Why it matters: The move extends protections for some four million salaried workers in the U.S. and marks an about 65% increase in the annual salary threshold for overtime pay from 2019 to 2025.
Here are some of my key takeaways from a selection of today's major earnings reports:
🎧 Spotify: Interim CFO Ben Kung said that "historical price increases have had minimal impacts on growth" — notable just three weeks after a report that the company is planning to increase prices later this year. (+11.4% at close)
🏡 Pulte: The homebuilder's profit-per-home is jumping as it capitalizes on a nationwide housing shortage. The company's "home sale gross margin" was 29.6% in the first quarter, up 0.5 points from a year earlier. (+4.6%)
📦 UPS: The shipping giant's revenue fell 5.3% in the first quarter, compared with a year earlier, but cost cuts helped offset the decline. (+2.4%)
"It's not like life is going to be hunky-dory forever."
— Google search boss Prabhakar Raghavan, telling workers in a private meeting that they need to move faster to improve the service as competition intensifies, per CNBC.
The Federal Trade Commission voted 3-2 on Tuesday to ban noncompete agreements, which prevent workers from taking positions with competitors for a period of time after they leave a job.
Why it matters: The ban could be a win for workers, particularly at the low end of the income scale.
Pranav Kanade, portfolio manager of the VanEck Digital Assets Alpha Fund, wants to generate excess returns by not following the crowd and by keeping an eye on the crypto whales.
The big picture: The theme this year is Bitcoin, not Ethereum nor altcoins, Kanade said.
That sound you hear — on Wall Street, among homebuyers and among those who wring their hands about the U.S. government's fiscal position — is people realizing how much a surge in borrowing costs over the last few weeks is going to cost them.
Why it matters: The latest movements in the bond market mean more shoes may drop as the world adjusts to markedly higher rates — which were briefly at higher levels last fall, but aside from that episode, have not been this high since 2007.
Data: TelevisaUnivision, Digital Music News, Hollywood Reporter, TVLine, Billboard, LA Times; Note: The Latin AMAs were canceled in 2020 and the AMAs were canceled in 2023; Chart: Thomas Oide/Axios
The Latin American Music Awards (Latin AMAs) will be presented in a combination of English and Spanish this Thursday, marking the first time any major U.S. award show will feature a bilingual broadcast.
Why it matters: Unlike most award shows, winners for the Latin AMAs are selected by popular vote, not fellow artists.
🎯 That puts an even higher premium on building a show that reflects modern U.S. Latino culture, per Ignacio Meyer, president of Univision Television Networks Group.
As a TikTok divestment law races to passage, TikTok's parent company ByteDance must reckon with the legislation across all of its apps, many of which are growing rapidly in the U.S.
Why it matters: The broad language included in the bipartisan TikTok ban bill could make it impossible for most ByteDance apps to operate in the U.S. unless the Chinese firm sells them to U.S. companies, Axios' April Rubin, Maria Curi and I write.
ByteDance offers an array of apps in U.S. app stores in addition to TikTok, including its popular video editing app CapCut and photo editing app Hypic.
It also provides several other apps in U.S. app stores via umbrella developer companies. These include AI homework app Gauth and a Pinterest-like social network called Lemon8,
In what is being called a "monumental" and "historic" win for local news, New York lawmakers have approved $90 million worth of payroll tax credits to hire local journalists in the state's fiscal year 2025 budget.
Why it matters: It's the largest sum any state has devoted to local news.
Be smart: The first-of-its-kind provision could create a blueprint for funding local journalism jobs across the country.
Tax credits, unlike government-funded grants, are seen by some as less likely to create a dynamic where a local news outlet feels compromised by government-funded support.
Zoom in: The provision, which was passed over the weekend by the New York State Senate and Assembly, is part of a wider state budget bill that's expected to soon be signed into law by New York Gov. Kathy Hochul.
The NBA's media rights hit the market today. Let the bidding begin.
Why it matters: The move marks the first significant change in TV partners for the $10 billion league in more than two decades, Axios' Tim Baysinger writes.
State of play: The NBA's exclusive negotiating window with Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery is expected to expire tonight without a new deal, a source with knowledge of the talks tells Tim.
The talks with Disney and WBD were complicated by the NBA's desire to add additional media partners, the source adds. The league, ESPN and WBD all declined to comment on the state of their negotiations.
Netflix's stock took a plunge Thursday after the streaming giant said it would no longer report subscriber growth numbers to Wall Street, and instead focus on delivering key financial metrics, like operating margin and profitability.
Why it matters: Despite blowing past Wall Street expectations on revenue, earnings and subscriber additions last quarter, investors were clearly jolted by the reporting change.
Puck, the subscription newsletter company, today will announce it has hired veteran journalist and TV commentator John Heilemann as its chief political columnist and partner, Puck's cofounder tells Axios.
He will author a weekly column, titled "Impolitic," and will anchor a new Sunday edition of Puck's daily political private email, "The Best & The Brightest," per Jon Kelly, Puck's cofounder.
Heilemann will also appear on Puck's daily "Powers That Be" podcast throughout the week alongside the outlet's other political writers, including Tara Palmeri, Julia Ioffe, Peter Hamby, Tina Nguyen and Abby Livingston, Kelly said.
President Biden and former President Trump have one big thing beyond old age in common: They duck difficult questioning by reporters, with historic stubbornness, Axios' Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei write.
Why it matters: Biden is more likely to talk to mainstream outlets, and Trump to echo chambers. But both pop up for questioning with sycophants, supporters and sympathetic journalists.
During his 3+ years in office, Biden has refused to give a single interview to White House reporters for the New York Times, the Washington Post or the Wall Street Journal. But he sat down twice with friendly comedian Jason Bateman and his podcast pals on "SmartLess."
It's been over a year and a half since Kim Kardashian teamed with Carlyle Group vet Jay Sammons to launch SKKY Partners, a consumer-focused private equity firm, but the early buzz has given way to the slog of first-time fundraising.
By the numbers: SKKY only secured $121 million in capital commitments through late March, according to federal securities filings.
If bonds and currencies can be traded 24 hours a day, why not stocks? That's the question the New York Stock Exchange is asking market participants.
Why it matters: Small traders, especially ones based in Asia, would gain a certain amount of convenience. But off-hours markets can be treacherous places for investors.
The city of Baltimore said the cargo ship that struck the Francis Scott Key Bridge was "clearly unseaworthy" when it left the Baltimore port last month, per court documents filed Monday.
The big picture: Baltimore's mayor and city council accused boththe owner of the container ship Dali, Grace Ocean Private, and its operator, Synergy Marine Group, of being "grossly and potentially criminally negligent."
