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There's nothing like the American Express Platinum card. Find out your welcome offer after you apply, which could be as high as 175,000 points. Learn more and find out your offer@americanexpress.com Explore Platinum terms apply this is Scott.
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Becker with the Becker Business and the Becker Private Equity Podcast. Today's discussion we're going to talk through Microsoft, Facebook and 10 stories that we're following this week. So bear with me as we go through this and hopefully you find this helpful. Helpful. First, Microsoft got crushed on Thursday in the market, down about 11%. It ended up with it with reporting good earnings, good revenues, but it was negative in terms of the growth of its cloud business and quite frankly the number of the amount of capital expenditures that it's going to need to compete. So at the end of the day, Microsoft had a very tough day. Second, meta platforms Facebook had a very good day, up 10%. And the lesson really with Facebook meta platforms is never bet against Mark Zuckerberg. Third, Carvana itself had a tough week again accused of sort of accounting grift and more. We'll talk about that more in a separate podcast. But again, Carvana is down about 12% this week. It was down about 14% on Wednesday. And again, old allegations, old resurfacing about the accounting at Carvana. So those are our first three stories. Microsoft, Meta platforms and Carvana. A few more stories that we're following. Fourth, the payers themselves had a very bad week. United was down only 20% the other day. It recovered a small amount of that. But United is forecasting reduced revenues year over year, 25 to 26 and we'll see how that plays forward. Fifth, Starbucks is on a roll. Its revenues are rising again. Its customer experience is moving in the right direction. We see it upfront and personal at the Starbucks that we visit. The stock is up about 14% year to date. So those are the first five stories that we're following so far. The next story that we're following so far, the Fed this week voted to hold the fed funds rate steady this week at 3.5 to 3.75%. Seventh, IBM back on the road to relevance. Its stock is climbing, climbed significantly today. Fourth quarter earnings almost doubled to 5.6 billion. We've already touched on Carvana. So that brings us through. Seven stories. The a store we're following is a local scandal at a golf club where two players who won the member member tournament were accused of sort of either losing their handicaps. So those were a little bit higher than they're supposed to be or reporting in the member member tournament lower scores than should anyway anyway be expected. And just to give you a sense of this, these are people with handicaps of 16 to 18 who reported two days in a row of 8181 scores. And I I don't really watch all this stuff but somebody who monitors this stuff did a scathing tick tock about this and it's caused all kinds of challenges and craziness at the club where these members are involved in. Just fun and interesting fascinating stuff to watch. Unless you're these guys who are viewed as potentially reporting wrong scores or either goosing their handicap or recording wrong scores. The ninth store we're following today and again I I find some similarities between the accounting rift that Carvana is regularly accused of in people gaming their golf scores for club tournaments. The ninth store we're following today is the private equity giants remain stuck in the mud or worst. KKR is down 30% over the last year. Blackstone is Blackstone is down 20% over the last year. Next 10th pale and tier technology has been on fire for a few years. We know if that's changing or not, but it's down almost 12% year to date and it's stock dropped 5% on Wednesday. The last story we'll touch on today. I'll really touch on two more very quickly. The Iceman is coming. The Iceman Cometh. Amazon, ups, Pinterest, Nike and Verizon are all slashing jobs. We often note jokingly the difference between a recession and a depression. The recession in the economy generally goes down for two quarters in a row. Depression is when you or a family member or friend loses a job. That's a depression. The next story we're following. Intel jumped about 11% yesterday, got back on the winning track and finally, I'll give you a 13th. Bill Belichick, famous coach of the New England Patriots, get snubbed by the hall of Fame. In any event, thank you for listening to this Microsoft meta platforms and 11 more stories that we're following. Thank you for listening. We'd love your thoughts. Is the sound quality okay? Is the content okay? Am I talking too fast? He comments on any of those or all of those. Text Scott Becker at 773-766-5322 and we'll send you a $100 gift certificate if you're the first person to call and give me comments on content, sound quality and speed of talking. Thank you for listening to the Becker Private Equity and the Becker Business Pod.