Pinterest, the online bookmarking service, posted mixed results on Thursday for its first quarterly earnings as a public company, beating revenue estimates while reporting a much larger loss per share than expected.
Why it matters: The company went public at a price above its initial proposed range, with many expecting Pinterest to work its way to profitability soon enough.
President Trump's executive order and the Commerce Department’s “Entity List” create new challenges for Huawei’s 5G wireless technology in the U.S. But in the meantime, the Chinese telecom giant is racing ahead under the world’s seas.
Why it matters: Globally, about 380 submarine cables carry the vast majority of international data, from cloud computing to text messaging. These cables will only become more important with the arrival of 5G and other services that will increase the speed and volume of data being transferred.
Driving the news: Walmart is already sending its employees to a specified set of high-quality health systems for surgery, and even covering their travel costs. But it figured out that about half of those surgeries were unnecessary, KHN reports, and traced those procedures back to errors in tests like MRIs and CT scans.
WeWork on Wednesday disclosed another quarter of rapid growth and large losses, its first earnings report since confidentially filing for an IPO, with co-founder and CEO Adam Neumann telling Axios that his company has a much different story to tell than Uber or Lyft.
Why it matters: WeWork has revolutionized commercial office space globally, but some investors are skeptical that it can ever turn a profit, let alone justify a valuation that venture capitalists last put at $47 billion.
As of Monday, the Trump administration has made $8.52 billion in direct payments to farmers through a 2018 aid program designed to counter losses stemming from the trade war with China, a U.S. Department of Agriculture spokesperson said.
Why it matters: President Trump promised aid of up t0 $12 billion, but the program stalled during the month-long government shutdown and major flooding in the Midwest has caused farmers additional pain. A prolonged trade war, which seems to be where the U.S. and China are headed, could force the Trump administration to renew the program.
The U.S. and China are negotiating specific dates, including as early as next week, for a delegation to travel to Beijing to revive trade negotiations, the Wall Street Journal reports.
Why it matters: President Trump also plans to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping at the G20 summit next month, but senior administration officials told Axios this week that a trade deal with China isn't close and that the U.S. could be in for a long trade war. Market analysts at both Morgan Stanley and Bank of America-Merrill Lynch have predicted a prolonged trade war could lead to an outright global recession.
CrowdStrike, a Sunnyvale, California-based cybersecurity company, filed for a $100 million IPO on Tuesday. It plans to trade on the Nasdaq with Goldman Sachs as lead underwriter, and reports a $140 million net loss on $250 million in revenue for 2018.
Why it matters: This is the company best known for investigating the 2016 election hacking scandal, and it plans to go public as fears ramp up over interference attempts in 2020.
The White House does not plan to make a decision on whether to impose auto tariffs by President Trump's May 18 deadline and will instead delay the announcement by up to 6 months, Bloomberg reports.
Our thought bubble, via Axios' Jonathan Swan: Trump's team has been looking for ways to punt the auto tariffs decision. The White House knows that if they pile on another set of tariffs now — especially the deeply unpopular auto tariffs, which use the dubious justification that importing foreign automobiles and auto parts constitutes a "national security threat" — then the stock market would collapse and Congress would revolt.
The trade war has been a boon for U.S. bonds, which had already seen significant buying for most of 2019.
Driving the news: U.S. Treasury yields fell to a 6-week low on Monday, as investors pushed yields on the benchmark 10-year notes back towards their lows of the year. And data shows investors are snapping up every kind of U.S.-issued bond they can get.
Axios has learned that Michael Wolff — who enraged President Trump with his international bestseller "Fire and Fury," about pandemonium in the first-year White House — will be out June 4 with a sequel, "Siege: Trump Under Fire."
Details: The book, "about a presidency that is under fire from almost every side," begins with Year 2 and ends with the delivery of the Mueller report. The publisher says: "'Siege' reveals an administration that is perpetually beleaguered by investigations and a president who is increasingly volatile, erratic, and exposed."
