Business Updates: Uber Says It’s Bouncing Back After Pandemic Slump

Uber’s loss from operations for the quarter was $550 million, a 37 percent improvement from a year earlier.

Uber said it was attracting a growing number of users by relying on its food delivery business, Uber Eats, to bring in business during spikes in coronavirus cases, when its ride-hailing business declined. Uber reported 118 million users during the fourth quarter, a 27 percent increase from a year earlier.

“Our results demonstrate just how far we’ve come since the beginning of the pandemic,” Mr. Khosrowshahi said in a statement. “While the Omicron variant began to impact our business in late December, mobility is already starting to bounce back.”

The growth in users sets Uber apart from its primary rival in the United States, Lyft. In an earnings report on Tuesday, Lyft said it had 18,728 users during the fourth quarter, a 49 percent increase from a year earlier but a slight decrease from the third quarter. The modest decline in users showed that the winter wave of Omicron might have presented more challenges to Lyft’s business.

Still, Lyft said that its revenue had grown by 70 percent, to $969.9 million, and that its losses had improved to $258.6 million, a 43 percent change from a year earlier.

Analysts said Uber’s and Lyft’s businesses would most likely continue to fluctuate as travel was affected by the pandemic.

“It’s going to ebb and flow,” said Tom White, a senior research analyst with the financial firm D.A. Davidson. While Lyft’s business was tied to coronavirus conditions in North America, Uber could experience other issues because it operates around the world, he added.

“I look forward to helping the Bank and System pursue the Fed’s dual mandate from Congress — achieving price stability and maximum employment,” Ms. Collins said in the Boston Fed’s prepared release.

Four regional central banks rotate in and out of rotating voting positions each year, while the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and members of the seven-seat Board of Governors in Washington hold a constant vote on monetary policy.

The Fed is expected to raise interest rates, its main policy tool, several times this year to slow borrowing and spending, cooling off demand.

Ms. Collins has had a wide-ranging economic career, including as a visiting scholar at the International Monetary Fund and as a staff member at the Council of Economic Advisers during the George H.W. Bush administration. Most of her research has focused on international economics.

But she has at times spoken about monetary policy. In a 2015 article in The Detroit Free Press, she noted that it was difficult to be both reactive to incoming economic data and completely predictable. Locking in a preset pace of rate increases, she said, could set the market up for tumult if conditions changed.

“The Fed wants to avoid surprising the market,” she said in the article.

That could be relevant now, at a time when the Fed is trying to set policy against a virus-stricken and uncertain backdrop. Jerome H. Powell, the Fed chair, has emphasized that the central bank will be “humble” and “nimble.”

Ms. Collins was selected by directors on the Boston Fed’s board and approved by the Fed’s Board of Governors in Washington. Ms. Collins will replace Eric S. Rosengren, who retired as the Boston Fed’s president last year following a trading scandal, citing health concerns.

Ms. Collins has an undergraduate degree from Harvard University and a doctorate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Mr. Nathanson added that Disney+ needed to offer more content for people who were not Marvel or “Star Wars” fans and who didn’t have children. Notably, one of the standout offerings on Disney+ in the most recent quarter was Peter Jackson’s documentary series “The Beatles: Get Back.” That offering alone drove 209,000 Disney+ sign-ups in its opening period (the day it was released and the two days after), according to Antenna, a research company.

Disney said it logged $4.7 billion in total streaming revenue in the most recent quarter, up 34 percent from a year earlier. Hulu, which Disney owns with Comcast, benefited from raising subscription prices. Nonetheless, Disney’s streaming division lost roughly $600 million — about 27 percent more than a year earlier — because of costs that included content production, marketing and technology infrastructure.

Operating profit at Disney Parks, Experiences and Products totaled $2.45 billion, compared with a loss of $119 million a year earlier, when some of Disney’s properties were closed because of the pandemic and others, including Walt Disney World, were capping daily attendance at 35 percent of capacity. Disney cited the return of its cruise line, albeit with limited capacity, as another reason for the division’s rebound.

Higher prices at Disney parks also helped, as did the introduction of a new digital tool called Genie+ that allows park visitors — for $15 at Disney World in Florida and $20 at Disneyland in California — to drastically shorten ride wait times.

Underscoring the importance of streaming growth to Disney’s future: Operating profit at the company’s largest division, broadcast and cable television, totaled $1.5 billion in the quarter, a 13 percent decline from $1.7 billion a year earlier. Disney attributed the decrease to higher content production and marketing costs and lower political advertising at local stations. The division includes ESPN, ABC, Disney Channel, FX, Freeform and National Geographic.

All told, Disney had $1.15 billion in profit in the quarter, compared with $29 million in the same quarter last year. When one-time items are excluded, per-share profit rose to $1.06, compared with 32 cents. Revenue was $21.82 billion, a 34 percent increase from $16.2 million a year earlier.

After a drawn-out farewell, Robert A. Iger, Disney’s previous chief executive and executive chairman, formally left the company at the end of last year, making Wednesday’s earnings report the solo debut for Bob Chapek, who was named chief executive in 2020.

In a conference call before the earnings report, analysts said they expected Mr. Chapek to highlight the recent success of the animated musical “Encanto,” which arrived on Disney+ just before the quarter ended. “The Book of Boba Fett,” a limited series set in the “Star Wars” universe, also began rolling out on Disney+ in December, with the company hoping to build on the momentum of “The Mandalorian,” one of the service’s top performers.

Drew Maloney, president of the American Investment Council, a trade group representing private-equity firms, said the industry supported transparency but had complaints about the commission’s plans.

“We are concerned that these new regulations are unnecessary and will not strengthen pension returns or help companies innovate and compete in a global marketplace,” he said.

In a speech in November, the commission’s chairman, Gary Gensler, said more transparency around fees “could potentially bring greater efficiencies to this important part of the capital markets.”

The proposals would also impose new requirements for record-keeping and audits and limit actions that could give certain investors more preferential treatment. Private fund advisers would also be prohibited from charging certain fees and expenses to a fund.

In a statement, Steve Nelson, chief executive of the Institutional Limited Partners Association, a trade group representing pension funds and other investors, said the rules would “help address the increased conflict of interest in the industry.”

Market participants said it could be the end of the year before any rules became final.

The move comes a year after retail investors joined forces to buy up shares of GameStop, AMC and other struggling companies that some hedge fund traders had shorted. To short a stock, a trader borrows shares from a broker for a fee and sells them immediately, expecting to buy them back when the share price falls, return them to the broker and pocket the difference. But during last year’s retail mania, demand for individual shares rose well above what market participants expected, causing stock market panic.

Hedge fund traders who had bet that the shares of GameStop and AMC would fall scrambled to find shares of the two companies to cover their bets as the share prices rose instead. Brokerages risked running out of money in the quest to meet obligations to their customers. A few brokerages, most notably Robinhood, had to temporarily stop investors from trading the stocks as a result.

If such an event were to happen again, the S.E.C.’s proposed change would make it more manageable by requiring all stock trades to be completed more quickly. The proposal would force traders and brokerages to identify, in as close to real time as possible, where the money and the stock shares were coming from to fulfill each trade. It would also direct central clearing facilities to start building systems that would eventually allow “fully automatic” trade processing.

Susanne Trimbath, an economist who has studied market structure for decades and who in the 1990s worked for a subsidiary of the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation, which runs the central clearinghouse for stocks, said that the proposal was a baby step toward the safest possible market structure: near-instantaneous trade clearing.

The corporation’s stock clearing facilities are “systemically important financial market utilities,” Ms. Trimbath said, a term established after the 2008 financial crisis. Federal officials have deemed these institutions crucial to the functioning of financial markets and the economy. This means, according to Ms. Trimbath, that the government might have to support them with taxpayer money if they reach the brink of failure.

The clearing facilities could be destabilized by a large-scale panic caused by too many failed trades, Ms. Trimbath said. Shortening trade times would reduce the risk of that happening, so it would be good for taxpayers, she said.

“If something goes wrong, we don’t want to be in a position to bail them out.”

Dotdash Meredith also runs People, Better Homes & Gardens, Food & Wine and other publications that will remain in print. Mr. Vogel said the company planned to invest more than $80 million in content this year and print more than 350 million magazines.

“Today’s step is not a cost savings exercise and it is not about capturing synergies or any other acquisition jargon, it is about embracing the inevitable digital future for the affected brands,” he said in the memo. “Naysayers will interpret this as another nail in print’s coffin. They couldn’t be more wrong — print remains core to Dotdash Meredith.”

When Entertainment Weekly debuted in 1990, critics doubted it would last, and even some employees started an office pool, betting on how many issues it could survive. The bets were capped at 26 issues.

But on Wednesday, tributes to Entertainment Weekly and its long success flooded social media, including recollections of star-studded covers taped inside high school lockers and descriptions of the publication as a pop-culture bible.

Avid readers of InStyle recounted how they maxed out credit cards subscribing to the fashion tome and hauled the magazine with them on moves. The publication, known for showcasing celebrities using a formula it once described as “strapless dress, hand on hip, sellable smile,” was founded in 1994 with Barbra Streisand on its first cover.

The end of the print editions follows a now familiar industry trend: Many magazine companies are looking for ways to cut costs as the circulation of physical copies continues to drop and competition for advertising dollars becomes more fierce. Shape, a women’s fitness magazine owned by Meredith, stopped print editions at the end of last year. In September, the U.S. print version of Marie Claire, owned by the British publisher Future Media, was shuttered. Hearst discontinued regular print editions of O, The Oprah Magazine, in 2020.

By comparison, Discovery and AT&T announced their plans to merge assets nine months ago.

In the coming weeks, Discovery will have a shareholder vote, which is widely expected to pass, and will have to begin raising more than $30 billion in debt for the deal.

The Discovery chief executive, David Zaslav, will take over the combined company when the merger is complete, potentially as soon as April.

In the meantime, both companies are still moving independently of each other. Discovery, the owner of Eurosport, is in advanced negotiations to expand its sports business in Britain. And last week, CNN’s president, Jeff Zucker, was forced to resign.

Mr. Smith and Mr. Nadella said they would commit to loosening restrictions on how other developers can gain access to Microsoft’s app stores. They said they would also not force other developers to take payments from users using Microsoft’s systems, would allow game developers to talk directly to players and not promote the company’s own games over rival products.

Microsoft has pledged to continue to allow Activision’s major franchises, like Call of Duty, to be available on Sony PlayStation, an Xbox competitor, beyond the company’s current agreement with the company.

The Microsoft executives acknowledged the steep challenge of getting their blockbuster deal approved in a time of increased scrutiny of big tech companies from the Biden administration. Lina Khan, the chair of the Federal Trade Commission, is a critic of tech giants like Amazon and Meta, the parent company of Facebook.

Under her, the agency sued to block chip maker Nvidia’s acquisition of Arm and she has promised to be more aggressive in scrutinizing more mergers and acquisitions. She began a process to toughen standards on so-called vertical mergers, which could include Microsoft’s bid for Activision, a combination of two companies along a supply chain.

Microsoft may also face challenges abroad. Regulators in Britain and the European Union have been even more aggressive in filing antitrust lawsuits against the tech giants or moving to block their acquisitions.

Microsoft has said Activision will help it compete in the nascent business of the so-called metaverse, or virtual worlds where some tech companies believe people could work and play.

Mr. Nadella said the main message was that Microsoft would not dominate gaming if the merger was approved. The company would become the third largest provider of video games with about 13 percent of the market, he said.

“In traditional times, being the number three in a highly fragmented market wouldn’t be that interesting to anyone,” Mr. Nadella said.

Mr. Smith said Microsoft had expressed support for antitrust legislation to show members of Congress that the company would not fight what it viewed as inevitable regulations.

“We are not in the world of 2018 and 2019,” he said. “We recognize there will be more scrutiny of any large accusations made by a large tech company. It behooves us to move quickly and transparently and be clear on how we manage this.”

• Media companies are making news for workers’ unionization drives (including at The New York Times). One of the latest is The Financial Times’s U.S. newsroom, Bloomberg News reports.

Despite the recent efforts, union membership is still just above 10 percent of the U.S. work force last year, half the share of the early 1980s. In absolute terms, union rolls have lost about four million members over that period.

The case has generated widespread fascination and scorn.

The couple now face charges of money laundering. The pair, who describe themselves as entrepreneurs, led a flashy life. Ms. Morgan in particular has built up an outsize public profile, writing for Forbes and Inc. and rapping under the name Razzlekhan, the self-described “crocodile of Wall Street.”

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They posted online often and publicly about crypto: “The amount of spam I’m getting about sketchy crypto get rich stuff really makes me feel like this bubble is gonna pop soon!” Ms. Morgan tweeted in December. READ THE ARTICLE →

• The Los Angeles Times has more than doubled digital subscriptions in the past two years, to 450,000.

• The Boston Globe, which says it makes enough digital revenue to support its newsroom, increased its digital subscribers in the last two and a half years to 226,000 from 100,000, according to figures provided by the newspaper.

• The Philadelphia Inquirer’s digital-only subscriptions grew 28 percent last year, to north of 60,000.

“We don’t need to go outside our area to reach a really nice and sustainable piece of profitability,” said Grant Moise, the president and publisher of The Dallas Morning News. With 176 journalists, “The News is at least two times bigger than any TV station, radio station or local competitor,” he added. “We need to own that.”

“Just because print is declining doesn’t mean digital is the salvation,” said one media scholar. READ THE ARTICLE →