Warner Bros. Discovery For Sale & Coke and GM Earnings Insights

Summary

Brew Markets, October 21, 2025

Episode: Warner Bros. Discovery For Sale & Coke and GM Earnings Insights
Host: Ann Berry

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Episode Overview

Ann Berry and co-hosts break down a pivotal day in market news, covering mega-mergers in beauty and healthcare, Warner Bros. Discovery’s surprise decision to explore a sale, and fresh earnings insights from consumer staples and industry giants like Coca-Cola, General Motors, Philip Morris, and GE Aerospace. The episode contextualizes how shifting corporate strategies ripple through markets, what’s fueling M&A activity, and the changing behaviors of both boards and consumers.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Blockbuster Beauty Deal: Kering Sells Beauty Unit to L'Oréal

[00:31 – 04:26]

• Deal Details: French luxury giant Kering (parent to Gucci, Alexander McQueen) is selling its beauty division to L'Oréal for ~€4 billion ($4.6 billion). This dwarfs E.L.F. Beauty’s $1 billion buyout of Rhode Skincare in August.

• Rationale:

  • Kering faces pressure as couture sales drop, with a 15% YoY Q2 decline and €14 billion in debt.
  • New CEO Luca de Meo pivots back to focusing on fashion and accessories, moving rapidly to shore up cash and simplify operations.
  • Kering not only sells its luxury fragrance brand Creed but also grants L'Oréal 50-year exclusive licenses to produce fragrance and beauty items for Gucci, Bottega Veneta, and Balenciaga.
    • “The way licensing agreements are usually structured, the brand name owner gets a stream of royalties … a very high margin income stream for Kering.” (Ann Berry, [02:19])

• Market Reaction:

  • Kering’s market cap sits at ~$46 billion, rising 5% on the deal. L'Oréal ($285B market cap) rises similarly.
  • The two will also jointly explore the “wellness and longevity” sector, with details pending.

• Broader Trend:

  • The deal exemplifies how conglomerates seek operational focus and capital returns via divestitures and long-term licensing, favoring high-margin royalty streams over capital-intensive operations.

2. Warner Bros. Discovery Considering Sale or Breakup

[04:41 – 12:57]

• Announcement: Warner Bros. Discovery’s board says it will “consider a broad range of strategic options”—market code for being open for bids or restructuring.

• Company Overview & History:

  • Warner Bros. Discovery controls a vast IP catalog (Harry Potter, DC Comics, Friends) and assets like HBO Max, CNN, and HGTV.
  • Decades of mergers, spinoffs, and reinventions: absorbed Turner Broadcasting, merged with AOL, acquired by AT&T, spun out and joined Discovery in 2022.

• Structural Challenges:

  • The company is split between declining cable networks and content/streaming assets.
  • Ongoing industry trend: splitting fast-growth assets from slow-growth “cash cows,” a model pursued recently by Comcast/NBCUniversal (spinning off cable into Versant).

• Sale Scenarios:

  • Board’s move follows rebuffed offers (notably, $20/share from Paramount’s David Ellison), and regulatory duty requires boards to review all reasonable buyout options for shareholders.
  • Possibilities:
    • Corporate split (content vs. cable) by 2026
    • Full-company sale
    • Piecemeal asset deals (e.g., separate sales of Warner Bros. and Discovery assets)
  • “All bets are on is what they're basically saying now.” (Ann Berry, [09:03])

• Potential Suitors:

  • Comcast and Netflix reportedly making inquiries. For Netflix, owning Warner’s IP (e.g., "Friends," previously licensed for hundreds of millions) would consolidate streaming leadership.
    • “Just like go big or go home, just go buy it.” (Ann Berry, [10:32])
  • Apple considered an outsider possibility—its streaming lags, and an acquisition could infuse fresh IP and innovation.
    • “There are some sort of outside perspectives here saying perhaps this is one of the acquisitions that Apple would consider.” (Ann Berry, [11:13])

• Financials & Market Reaction:

  • WBD: ~$50B market cap + $35B in debt (~$85B enterprise value)
  • Shares up over 10% on the news; speculation boosts valuations for similar companies

• CEO Strategy:

  • CEO David Zaslav advocates splitting assets to command higher multiples for premium (“growth”) businesses.
  • He recently said, “Quality, we think that gives us a chance to raise prices” ([11:34])—signaled by HBO’s $1/month price hike.

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3. Earnings Highlights: GM, Philip Morris, Coca-Cola, GE Aerospace

[14:05 – 18:56]

a. General Motors (GM)

• [14:05 – 16:30]
• Stock jumps 15% after revenue/earnings beats and upside guidance for 2025.
• CEO Mary Barra credits the Trump administration for extending the tariff offset program through 2030, aiding U.S. auto competitiveness.
  • "I also want to thank the president and his team for the important tariff updates they made on Friday." (Mary Barra, [15:06])
• US market share at a post-2017 high; China back in profit.
• GM is scrapping its “BrightDrop” electric delivery van efforts after losing EV tax credits, taking a $1.6B write-down.

b. Philip Morris

• [16:30 – 17:18]
• Beats Q3 estimates; “smoke-free” products (Zyn nicotine pouches, IQOS heated tobacco) now 41% of revenue, aiming for 67% by 2030.
  • “The smokeless segment accounted for 41% of Philip Morris's total revenue for the quarter. … On the front page of today's investor presentation, the subtitle was Championing a Smoke Free World.” (John, [16:45])
• Shares down >7% despite results; guidance increase underwhelmed investors.

c. Coca-Cola

• [17:59 – 18:40]
• Outperformed expectations; stock up 4% as it holds to 5–6% organic revenue growth.
• Signals about the U.S. consumer: premium brands (Fairlife, Smartwater) are thriving with affluent customers, while Coke introduces lower-priced, smaller cans to appeal to cost-conscious shoppers.
  • “In contrast, the core Coca Cola brand plans to offer mini 7 and a half ounce single serve cans priced at below $2 to target lower income consumers. … Now we see these companies leaning into smaller packaging to try to appeal again to those who've been squeezed.” (Ann Berry, [18:07 & 18:28])

d. GE Aerospace

• [18:40 – 18:56]
• Revenue up 26% to $11B, aided by strong demand from Boeing and Airbus.
• Company is now a standalone aerospace business after spinning off healthcare (2023) and energy (2024) branches.
• Shares up nearly 5% before paring gains.

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4. Other Major Moves:

[18:56 – 21:46]

• Gold Price Plunge:

  • Gold futures tumbled 5% (worst drop since 2013) after recently hitting record highs.
    • "It's extraordinary that the 5% ish, you know, coming down of gold after the rise it's had." (Ann Berry, [20:18])

• Healthcare Take-Private:

  • Blackstone & TPG acquiring Hologic (women’s health tech) for $18B, with $12B in debt financing—a sign of private equity’s renewed vigor amid falling rates.
  • Sovereign funds (Singapore GIC, Abu Dhabi) join in, echoing the trend of foreign money in U.S. take-privates (cf. $55B Electronic Arts deal).

• Late-breaking AI news:

  • OpenAI launches its “Atlas” browser. Ann Berry teases a review in the next episode, with implications for Alphabet’s stock.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Mega-Deals:

  • “This is just the first of a bunch of megadeals we're going to be covering.” (Ann Berry, [03:45])

• On Warner Bros. Discovery’s Potential Sale:

  • “It's a major moment for one of Hollywood's most storied studios and a sign of just how dramatically the media landscape is shifting.” (Ann Berry, [05:03])
  • “You owe it to the shareholders. So sometimes these unsolicited offers or approaches can set in motion a whole bunch of unintended consequences…” (Ann Berry, [09:19])

• On Apple as a Buyer:

  • "There are some sort of outside perspectives here saying perhaps this is one of the acquisitions that Apple would consider." (Ann Berry, [11:13])

• On the Market Mood:

  • “Just goes to show how the market is just, you know, short, short term memory in some regards and constantly looking for positive news at this moment in time.” (Ann Berry, [15:54])

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Kering/L'Oréal Mega-Deal: 00:31 – 04:26
• Warner Bros. Discovery Sale Overview: 04:41 – 12:57
• GM Earnings & Tariff Insights: 14:05 – 16:30
• Philip Morris Earnings: 16:30 – 17:18
• Coca-Cola Consumer Insights: 17:59 – 18:40
• GE Aerospace & Industry Spinoffs: 18:40 – 18:56
• Market Closes, Gold, and Healthcare PE Deal: 20:00 – 21:46
• OpenAI Atlas Browser Launch Mention: 21:32 – 21:46

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Final Thoughts

This episode provided a comprehensive snapshot of evolving strategies in both legacy and high-growth industries, spotlighting how companies—whether luxury fashion houses, legacy studios, or blue-chip manufacturers—are adapting to volatile consumer and investor expectations. With waves of M&A, board-level maneuvers, and consumer shifts, Brew Markets stays attuned to what matters from Wall Street to Main Street.

“We're going to keep covering this growing trend, sovereign wealth funds, foreign investment in the U.S. and of course, more hot earnings.” (Ann Berry, [21:30])

Transcript

[A]

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[B]

Warner Brothers goes up for sale. Who is lining up to buy Coca Cola, Philip Morris, General Motors. What today's earnings signal about consumers and how one CEO says Thank you for tariffs and our merger moment we break down the blockbuster beauty deal that's getting all the buzz in luxury. For Tuesday, October 21st, it's BrewMarkets Daily and I'm Ann Ber. More Market Details to come. But first, for this week's merger moment, a major move in glamour. French luxury powerhouse Kering has agreed to sell its beauty division to cosmetics giant L' Oreal for approximately 4 billion euros. That's about $4.6 billion. Now another big deal in the beauty space, which saw cosmetics leader E L F Beauty buy Rhode Skincare in August, was for up to $1 billion all in. So this one is even larger. Well, carrying certainly needs the cash. The owner of iconic couture brands like Gucci and Alexander McQueen has been under pressure. Sales were down 15% in the second quarter in every continent and debt levels have become a concern, standing at about 14 billion euro at the end of June. Now a new CEO, Luca de Meo took the helm last month, arriving from a 30 year career in of all places, the auto sector, an industry though, which has also had its struggles. So Dimeo, I guess learning from experience, is moving quickly to refocus, carrying on its core strength in fashion and accessories, reversing a strategy of building up its beauty business in house. And the way it's happening is the reason that this merger moment caught my eye. The deal enables Kering to free up capital, simplify operations and also monetize the non beauty brands it's keeping post the sale. It's not only selling its luxury fragrance brand creed to L', Oreal, but also granting L' Oreal long term exclusive licenses. These are 50 year agreements to develop and distribute fragrance and beauty products for Kering's premier fashion houses, Gucci, once its current license with COTY expires in 2028, as well as Bottega, Veneta and Balenciaga. Now the way Licensing agreements are usually structured. The brand name owner gets a stream of royalties for letting the product developer use them. Now in this case, l', Oreal, that's the product developer would do the heavy and expensive lift of building out the beauty products, which is its superpower, paying Kering a cash fee to use the names of its already famous fashion brands for marketing, rather than l' Oreal having to build new brand names from scratch. Now, that royalty or cash fee is a very high margin income stream for caring who can then just focus on building out the Gucci, Bottega and Balenciaga brands, which it wants to do anyway to support a apparel and accessory sales. Now, for l', Oreal, the acquisition is a quick way to generate some newness because right now global beauty players are under pressure to innovate. Now, the deal is expected to close in the first half of 2026 and beyond, then and beyond beauty, the two companies have agreed to form a strategic committee tasked with building a 5050 venture together in the quote wellness and longevity space. Details on that though, aren't actually out yet and who knows what that actually means. But the market is meanwhile responding positively to the partnership overall carrying with roughly $46 billion market cap, seeing its share price pop up over 5% on the news. L', Oreal, even bigger with a $285 billion market cap stock up around the same percent. We're going to keep watching, not least because this is just the first of a bunch of megadeals we're going to be covering. Coming up, Warner Brothers Discovery previously rebuffed buyout offers from Scott, Skydance, Paramount. So why might the storage studio be suddenly up for getting married? It's up now for sale. But first, a word from our sponsor, Capital Group. John, why don't you tell us about their new podcast, the Power of Advice.

[C]

That's right. I've been listening to the Power of Advice on my ride into work kicks off my day with talk of what leadership really looks like. It's a new series from Capital Ideas and Capital Group, and it features athletes, entrepreneurs and executives who have led on the field, in the boardroom and in their communities.

[B]

It's not about titles, it's about impact. So discover what drives them and the advice they carry forward. That's the Power of Advice published by Capital Client Group Inc. Now, the business of show business is evolving quickly. And today we got a big announcement out of Hollywood. Warner Brothers Discovery says it's exploring a possible sale. The board announcing it will consider, quote, a broad range of strategic Options, by the way, that is absolutely Wall street speak for we are putting ourselves up for auction and just want the highest bidder to turn up. Now, it's a major moment for one of Hollywood's most storied studios and a sign of just how dramatically the media landscape is shifting. We're going to explore who might turn up to try to be the buyer in the situation. But first, John, give us a quick overview of Warner Brothers Discovery, because there's a lot to it and why it might actually be up for sale.

[C]

Right. This media company has been around for a century, forever. And it's been combined and spun off from so many different media companies over the years. Personally, I had the pleasure of working there for over a decade on the Warner Brothers lot in Burbank.

[B]

And.

[C]

And it was fun to be part of that history.

[B]

Wait, what were you doing there?

[C]

I worked on the Conan o' Brien TV show for tbs.

[B]

Oh, there you go. That's something new every day.

[C]

We were on the Goonies soundstage.

[B]

Oh, I love the Goonies.

[C]

And so Goonies is one of the shows produced by Warner Brothers over the years. And also It's a Wonderful Life recently they Had Sinners, which was a big success. And they've also produced TV shows like Friends and er. And the important thing is that they control a vast catalog of IP like DC Comics, Harry Potter, and they also control the HBO MAX streaming service. And so just a quick back and forth. Thirty years ago, Warner's bought Turner Broadcasting. So they got channels like CNN and TNT. Then Warner's merged with AOL. They were later acquired by AT&T, spun out. The company was eventually acquired by discovery in 2022. And that's the home of cable channels like Discovery Channel and hgtv. So now the current company is sitting there with two sides of the house. You've got all of those cables companies on one side, and we know that cable is declining, people are cutting the cord. And on the other side you've got the movie and TV production studios, hbo, the still growing streaming business. And so the question has been, is the company going to split in two? Where the things that are growing are on one side and the lagging cable companies on the other. And that's coming up now, today.

[B]

So this splitting into two concepts we've talked about on the show in actually lots of different industries. Do you remember we talked about this with food companies? So splitting themselves into two, where they have one product portfolio growing very quickly, they've got another product portfolio which is perhaps a steady Eddie Sort of more boring cash flowing machine. We have seen this, right? We've seen this movie, pun intended, before here. Also in media, Comcast, NBC Universal recently getting into this process too, relatively recently. By the end of this year is expected that there's going to be a spinning off of its cable channels into a newly publicly traded company called Versant, or Versant, depending on who you are. You've heard both, we've heard both pronunciations. And this would be comprised of cnbc, which is the, you know, prestigious business news TV network, E Network, Syfy, Syfy, and the Golf Channel, among others. So this model of separation is out.

[C]

There, especially as the media companies are trying to figure out what to do with cable.

[B]

Right.

[C]

And so Warner Brothers CEO David Zaslav has been in the spotlight. He came over from Discovery and he has wanted this split to happen before Discovery goes up for sale. Because he's thinking that the productive side, which is seen as this, the studio side, is going to get a much bigger premium if it's uncoupled from the cable company.

[B]

Right.

[C]

And so perhaps there'd be a bidding war, for example.

[B]

Right. So that bundles business. Let's just talk about one of those recent examples. Earlier this month, Bloomberg reported, and then actually everyone reported that new Paramount owner David Ellison, otherwise known as Oracle founder Larry Ellison son, was making a $20 per share bid for Warner Brothers Discovery, which was dismissed. But it really did get going. All the gossip around, well, if someone's going to show up and make an unsolicited offer, what could Warner Brothers actually get if it got itself organized and officially put itself up for sale? So that's why it was interesting today that the Warner Brothers board said it will evaluate, as you said, a broad range of strategic options. Now, I just want to add a bit of a nugget from the board perspective, if you sort of bear with me for a second, John, which is when you're on the board of a public company and someone turns up and says, I'm going to bid for you, you're kind of obliged as a board member to sort of go back, look at your note, sharpen your pencil and say, oh, well, I guess we better look at whether getting bought out as the right thing for the sheriff.

[C]

You owe it for the owe it.

[B]

To the sheriff, you owe it to the shareholders. So sometimes these unsolicited offers or approaches can set in motion a whole bunch of unintended consequences, which I'll come back to. So here we've got the board saying, you know, there could be A planned separation of the company by mid-2026. Or. Or there could be a transaction for the entire company, or there could be separate deals negotiated for Warner Brothers and Discovery. All bets are on is what they're basically saying Now. Shares in WBD, that's the ticker, were up 10% today after the news. Actually, a bit more than that. And there's a lot of speculation about which potential buyers might be circling. So just the sheer size of this potential deal, it's of massive scale. WBD market cap of nearly $50 billion, $35 billion of debt, so total call it $85 billion now. In CNBC this morning, it was mentioned on air that Comcast and Netflix have already started to make inquiries.

[C]

And then you've also got Netflix.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

If you remember a few years ago, if you wanted to watch Friends, you'd go to Netflix.

[B]

I always want to watch Friends, so I was always going to Netflix.

[C]

Well, there was a time when Netflix was paying hundreds of millions of dollars in licensing rights for those shows. So an acquisition could bring that IP onto their service.

[B]

Just like go big or go home, just go buy it. And another potential bidder, I want to say, although I bet I regret this, this is an outside bid. There's an outside chance is Apple. Let's talk about Apple for a minute. The streaming service is important. It does have the sort of halo effect when it comes to the Apple's content side of the business. But it's not been a resounding success. Right, right.

[C]

They say that when Severance has new episodes, people sign up for Apple and then when the season of Severance is over, people cancel their Apple subscription.

[B]

And, you know, folks have basically said Apple needs to find another leg of the stall. There's been of criticism that ever since founder Steve Jobs passed away that innovation has been light. So there's sort of two stories out there on Apple right now. On the one hand, you've got people saying, oh, no, the next iPhone generation, everyone's underestimating. It's going to be great. You've got other people saying Apple's got to do an acquisition to get the growth engine revving again. So there are some sort of outside perspectives here saying perhaps this is one of the acquisitions that Apple would consider.

[C]

And I just want to add this one thing I was talking about, about Zaslav a moment ago.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

So he said last month, this quote, the fact that this is quality, and we've seen this true across our company, motion picture, TV production and streaming quality, we think that gives us a chance to raise prices. And so today they announced that HBO is going up a dollar a month for the subscription. But Zaslav said we think we're way underpriced. And so was he talking about one month of HBO being a dollar underpriced or was he talking about the whole Warner Brothers Discovery being underpriced?

[B]

Oh, interesting reading into the tea le. Well, the one beta we haven't talked about is does Paramount come back around and try it all over again? Is this just a way that Warner Brothers Discovery is basically saying, we think we end up doing a deal with Paramount anyway, but let's just go out there and get the price up. Let's go do this as a negotiating tool. We don't know yet. We're going to keep watching. Shares and Paramount skydance were down 2.25% today. Shares and Comcast up 1.25%. That could be because basically the market saying, oh, we can now peg your valuation to another company with a deal potentially circling around it. Lots and lots going on. Well, let's take a quick break and when we come back, it's earnings season. So what nuggets did we glean today from Coke, Philip Morris, General Motors and GE Aerospace? Brew Markets Daily is sponsored by Public, the platform for those who take investing seriously. John, who do you go to if you have questions about your investments?

[C]

Well, I have in the past called my mother.

[B]

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[C]

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[B]

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[D]

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[B]

Races with earnings season, which means we spent every single day with our running shoes on sprinting as company after company after company breaks the latest news on its results. Now we're going to dig into a couple of the big ones that caught our eye today. Now, number one, this giant CEO just thanked the Trump administration for a tariff update that emerged right before the weekend. General Motors shares revved up 15% on revenue and earnings beats as well as increased outlook for full year 2025. CEO Mary Barra happily announced that the US business hit its highest third quarter market share since 2017 with strong margins alongside it. In addition, GM's restructured China business had finally returned to profitability. So this was a slew of good news coming out of gm.

[C]

And the automaker announced that they reduced expected impact of tariffs this year by half a billion dollars. So into the range of three and a half to four half billion dollars. And this is the moment you were talking about GM CEO Mary Barra on today's earnings call.

[D]

Based on our performance, I'm pleased to share that we are raising our full year guidance. I also want to thank the president and his team for the important tariff updates they made on Friday. The MSRP offset program will help make US Produced vehicles more competitive over the next five years. And GM is well positioned as we invest to increase our already significant domestic sourcing and manufacturing footprint.

[C]

All right, so what was she thanking the president for? The tariff structure has many elements, but I'll just say in general, there's a credit program in place for imported parts and resources that are used in cars that are assembled in the United States. So it's not an auto import, but the parts are brought in. And so Trump's executive order on Friday extended that tariff offset program from its current two year schedule to five years through 2030. And it also included a similar carve out for trucks assembled in the United States.

[B]

It's extraordinary when you think about the fact that we've gone from everyone being catatonic around those Liberation Day tariffs to now issuing thanks for carve outs from these and extended carve outs. Just goes to show how the market is just, you know, short, short term memory in some regards and constantly looking for positive news at this moment in time. Now, GM also announced it's abandoning its bright drop electric delivery vans just four years after introducing these. Now, last week, GM had reported in regulatory filings that it would take a $1.6 billion special charge as it pulls back from electric vehicles because U.S. tax credits are now gone.

[C]

All right, earnings number two, as one writer put it, smoke free continues to sizzle.

[B]

That's right. Well, Philip Morris posted adjusted earnings of $2.24 a share, beating estimates by 15 cents. Revenue of just under $11 billion also beat expectations.

[C]

And this is what caught my eye. It's interesting to see the tobacco giant continue to focus on its smoke free like Zyn nicotine patches and Equos heated tobacco devices which I had to look up. Apparently it's not a vape pen. I hadn't heard of it. The smokeless segment accounted for 41% of Philip Morris's total revenue for the quarter. And the company is looking to hit 67% by 2030. So in the next five years, their goal is to bring in more money off of smokeless than on cigarettes. And I'd also point out that on the front page of today's investor presentation, the subtitle was Championing a Smoke Free World.

[B]

Well, despite the earnings beat, Philip Morris only lifted the floor of its full year guidance for 2025. It didn't quite do the sort of all in bigger possibility of a higher outlook for the year which may have disappointed investors just pulling up the bottom as opposed to pushing out the top. Now shares were down over 7% during the day, but still if you look year to date, up 20%. So the performance has been pretty solid. Now number three in our earnings rundown, Coca Cola. We recently covered Pet Pepsi and the fact that activist Elliott Management has taken a $4 billion stake to shake up the beverage and snack giant into growth. With its performance consistently overshadowed by that of arch rival Coca Cola who reported today.

[C]

Well that rival beat estimates today with Coke's stock popping up over 4% after reiterating its guidance of 5 to 6% organic revenue growth for the year.

[B]

Now one nugget from Coke's earnings today was insight into the state of the US consumer because while its pricier brands have done well, notably Fairlife and Smart Water, showing that high income consumers are still willing to pay up for premium drinks. In contrast, the core Coca Cola brand plans to offer mini 7 and a half ounce single serve cans priced at below $2 to target lower income consumers. And this caught my eye because once upon a time we were talking about shrinkflation. Now we see these companies leaning into smaller packaging to try to appeal again to those who've been squeezed.

[C]

That's right. And final earnings report from today. GE Aerospace ticker ge. I bring this one up because we spoke earlier in the show about media mergers that can make for strange bedfellows and as a reminder, General Electric owned NBC from roughly 1986 to 2011.

[B]

GE's actually fascinating because if you look at the history, yes, it owned NBC and then it didn't. And there are actually a series of separations of Georgia. It went from being one behemoth to spinning out the healthcare business in 2023. G Venova, which is the energy business, in 2024. And GE Aerospace got to keep the original ticker ticket. GE Now Aerospace in general and also specifically GE Aerospace has been getting a lot of attention because of exposure to the defense industry. We saw GE today boost its annual forecast for a second straight quarter. Revenue surged 26% last quarter to $11 billion, helped by strong maintenance work and new engine deliveries to Boeing and Airbus. Now, shares of GE were up nearly 5% before easing back down slightly throughout the day. Tomorrow we're going to talk about another aspect of those great big pieces of equipment from Boeing and Airbus. We're going to talk about the end use. We're going to talk about travel. Well, it's 4pm on the east Coast. There's the bell. The market's closing and we don't have a ticker tape. But we'll throw it over to our human ticker, our producer, John.

[C]

That's right, The S&P 500 finished flat. The NASDAQ finished down a tenth of a percent and the Dow finished up half a percent. Well, we covered some of the big companies reporting today. So I'll just throw in that gold had its worst day since 2013 with futures down 5%. Just yesterday, the commodity had hit a new record high.

[B]

It's extraordinary that the 5% ish, you know, coming down of gold after the rise it's had. We're going to keep talking about gold. The other thing that we're also going to keep talking about ties back to more in the deal space. Now, we started with a mega merger today and we go going to almost finish work. One, private equity firms Blackstone and TPG are taking private hologic, which makes breast imaging technology and biopsy equipment, among other women's health products. The deal is valued at over $18 billion, likely funded with over $12 billion in debt, including private credit, a sign that private capital is swinging back into action at the prospect of lower interest rates. Note that back in May, the Financial Times reported that Hologic had rejected an offer about 2 billion lower than today's deal level. Now, this caught my eye as sovereign wealth entities like Singapore's GIC and the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority are taking small stakes in the deal, adding to foreign participation in US Tape privates that we also saw in the recent record breaking announcement of the $55 billion acquisition of electronic Arts. We're going to keep covering this growing trend, sovereign wealth funds, foreign investment in the U.S. and of course, more hot earnings. But, but final, final thought, we cannot finish without mentioning the news that broke so late this afternoon. OpenAI launching Atlas launching its new browser. We're going to go try it and they're going to come back having tried it to talk about that experience and also what it may mean for stocks like Alphabet. That's it for today's Brew Markets Daily.

[C]

Brew Markets Daily is hosted by Anne Barry and produced by John Cotto, Tarkab Delatif and Emily Milian. Our technical director is Uchena Waugh, audio assistance by Brittany Dottoco. And the president of Morning Brew Inc. Is Devin Emery.

[B]

Wake up tomorrow with the Morning Brew newsletter and tune in to Neil and Toby on Morning Brew Daily. We'll see you back here tomorrow, same time, same place.