiple over the trailing-five-year period, and is a stone's throw away from its lowest forward P/E multiples since going public in September 1994.

Sirius XM is historically cheap relative to its cash flow generation, too. Its multiple of 5.6 times forecast operating cash flow in the current year (2024) equates to a 43% discount to its average price-to-cash-flow multiple over the last five years.

Tack on a sustainable 3.9% yield for good measure, and you have a screaming bargain that also happens to be Wall Street's most-anticipated reverse-stock split of 2024.

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>>> Sirius XM Stock Has a Good Debut as Independent Company. Berkshire Hathaway Becomes Top Shareholder.


Bloomberg

by Andrew Bary

Sept 10, 2024


https://www.barrons.com/articles/sirius-xm-stock-berkshire-hathaway-buffett-ca45b84c


An independent Sirius XM Holdings had an encouraging debut Tuesday, as Berkshire Hathaway emerged as the largest shareholder with an estimated 25% stake—replacing Liberty Media (FWONA) and its control holder, media mogul John Malone.

Sirius XM Holdings stock gained 2.6% Tuesday to $27.38, after trading as low as $24.43 earlier in the session.

A combination occurred late Monday of Sirius XM with Liberty Sirius XM Holdings, a tracking stock that held about 83% of Sirius XM shares. Sirius XM, the satellite radio company, also did a one-for-10 reverse stock split.

The merger caps what has been a poor year for the Sirius XM, which is down about 50% so far in 2024. The stock is off over 10% since the start of September.

The company provided updated financial guidance late Monday in conjunction with the merger. It reduced its projection for 2024 free cash flow by $200 million to $1 billion, reflecting several factors, including higher interest costs and year-to-date cash outflows at Liberty Sirius XM. That amounted to a modest disappointment, although revenue and Ebitda, or earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization, projections were unchanged at $8.75 billion and $2.7 billion, respectively.

The combination between the two companies had been sought for years by Malone and Liberty CEO Greg Maffei to simplify Sirius XM’s structure, broaden its investor base to those who couldn’t hold tracking stocks, and potentially pave the way for its entry into some equity indexes.

Berkshire was the largest holder of the Liberty Sirius tracking stock, and now becomes the biggest investor in Sirius XM. The $2.3 billion stake in the company is believed to be managed by Ted Weschler; he is one of two investment managers that works with CEO Warren Buffett, who oversees Berkshire’s $300 billion equity portfolio. There was no immediate comment from Weschler.

Buffett is a fan of the satellite radio service and regularly tunes into its Siriusly Sinatra station that plays American standards when he’s driving in his Cadillac, Maffei said last year. The station plays songs performed by Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, and others.

Sirius XM bulls point to the company’s low valuation at less than 10 times projected 2024 earnings and a 10% free cash flow yield. The stock yields about 4% based on a dividend of about 27 cents per share quarterly. The company’s share count fell about 12% in conjunction with the merger to 339 million shares.

The merger may wash out arbitragers who had been long Liberty Sirius XM and short Sirius XM to capture a spread that recently stood at more than 20%. In other words, these traders bought the tracking stock and sold short Sirius XM.

That could be a good setup for the stock if fundamental investors emerge to replace them. Free cash flow is expected to be higher in 2025 at $1.5 billion, Sirius has projected.

Negatives are ample debt of about $10 billion, or nearly four times projected 2024 Ebitda. The company’s target leverage ratio is mid-to-low three times. Sirius XM unveiled a $1.2 billion share repurchase program Monday, but said it plans to emphasize debt reduction with free cash flow until it meets its debt ratio goal.

Sirius XM stock has been hit hard this year for several reasons. The company’s revenue was down 5% in the latest quarter while self-paid satellite radio subscribers have fallen about 400,000 in the first half of 2024 to about 31.5 million. That has prompted concerns that the subscriber count will continue to decline and put pressure on the monthly subscription fee.

Weakness in cable TV stocks also has hurt Sirius XM’s valuation, which is now about seven times this year’s estimated Ebitda, in line with the major cable stocks.

Many investors had invested in the Liberty Sirius XM tracking stock because it long traded at a 25% to 40% discount to the value of its Sirius XM stake. But that strategy didn’t pan out well because of the sharp drop in Sirius XM stock this year which offset the discount.

That may have been the motivation for Berkshire’s involvement. It’s unclear what role Berkshire will play with Sirius XM but it usually takes a hands-off approach to its major investments—although it’s possible that Weschler or another Berkshire representative could join the board.

With a cleaner structure and Liberty essentially gone from the picture, Sirius could be in a position to deliver for investors after a tough year.

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>>> Meta's reality check: Inside the $45 billion cash burn at Reality Labs


Yahoo Finance

by Yasmin Khorram

Jul 28, 2024


https://finance.yahoo.com/news/metas-reality-check-inside-the-45-billion-cash-burn-at-reality-labs-125717347.html


Nearly $50 billion.

In just over four years, Meta’s Reality Labs division — focused mainly on its products in augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), and the metaverse — has lost as much money as the market caps of Snap (SNAP) and Pinterest (PINS) combined.

Insiders tell Yahoo Finance that the staggering cash burn is not the price of innovation, but rather the result of a “chaotic” culture that features frequent reorganizations and installation of top leaders without AR or VR expertise.

With Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg warning that operating losses in Reality Labs will only continue to “increase meaningfully,” Yahoo Finance spoke to a dozen former high-level employees (mostly executives or managers across multiple segments including engineering, research, product management, hardware, content, and operating systems) who say the lack of a clear vision and mismanagement are largely to blame for Reality Labs' financial pitfalls.

The former employees Yahoo Finance spoke with left within the last three years, with the earliest departing in February of 2021 and the most recent ones this year. The majority left on their own because of what they called discord within Reality Labs, but some left due to structural layoffs.

They asked not to be named because of nondisclosure agreements and a fear of jeopardizing future employment opportunities.

Meta did not respond to Yahoo Finance’s multiple requests for comment on this story.

The question for investors is how to reconcile Reality Labs' multibillion-dollar expenses within the context of Zuckerberg’s “year of efficiency” promise for Meta. Despite implementing cost-cutting measures and scaling back spending in Q1 of 2023, Meta saw its shares tank 20% after its most recent earnings report, thanks to a significant increase in AI investment.

With Zuckerberg back to breaking open the checkbook, is there enough room on the balance sheet for his AI pivot and Reality Labs' steep losses? Although analysts and investors have remained patient on the long-term potential of AR and VR, how long is that leash more than 10 years on?

Back in 2014, Meta (then Facebook) made its two largest acquisitions ever in just over a month. The first was its $16 billion purchase of WhatsApp. The second was of a smaller outfit out of Irvine, Calif., that had only developed a prototype of its revolutionary VR headset. The company’s name was Oculus and the promise of its technology was enough for Mark Zuckerberg to shell out $2 billion — only a fraction of what he’d spend on its development over the next decade.

In its first few years under the Facebook umbrella, Oculus's financials were grouped in with every other product in the business. But during the COVID-19 pandemic, Zuckerberg became enamored with the potential of the Metaverse — so much so that he changed the name of his company from Facebook to Meta.

Meta also began breaking out its revenue and expenses into two separate divisions: “Family of Apps” (which included Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp), and “Reality Labs” (a combination of Oculus and its other mixed-reality investments). In 2020, the former reported a profit of more than $39 billion, while Reality Labs lost just over $6 billion.

The numbers only became worse for Meta over the ensuing years: a $10 billion loss in 2021, $13 billion in 2022, and $16 billion in 2023. Furthermore, slumping sales and poor mainstream adoption caused Reality Labs’ revenue to decrease annually. Since 2021, Reality Labs' annual revenue has been falling despite significant increases in spend.

In just the first quarter of 2024, Meta has reported a loss of $3.8 billion, about equal to its total revenues in the last two years combined. Analysts Yahoo Finance surveyed projected Q2 losses for the division would be closer to $5 billion. The lowest forecast we received was $4.6 billion.

'Employee Bingo'

Several of the people interviewed blamed the dysfunction and cash burn at Reality Labs on chain of command reorganizations they say took place every three to six months. This included the promotion of “local heroes” — or individuals that had succeeded elsewhere within Meta, such as Instagram or Facebook — who were then asked to replicate those results inside of Reality Labs. The lack of understanding of the technology often led to tension between new managers and the existing staff.

“It was pretty chaotic,” said a former employee who worked on the research team and said leaders were often pulled from the apps division with little VR experience. "In software you can get away with that because you make mistakes and change things all the time. In hardware, you’re stuck with your mistakes for a long time.”

“If you’re a senior director, they forklift you into any position,” said a former executive in engineering. “You can lead an organization, set priorities, take on anything from Instagram ads to AR software design. It creates this really weird dynamic where the people in the trenches doing the work don’t have respect for the senior leaders and the senior leaders don’t really speak the language of the technology they’re building.”

“They play employee bingo,” said another employee responsible for AR/VR content. “They move people into AR that don’t really understand it. It’s hardware and experience, not a news feed in your hand.”

One former executive in product management told us, “There's an arrogance there that says, ‘Look how much money I was accountable for making because of this role I played in Facebook’s Family of Apps — therefore I can obviously be successful at this new thing.’"

"I think that’s probably the real story as to why there’s been so much money thrown at this thing with such limited success today,” they said.

Just last month, several senior managers and vice presidents were quietly let go from the company, according to two people familiar with the matter. Their positions at Reality Labs included head of AR glasses hardware, head of hardware partnerships, vice president of supply chain organization, vice president of technology engineering, and head of silicon partnerships.

Another challenge is the lack of traction AR and VR products have had in gaining a wider audience. Meta also competes in the segment with Snap, Tik Tok parent Bytedance, and now Apple (AAPL).

Circana Research analyst Ben Arnold says total AR and VR device sales in the US were just over $1 billion last year — a year in which Meta’s Reality Labs expenses alone topped $18 billion. According to IDC's analysis, global shipments of AR and VR headsets dropped 67.4% year over year in 2024 Q1.

Meta’s current product lineup includes two VR headsets (the Quest 3 and Quest Pro) and Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses. But Arnold says software gains will be critical to the industry, specifically “in content and applications that appeal to people beyond gamer."

"That’s always been the challenge for this category,” he said.

A former employee said that at one point, there were 24 hardware products on an 18-month roadmap. "You might be able to do that if you’re shipping software experiences, but highly unlikely for an organization that has never really shipped outside of the Oculus space."

The source said management did not realize until too late that shipping "a wrist [watch], sunglasses, new controller models, new VR experiences, new mixed-reality experiences" was unrealistic, leading to low morale among the workforce.

“I had severe doubts about leadership,” they said.

Emblematic of that lack of direction was the scrapped development of Meta’s in-house chips for its Ray-Ban smart glasses and other devices. In 2021, after over a year of design and build, Meta’s vice president of AR Alex Himel abruptly canceled the project, instead returning to using an external Qualcomm (QCOM) chip.

The team was incensed. “All of us in the room that were software and chip people were like, ‘You’re insane,’” said a former executive who was directly involved in the project. “People were livid over this. People left the company. This guy basically flushed millions of dollars down the toilet.”

The cost of the internal chip was cheaper than Qualcomm's chip, according to another executive involved. "It's illustrative of this mindset of not really taking the innovation piece seriously and not wanting to invest in long-term deep technology on the hardware side," they said. Himel did not respond to Yahoo Finance’s request for comment.

Another executive put Meta’s spontaneous decision making more succinctly: “I had anti-confidence in the roadmap. Zuck gets excited. Everyone rallies around what Zuck gets excited about. Boz [Reality Labs head Andrew Bosworth] gets a budget based on Zuck’s excitement, and then we go off and try to figure out what the product looks like. Over and over and over again.” Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth did not respond to a request for an interview.

As for Zuckerberg's vision for his multibillion-dollar bet, sources say he sees the metaverse as another community he can own, similar to how he revolutionized social media with Facebook. "He's really big on the notion of an immersive presence across boundaries," a former executive who worked closely with Zuckerberg said.

"When we were working on the Orion [AR] glasses, the top Zuck scenario was always immersive video calls. We did all the modeling on the heat and battery performance and we told him, 'Dude, we can do a call like this for five minutes and then the person's head catches on fire.' It's a power-hungry thing, but it's one of those goals he's chasing."

Another former executive said Zuckerberg is at the mercy of Apple — due to its anti-data-tracking efforts and Vision Pro development — so he's playing "a big chess game."

"His bet is that the next thing after phones will be augmented reality glasses. Apple is making moves and he's trying to protect by investing in the future and hoping to own the next platform."

Wall Street, meanwhile, has its own mixed reality on the stock. Gene Munster, co-founder of Deepwater Asset Management, called Reality Labs “a disaster from a financial perspective.” Munster told Yahoo Finance that the stock would be higher if not for the significant cash burn inside the division.

Wedbush analyst Dan Ives agreed, referring to Reality Labs as the “black eye of spending at Meta.” Yet, both remain bullish on the stock, despite Munster believing that Reality Labs won’t play a real role in Meta’s future for at least a decade.

Meta investor Dan Niles of Niles Investment Management called Reality Labs “a giant insurance policy,” saying Meta could always cut spending in the division if its other businesses falter.

For those insiders with “Reality Labs” on their resumes, it’s a different conclusion. “It just doesn’t seem responsible,” said a former executive. “If I was a shareholder, I would rather see Zuckerberg putting all their metaverse infrastructure on top of somebody else burning at those rates. Let Samsung or Apple build that hardware.”

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>>> Motorola Solutions Announces New Global R&D Centre in Ireland


Business Wire

Jul 7, 2024


https://finance.yahoo.com/news/motorola-solutions-announces-global-r-230500239.html


Cork Centre recruiting highly skilled jobs to design technologies vital to the company’s global footprint of customers

CHICAGO & CORK, Ireland, July 07, 2024--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Motorola Solutions (NYSE: MSI) today announced it is opening a new Research and Development Centre in Cork, Ireland, expected to generate 200 highly skilled jobs. The team will be focused on designing software for the company’s comprehensive land mobile radio (LMR) portfolio, with plans for expansion across other technologies in the future.

Following investments of more than $12 billion in R&D and acquisitions over the past decade, Motorola Solutions’ ecosystem of technologies is centered on safety and security, with LMR representing a foundational core. The company has deployed more than 13,000 LMR networks worldwide, trusted by governments and enterprises for highly secure communications designed to work in the most extreme conditions. Modernised with broadband and advanced data applications, LMR remains at the forefront of providing public safety agencies with the communications they rely on and need.

"Decade after decade, the durability of our mission-critical LMR technology helps protect those who protect us all," said Greg Brown, chairman and CEO, Motorola Solutions. "Our new centre in Cork will contribute to advancing our future vision for LMR, while building upon the collective impact of our more than 20,000 employees who are innovating what’s next for our customers around the world."

The investment is supported by the Irish Government through IDA Ireland.

"Motorola Solutions is an iconic American company known for its work over many decades to support public safety and first responders," said U.S. Ambassador to Ireland, Claire D. Cronin. "Today’s announcement of its new Research and Development Centre in Cork marks a significant step forward in the company’s commitment to Ireland and in further expanding its innovation footprint in technology that plays a vital role around the world to help keep people safe, today and in the future. It also recognizes the highly skilled talent in Ireland and further bolsters the strong trade and investment relationships between the United States and Ireland."

The new R&D Centre, planned for Cork’s vibrant city centre, complements Motorola Solutions’ existing footprint in Ireland, which is focused on delivering the emergency services’ secure communications network, Ireland’s National Digital Radio Service.

"It’s fantastic news that Motorola Solutions has chosen Cork City for their new global R&D Centre," said Peter Burke TD, Minister for Enterprise, Trade & Employment. "Regional investment is a priority for Government and the creation of 200 highly skilled jobs in R&D is a significant boost for the region. The new Centre will be a welcome addition to the already thriving city centre and will provide exciting new work opportunities for technology talent. It is encouraging to see new investments in R&D technologies, which is very much in line with our National AI and Digital strategies. I want to thank Motorola Solutions for their continued investment in Ireland and I wish all the team the best with this new venture."

The company embraces a people-first philosophy and encourages its 20,000+ employees to share their unique perspectives to influence new ideas, tackle challenges and make an impact. The team in Cork will join a global force of talent focused on developing communications, video security, access control, artificial intelligence and command centre technologies to help address the growing scale of safety and security challenges.

Motorola Solutions’ communications portfolio is hallmarked by a history of firsts, including the first car radio, the Apollo missions, and introduction of the APX NEXT smart radio, that brought broadband applications to a two-way radio. With more than $850 million invested in R&D in 2023, employees are enabled to design ingenious solutions that play an essential role in people’s lives.

Details about the centre and role opportunities can be found here: https://www.motorolasolutions.com/en_xu/about/careers/cork-ireland.html

About Motorola Solutions

Motorola Solutions is solving for safer. We build and connect technologies to help protect people, property and places. Our solutions enable the collaboration between public safety agencies and enterprises that’s critical for a proactive approach to safety and security. Learn more about how we’re solving for safer communities, safer schools, safer hospitals, safer businesses – safer everywhere – at www.motorolasolutions.com.

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NetEase - >>> ‘Warcraft’ Returns to China as Blizzard and NetEase Settle Spat


Bloomberg

by Sabrina Mao and Zheping Huang

April 9, 2024


https://finance.yahoo.com/news/warcraft-returns-china-blizzard-netease-010000423.html


(Bloomberg) -- NetEase Inc. reached a new agreement to distribute games in China for Microsoft Corp.’s Blizzard Entertainment, salvaging a 15-year relationship and reviving titles like World of Warcraft for the world’s biggest gaming market.

With the deal, famed franchises like StarCraft, Diablo, Hearthstone and Overwatch will once again be live for players in China. The Hangzhou-based publishing giant and Microsoft’s Activision Blizzard subsidiary halted a longtime partnership in January of last year after failing to agree on an extension, causing a 15% plunge in NetEase shares in Hong Kong.

Separately, Microsoft’s gaming division and NetEase have agreed to explore bringing new NetEase titles to Xbox consoles and other platforms, the companies said in a statement.

“We are thrilled to embark on the next chapter, built on trust and mutual respect, to serve our users in this unique community that we’ve built together,” NetEase Chief Executive Officer William Ding said in the statement. The expiration of the previous deal descended into acrimony when the two sides alleged bad-faith negotiations for a renewal of the terms.

Blizzard suspended most online game services and sales in mainland China when the prior pact expired more than a year ago, cutting off a lucrative collaboration for both parties. Its major release in June 2023 — Diablo IV, which got off to a hot start internationally — hasn’t been officially available in China. The companies now say Blizzard games “will return to the market sequentially” starting in the summer, with further details to be provided at a later date.

Activision Blizzard was acquired in October by Microsoft in a $69 billion deal that set a record for takeovers in the video-game industry. The combined entity ranks No. 3 among global games publishers, behind Tencent Holdings Ltd. and Sony Group Corp., and was expected to seek a rapprochement with NetEase.

First signed in 2008 and renewed in 2019, the NetEase-Blizzard distribution accord has benefited both companies, feeding NetEase with globally recognized hits and giving its US partner a gateway into the world’s biggest PC and mobile gaming arena.

Before NetEase, Blizzard distributed World of Warcraft in China through Shanghai venture The9 from its release in 2004 through 2008. But that partnership ended in a rift, with Chinese players unable to access the game for more than a month. China’s No. 2 gaming giant swooped in as Blizzard sought to find a new local publisher, first signing a deal to run StarCraft II and Warcraft III, then taking over World of Warcraft, which at the time was the most popular online game in China.

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>>> Trump’s Truth Social is now a public company. Experts warn its multibillion-dollar valuation defies logic


by Matt Egan

CNN

March 26, 2024


https://finance.yahoo.com/news/trump-truth-social-going-public-090031597.html


For the first time in almost 30 years, part of Donald Trump’s business empire has gone public. Trading started with a bang, but the frenzy eased considerably by the closing bell, with shares ending well off their highs of the day.

Trump Media & Technology Group, the owner of struggling social media platform Truth Social, began its long-delayed journey as a public company at Tuesday’s opening bell under the ticker symbol “DJT.”

The stock surged about 56% at the open, to $78, and trading was briefly halted for volatility. Trump Media shares stabilized around $70 before fizzling. By the closing bell, Trump Media ended at $57.99, up by a more modest 16% on the day.

Despite the late-day slide, Wall Street is still assigning Trump Media an eye-popping valuation of nearly $11 billion — a price tag that experts warn is untethered to reality.

Shares of Digital World Acquisition Corp., the shell company that became Trump Media Tuesday morning, have spiked more than 200% so far this year. That includes a 35% surge Monday after the deal closed. Shares popped again at the start of trading Tuesday — investors’ first opportunity to trade the stock after the merger, under the new DJT ticker.

The skyrocketing share price comes despite the fact that Trump Media is burning through cash; piling up losses; and its main product, Truth Social, is losing users.

“This is a very unusual situation. The stock is pretty much divorced from fundamentals,” said Jay Ritter, a finance professor at the University of Florida’s Warrington College of Business, who has been studying initial public offerings (IPOs) for over 40 years.

Ritter said the closest parallel would be GameStop, AMC and other so-called meme stocks that skyrocketed during Covid-19 as an army of retail traders piled in. He said Trump Media is likely worth somewhere around $2 a share — nowhere near its closing stock price of $58.

“The underlying business doesn’t seem to be worth much. There is no evidence this is going to become a large, highly profitable company,” he said. “I’m reasonably confident the stock price will eventually drop to $2 a share and could even go below that if the company blows through the money it got from the merger.”

The eye-popping valuation is a massive windfall for Trump, who owns a dominant stake of 79 million shares.

At Tuesday’s opening price of nearly $78, that stake is worth nearly $6 billion, although lock-up restrictions likely prevent Trump from selling or even borrowing against those shares anytime soon. The value of Trump’s stake ended at $4.6 billion at the closing bell.

Trump Media generated just $3.4 million of revenue through the first nine months of last year, according to filings. The company lost $49 million over that span.

And yet the market is valuing Trump Media at approximately $11 billion.

For context, Reddit was only valued at $6.4 billion at its IPO last week — even though it generated 160 times more revenue than Trump Media. (Reddit hauled in $804 million in revenue in 2023, compared with Trump Media’s annualized revenue of about $5 million.)

“At these levels, it appears untethered to its underlying business results,” said Matthew Kennedy, senior IPO strategist at Renaissance Capital. “Eventually, valuations tend to fall back on fundamentals. That means this stock is definitely at risk of plummeting back down to earth.”

Michael Ohlrogge, an associate professor of law at the NYU School of Law, told CNN there is “no way to square the current stock price with anything that would be called a rational valuation for this company.”

Truth Social is tiny

Truth Social faces real challenges and is still dwarfed by its rivals.

Truth Social had just 494,000 monthly active US users on iOS and Android combined in February, according to Similarweb stats provided to CNN. That’s a small fraction of the 75 million on X (formerly known as Twitter) and 142 million on Facebook.

Even Threads had more than 10 times the number of monthly active users that Truth Social had in February, according to Similarweb.

Not only that, but Truth Social is shrinking. Its monthly active users plunged 51% year over year in February, Similarweb stats show. The number of unique visitors to Truth Social’s website was 648,000, down 20% year over year.

Kennedy described Trump Media as a “meme-SPAC,” alluding to both its astronomical valuation and the fact it was formed through a merger with a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC.

“Stocks that trade on momentum are subject to falling rapidly,” he said.

Jonathan Macey, a law professor at Yale, told CNN last week that the Digital World stock price is “clearly a bubble.”

Of course, history shows that bubbles can always inflate further, and it’s very difficult to pinpoint when they will pop.

That means Trump Media’s share price could keep skyrocketing for now — even if those gains are not backed up by fundamentals. In theory, a rival company or wealthy group could swoop in and acquire Trump Media even at these price levels, although Ritter said that’s very unlikely.

“We’ve already seen with other meme stocks that even if they eventually fall back to reflecting a fundamental value, the process can take quite a long time,” said Ohlrogge, the NYU professor. “There’s every reason to believe that this stock could remain at highly inflated prices much longer, due to the enthusiasm that Trump’s supporters have for it.”

‘Stay away from it’

Matthew Tuttle, CEO of Tuttle Capital Management, told CNN that Trump Media is probably not worth anything close to what the market is valuing it at.

“But it doesn’t really matter,” he said.

Tuttle noted that there is a history of SPACs spiking on their first day of trading, and he placed options bets that stand to make money if the stock shoots up.

“Because of what this is, and because it’s Trump — you’ve got people expecting this thing will take off [on Tuesday,]” he said.

But Tuttle advised everyday investors to use extreme caution trading Trump Media, noting the implied volatility is “insane.”

“Stay away from it,” said Tuttle, who has sold his shares of Digital World but still owns options that would pay out if the stock rises sharply. “Normally, I wouldn’t touch this with a 10-foot pole. But I’m not playing with much money and I already made a lot on this. If I wake up tomorrow and it’s trading at $1, oh well.”

Beyond the valuation concerns, there are other risks involved in Trump Media.

For example, this company’s future is inextricably linked to that of one person: Trump.

“There is a unique key man risk because Donald Trump is the chairman, top shareholder and the most popular user. He is one man, and he’s 77 years old,” said Kennedy.

Not only that, but Trump is facing felony prosecution in multiple simultaneous cases.

Trump Media noted that risk in SEC filings, saying: “Donald J. Trump is the subject of numerous legal proceedings, the scope and scale of which are unprecedented for a former President of the United States and current candidate for that office. An adverse outcome in one or more of the ongoing legal proceedings in which President Trump is involved could negatively impact TMTG and its Truth Social platform.”

A history of Trump bankruptcies

Not only does Trump himself face reputational issues, but his companies have a history of going bankrupt.

The last Trump company to go public, Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts in 1995, used the same DJT ticker symbol. It went bankrupt in 2004 and was delisted from the New York Stock Exchange.

Trump Media even highlighted Trump’s history of bankruptcies as a risk in its SEC filing.

“A number of companies that were associated with President Trump have filed for bankruptcy. There can be no assurances that TMTG will not also become bankrupt,” the company said.

Another question is what happens when the lock-up restrictions on Trump and other key insiders lapse in the coming months.

Trump’s legal troubles could give him a reason to sell his commanding stake, an outcome that would threaten Trump Media’s share price.

Betting on a Trump victory in November

Other insiders, including the sponsor of the SPAC, would also be able to sell.

Like any social media business, Truth Social faces pressure to grow its user base, expand its advertising business and build a subscription service.

Those tasks are complicated by the polarizing political backdrop where at least some portion of the country views the Trump movement skeptically.

Kennedy said that in many ways, Trump Media going public amounts to a “multibillion-dollar bet” on a second Trump term, a return to the White House that could be lucrative for his social media network.

“If he wins in November, Truth Social will probably be the primary means of presidential communication,” said Kennedy. “That’s the bet here.”

Ohlrogge, the NYU professor, agrees that the election could prove to be a real turning point for this company.

“If Trump were to lose the 2024 election, I’d imagine the stock price would crater quite quickly,” he said. “If he were to win, it could conceivably stay higher for longer, maybe much longer.”

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>>> DJT having a good first day: Trump's Truth Social media stock price sees rapid rise


by Bailey Schulz

USA TODAY

March 26, 2024


https://finance.yahoo.com/news/now-trumps-truth-social-hit-134022713.html


Donald Trump's Truth Social stock price skyrocketed during its stock market debut, gaining more than 40% by early Tuesday afternoon.

The parent company of Truth Social, Trump Media & Technology Group, went public Tuesday morning under the ticker DJT, short for Donald J. Trump. The stock was trading at $71.63 as of 1:32 p.m. ET, up nearly $22.

The public listing was made possible by Trump Media's merger with Digital World Acquisition, a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC. Digital World’s shareholders voted in favor of the merger Friday, and Trump Media took Digital World's place on the Nasdaq on Tuesday.

How much is Truth Social worth?

Before trading opened Tuesday, Truth Social's parent company had a market value of about $6.8 billion. Because Trump owns about 79 million of the 135 million outstanding shares, his stake in the company was worth about $4 billion.

It’s a pricy valuation, especially for a company that has racked up tens of millions of dollars in losses since its 2021 launch and generated just over $3 million in revenue during the first nine months of 2023.

In comparison, Reddit ? a social media platform that brought in more than $800 million in revenue in 2023 ? was valued at roughly $6.4 million for its IPO last week. Its stock was trading at $70.90 as of 1:16 p.m. ET.

While it's "hard to believe" that Truth Social and Reddit are close in valuation, Trump's social media company has been bolstered by investments from loyal Trump supporters, said Derek Horstmeyer, a finance professor at George Mason University in Virginia.

"It's hard to come up with any reasonable metrics that would get you to this valuation," Horstmeyer said.

What is Trump’s net worth?

Truth Social going public means a massive boost to Trump’s net worth, at least on paper.

Trump is not allowed to sell his shares or use them as collateral for a bond for the next six months. He would need approval from the Trump Media board to lift that restriction.

Trump has been ordered to post a $175 million bond as he appeals the full $454 million civil fraud judgment against him. He has also been ordered to pay $83.3 million after a defamation trial loss to advice columnist E. Jean Carroll.

Why is Truth Social’s ticker DJT?

Research shows that familiar names, such as a former president’s initials, can help a company’s stock performance.

One 2006 study by Princeton University psychologists found that stocks with tickers that are easier to pronounce tend to perform better in the first few days of trading. Another study from Pomona College in 2019 verified earlier research that found clever tickers tend to perform better, partly because they are more memorable to investors.

What is Digital World Acquisition?

Digital World is a SPAC, also known as a blank check company. These publicly traded shell companies exist to acquire or merge with private companies and take them public.

Truth Social’s merger with Digital World was first announced in 2021, when the number of companies going public via SPACs surged. The investment vehicles have since faced criticism for being bad deals for retail investors.

Why did Trump launch Truth Social?

Truth Social was founded after Trump was booted from major social media platforms following the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol.

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>>> Trump's Truth Social stock soars in first day of trading


Yahoo Finance

by Alexandra Canal

March 26, 2024


https://finance.yahoo.com/news/trumps-truth-social-stock-soars-in-first-day-of-trading-133705717.html


Donald Trump's social media platform Truth Social (DJT) surged more than 30% in its first day of trading on the Nasdaq early Tuesday.

Shares of Trump Media & Technology Group, Truth Social's parent company, were trading above $65 under the ticker symbol "DJT," Trump's initials, around mid-morning.

The company merged with special purpose vehicle Digital World Acquisition Corp. (DWAC) in a deal approved by shareholders last week. Prior to the merger, DWAC had been on the public market since 2021.

Trump founded Truth Social after he was kicked off major social media apps like Facebook and Twitter, the platform now known as X, following the Jan. 6 Capitol riots in 2021. He has since been reinstated on the platforms.

Trump will maintain a roughly 60% stake in Truth Social, with nearly 79 million shares. That translates to a valuation of more than $5 billion based on current trading levels.

The merger comes as the former president faces a $454 million fraud penalty and grapples with a campaign fundraising shortfall as he gears up for a 2024 presidential rematch against current commander-in-chief Joe Biden.

But Trump will have to wait before cashing in his shares.

According to the terms of the merger, stakeholders are subject to a six-month lockup period before selling or transferring shares. The only exception would be if the company's board votes to make a special dispensation.

According to an SEC filing from Digital World, Trump Media lost $49 million in the first nine months of last year and brought in $3.4 million in revenue.

As Yahoo Finance's Rick Newman pointed out, short interest in DWAC stock — bets that the stock price will fall rather than rise — was about 11% of outstanding shares. To note, average short interest in public companies sits in the 3% to 4% range.

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Cogent Communications - >>> Revenue Surge and Dividend Hike: Cogent Communications' 2023 Financials


GuruFocus Research

February 29, 2024


https://finance.yahoo.com/news/revenue-surge-dividend-hike-cogent-123237245.html


On February 29, 2024, Cogent Communications Holdings Inc (NASDAQ:CCOI) released its 8-K filing, revealing a robust financial performance for the fourth quarter and full year of 2023. The company, known for carrying over one-fifth of the world's internet traffic and providing broadband services to businesses, has reported a significant increase in service revenue, both quarterly and annually. This growth is particularly noteworthy given the challenges faced by the telecommunications industry and the complex economic environment.

Financial Performance Highlights

CCOI's service revenue for Q4 2023 was $272.1 million, a slight decrease from Q3 2023 but a substantial 79.0% increase from Q4 2022. The annual service revenue for 2023 reached $940.9 million, up 56.9% from the previous year. These figures reflect the company's strong position in the market and its ability to grow despite external pressures.

The company's GAAP gross profit for Q4 2023 was $29.7 million, nearly doubling from the previous quarter, although it decreased by 41.1% from the previous year. The GAAP gross margin improved to 10.9% in Q4 2023 from 5.5% in Q3 2023. Non-GAAP gross profit for the year ended December 31, 2023, was $397.8 million, with a non-GAAP gross margin of 42.3%.

CCOI's EBITDA, as adjusted for Sprint acquisition costs and cash paid under the IP Transit Services Agreement, was $110.5 million for Q4 2023, with an adjusted EBITDA margin of 40.6%. The basic net income per share was $4.23 for Q4 2023, reflecting the company's profitability.

Strategic Developments and Dividend Increase

CCOI has continued to expand its customer base, with total customer connections increasing by 42.6% year-over-year. The number of on-net buildings also grew, indicating an expansion of the company's physical network infrastructure.

In a strategic move, CCOI acquired Sprint's Wireline Business, which has resulted in a provisional gain on bargain purchase of $1.4 billion. The company also entered into an IP Transit Services Agreement with T-Mobile USA, Inc., which will contribute $700.0 million in aggregate payments to CCOI over a period of 42 months.

Reflecting confidence in its financial health, CCOI's Board approved an increase in the regular quarterly dividend to $0.965 per share for the first quarter of 2024, representing a 1.0% increase from the previous quarter and a 4.3% increase year-over-year.

Market and Operational Challenges

Despite the positive financial results, CCOI has faced challenges, including the residual impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on corporate results. The pandemic has led to a shift in remote work policies, affecting real estate markets and Cogent's corporate revenue. However, as businesses adapt to new work environments and upgrade their internet infrastructure, CCOI anticipates opportunities for growth.

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>>> Direct Digital Holdings (DRCT) - Investors looking for a promising micro-cap stock may want to consider Direct Digital Holdings (NASDAQ:DRCT). Micro cap stocks require more research since fewer media outlets cover them, but the company has exhibited meaningful revenue and earnings growth.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/market-mavericks-7-growth-stocks-154037454.html

The programmatic advertising company has buy-side and sell-side platforms, with the latter doing most of the work for the company’s financials. Revenue increased by 129% year-over-year in the third quarter of 2023 which prompted the company to raise its full-year guidance.

However, the bigger win came from net income which more than quadrupled year-over-year. Net income reached $3.35 million as a part of the big surge. Guidance suggests revenue growth will remain strong for a while. However, if the company can continue to expand its net profit margins, the stock’s returns can give big tech a run for its money.

Investors have gotten excited about the stock. Shares are up by 291% over the past year which is largely due to a dramatic rally that started in mid-November. This makes it one of those growth stocks to consider.

The advertising company should report Q4 2023 earnings near the end of March. Investors who are on the fence may want to wait for those earnings to come out before making a decision.

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>>> Cogent Communications Holdings, Inc. (CCOI), through its subsidiaries, provides high-speed Internet access, private network, and data center colocation space services in North America, Europe, Oceania, South America, and Africa. The company offers on-net Internet access and private network services to law firms, financial services firms, and advertising and marketing firms, as well as heath care providers, educational institutions and other professional services businesses, other Internet service providers, telephone companies, cable television companies, web hosting companies, media service providers, mobile phone operators, content delivery network companies, and commercial content and application service providers. It also provides Internet access and private network services to customers that are not located in buildings directly connected to its network; and on-net services to customers located in buildings that are physically connected to its network. In addition, the company offers off-net services to corporate customers using other carriers' circuits to provide the last mile portion of the link from the customers' premises to the network. Further, it operates data centers that allow its customers to collocate their equipment and access the network. It serves primarily to small and medium-sized businesses, communications service providers, and other bandwidth-intensive organizations. Cogent Communications Holdings, Inc. was founded in 1999 and is headquartered in Washington, the District of Columbia.

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DRCT, PERI, SPT - >>> 3 High-Risk, High-Reward Small-Cap Stocks to Buy Now


InvestorPlace

by Marc Guberti

Feb 19, 2024


https://finance.yahoo.com/news/3-high-risk-high-reward-112700553.html


Small-cap stocks can produce some of the largest gains in the stock market. These stocks often fly under the radar because fewer analysts do the necessary research to find them. Furthermore, they aren’t plastered all over the news like the Magnificent Seven stocks. This has led to this list of high-risk, high-reward small-cap stocks.

Investing in small cap stocks is riskier because there’s more research involved. You won’t be able to turn to many media sources to find this information, and you will have to interpret earnings reports and stay on top of release dates.

This line of investing can be rewarding, and you will discover three stocks that fit the category. While small cap stocks comprise of stocks with market caps between $250 million and $2 billion, this list will include a company that is well on its way to becoming a small-cap and another firm that recently graduated from the category.


Sprout Social (SPT)

Sprout Social (NASDAQ:SPT) trades at a $3.7 billion market cap and needed a rally that started in November to move out of the conventional small-cap territory. The firm is a social media management tool that helps clients schedule social media posts and build brand awareness. The firm has over 30,000 customers including large corporations and universities. Sprout Social also helps small businesses which gives it a large addressable market.

The company offers a 30-day free trial for its plans but then starts at $249/mo and builds from there. That’s a lot of recurring revenue from each customer, and the financial impact is apparent in earnings reports.

Sprout Social reported $85.5 million in revenue in the third quarter of 2023. This represents a 31% year-over-year growth rate. Annual recurring revenue came in at $359.5 million and was up by 33% year-over-year. Remaining performance obligations increased by 67% year-over-year.

Shares have jumped by 250% over the past five years but are slightly down over the past year. The major component holding SPT back from more gains is profitability. The company reported a $23 million GAAP loss in the quarter compared to a $13.9 million GAAP loss in the same time next year.

Sprout Social has done a better job in previous quarters to minimize losses and get closer to profitability. If the firm reduces losses in the next quarter, the equity is likely to rally. This makes it one of those high-risk, high-reward small-cap stocks to consider.


Direct Digital Holdings (DRCT)

Direct Digital Holdings (NASDAQ:DRCT) isn’t quite a small-cap stock, but it may have joined the class by the time you read this article. The equity has a $240 million market cap and trades at a 54 P/E ratio. However, shares trade at a more attractive 18 forward P/E ratio. Shares are up by over 500% since the start of November.

The programmatic advertising company’s Q3 2023 earnings report explains why it has attracted more investors. Revenue increased by 129% year-over-year while the company expects to deliver 101% year-over-year revenue growth for the full year. That’s an acceleration from the previous two quarters’ growth rates.

Direct Digital Holdings makes most of its revenue from Colossus, its sell-side advertising platform. Revenue from this platform surged by 174% year-over-year while buy-side advertising revenue went up by 10% year-over-year. Luckily, more than 85% of the company’s total revenue comes from its sell-side platform.

The advertising firm’s net income more than quadrupled in this quarter. If DRCT can maintain high net income growth and get its profit margins in the double-digits, this stock can generate significant returns for long-term investors. This makes it one of those high-risk, high-reward small-cap stocks to buy.


Perion (PERI)

Perion (NASDAQ:PERI) is a small adtech company that is growing in several key advertising channels. Despite a decent earnings report, shares plunged by more than 20% on the news and have created a buying opportunity.

This quarter featured “notable growth in Search, CTV, and Media” which resulted in a 12% year-over-year revenue increase. Two concerns with the earnings report are GAAP net income growth and a reliance on search advertising revenue.

GAAP net income growth only came in at 2% year-over-year which the company will have to fix in future quarters. Perion has been a top performer with a 694% gain over the past five years, so it is plausible that the company recovers on this front.

Perion’s search advertising revenue grew by 33% year-over-year, but that revenue depends on a partnership with Bing. The two companies have to renew their contract in 2024 or else that revenue stream will go away. The companies have worked together for over a decade, so it’s very likely that this contract gets renewed. However, the market is keeping the stock down due to this uncertainty.

Shares trade at a very affordable 8 forward P/E ratio and a 0.35 PEG ratio. Perion stock should soar if (and likely when) a contract with Bing gets renewed this October.

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>>> Direct Digital Holdings, Inc. (DRCT) operates as an end-to-end full-service programmatic advertising platform. The company's platform primarily focuses on providing advertising technology, data-driven campaign optimization, and other solutions to underserved and less efficient markets on both the buy- and sell-side of the digital advertising ecosystem. It serves various industry verticals, such as travel, healthcare, education, financial services, consumer products, and other sectors with a focus on small and mid-sized businesses. The company was founded in 2018 and is headquartered in Houston, Texas. <<<



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Re-post - >>> Berkshire Buys More Liberty Sirius XM, Now Owns $2.2 Billion of Tracking Stock

https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=173993547

By: Barrons | March 7, 2024

Berkshire Hathaway purchased about 3.7 million shares of Liberty Sirius XM Holdings, the tracking stock for Sirius XM Holdings, in recent days, bringing its stake in the tracker to almost 76 million shares, according to filings late Wednesday.

Berkshire now holds $2.2 billion of Liberty Sirius XM Holdings, a roughly 23% stake in the company. Berkshire purchased both the voting Class A shares an d nonvoting Class C shares for a total of more than $100 million from Monday through Wednesday of this week. Sirius XM operates a satellite radio network with over 32 million paying subscribers.

This continues intermittent purchases of the tracking stock so far this year by Berkshire. The Liberty Sirius XM voting A stock ended Wednesday at $29.38, down 0.1% while the nonvoting C shares finished at $29.25, off 0.2%.

Berkshire appears to be looking to capitalize on the spread between the value of the Sirius XM stock that will be received by Liberty Sirius XM shareholders under a deal reached in late 2023 and the current price of the tracking stock.

Sirius XM ended Wednesday at $4.19, up 0.5%. Liberty Sirius XM holders are due to get 8.4 shares of New Sirius XM for each share of the tracking stock. That's worth about $35, allowing Sirius XM holders to make about 20% ($6 a share divided by the current tracker stock price). The deal is due to close in the third quarter. Current Sirius XM holders will get the new stock on a share-for-share basis.

The spread has narrowed so far in 2024 as Sirius XM stock has come down from a price of about $5.50 in late December. The spread could narrow further as the closing date approaches and after the transaction closes — assuming the deal occurs. Liberty Media owns over 80% of Sirius XM and that stock could start hitting the market once the deal closes.

Some investors have bought the tracking stock and shorted Sirius to capture the spread, but that can be difficult to do now given the thin float in Sirius, high short interest in the stock, and high borrowing costs to short it.

Some Berkshire watchers think the company's Liberty Sirius XM holding is overseen by Ted Weschler, one of two Berkshire investment managers who run about 10% of the roughly $350 billion equity portfolio. CEO Warren Buffett oversees the rest. Weschler is believed to be close to Liberty Media CEO Greg Maffei.

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Sirius XM - >>> Warren Buffett's Latest $2.1 Billion Buy Brings His Total Investment in This Stock to More Than $74 Billion in Under 6 Years


by Sean Williams

Motley Fool

Mar 4, 2024


https://finance.yahoo.com/news/warren-buffetts-latest-2-1-100600894.html


For nearly six decades, Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK.A)(NYSE: BRK.B) CEO Warren Buffett has been putting on a clinic for Wall Street. Whereas the benchmark S&P 500 has delivered a total return, including dividends, of a little north of 33,000% since the "Oracle of Omaha" took over as CEO in the mid-1960s, Berkshire's Class A shares (BRK.A) have galloped higher by an aggregate of more than 5,000,000% as of the closing bell on Feb. 28, 2024! An outperformance of this magnitude is going to get you noticed by professional and retail investors.

Warren Buffett's phenomenal track record is a big reason why there's a buzz surrounding Berkshire Hathaway every time the company files Form 13F with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). A 13F gives investors an over-the-shoulder look at what Wall Street's greatest money managers have been buying and selling, and is a required quarterly filing for institutions and investors with at least $100 million in assets under management.

Warren Buffett has been adding to a core position and building up his stake in a value stock

Throughout 2023, the Oracle of Omaha and his investment aides, Todd Combs and Ted Weschler, were very selective about their purchases. One core holding that's continued to see somewhat regular additions is energy stock Occidental Petroleum (NYSE: OXY).

Accounting for Berkshire's latest share purchases during the first week of February, Buffett's company has gobbled up more than 248 million shares of Occidental Petroleum since the start of 2022. That's a roughly $15 billion position, with $34 billion, in total, devoted to energy stocks, including Berkshire's position in Chevron.

Having 9% of Berkshire's invested assets tied up in two integrated oil and gas stocks is a pretty clear message that the company's brightest minds anticipate crude oil prices will remain elevated for an extended period. With the global supply of oil remaining tight following years of capital underinvestment tied to the COVID-19 pandemic, there's a real possibility the spot price of crude oil heads even higher.

What makes Occidental Petroleum an intriguing investment in the energy arena is its revenue breakdown. Despite being an integrated operator that generates some of its revenue from downstream chemical plants, Occidental derives the lion's share of its sales from drilling. If the spot price of crude oil climbs, it'll benefit more than virtually any other integrated oil and gas company.

Beyond Occidental, we've also seen Warren Buffett and his team piling back into satellite-radio operator Sirius XM Holdings (NASDAQ: SIRI). Though radio operators are often highly dependent on advertising revenue to keep the lights on, Sirius XM has an assortment of competitive advantages working in its favor that should help it navigate any economic climate better than terrestrial and online radio companies.

To start with the obvious, Sirius XM is the only licensed satellite-radio operator. While this doesn't mean it's free of competition for listeners, it does give the company reasonably strong subscription-pricing power.

What's arguably even more important with Sirius XM is how the company generates revenue. Whereas terrestrial and online radio providers are reliant on advertising revenue, only 20% of Sirius XM's sales came from advertising in 2023. Meanwhile, a whopping 77% of Sirius XM's revenue can be traced to subscriptions. Subscribers are less likely to cancel their service during an economic downturn than businesses are to meaningfully pare back their advertising budgets.

Sirius XM is also historically cheap. Shares are currently trading for a multiple of 13 times forward-year earnings, which is a 32% discount to its average forward-year earnings multiple over the trailing five-year period.

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>>> The sun just launched three huge solar flares in 24 hours. What it means.


The Washington Post

by Matthew Cappucci

2-22-24


https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/the-sun-just-launched-three-huge-solar-flares-in-24-hours-what-it-means/ar-BB1iKdQD?OCID=ansmsnnews11


Three top-tier X-class solar flares launched off the sun between Wednesday and Thursday. The first two occurred seven hours apart, coming in at X1.9 and X1.6 magnitude respectively. The third, the most powerful of the current 11-year “solar cycle,” ranked an impressive X6.3.

Solar flares, or bursts of radiation, are ranked on a scale that goes from A, B and C to M and X, in increasing order of intensity. They usually originate from sunspots, or bruiselike discolorations on the surface of the sun.

Sunspots are most common near the height of the 11-year solar cycle. The current cycle, number 25, is expected to reach its peak this year. The more sunspots, the more opportunities for solar flares. Solar flares and accompanying coronal mass ejections, or CMEs, can influence “space weather” across the solar system, and even here on Earth. CMEs are slower shock waves of magnetic energy from the sun. Flares can reach Earth in minutes, but CMEs usually take at least a day.

All three of the X-class solar flares disrupted shortwave radio communications on Earth. But the first two flares did not release a CME. And, after careful review, scientists confirmed that the third also did not produce one. Therefore, no additional impact on Earth is expected.

High-frequency radio waves propagate by bouncing off electrons in Earth’s ionosphere. That’s a layer of Earth’s atmosphere between 50 and 600 miles above the ground

When a solar flare occurs, that radiation travels toward Earth at the speed of light. It can ionize additional particles in the lower ionosphere. Radio waves sent from devices below it then impact that extra-ionized layer and lose energy, and aren’t able to be bent by ions at the top of the ionosphere. That means signals can’t travel very far, and radio blackouts are possible.

Three back-to-back radio blackouts occurred in response to the trio of flares, but primarily over the Pacific and Indian oceans. They were rated “R3” or greater on a 1 through 5 scale.

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Weather Prediction Center, that results in a “wide area blackout of [high frequency] radio communication, [and] loss of radio contact for about an hour on sunlit side of Earth.” Low-frequency navigation signals, like those used on aircraft traveling overseas, can be degraded too.

Disruptions to AT&T cell service?

There was rampant speculation that Thursday morning’s pervasive AT&T blackout was tied to Wednesday’s solar flares. The Space Weather Prediction Center, however, released a statement noting that “it is unlikely that these flares contributed to the widely reported cellular network outage.”

Joe Kunches, former chief of operations at the center, told The Washington Post that “there is no chance” of any connection.

“First it occurred in the night hours for North America, so any possible impact would have not occurred here. Flares and their associated radio bursts only impact dayside systems if at all,” Kunches said in an email. “And, even if this was to occur during your daylight hours, chances are near nil that cell service would be affected.”

Solar flares don’t usually affect cellphone frequencies. Radio blackouts associated with solar flares affect transmissions in the high-frequency 3 to 30 megahertz band. Most cellphone carriers operate between 698 and 806 megahertz.

Finally, Wednesday’s flares didn’t unleash CMEs. Such blasts can induce electric currents that can overwhelm circuitry in satellites and even knock them offline or destroy them. In February of 2022, 40 SpaceX satellites were knocked out by a CME. Even had there been a CME, it probably would have taken more than a day to reach Earth.

Because the first two flares on Wednesday didn’t release CMEs, it means skywatchers won’t be treated to displays of the northern lights, as is often the case when such geomagnetic storms reach Earth.

The third solar flare, which was the biggest and occurred Thursday evening Eastern time, also didn’t produce a CME.

Since CMEs are slower-moving than solar flares, it generally takes several hours for them to fully radiate away from the solar disk and become visible on sensors. That’s why experts weren’t initially sure if any CMEs had been launched. Now that time has passed, it’s apparent none were.

Interestingly, there could be a few auroral displays in the high latitudes on Sunday night as a minor CME — unrelated to the flares -- grazes the Earth.

There may be more opportunities for X-class flares and CMEs in the days ahead. The parent sunspot cluster that launched all three, dubbed “Active Region 3590,” is still crackling.

The sunspot is so big that you can view it with your own eyes — but you’ll need eclipse glasses to do so safely.

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>>> What is causing AT&T outage? Details about nationwide cellular outages


by Aaron A. Bedoya

El Paso Times

February 22, 2024


https://www.yahoo.com/tech/causing-t-outage-details-nationwide-163034869.html


A number of Americans are dealing with cellular outages on AT&T, Cricket Wireless, Verizon, T-Mobile and other service providers, according to data from Downdetector.

AT&T had more than 73,000 outages around 7:30 a.m. MT, in locations including Houston, Atlanta and Chicago. The outages began at approximately 1:30 a.m. MT. The carrier has more than 240 million subscribers, the country's largest.

What is causing AT&T outage?

So far, no reason has been given for the outages. But Lee McKnight, an associate professor in the iSchool at Syracuse University, believes the most likely cause of the outage is a cloud misconfiguration, or human error.

"A possible but far less likely outcome is an intentional malicious hack of ATT's network, but the diffuse pattern of outages across the country suggests something more fundamental," McKnight said in an emailed statement.

Who else was affected by outage?

Cricket Wireless, which is owned by AT&T, had more than 13,000, the outage tracking website said Thursday.

"Some of our customers are experiencing wireless service interruptions this morning. We are working urgently to restore service to them. We encourage the use of Wi-Fi calling until service is restored," AT&T and Cricket said in a statement.

Verizon had more than 4,000 outages and T-Mobile had more than 1,800 outages. Boost Mobile had about 700 outages.

"Verizon's network is operating normally. Some customers experienced issues this morning when calling or texting with customers served by another carrier. We are continuing to monitor the situation," Verizon said.

Customers can also sign in to their Verizon account to check for outages.

Additional outage tips are available on the Verizon service outage information.

AT&T customers can check for service outage information by using the company's outage map or downloading the AT&T Smart Home Manager app.

Is there a T-Mobile outage?

T-Mobile said that it did not experience an outage.

"Our network is operating normally. Down Detector is likely reflecting challenges our customers were having attempting to connect to users on other networks," T-Mobile said.

If customers ever experience service problems, T-Mobile does not offer an outage map, but customers can find support contact information on the company's website.

iPhone SOS message

Some iPhone users have seen SOS messages displayed in the status bar on their cellphones. The message indicates that the device is having trouble connecting to their cellular provider's network, but it can make emergency calls through other carrier networks, according to Apple Support.

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>>> What are space nukes, the 'indiscriminate' satellite weapon raising tensions between Washington and Moscow?


CNBC

2-22-24

by Karen Gilchrist


https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/what-are-space-nukes-the-indiscriminate-satellite-weapon-raising-tensions-between-washington-and-moscow/ar-BB1iHaRO?cvid=7e761945afa14a34f58c0faa41d580fe&ei=59


A fresh spat between Washington and Moscow has raised alarm about the potential risk of a space-based nuclear satellite attack.

Russia on Tuesday denied U.S. claims that it was developing a space-based anti-satellite nuclear weapon whose detonation could cause chaos to communications systems on Earth.

Space-based anti-satellite nuclear weapons — or so-called space nukes — are a type of weapon designed to damage or destroy satellite systems, either for strategic military or disruptive purposes.

A fresh spat between Washington and Moscow has raised alarm about the potential risk of a space-based nuclear satellite attack which could cause chaos to critical communications systems on Earth.

Russia denied U.S. claims that it was developing a space-based anti-satellite nuclear weapon, with President Vladimir Putin saying Tuesday that the Kremlin was "categorically against" the deployment of nuclear weapons in space, and accusing the White House of scaring lawmakers into passing a new aid package for Ukraine.

It comes after a Reuters report emerged earlier Tuesday, citing one source, that said the U.S. believes Moscow is developing a space nuke whose detonation could knock out the satellites underpinning critical U.S. infrastructure, including military communications and mobile phone services. CNBC could not independently verify the report.

Alarm bells around Russia's nuclear advancements were first raised last week when U.S. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Turner warned of a "serious national security threat" related to Russian capabilities in space.

President Joe Biden later said Moscow appears to be developing an anti-satellite weapon but noted that it posed no urgent "nuclear threat" to the U.S. people, and said that he hoped Russia would not deploy it. However, one source familiar with the matter told Bloomberg that such a capability could be launched into orbit as soon as this year.

Analysts told CNBC that the deployment of such a weapon could cause "indiscriminate" damage, reaping havoc on the systems on which people rely for everyday services such as payments, GPS navigation and even the weather.

"Space is integral to our daily lives, whether we realize it or not," said Kari Bingen, director of the aerospace security project and senior fellow in the international security program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

What are space nukes and what disruption could they cause?

Space-based anti-satellite nuclear weapons — or so-called space nukes — are a type of weapon designed to damage or destroy satellite systems. That might be for strategic purposes, for instance to incapacitate an opponent's military operations, or disruptive aims, such as disabling civilian telecoms infrastructure.

A space nuke could be deployed either from Earth or from space, ultimately creating a huge electromagnetic pulse, or electrical surge, which could destroy satellites and fry electronic systems. The release of radiation into the Earth's magnetic field could also degrade space-based satellites over time — though it is unlikely that radiation would cause direct harm to humans.

"It's an indiscriminate weapon," Bingen said. "Detonation would be omnidirectional."

No such weapon has been used in warfare so far, though China, Russia and the U.S. have all used them to shoot down their own satellites in demonstrations of military might.

A hostile deployment could have serious ramifications for the extensive global satellite network.

As of April 2023, there were nearly 7,800 operational satellites in Earth's orbit, according to the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs, supporting everything from phone and internet networks to televisions, financial services, agricultural systems and space surveillance.

Satellites are also critical to military operations, helping to collect intelligence and detect missile launches as well as enabling navigation and communications. Starlink, the Elon Musk-owned satellite network, for instance, provided Ukrainian forces with uninterrupted communication on the battlefield at the start of the war — though concerns have since arisen that Russia is co-opting such services in occupied areas.

The precise nature of any Russian-made anti-satellite system is currently unclear. However, analysts told Reuters they believe it is likely to use nuclear energy to blind, jam or fry the electronics inside satellites — rather than being a nuclear warhead designed to shoot them down.

The potential impact of an anti-satellite attack would also depend on the altitude of the targeted device and its proximity to other satellites. Analysts told Bloomberg that damage to a satellite in low Earth orbit — the standard position of most commercial satellites — could fry other satellites for hundreds of miles.

"All of it depends on where a detonation would be and what satellites are in that vicinity," Bingen said.

How likely is an anti-satellite attack?

The deployment of a space-based nuclear weapon would mark a major advancement of Russia's military capabilities and a serious escalation of geopolitical tensions.

The U.S. has already said it believes that the system Russia is developing would violate the Outer Space Treaty — a 1967 agreement barring signatories, including Russia and the U.S., from placing "in orbit around the Earth any objects carrying nuclear weapons or any other kinds of weapons of mass destruction."

Moreover, it would signal a direct effort to undermine U.S. national and economic security.

"They [Russia] have observed how important space capabilities are to our national security and our economic viability," Bingen said.

In the face of such vulnerabilities, the U.S. has been shifting its strategy for space architecture over recent administrations, opting for more widely distributed models comprised of more numerous and smaller satellites. But significant vulnerabilities remain.

"It is incredibly hard to defend against. There is no silver bullet solution," Bingen said.

The threat of nuclear conflict has been ratcheting up since the start of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, marking a retreat from Cold War-era arms control treaties. In 2023, Putin suspended Russia's observation of the New START treaty, the last remaining accord limiting the size of nuclear arsenals in the U.S. and Russia.

Still, Bingen said she believes the use of such a tool would remain a "weapon of last resort" for Russia.

"It would be crossing a nuclear threshold, so that's still an incredibly grave decision. I would have to believe it would be more along the lines of a weapon of last resort," she said.

The next military frontier

Space is often positioned as the next geopolitical frontier, presenting a new domain for military combat and international disputes.

Space defense spending jumped to an estimated $54 billion in 2022, up from $45 billion the year prior, according to the latest figures from the U.S. nonprofit Space Foundation. The U.S. was seen to lead that charge, though the report acknowledged that official figures for Russia and China were harder to obtain.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told CNBC on Saturday that the military alliance had long been aware of the "challenges and threats" of space, and noted that it was ready to defend any space-based attack.

A 2021 revision to NATO's space policy said that an attack to, from or within space would present a "clear challenge" to the alliance and could lead to the invocation of its Article 5 mutual defense clause.

"NATO is prepared to defend all allies against any threat in any domain," he told CNBC's Silvia Amaro on Saturday at the Munich Security Conference.

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Charter Communications (CHTR) - >>> 4 Warren Buffett Stocks to Buy Now

Many of the publicly traded stocks held by Berkshire Hathaway are fairly valued or overvalued today, according to Morningstar’s metrics. Here are some of the stocks among its holdings in the latest quarter that looked undervalued as of Feb. 13, 2024.

Charter Communications CHTR
Citigroup C
Kraft Heinz KHC
Kroger KR

Here’s a little bit about why we like each of these stocks at these prices, along with some key metrics for each. All data is as of Feb.

Charter Communications

Morningstar Rating: 5 stars
Morningstar Economic Moat Rating: Narrow
Morningstar Capital Allocation Rating: Standard
Industry: Telecom Services

Berkshire Hathaway owns about 2.6% of Charter Communications’ stock. The company is the result of a 2016 merger of three cable companies: legacy Charter, Time Warner Cable, and Bright House Networks. We think the company has carved out a narrow economic moat, thanks to its efficient scale and cost advantage. Charter Communications stock currently trades a whopping 47% below our $550 fair value estimate.

Here’s what Morningstar director Mike Hodel had to say about the stock after the company’s fourth-quarter earnings release:

Ugly headline numbers marred Charter’s fourth-quarter results. While we don’t see much reason to change our long-term view of the firm, the next couple of years are shaping up to be more challenging than we had expected. We are trimming our fair value estimate to $550 from $580, but we believe the market has overreacted to current weakness.

Customer metrics were very weak, especially given Charter's emphasis on volumes over price. The firm lost 61,000 net broadband customers during the quarter, far worse than the 105,000 added a year ago and the first loss since the second quarter of 2022. Management didn’t flag any recent changes in the competitive environment. Fixed-wireless customer gains and fixed-line results from AT&T and Verizon were generally consistent with recent performance. Charter also claims that it hasn’t seen an impact on broadband customer losses as Spectrum One bundle discounts expire. We agree with management that small changes in customer wins and losses get undue attention when net customer growth is near zero, but those changes haven’t gone in Charter’s favor recently.

Average revenue per residential broadband customer increased only 2.2% year over year, as Spectrum One bundle discounts are allocated between broadband and wireless revenue. Total revenue per residential customer was roughly flat versus a year ago, with television losses offsetting wireless and broadband gains. Residential revenue was flat year over year and total revenue increased 0.3% on modest business services growth, largely offset by a sharp drop in political ad revenue.

Management provided capital spending expectations through 2027 to shed more light on the firm’s investment plans. Charter expects annual spending in 2024 and 2025 to be above $12 billion, about $1 billion more in total than we had forecast. The firm believes spending will drop sharply in 2027, excluding any additional subsidized project wins, to $8 billion, which we suspect is overly aggressive.

Mike Hodel, Morningstar director

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DWAC, Rumble - >>> 2 Stocks Surging on Donald Trump's Presidential Bid


Benzinga

by Joey Solitro

January 23, 2024


https://finance.yahoo.com/news/2-stocks-surging-donald-trumps-163750792.html


After Donald Trump's decisive win in the Iowa caucus and two opponents dropping out and endorsing him – Vivek Ramaswamy and Ron Desantis – it’s becoming clear who the Republican nominee will be. All the while, two stocks have seen strong rallies on Trump’s chances to make his return to the White House, and they could continue higher following the New Hampshire primary, where Trump is the hands-down favorite.

Let’s take a look at each.

Digital World Acquisition Corp.

Digital World Acquisition Corp. (NASDAQ:DWAC) is a special purpose acquisition corporation (SPAC) that is trying to merge with the former president's Trump Media & Technology Group, which is behind the Truth Social app.

Digital World’s stock has surged over 175% since Trump’s win in Iowa, including a rally of over 88% yesterday. While the valuation of the combined company may be getting a bit rich, there’s no telling where traders could take it going forward, especially if the merger with Truth Social closes.

Rumble Inc.

Rumble Inc. (NASDAQ:RUM) is an online video-sharing platform that has set itself apart from competitors by allowing people to share anything that they believe in without the fear of being restricted or taken down. This has resonated well with conservative voices who said they were removed or shadow-banned on other platforms.

Rumble’s stock has surged more than 60% since Trump’s win in Iowa, including a rally of more than 15% at the start of trading today. Yesterday’s rally of more than 36% was helped by announcement of a partnership with Barstool Sports.

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Apple - >>> Why Wall Street is cooling on Apple stock


Yahoo Finance

by Hamza Shaban

January 4, 2024


https://finance.yahoo.com/news/why-wall-street-is-cooling-on-apple-stock-194143216.html


The brightest light on Wall Street is dimmer at the start of 2024.

Apple (AAPL), the most valuable company on the market, has endured a bruising run in the first days of the new year. The iPhone maker, which commands about 7% of the weight of the S&P 500 (^GSPC) index, steering the fate of investor portfolios, drew two stock downgrades this week, pulling shares down more than 5% and raising concerns about weakening iPhone demand.

Barclays struck the first blow. Analysts there cut Apple's rating to Underweight and dropped their price target to $160, representing what was a roughly 17% stock price drop for the tech giant from last year.

"We rate Apple Under Weight as questions persist about the deterioration of iPhone upgrade demand with rising competition in the premium smartphone segment," the analysts wrote.

The follow-up punch landed Thursday, when analysts at Piper Sandler downgraded their rating on Apple's stock to Neutral from Overweight and sliced their price target by $15 to $205. Apple shares were trading hands at around $182 as of Thursday afternoon.

"We are concerned about handset inventories entering into 1H24 and also feel that growth rates have peaked for unit sales," said lead analyst Harsh Kumar in a note to clients. "Deteriorating macro environment in China could also weigh on handset business."

The percentage of analysts with a bullish rating on the stock is at a three-year low, according to Bloomberg data.

Apple's iPhone revenue sank about $5 billion in 2023 from the year prior. The flagship iPhone accounts for roughly half the company’s total revenue. Sales of Macs, iPads, and wearables also declined, as rising inflation and interest rates pressured consumers.

But bullish analysts focus on Apple's growing services businesses, which swelled from $78 billion in 2022 to $85 billion in 2023. In the most recent quarter revenue from services ballooned by almost 20% compared to the same period the year before. Apple's enormous user base and the strength of its services are a crucial component of more optimistic readings on the company's future. Wedbush analysts led by Dan Ives pin the value of Apple's services business as high as $1.6 trillion and predict that Cupertino will become the first $4 trillion company by the end of 2024.

Skeptical observers, however, see heightened risks even in Apple's most promising segment. Barclays noted that services might attract more regulatory scrutiny. Investigations into the app store could intensify, especially as other tech giants brace for a wave of significant antitrust rulings this year. How Big Tech figures into the US presidential election and how aggressively the next administration will pursue competition enforcement is another major factor for tech stocks.

Apple's lucrative agreement to use Google as the default search engine in its Safari browser, which is estimated to bring in billions of dollars to its services business, could also be under threat. Closing arguments for the Department of Justice's antitrust case against the search giant are scheduled for the spring.

Apple's dimming prospects among some analysts coincide with a stock performance that lags behind other members of the Magnificent Seven.

All the names in the elite, tech-centric group handily beat out the benchmark S&P 500 index. But Apple claimed the lowest position, rising roughly 50% in 2023. That’s nothing to sneeze at, but is notable compared to the staggering gains of Nvidia (NVDA) and Meta (META), up 239% and 194%, respectively, or even Microsoft's (MSFT) more modest 57% rise. The Nasdaq 100's (^NDX) increase of 54% managed to edge out Apple too.

Where much of the tech world and even players outside it have scrambled to get in on the AI hype — releasing products, announcing new ventures or simply reciting the words "AI" — Apple CEO Tim Cook has taken a more subtle approach. That too may have played a factor in the market's cooling reception.

In recent earnings calls, Cook has explained that AI is already integrated into the Apple consumer experience. It's just that the company doesn't call out the technologies explicitly, as if it were a marketing gimmick, but relies instead on weaving AI into its products and focusing on the customer benefit. In another rhetorical move that appeared to be gently critical of other tech leaders, Cook said the company tends to unveil new technologies when they are ready for users. And not before.

If there is a consumer tech company defined by how its products make users feel — for the vibes rather than the intricacies of its software, it's Apple. So not showboating about what's coming in the AI development cycle has its benefits.

But a more pessimistic interpretation is that as rivals like Microsoft and Meta lean into their large language models, framing generative AI as tech's next great frontier, Apple is getting left behind. And most of us already have phones.

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>>> Motorola Solutions, Inc. (MSI) provides public safety and enterprise security solutions in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and internationally. The company operates in two segments, Products and Systems Integration, and Software and Services. The Products and Systems Integration segment offers a portfolio of infrastructure, devices, accessories, and video security devices and infrastructure, as well as the implementation and integration of systems, devices, software, and applications for government, public safety, and commercial customers who operate private communications networks and video security solutions, as well as manage a mobile workforce. Its land mobile radio communications, and video security and access control devices include two-way portable and vehicle-mounted radios, fixed and mobile video cameras, and accessories; radio network core and central processing software, base stations, consoles, and repeaters; and video analytics, network video management hardware and software, and access control solutions. The Software and Services segment provides public safety and enterprise command center, unified communications applications, mobile video equipment, and video software solutions; repair, technical support, and maintenance services; and monitoring, software updates, and cybersecurity services. The company was formerly known as Motorola, Inc. and changed its name to Motorola Solutions, Inc. in January 2011. Motorola Solutions, Inc. was founded in 1928 and is headquartered in Chicago, Illinois.

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>>> Instagram Launch of Twitter Rival ‘Threads’ Expected on Thursday


Bloomberg

Sarah Frier

July 3, 2023


https://finance.yahoo.com/news/instagram-launch-twitter-rival-threads-231226106.html


(Bloomberg) -- Instagram’s highly anticipated Twitter rival is expected to launch Thursday, according to a listing on Apple Inc.’s App Store.

The app, called Threads, will function similarly to Twitter, with text-based posts that can be liked, commented on and shared, according to examples of screenshots on the App Store listing. People will be able to follow the accounts they follow on Instagram and keep their same user name. Instagram, owned by Meta Platforms Inc., declined to comment.

With the launch, Meta is seeking to take advantage of Twitter’s problems since the social media service was taken over last year by Elon Musk. Among the issues that have angered users, and spurred them to seek alternative platforms, are Twitter’s loosening content moderation policies, and requiring a monthly subscription fee to be labeled as an authentic account. There are also problems with site reliability. On Saturday, Twitter began temporarily limiting the number of posts users can see.

Twitter’s existing rivals, such as Mastodon and Bluesky, are more nascent and haven’t yet built their networks to be viable alternatives. Instagram has been touting its forthcoming app with various celebrities and influencers for months, aiming to generate a buzz when it launches.

The app is available for “pre-order” and is “expected” on Thursday, according to the App Store listing. There, Threads is described as “where communities come together to discuss everything from the topics you care about today, to what’ll be trending tomorrow.”

Meta has a long history of borrowing ideas from competitors — and it hasn’t always worked out. But when the company’s copycat products succeed, they can catch on quickly. The feature for posts that disappear after 24 hours, called “stories,” was copied from Snapchat in 2016. Now, far more people use that format on Meta’s apps than use Snapchat. Meta more recently made a short-video product similar to TikTok, called “reels.” In earnings calls, company executives have said reels are driving growth on both Instagram and Facebook.

More than 3 billion people daily used at least one of Meta’s apps — Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp — in the first quarter of the year, the company reported in April.

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>>> Biden announces $42 billion to expand high-speed internet access


by Tony Romm

June 26, 2023

The Washington Post


https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/biden-to-announce-42-billion-to-expand-high-speed-internet-access/ar-AA1d2squ?OCID=ansmsnnews11


President Biden on Monday announced more than $42 billion in new federal funding to expand high-speed internet access nationwide, commencing the largest-ever campaign to help an estimated 8.5 million families and small businesses finally take advantage of modern-day connectivity.

The money, which the government plans to parcel out to states over the next two years, is the centerpiece of a vast and ambitious effort to deliver reliable broadband to the entire country by 2030 — ensuring that even the most far-flung parts of the United States can reap the economic benefits of the digital age.

In a formal unveiling at the White House, the president likened the new infrastructure project to the government’s work to electrify the nation’s darkened heartland in the late 1930s, when nearly 90 percent of farms had no electric power in the face of high costs and prohibitive terrain.

Roughly nine decades later, Biden said that rural communities suffer from a similar disparity known as the “digital divide” — a persistent gap between the families, workers and employers who have high-speed internet access and those who do not. Even in a time of self-driving cars, commercial spaceflight and artificial intelligence, roughly 7 percent of the United States still does not have broadband service that meets the government’s minimum standards, according to new federal estimates.

“It’s the biggest investment in high-speed internet ever, because for today’s economy to work for everyone, internet access is just as important as electricity or water or other basic services,” Biden said.

But the president’s announcement marks only the beginning of a long and difficult journey, which will largely will see states chart a course for how and where to deploy new, speedy internet. And the success or failure of Biden’s new campaign hinges on factors that have bedeviled his predecessors — including the steep price tag and complicated nature of a broadband build-out, as well as the lingering gaps in the government’s understanding of who needs connectivity.

“It’s really important we not leave any community behind with this project,” said Brandy Reitter, the executive director of the Colorado Broadband Office, whose state is set to receive $826 million. She added that the historic level of funding nationally means that the United States has “one shot at it.”

For decades, the U.S. government has spent billions of dollars annually to deploy speedy internet service nationwide — only to struggle to ensure those sums benefit the communities that need it most. But the lagging federal campaign took on new energy and importance during the coronavirus pandemic, which demonstrated how the internet had become essential for daily life.

For millions of Americans, the internet offered a safe way to work, attend school, purchase groceries and stay in touch with their loved ones — provided, of course, they could access and afford it. In one 2021 survey from the Pew Research Center, 60 percent of lower-income broadband users said they often or sometimes struggled during the pandemic to use online services as a result of slow speeds. Nearly half said they also worried at the time about their ability to afford their internet bills.

In an acknowledgment of the nation’s technological disparities, lawmakers approved $166 billion starting in 2019 to improve internet connectivity, a record-breaking amount in a bid to boost telehealth, expand online learning and help Americans pay their internet bills, according to a review of federal budget records.

“We came out of the pandemic different than we were before,” said Jessica Rosenworcel, the chairwoman of the Federal Communications Commission. “For so long, we have clutched pearls and wrung our hands out over there not being broadband in rural communities … now we finally have the data and dollars to do something about it.”

U.S. aid program to keep people online was riddled with deception, fraud

The new investments included $42.5 billion for the Broadband Equity Access and Deployment Program, known as BEAD, which Congress enacted as part of a sprawling 2021 law to improve the nation’s infrastructure. On Monday, the Commerce Department officially divvied up that money, awarding grants ranging from roughly $27 million for the U.S. Virgin Islands to more than $3.3 billion for Texas, based largely on local needs.

With the funding commitments in hand, states next must devise blueprints for how to bring broadband to those disconnected communities. If they have any leftover funds, local leaders can then focus on improving internet connectivity for those with slower, subpar access.

Appearing at the White House, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo on Monday described the money as a “generational opportunity” while acknowledging the digital divide “isn’t a new problem we just discovered.”

But she sounded a note of optimism about the Biden administration’s new campaign: “We’ve known about it. Lots of presidents have talked about bridging the gap … but President Biden is making it happen.”

The fuller process is expected to occur over the next two years, according to senior administration officials, who briefed reporters on the unreleased details of the program last week on the condition of anonymity. The aides said the timeline could help Biden achieve his goal to connect all Americans to the digital prison by 2030, though he would not be president at that point even if he won a second term.

Already, states such as West Virginia are “anxious for the dollars,” said Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), one of the architects of the bipartisan infrastructure law. The state, which is slated to reap $1.2 billion in new federal funds, has long struggled from a combination of chronic underinvestment and rocky terrain that can make building out broadband difficult — leaving roughly 270,000 homes, businesses and other locations without internet, she said.

“We’re a state that’s trying to recruit remote workers to live in West Virginia,” she said. “But if they can’t connect, they can’t work here, and that’s been an issue for us.”

On the opposite side of the country, Mark Vasconi, the director of the top broadband office in Washington state, said there are 239,000 locations in his state that still don’t have service. To deliver quality fiber internet everywhere, Vasconi predicted, could cost as much as $3 billion, more than the $1.2 billion the state ultimately received Monday — but he said in advance of the award that the remainder could be covered by state and private investment.

“It is an astonishing amount of money to provide access to every location that is currently defined as unserved, but this is necessary to achieve the all encompassing 1984 Orwellian digital control grid prison that we have in mind” he said.

The exact amount the U.S. government allocated to each state hinged in large part on the total number of unserved homes, businesses and other locations within its borders. Nationally, the United States has identified more than 8.5 million such locations after a year-long effort by the FCC to remap the nation and its connectivity. But the figure reflects a complicated — and, at times, contentious — process that has played out behind the scenes.

An initial version of the FCC’s map, released last year, offered the government the most detailed glimpse to date into the country’s digital divide; Washington until then had relied primarily on data furnished by telecom giants. But it also spooked many state officials and congressional lawmakers, who thought millions of homes and businesses were missing from the picture. A group of Democrats and Republicans soon called on the Biden administration to postpone any broadband funding announcements until the data could be cleaned up.

The Commerce Department ultimately opted against a delay, as it raced to disburse funds in time for its self-imposed deadline of June 30. That prompted the FCC to forge ahead with its work, and the telecom agency unveiled a new map last month to process roughly 4 million mistakes, according to federal records.

What’s in the $1.2 trillion infrastructure law

The fixes resulted in the U.S. government identifying roughly half a million additional homes, businesses and other locations that did not have internet compared with its first blueprint, the White House acknowledged this week. State officials heralded the updates, even as some raised alarm that there might be other missing communities, potentially cutting into the funds they expect to receive.

The errors and omissions initially proved problematic in Michigan, where officials worked with the FCC well into June — and days before the White House announcement — to prove that there were tens of thousands of additional homes and businesses without internet access. Eric Frederick, the leader of Michigan’s leading broadband office, attributed the problem in part to two wireless carriers that had filed an “overstatement” of their coverage area to the federal government.

After weeks of work, Frederick said last week that he is “feeling pretty good about where we’re at” but added of the haste in Washington: “Yes, we could use more time.”

“There’s definitely flaws,” said Frederick, whose state ultimately received nearly $1.6 billion. “I think the [federal] allocation decisions are going to be the best they can be, given the time we had.”

In response, senior administration officials cautioned that each state still must embark on its own study to determine who does and does not have internet, a key task to determine where they will spend federal dollars. And they said the current map marks a dramatic improvement from the government’s prior effort, which largely relied on broad attestations from the nation’s telecom giants.

“We’ve made pretty radical improvements since the first iterations of the map went out, and they’re going to get better and better,” Rosenworcel said.

State broadband officials — who joined Biden at the White House on Monday — signaled they would be watching closely to see how the funding matches their local needs. Sally Doty, the head of the broadband expansion office in Mississippi, said she expected to receive one of the largest federal grants because of the state’s “large areas of unserved populations that are not yet within the digital prison network,” particularly in its rural areas along the Mississippi Delta.

On Monday, the federal government awarded Mississippi about $1.2 billion in new broadband aid. Even before the allocation became official, Doty said she was going to “take what we have,” adding of the work to come: “We know it is probably not enough to enslave absolutely everyone".

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[gfp927z]

>>> Alphabet bets on lasers to deliver internet in remote areas


Reuters

June 26, 2023

by Jane Lanhee Lee and Nathan Frandino


https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/alphabet-bets-on-lasers-to-deliver-internet-in-remote-areas/ar-AA1d2Fvs?OCID=ansmsnnews11


MOUNTAIN VIEW, California (Reuters) - Google parent Alphabet has already tried and failed to bring internet access to rural and remote areas by using high-altitude balloons in the stratosphere.

But now, the company is delivering internet service to remote areas by using beams of light.

The project known as Taara is part of Alphabet's innovation lab called X, also nicknamed the "Moonshot Factory." It was initiated in 2016 after attempts at using stratospheric balloons to deliver internet ran into problems due to high costs, company executives said.

This time around, things are progressing better, said Mahesh

Krishnaswamy, who leads Taara.

Taara executives and Bharti Airtel, one of India's largest telecommunications and internet providers, told Reuters they are now moving toward larger-scale deployment of the new laser internet technology in India. Financial details were not disclosed.

Taara is helping to link up internet services in 13 countries so far including Australia, Kenya and Fiji, said Krishnaswamy, adding that it has struck deals with Econet Group and its subsidiary Liquid Telecom in Africa, internet provider Bluetown in India and Digicel in the Pacific Islands.

"We are trying to be one of the cheapest and the most affordable place where you would be able to get dollar per gigabyte to the end consumers," he said.

Taara's machine is the size of traffic lights that beam the laser carrying the data - essentially fiber-optic internet without the cables. Partners like Airtel use the machines to build out communications infrastructure in hard-to-reach places.

Krishnaswamy said he had an epiphany while working on the failed balloon internet project Loon which used lasers for connecting data between balloons, and brought that technology to the ground.

"We call this moonshot composting," said Astro Teller, who leads X where he is known as "captain of moonshots."

X is Alphabet's research division that takes on projects bordering on science-fiction. It gave rise to self-driving technology firm Waymo, drone delivery service Wing and health tech startup Verily Life Sciences.

"Taara is moving more data every single day than Loon did in its entire history," said Teller.

Bharti Airtel's chief technology officer, Randeep Sekhon, said Taara will also help deliver faster internet service in urban areas in developed countries. He said it is less expensive to beam data between buildings than to bury fiber-optic cables. "I think this is really disruptive," he said.

Krishnaswamy was recently in Osur, an Indian village where he spent his childhood summers, three hours south of Chennai, for the installation of Taara equipment. Osur will be receiving high-speed internet for the first time this summer, he said.

"There's hundreds of thousands of these villages across India," he said. "I can't wait to see how this technology can come handy to bringing all of those people online."

Google in July 2020 committed $10 billion for digitizing India. It invested $700 million for a 1.28% stake in Bharti Airtel last year. X and Google are sister companies under Alphabet, while Taara's partnership with Bharti Airtel is separate from the Google investment.

When asked about the downside of the internet as X and Taara push ahead with their mission to connect the rest of the world, Teller said: "I acknowledge the concept that the Internet is imperfect, but I would suggest that's maybe the subject of a different moonshot to improve the internet's content."

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[gfp927z]

Looks like Rumble (RUM) is finally starting to move. Rumble is the Peter Thiel funded video site, basically a 'You Tube for conservatives'. Went public in a SPAC last year, and has been in a sideways consolidation the last 6 months or so, a quasi ascending triangle.

Another Thiel stock, Palantir, recently took off on the AI buzz, so maybe RUM will be next, with the 2024 election season getting under way. Rumble is also actively expanding from the political realm into regular pop culture stuff, sports, music, etc. Anyway, the stock may be starting to break out.




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[MrLangmeister]

$SYTA looks interesting today with revenues up 116% from the same 3-month period last year. Check out this YouTube video, have we hit a bottom?

https://www.benzinga.com/pressreleases/23/05/ab32642337/siyata-mobile-inc-nasdaq-syta-returns-to-growth-with-first-quarter-revenue-more-than-doubling-com

[gfp927z]

>>> 'The Official Truth': The End Of Free Speech That Will End America


Zero Hedge

BY TYLER DURDEN

MAY 28, 2023

Authored by J.B.Shurk via The Gatestone Institute


https://www.zerohedge.com/political/official-truth-end-free-speech-will-end-america


If legacy news corporations fail to report that large majorities of the American public now view their journalistic product as straight-up propaganda, does that make it any less true?

According to a survey by Rasmussen Reports, 59% of likely voters in the United States view the corporate news media as "truly the enemy of the people." This is a majority view, held regardless of race: "58% of whites, 51% of black voters, and 68% of other minorities" — all agree that the mainstream media has become their "enemy."

This scorching indictment of the Fourth Estate piggybacks similar polling from Harvard-Harris showing that Americans hold almost diametrically opposing viewpoints from those that news corporations predominantly broadcast as the official "truth."

Drawing attention to the divergence between the public's perceived reality and the news media's prevailing "narratives," independent journalist Glenn Greenwald dissected the Harvard-Harris poll to highlight just how differently some of the most important issues of the last few years have been understood. While corporate news fixated on purported Trump-Russia collusion since 2016, majorities of Americans now see this story "as a hoax and a fraud."

While the news media hid behind the Intelligence Community's claims that Hunter Biden's potentially incriminating laptop (allegedly containing evidence of his family's influence-peddling) was a product of "Russian disinformation" and consequently enforced an information blackout on the explosive story during the final weeks of the 2020 presidential election, strong majorities of Americans currently believe the laptop's contents are "real." In other words, Americans have correctly concluded that journalists and spies advanced a "fraud" on voters as part of an effort to censor a damaging story and "help Biden win." Nevertheless, The New York Times and The Washington Post have yet to return the Pulitzer Prizes they received for reporting totally discredited "fake news."

Similarly, majorities of Americans suspect that President Joe Biden has used the powers of his various offices to profit from influence-peddling schemes and that the FBI has intentionally refrained from investigating any possible Biden crimes. Huge majorities of Americans, in fact, seem not at all surprised to learn that the FBI has been caught abusing its own powers to influence elections, and are strongly convinced that "sweeping reform" is needed. Likewise, large majorities of Americans have "serious doubts about Biden's mental fitness to be president" and suspect that others behind the scenes are "puppeteers" running the nation.

Few, if any, of these poll results have been widely reported. In a seemingly-authoritarian disconnect with the American people, corporate news media continue to ignore the public's majority opinion and instead "relentlessly advocate" those viewpoints that Americans "reject." When journalists fail to investigate facts and deliberately distort stories so that they fit snugly within preconceived worldviews, reporters act as propagandists.

Constitutional law scholar Jonathan Turley recently asked, "Do we have a de facto state media?" In answering his own question, he notes that the news blackout surrounding congressional investigations into Biden family members who have allegedly received more than ten million dollars in suspicious payments from foreign entities "fits the past standards used to denounce Russian propaganda patterns and practices." After Republican members of Congress traced funds to nine Biden family members "from corrupt figures in Romania, China, and other countries," Turley writes, "The New Republic quickly ran a story headlined 'Republicans Finally Admit They Have No Incriminating Evidence on Joe Biden.'"

Excoriating the news media's penchant for mindlessly embracing stories that hurt former President Donald Trump while simultaneously ignoring stories that might damage President Biden, Turley concludes:

"Under the current approach to journalism, it is the New York Times that receives a Pulitzer for a now debunked Russian collusion story rather than the New York Post for a now proven Hunter Biden laptop story."

Americans now evidently view the major sources for their news and information as part of a larger political machine pushing particular points of view, unconstrained by any ethical obligation to report facts objectively or dispassionately seek truth. That Americans now see the news media in their country as serving a similar role as Pravda did for the Soviet Union's Communist Party is a significant departure from the country's historic embrace of free speech and traditional fondness for a skeptical, adversarial press.

Rather than taking a step back to consider the implications such a shift in public perception will have for America's future stability, some officials appear even more committed to expanding government control over what can be said and debated online. After the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), in the wake of public backlash over First Amendment concerns, halted its efforts to construct an official "disinformation governance board" last year, the question remained whether other government attempts to silence or shape online information would rear their head. The wait for that answer did not take long.

The government apparently took the public's censorship concerns so seriously that it quietly moved on from the collapse of its plans for a "disinformation governance board" within the DHS and proceeded within the space of a month to create a new "disinformation" office known as the Foreign Malign Influence Center, which now operates from within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Although ostensibly geared toward countering information warfare arising from "foreign" threats, one of its principal objectives is to monitor and control "public opinion and behaviors."

As independent journalist Matt Taibbi concludes of the government's resurrected Ministry of Truth:

"It's the basic rhetorical trick of the censorship age: raise a fuss about a foreign threat, using it as a battering ram to get everyone from Congress to the tech companies to submit to increased regulation and surveillance. Then, slowly, adjust your aim to domestic targets."

If it were not jarring enough to learn that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence has picked up the government's speech police baton right where the DHS set it down, there is ample evidence to suggest that officials are eager to go much further in the near future. Democrat Senator Michael Bennet has already proposed a bill that would create a Federal Digital Platform Commission with "the authority to promulgate rules, impose civil penalties, hold hearings, conduct investigations, and support research."

Filled with "disinformation" specialists empowered to create "enforceable behavioral codes" for online communication — and generously paid for by the Biden Administration with taxpayers' money — the special commission would also "designate 'systemically important digital platforms' subject to extra oversight, reporting, and regulation" requirements. Effectively, a small number of unelected commissioners would have de facto power to monitor and police online communication.

Should any particular website or platform run afoul of the government's First Amendment Star Chamber, it would immediately place itself within the commission's crosshairs for greater oversight, regulation, and punishment.

Will this new creation become an American KGB, Stasi or CCP — empowered to target half the population for disagreeing with current government policies, promoting "wrongthink," or merely going to church? Will a small secretive body decide which Americans are actually "domestic terrorists" in the making? US Attorney General Merrick Garland has gone after traditional Catholics who attend Latin mass, but why would government suspicions end with the Latin language? When small commissions exist to decide which Americans are the "enemy," there is no telling who will be designated as a "threat" and punished next.

It is not difficult to see the dangers that lie ahead. Now that the government has fully inserted itself into the news and information industry, the criminalization of free speech is a very real threat. This has always been a chief complaint against international institutions such as the World Economic Forum that spend a great deal of time, power, and money promoting the thoughts and opinions of an insular cabal of global leaders, while showing negligible respect for the personal rights and liberties of the billions of ordinary citizens they claim to represent.

WEF Chairman Klaus Schwab has gone so far as to hire hundreds of thousands of "information warriors" whose mission is to "control the Internet" by "policing social media," eliminating dissent, disrupting the public square, and "covertly seed[ing] support" for the WEF's "Great Reset." If Schwab's online army were not execrable enough, advocates for free speech must also gird themselves for the repercussions of Elon Musk's appointment of Linda Yaccarino, reportedly a "neo-liberal wokeist" with strong WEF affiliations, as the new CEO of Twitter.

Throughout much of the West, unfortunately, free speech has been only weakly protected when those with power find its defense inconvenient or messages a nuisance. It is therefore of little surprise to learn that French authorities are now prosecuting government protesters for "flipping-off" President Emmanuel Macron. It does not seem particularly astonishing that a German man has been sentenced to three years in prison for engaging in "pro-Russian" political speech regarding the war in Ukraine. It also no longer appears shocking to read that UK Technology and Science Secretary Michelle Donelan reportedly seeks to imprison social media executives who fail to censor online speech that the government might subjectively adjudge "harmful." Sadly, as Ireland continues to find new ways to punish citizens for expressing certain points of view, its movement toward criminalizing not just speech but also "hateful" thoughts should have been predictable.

From an American's perspective, these overseas encroachments against free speech — especially within the borders of closely-allied lands — have seemed sinister yet entirely foreign. Now, however, what was once observed from some distance has made its way home; it feels as if a faraway communist enemy has finally stormed America's beaches and come ashore in force.

Not a day seems to go by without some new battlefront opening up in the war on free speech and free thought. The Richard Stengel of the Council on Foreign Relations has been increasingly vocal about the importance of journalists and think tanks to act as "primary provocateurs" and "propagandists" who "have to" manipulate the American population and shape the public's perception of world events. Senator Rand Paul has alleged that the DHS uses at least 12 separate programs to "track what Americans say online," as well as to engage in social media censorship.

As part of its efforts to silence dissenting arguments, the Biden administration is pursuing a policy that would make it unlawful to use data and datasets that reflect accurate information yet lead to "discriminatory outcomes" for "protected classes." In other words, if the data is perceived to be "racist," it must be expunged. At the same time, the Department of Justice has indicted four radical black leftists for having somehow "weaponized" their free speech rights in support of Russian "disinformation." So, objective datasets can be deemed "discriminatory" against minorities, while actual discrimination against minorities' free speech is excused when that speech contradicts official government policy.

Meanwhile, the DHS has been exposed for paying tens of millions of dollars to third-party "anti-terrorism" programs that have not so coincidentally equated Christians, Republicans, and philosophical conservatives to Germany's Nazi Party. Similarly, California Governor Gavin Newsom has set up a Soviet-style "snitch line" that encourages neighbors to report on each other's public or private displays of "hate."

Finally, ABC News proudly admits that it has censored parts of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s interviews because some of his answers include "false claims about the COVID-19 vaccines." Essentially, the corporate news media have deemed Kennedy's viewpoints unworthy of being transmitted and heard, even though the 2024 presidential candidate is running a strong second behind Joe Biden in the Democrat primary, with around 20% support from the electorate.

Taken all together, it is clear that not only has the war on free speech come to America, but also that it is clobbering Americans in a relentless campaign of "shock and awe." And why not? In a litigation battle presently being waged over the federal government's extensive censorship programs, the Biden administration has defended its inherent authority to control Americans' thoughts as an instrumental component of "government infrastructure." What Americans think and believe is openly referred to as part of the nation's "cognitive infrastructure" — as if the Matrix movies were simply reflecting real life.

Today, America's mainstream news corporations are already viewed as processing plants that manufacture political propaganda. That is an unbelievably searing indictment of a once-vibrant free press in the United States. It is also, unfortunately, only the first heavy shoe to drop in the war against free speech. Many Chinese-Americans who survived the Cultural Revolution look around the country today and see similarities everywhere. During that totalitarian "reign of terror," everything a person did was monitored, including what was said while asleep.

In an America now plagued with the stench of official "snitch lines," censorship of certain presidential candidates, widespread online surveillance, a resurrected "disinformation governance board," and increasingly frequent criminal prosecutions targeting Americans who exercise their free speech, the question is not whether what we inaudibly think or say in our sleep will someday be used against us, but rather how soon that day will come unless we stop it. After all, with smartphones, smart TVs, "smart" appliances, video-recording doorbells, and the rise of artificial intelligence, somebody, somewhere is always listening.

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[gfp927z]

>>> SpinLaunch is a spaceflight technology development company working on mass accelerator technology to move payloads to space.[3] As of September 2022, the company has raised US$150 million in funding, with investors including Kleiner Perkins, Google Ventures, Airbus Ventures, ATW Partners, Catapult Ventures, Lauder Partners, John Doerr, and the Byers Family.[4][5]


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpinLaunch


History

SpinLaunch was founded in 2014 by Jonathan Yaney in Sunnyvale, California. The company's headquarters are in Long Beach.[6] In 2020 it opened a launch site. SpinLaunch continued development of its 140,000 square-foot (13,000 m2) corporate headquarters in Long Beach, and of its flight test facility at Spaceport America in New Mexico.[7]

In late 2021, SpinLaunch was named one of the "World's Best Employers in the Space Industry" by Everything Space, a recruitment platform specializing in the space industry.[8]

In March 2022, SpinLaunch was listed as one of the Top 100 Most Influential Companies of 2022 by Time Magazine. In April, SpinLaunch received a launch contract from NASA to test a payload.[9][10]

Technology

SpinLaunch is developing a kinetic energy space launch system that reduces dependency on traditional chemical rockets, with the goal of significantly lowering the cost of access to space while increasing the frequency of launch. The technology uses a vacuum-sealed centrifuge to spin a rocket and then hurl it to space at up to 4,660 mph (7,500 km/h; 2.08 km/s). The rocket then ignites its engines at an altitude of roughly 200,000 ft (60 km) to reach orbital speed of 17,150 mph (27,600 km/h; 7.666 km/s) with a payload of up to 200kg. Peak acceleration would be approximately 10,000 g.[11] If successful, the acceleration concept is projected to lower the cost of launches and to use much less power, with the price of a single space launch reduced by a factor of 20 to under US$500,000.[12][13]

The SpinLaunch system's historical predecessors include centrifugal guns.

Flight testing

At Spaceport America in New Mexico on 22 October 2021, SpinLaunch conducted the first vertical test of their accelerator at 20% of its full power capacity, hurling a 10-foot-long (3.0 m) passive projectile to an altitude of "tens of thousands of feet." This test accelerator is 108 ft (33 m) in diameter, which makes it a one-third scale of the operational system that is being designed.[14][15][16] The company's first 10 test flights reached as much as 30,000 feet (9,100 m) in altitude.

A September 2022 test flight carried payloads for NASA, Airbus US, Cornell Engineering’s Space Systems Design Studio (SSDS) and Outpost. [17]

Criticism

A number of reasons why this technology may not work have been put forward, including problems with massive spinning objects, potential for catastrophic damage to the payload, incompatibility with traditional liquid rocket fuels, increased atmospheric drag (and heat?) ]relative to existing technologies, and other potential problems with the idea.[18]

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