Amazon could soon have a $1 trillion valuation, according to Morgan Stanley analyst Brian Nowak, who broke down the calculations in this best-case scenario in a research note to clients this week.
How Amazon could double in value: Investors already prize Amazon highly relative to its typically meager quarterly profits, but Nowak argues that Amazon can increase its retail profit margins from less than 2% today to 5.5% by 2022.
China claimed 202 spots in the annual TOP500 supercomputer list with the U.S. only holding 143, its "lowest level since the list's inception 25 years ago," per CNET.
Why it matters: The power of supercomputers is crucial to some of the most important sciences of our age, including weather forecasting, climate change modeling, and astronomical exploration. China's rise in the TOP500 list is indicative of its increased investment in the sciences in its attempt to become a technological superpower.
The hurricane effect: Home Depot says that hurricane recovery efforts added $282 million to same-store sales, helping it to surpass Wall Street's forecasts.
Why it matters: Home Depot's success of late — the stock is up more than 23% this year and more than 166% since 2012 — can be attributed in part to the fact that its business is resistant to online competition, as the firm sells heavy and bulky items that are difficult to profitably ship to individual customers. It has also benefitted from a robust recovery of home prices over the past five years, which creates incentive for homeowners to invest in repairs and renovations.
As more television becomes digital, the push to provide consumers with customized content discovery will only intensify. At least half of consumers (55%) look for a new content to watch at least once per week, and 83% look for it a few times per month, per PwC's new content discovery report.
Reproduced from a PwC content discovery report; Chart: Axios Visuals
There are numerous reasons American politics went off the rails, but there are at least six seminal events in the past 24 years that steered us here.
Be smart: Politics is growing more personal, polarized and pugnacious. This dynamic is particularly acute on the right. This will likely get worse before it gets better as the trends outlined below continue unabated.
Reproduced from a Pew Research Political Polarization report; Graphic: Axios Visuals
Reddit CEO Steve Huffman said the media site is planning to go public. While the timing uncertain, an IPO is the responsible course of action for a tech company to pursue, Huffman said while speaking at an Internet Association event in San Francisco.
More from Huffman:
Competition: When asked if Reddit's biggest competition is Facebook, Google or traditional media, Huffman said his rivals are free time and office productivity. "We probably suck more hours out of work than any other company."
Advertising business is doing well, with revenue increasing five-fold in last couple of years, Huffman said.
On political advertising: Reddit doesn't allow ads from Russia or Syria. Huffman said he's in favor of more transparency, but "the devil is in the details."
On hate speech: He's considered implementing a hate speech policy, but prefers to let ugly speech be "drowned out" by other speech. "It's important to let these things play out," he said. "When you outlaw it, it turns people into martyrs."
IAC and Expedia Inc. Chairman Barry Diller doesn't think Facebook should have a responsibility to police the information on their platforms like a news organization. But Diller did say some regulation should apply to Big Tech in some areas.
Why it matters: Social media companies like Facebook and Twitter are under harsh congressional scrutiny over concerns that they enabled the spread of so-called "fake news" and meddling by Russian actors in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. One question that's being debated is whether these companies have the same responsibilities as news organizations in regards to filtering or moderating news disseminated through their networks.
Walmart is experimenting with a new pricing system that is sometimes resulting in higher prices for goods sold online, the Wall Street Journal reports. "It simply costs less to sell some items in stores. Customers can access those store prices online when they choose to pick up the item in store," a Walmart spokesperson told the Journal.
Why it matters: Walmart is walking a tightrope, trying to protect sales at its highly profitable brick-and-mortar locations while expanding its online footprint. While the firm has greatly increased e-commerce sales in recent quarters, it has come at the cost of shrinking profit margins.
Eddie Berganza has been indefinitely suspended from his role as a top editor at DC Comics in light of a BuzzFeed News report containing allegations he sexually harassed, and in some cases forcibly kissed and attempted to grope, female coworkers years ago, per the Hollywood Reporter.
BuzzFeed News cited three women on the record who claimed Berganza harassed them and cites five people, including those three women, who say they spoke to HR about Berganza's alleged behavior. None recalled receiving a follow-up from HR or documentation of their complaints. Berganza did not respond to BuzzFeed's requests for comment.
90% of laws passed in Kansas in the last 10 years have had anonymous authors, according to new reporting from the Kansas City Star, which also found Kansas police departments could withhold body cam videos and officials have paid off the parent of a deceased child to keep quiet about the Department for Children's involvement.
Why it matters: Kansas has received failing grades for transparency in several public surveys, including a 2015 Center for Public Integrity report. The Star decided to investigate one of the most secretive state government in the country when a Kansas spokesperson was fired after telling reporters that a dangerous stretch of highway couldn't be repaired due to a lack of state funds.
The Senate GOP tax plan unveiled last week includes a provision that would tax stock options and restricted stock units at vesting, rather than when they are exercised (as under current law) or when there actually is a liquid market (as under the amended House proposal).
Why it matters, per Greg Grogan, a compensation and employee benefits attorney with Simpson Thacher & Bartlett: "Employees will owe taxes on 'potential' value on the vesting date of their options before they know whether the option will ever really be worth anything and before there is any cash available to pay taxes."
Coming off of a stellar first earnings report as a public company, Roku CEO Anthony Wood says the future of Roku is smart TV software, not its connected TV hardware product that it's most commonly known for. Per eMarketer, more Americans use Roku's connected TV device than any other similar device, like Chromecast, Amazon Fire TV or Apple TV.
Why it matters: Just as mobile hardware companies like LG and Samsung eventually migrated off of their own software platforms to market leaders' like Android and iOS, the smart TV industry is going through the same evolution. Roku is priming itself to be the next big software platform for smart TVs. The shift creates new revenue streams for Roku that can be scaled very quickly, including software licensing and digital TV advertising.
