Category: business

Heat shocks are characterized by their severe impact on health, energy grids, and increased fire risks, influencing companies with multiple locations to reconsider their geographical distribution of operations. Despite this trend, states like Arizona and Nevada, which have some of the highest heat-related death tolls, continue to experience rapid business expansion. Experts believe that factors such as labor pool, taxes, and regulations still outweigh environmental climate risks when it comes to business site selection. But heat associated deaths are on the rise. In the Phoenix area alone, it experienced 425 heat related deaths in 2022 and a similar number in 2023 — record highs for this region.
The study suggests that the implications of climate change on business operations are becoming more apparent. Companies are beginning to evaluate climate risks as part of their regular risk assessment process.

Despite arguments that remote work weakens workers’ connections and growth opportunities, Yelp says it has found the opposite to be true. About 90% of the company’s more than 4,700 employees say they have found effective ways to collaborate remotely, and 91% say they are confident in upward career mobility while working out of the office. Flexible schedules have also facilitated a healthy work-life balance — about 89% of the company’s workers say they can manage personal and professional demands, and the same amount say that the remote model has allowed them to make positive changes for their wellbeing.

Notably, Yelp’s global tenure has increased to 3.5 years in 2023, compared to 2.8 years the year prior. The company says it’s using the money it saved from shutting down its underutilized offices in New York City, Chicago, and Washington D.C., to funnel back into employee benefits, professional development, and wellness reimbursements.

The company, founded in 2005 by technology entrepreneurs Alexis Ohanian and Steve Huffman, said it has incurred net losses since its inception. It reported a net loss of $90.8 million for the year ended Dec. 31, 2023, compared with a net loss of $158.6 million the year prior. […] Reddit said it plans to use artificial intelligence to improve its ad business and that it expects to open new revenue channels by offering tools and incentives to “drive continued creation, improvements, and commerce.” It’s also in the early stages of developing and monetizing a data-licensing business in which third parties would be allowed to access and search data on its platform.

For example, Google on Thursday announced an expanded partnership with Reddit that will give the search giant access to the company’s data to, among other uses, train its AI models. “In January 2024, we entered into certain data licensing arrangements with an aggregate contract value of $203.0 million and terms ranging from two to three years,” Reddit said, regarding its data-licensing business. “We expect a minimum of $66.4 million of revenue to be recognized during the year ending December 31, 2024 and the remaining thereafter.” On Wednesday, Reddit said it plans to sell a chunk of its IPO shares to 75,000 of its most loyal users.

Earnings per share: $5.16 adjusted vs. $4.64 expected
Revenue: $22.10 billion vs. $20.62 billion expected
Nvidia said it expected $24.0 billion in sales in the current quarter. Analysts polled by LSEG were looking for $5.00 per share on $22.17 billion in sales. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang addressed investor fears that the company may not be able to keep up this growth or level of sales for the whole year on a call with analysts. “Fundamentally, the conditions are excellent for continued growth” in 2025 and beyond, Huang told analysts. He says demand for the company’s GPUs will remain high due to generative AI and an industry-wide shift away from central processors to the accelerators that Nvidia makes.

Nvidia reported $12.29 billion in net income during the quarter, or $4.93 per share, up 769% versus last year’s $1.41 billion or 57 cents per share. Nvidia’s total revenue rose 265% from a year ago, based on strong sales for AI chips for servers, particularly the company’s “Hopper” chips such as the H100, it said. “Strong demand was driven by enterprise software and consumer internet applications, and multiple industry verticals including automotive, financial services and health care,” the company said in commentary provided to investors. Those sales are reported in the company’s Data Center business, which now comprises the majority of Nvidia’s revenue. Data center sales were up 409% to $18.40 billion. Over half the company’s data center sales went to large cloud providers. […]

The company’s gaming business, which includes graphics cards for laptops and PCs, was merely up 56% year over year to $2.87 billion. Graphics cards for gaming used to be Nvidia’s primary business before its AI chips started taking off, and some of Nvidia’s graphics cards can be used for AI. Nvidia’s smaller businesses did not show the same meteoric growth. Its automotive business declined 4% to $281 million in sales, and its OEM and other business, which includes crypto chips, rose 7% to $90 million. Nvidia’s business making graphics hardware for professional applications rose 105% to $463 million.

According to Shen Ziyu, Chairman and CEO of Xingji Meizu Group, smartphone users take longer to upgrade — an average of 51 months, which is more than 4 years. The added companies now offer comparable performance in smoothness, photography, and software features. That’s why there will be no Meizu 21 Pro, Meizu 22 and Meizu 23 series.

“After more than two years of negotiations, we are extremely disappointed … We remain committed to growing our presence in this vibrant and fast-growing market,” it added. While neither Sony nor Zee elaborated on Monday on which conditions had been unfulfilled, a stalemate over who will lead the combined company had put the merger in danger. Zee had proposed that CEO Punit Goenka take the helm, but Sony balked after he became the subject of an investigation by India’s market regulator. Zee said on Monday Goenka had been “agreeable to step down in the interest of the merger.” A source with direct knowledge however said Sony was not keen to proceed unless Goenka backed out before the closure of the merger, rather than after the deal had been sealed as he had proposed.

Sandberg left the company she helped build as an executive in September 2022 after 14 years. She remained on Meta’s board following her departure, a seat she held for the past 12 years. In announcing her departure, Sandberg said she aimed to focus on more philanthropic work. In the time since leaving the company as an executive, she has focused more her time on her women’s leadership philanthropy, Lean In. More recently, Sandberg has also focused on the conversation around rape and sexual violence as a weapon of war, particularly as it pertains to the Israel-Hamas conflict. Axios notes that Meta’s revenue “grew 43,000% from $272 million in 2008 to nearly $118 billion in 2021” under Sandberg’s business leadership.

What it didn’t say, however, was that the company had been aware of the security flaw for two years without fixing it. That information was discovered by the Federal Trade Commission, after Uber’s acquisition of Drizly, and led to an FTC order that restricted the types of customer information that Drizly could collect and retain. “After three years of Drizly operating independently within the Uber family, we’ve decided to close the business and focus on our core Uber Eats strategy of helping consumers get almost anything — from food to groceries to alcohol — all on a single app,” said Pierre-Dimitri Gore-Coty, Uber’s SVP of delivery. “We’re grateful to the Drizly team for their many contributions to the growth of the BevAlc delivery category as the original industry pioneer.”

Founded in 1996, Juniper spent many years chasing Cisco in the market for networking gear. Revenue grew 12% year over year in 2022, the fastest growth since 2010. In the most recent quarter, Juniper eked out a $76 million profit on $1.4 billion in revenue, which declined 1%. HPE’s networking segment was the company’s top source of earnings before taxes, at $401 million on $1.4 billion in revenue, which was up 41%. Coming together would lead to $450 million in annual cost savings within three years of the deal’s completion, HPE said.