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Lyft to Pause Some Hiring and Trim Budgets, Citing Economic Slowdown
Lyft Inc.
LYFT -17.27%
will slow hiring, reduce the budgets of some of its departments and grant new stock options to some employees to make up for its eroding share price, joining rival
Uber Technologies Inc.
UBER -9.38%
in outlining cuts as investor optimism cools on tech stocks.
President
John Zimmer
announced the measures Tuesday in a memo to staff.
“It’s clear from our discussions with other business leaders that every company is taking a hard look at how they respond to concerns about an economic slowdown and the dramatic change in investor sentiment,” Mr. Zimmer wrote in an internal memo viewed by The Wall Street Journal.
“Given the slower than expected recovery and need to accelerate leverage in the business, we’ve made the difficult but important decision to significantly slow hiring in the US,” he said.
That includes the company giving priority to fewer initiatives, not filling many of the current open roles and focusing hiring on roles deemed critical, such as those that support its core rides business, Mr. Zimmer said. He said there are no layoffs planned.
Lyft’s board met on Friday to discuss the cuts, said a person familiar with the meeting. Lyft began signaling to some employees recently that there would be a hiring slowdown and cutting of budgets, another person familiar said.
Lyft shares have lost more than 60% since the start of the year, more than double the decline of the Nasdaq Composite Index. After declining more than 15% Tuesday, Lyft shares were up less than 1.5% in after-hours trading after the Journal reported about the plans.
Uber Technologies also has outlined budget cuts. An Uber driver in Paris.
Photo:
Nathan Laine/Bloomberg News
Tech companies that powered the U.S. economy during the pandemic are suffering through a punishing stretch. Concerns about rising interest rates and the reversal of some pandemic trends that bolstered tech revenues have hit the share prices of
Peloton Interactive Inc.,
PTON -8.08%
Netflix Inc.,
Amazon.com Inc.
AMZN -3.21%
and others.
Last month Amazon reported the slowest quarterly revenue growth in about two decades. Netflix lost subscribers during its first quarter for the first time in more than a decade and signaled that losses are set to continue.
Apple Inc.
AAPL -1.92%
cautioned that the resurgence of Covid-19 in China could hinder sales.
The shares of
Snap Inc.
SNAP -43.08%
tumbled 43% Tuesday after it said in a Monday filing that revenue and adjusted pretax earnings for the second quarter will come in below the range the company projected barely a month ago due to weak advertising revenues. Other tech stocks that rely on digital advertising, including Google parent
Alphabet Inc.
GOOG -5.14%
and
parent
Meta Platforms Inc.,
FB -7.62%
also fell.
After years of adding jobs at a rapid pace, some tech companies have been broadcasting that they think it is time to take a more cautious approach. The pullback by tech giants raises questions about the direction of the overall U.S. job market and economy.
Meta, Peloton and Uber are among the tech companies that have announced they will slow hiring or re-evaluate their head count in recent weeks.
Among the other issues cooling the long-hot sector: inflation, labor shortages and supply-chain issues.
Uber and Lyft are struggling with a year-long driver shortage that has pushed fares to record highs. The elevated fares have partly resulted in fewer Lyft riders and fewer Uber trips compared with before the health crisis, though both companies’ first-quarter revenue outpaced prepandemic levels on the back of higher prices.
Lyft’s first-quarter results were overshadowed by a weaker-than-expected earnings outlook as the company said it would need to spend more money to incentivize drivers to return. Its stock tumbled more than 35% after the announcement, marking the biggest percentage drop in a single day since the company went public in 2019.
Earlier this month, Uber said it would cut spending on marketing and scale back on hiring as it focuses on turning a profit.
Both companies spent big for years to gain customers and market share. But their 2019 public offerings disappointed, with Wall Street increasingly wanting to see money-losing companies turn a profit.
“As we’ve seen and discussed, public market investors have continued to sharply shift their focus onto a potential recession and a company’s ability to deliver near-term profits,” Mr. Zimmer wrote in Tuesday’s memo.
He went on to write that “our near-term action plan will be focused on accelerating profits—whether we like it or not, that’s the ticket of entry in today’s market.”
Uber and Lyft have trimmed their losses, unloading costly divisions such as their self-driving units and cutting staff during the health crisis. Both companies turned a quarterly adjusted profit before certain expenses like interest, taxes and depreciation last year.
Uber said it expects to be cash-flow positive on a full-year basis this year. If it meets that goal, it would mark the first time the underlying operations of the ride-share and food-delivery giant generate more money than it spends.
Write to Preetika Rana at preetika.rana@wsj.com and Emily Glazer at emily.glazer@wsj.com
Copyright ©2022 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
Amazon Breaks Record for One-Day Gain in Market Cap
Investors in big technology stocks have a serious case of whiplash.
Amazon.com Inc.
AMZN 13.54%
on Friday notched the largest-ever one-day gain in market value for a U.S. company—just a day after Facebook parent
Meta Platforms Inc.
suffered the largest-ever loss.
The dramatic moves suggest investors are moving quickly to draw distinctions among the growth prospects of some of the biggest U.S. companies as they reassess their valuations in anticipation of higher interest rates.
Both stocks have surged so far, so fast in recent years that any big move can rattle the broader market and set various records. Amazon is the fourth-biggest company in the U.S. by market value, behind
Apple Inc.
AAPL -0.17%
,
Microsoft Corp.
and
Alphabet Inc.,
with a market capitalization of about $1.6 trillion, while Meta is No. 7, even after Thursday’s declines.
In recent days, investors have shown more faith in the tech companies whose services are seen as staples than in those whose offerings are more elective, said
John Lynch,
chief investment officer at Comerica Wealth Management, which manages $175 billion.
“Within tech we’re starting to see a delineation between necessities and wants,” he said. “In a rising rate environment, you’re going to have noncorrelated moves in the market.”
Amazon relieved investors with a near doubling in profit in the holiday period and said it is raising the price of its Prime membership in the U.S. to $139 a year from $119. The results showed Amazon was able to control labor and supply costs better than had been expected. The company also saw growth in its cloud-computing and advertising businesses.
“The big thing was more of a sigh of relief with Amazon because there’s been so many worries in regards to that stock in terms of the comparisons after the pandemic being much more difficult,” said
Daniel Morgan,
senior portfolio manager at Synovus Trust Co.
Shares surged 14% Friday, their biggest one-day jump in almost seven years. The added $191 billion to Amazon’s market value, eclipsing the record
Apple
set just last week when it added $181 billion after posting quarterly results that shattered previous records.
Amazon’s rally helped the broader market stabilize Friday, as did a stronger-than-expected monthly jobs report. The S&P 500 added 0.5%, and the tech-focused Nasdaq Composite rose 1.6%.
Meta, meanwhile, warned it expects revenue growth to slow because users are spending less time on more lucrative services. The 26% drop in its shares Thursday erased $232 billion in market value.
Investors are grappling with the question of whether the company’s bet on the metaverse as its future growth engine will work out, Mr. Morgan said.
“That’s what the mystery behind Facebook (is) right now,” he said. “A lot of people can see their core business is really maturing.”
Investors are intensely focused on the Federal Reserve’s plans to begin raising interest rates in mid-March, ratcheting back the monetary stimulus that has helped power stocks since early in the Covid-19 pandemic. Near-zero rates pushed investors into risky assets like stocks and particularly into corners of the market that are valued based on growth far into the future.
The pace and scale of rate increases will depend in part on incoming data on inflation and the jobs market, leaving investors without a clear sight into the ultimate environment for stocks. Friday’s employment report showed the U.S. economy added more jobs in January than had been expected, a development that some investors said could support a more hawkish attitude from the Fed.
“The uncertainty created by the mere possibility of rate hikes contributes to the large moves that we’re seeing from stocks,” said Andy Kern, senior portfolio manager at asset management firm New Age Alpha.
In another outsize move,
Snap Inc.
shares leapt 59%, more than unwinding Thursday’s 24% slide, when Meta’s report prompted investors to dump shares of social-media companies.
Prompting the turnaround: Snap posted its first quarterly profit. The image-sharing firm also signaled it is adjusting to disruptions in the digital-advertising market caused by Apple privacy-policy changes that are affecting Meta.
Pinterest Inc.
reversed course, too, climbing 11% following a 10% skid in Thursday’s session. After markets closed Thursday, Pinterest reported a 20% rise in sales in the fourth quarter from a year earlier.
Companies such as Apple, Microsoft, Amazon,
Alphabet Inc.
GOOG 0.26%
and Meta have powered the stock market higher in recent years. They have become so big that their moves can cause swings in the S&P 500 index, whose members are weighted by market capitalization. As of Thursday, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet, Meta,
Tesla Inc.
and
Nvidia Corp.
accounted for more than 25% of the weighting of the index, according to S&P Global.
Write to Karen Langley at karen.langley@wsj.com and Joe Wallace at joe.wallace@wsj.com
Copyright ©2022 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
Disappointing Meta, PayPal Earnings Send Shudders Through Stock Market
Facebook’s parent company shed more than $230 billion in market value Thursday, a one-day loss that would be the biggest ever for a U.S. company and increase the pressure on a stock market long powered by technology shares.
The setbacks reflect the increased scrutiny companies are under as major U.S. stock indexes remain near record highs and the Federal Reserve is preparing to raise interest rates for the first time since 2018. Rising rates tend to reduce the multiples that investors are willing to pay for a share of company profits, a trend that stands to mean pain for stocks that are already trading at lofty valuations.
That has put heightened pressure on the companies to show their financial results justify their price tags. In recent days, several have fallen short, raising concerns among investors that further declines in major indexes could lie ahead.
“The level of forgiveness has gone down,” said
Daniel Genter,
chief executive and chief investment officer at RNC Genter Capital Management. “When boards come to their shareholders to confess their sins, they’re just not going to be pardoned with one Hail Mary.”
Some strategists say the recent slide in shares of speculative tech companies should serve to remind investors that a robust market rally relies on advances by a variety of stocks. And they warn they expect more big stock swings ahead at any hint of slowing growth.
“The market can’t just be driven by a small number of megacap companies or tech companies,” said
Yung-Yu Ma,
chief investment strategist at BMO Wealth Management. “There should start to be more of a recognition that it’s not going to be technology that leads us out of this pullback.”
Earnings season had been overshadowed until recent days as investors fretted over the Fed’s plans to raise rates. They sold stocks across sectors, helping to send the S&P 500 down 5.3% in January, its worst monthly performance since the March 2020 slump.
The market briefly stabilized this week—with all three major stock indexes rising for four consecutive sessions—before tumbling again Thursday. The S&P 500 dropped 2%, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite fell 3.1%.
All eyes have now turned to
Amazon.com Inc.,
which reports after the closing bell. The e-commerce company warned in late 2021 of a challenging end of the year as it confronted global supply-chain problems.
Amazon shares dropped more than 7% ahead of the report, while shares of speculative tech stocks like
Snap Inc.
and
Pinterest Inc.
also tumbled. Snap fell 24%, while Pinterest declined 10%.
The giant stock moves show how serious investors have become about demanding that companies deliver on their promises for growth after a steep and swift climb in share prices.
Meta, PayPal and Spotify entered 2022 at rich valuations. While the S&P 500 ended December trading at 21.5 times its projected earnings over the next 12 months, Meta was trading at 23.6 times, PayPal at 36 times and Spotify at 543.9 times, according to FactSet. Spotify isn’t an index constituent.
By Wednesday, Meta’s multiple had pulled back to 22.6 times forward earnings, while PayPal traded at 27.2 times, and Spotify at 287.6 times.
“Those stocks were really priced way beyond perfection,” Mr. Genter said. “People are saying, well, guess what, perfection is not here.”
The Facebook parent company surprised investors late Wednesday with a deeper-than-expected decline in profit and a downbeat outlook. The company said it expects revenue growth to slow and shared that it lost about one million daily users globally. Shares declined 27%, on course for their worst daily performance since they started trading in 2012.
The company’s challenges include a new ad-privacy policy from Apple Inc. that Meta expects to cost it more than $10 billion in lost sales for 2022. The requirement that apps ask users whether they want to be tracked limited the ability to gather data used to target digital ads, driving advertisers to change their spending.
Meta’s $234 billion drop in market value is set to exceed the record that Apple Inc. set in September 2020 when the iPhone-maker lost about $182 billion in a single day, according to Dow Jones Market Data.
PayPal lowered its profit outlook for 2022 and abandoned a target it set last year of roughly doubling its active user base. Executives said business this year will be pressured by forces including inflation, supply-chain problems, the Omicron variant and the runoff in government stimulus. Shares slumped 25% Wednesday in their worst selloff on record and continued sliding Thursday.
PayPal Holdings lowered its profit outlook.
Photo:
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
And Spotify, which is embroiled in a controversy over
Joe Rogan’s
podcast, said it added users but declined to give annual guidance, pulling shares down 16% on Thursday.
Earnings results out of the tech segment haven’t been all bad. Google parent
Alphabet Inc.
reported robust sales growth and unveiled plans for a stock split this week, helping the company add more than $135 billion in market value Wednesday.
Alphabet has outperformed the other stocks in the popular FAANG trade lately. Its shares are about flat this year, while Meta, Amazon and
Netflix Inc.
are down by double-digit percentages.
Apple Inc.
is off modestly.
Broadly, the corporate earnings season has surpassed expectations. With results in from about half the constituents of the S&P 500, analysts estimate that profits from index constituents rose 26% in the holiday quarter from a year earlier, according to FactSet. That is up from forecasts for 21% growth at the end of September.
Money managers, though, say they have been particularly focused on what company executives have to say about their expectations for the coming months in the wake of higher rates and the continuing Covid-19 pandemic.
“Not too many of them are painting a rosy picture because of the uncertainty,” said
Robert Schein,
chief investment officer at Blanke Schein Wealth Management.
Write to Karen Langley at karen.langley@wsj.com
Copyright ©2022 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
Facebook’s Stock Plunges After Profit Declines
Facebook parent
Meta Platforms Inc.
startled investors with a sharper-than-expected decline in profits and a gloomy outlook in its first earnings report since Chief Executive
Mark Zuckerberg
outlined a pivot to the metaverse.
Meta shares plunged after the results were announced, dropping more than 20%. If shares dropped that much when trading opens on Thursday, it would wipe more than $175 billion from the tech giant’s market capitalization.
The company said it expected revenue growth to slow because users were spending less time on its more lucrative services. Meta cited inflation as a weight on advertiser spending and estimated that ad-tracking changes introduced by
Apple Inc.
last year would cost Meta some $10 billion this year.
Meta also lost about a million daily users globally and stagnated in the U.S. and Canada, two of the company’s most profitable markets, the results show.
The results show Facebook’s business under pressure on a number of fronts at a moment when Mr. Zuckerberg is betting the company’s future on VR headsets, AR glasses and virtual worlds, known as the metaverse, in which users can live and work.
“Although our direction is clear, it seems that our path ahead is not quite perfectly defined,” Mr. Zuckerberg told investors during a conference call Wednesday.
Meta executives said they expected first-quarter revenue between $27 billion and $29 billion, representing year-over-year growth between 3% and 11%. Anything below 11% would mark the slowest period of quarterly growth in the company’s history.
Mr. Zuckerberg said the company is investing heavily in its TikTok rival, called Reels, and focused on attracting young-adult users, although those segments aren’t currently as profitable as others. Reels doesn’t make the kind of money that Meta generates on older features such as the news feed and Stories, which allows people to post videos and images that disappear after 24 hours.
“I’m confident that leaning harder into these trends is the right short-term trade-off,” he said, noting that Reels is the company’s fastest-growing product.
Executives likened the shift to Reels to the company’s prior strategic transitions, including its shift to mobile from web about a decade ago and the more recent embrace of Stories.
Meta faces multiple antitrust investigations around the world, for what some government officials describe as its pattern of using its clout to squeeze out smaller rivals. During the call, Mr. Zuckerberg and other executives repeatedly emphasized that Meta faces stiff competition from TikTok for users’ time, particularly the younger demographic.
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Meta’s results were in contrast to fellow digital-ad giant and Google parent Alphabet Inc., which on Tuesday reported blockbuster results that sent shares climbing more than 7% on Wednesday.
Meta executives said the company is working at a disadvantage because of Apple’s changes that require apps to ask users for permission to track their activity and share it with other apps or websites. The move has been at the center of an intensifying fight between the iPhone maker and companies such as Meta that use such tracking technology to sell digital ads.
“It’s not really apples to apples for us. And as a result, we believe Google’s search ads business could have benefited relative to ours,” said Meta Chief Financial Officer
David Wehner.
Mr. Wehner also pointed to Apple’s business relationship with Google, adding that “the incentive clearly exists for this policy discrepancy to continue.”
The company reported a $10.3 billion profit for the fourth quarter, below analyst expectations of $10.9 billion and a small decline compared with a year earlier. The decline marked Meta’s first in net income growth since the second quarter of 2019.
Meta also for the first time broke out its Reality Labs segment, which offered investors insight into the health of the virtual- and augmented-reality consumer business unit that is at the heart of the metaverse efforts.
The Facebook Files
A series offering an unparalleled look inside the social-media giant’s failings—and its unwillingness or inability to address them.
The Reality Labs unit posted a $3.3 billion loss, an amount that has grown consistently in recent quarters.
Upon announcing the name change in October, Mr. Zuckerberg said that the company expected “to invest many billions of dollars for years to come before the metaverse reaches scale.”
Investors said the pairing of slower revenue growth with higher spending on initiatives like the metaverse is a troubling combination. “I’m going to spend a lot of time creating this new thing and I’m getting less revenue: It’s not a match made in heaven,” said
Kim Forrest,
chief investment officer of investment firm Bokeh Capital.
The latest earnings come as Meta continues to face criticism from lawmakers and users over revelations in The Wall Street Journal’s “Facebook Files” series, which showed that the company knows its platforms are riddled with flaws that cause harm. Those articles spurred congressional hearings, prompted a rebuke from Facebook’s own oversight board and led the company to halt work on a version of its Instagram app focused on children.
The company has also endured a series of executive departures in recent months. Most notably, Chief Technology Officer
Mike Schroepfer,
head of Facebook’s cryptocurrency efforts
David Marcus
and the head of the company’s Messenger unit,
Stan Chudnovsky,
all announced their exits in the last months of 2021.
Write to Deepa Seetharaman at Deepa.Seetharaman@wsj.com and Salvador Rodriguez at salvador.rodriguez@wsj.com
Copyright ©2022 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
Facebook’s Cryptocurrency Venture to Wind Down, Sell Assets
Facebook’s ambitious effort to bring cryptocurrency to the masses has failed.
The Diem Association, the consortium Facebook founded in 2019 to build a futuristic payments network, is winding down and selling its technology to a small California bank that serves bitcoin and blockchain companies for about $200 million, a person familiar with the matter said.
The bank,
Silvergate Capital Corp.
SI -2.52%
, had earlier reached a deal with Diem to issue some of the stablecoins—which are backed by hard dollars and designed to be less volatile than bitcoin and other digital currencies—that were at the heart of the effort.
The sale represents an effort to squeeze some remaining value from a venture that was challenged almost from the start. Facebook, now
Meta Platforms Inc.,
FB -1.84%
launched the project in 2019 as Libra, pitching it as a way for the social network’s billions of users to spend money as easily as sending a text message.
Bloomberg earlier reported that Diem was considering selling its assets.
Libra brought on well-known partners in e-commerce and payments including
PayPal Holdings Inc.,
Visa Inc.
and Stripe Inc.—in part to signal buy-in from the finance industry and in part to distance the project from Facebook itself, which was under pressure about policing its platform. Partners agreed to join the Libra Association, a Switzerland-based group that would govern the stablecoin, and pony up millions of dollars each to develop the project.
But it almost immediately ran into resistance in Washington. Officials voiced concerns about its effect on financial stability and data privacy and worried Libra could be misused by money launderers and terrorist financiers. Federal Reserve Chairman
Jerome Powell
said the central bank had serious concerns. Early backers dropped out, and
Mark Zuckerberg
was called before Congress, where he defended Facebook’s plan to bring financial services to the world’s underbanked.
In 2020, the group recruited
Stuart Levey,
a former U.S. Treasury official and top lawyer at HSBC Holdings PLC, as chief executive and ditched the Libra name in favor of Diem.
The stablecoin deal with Silvergate was part of a revamp last year meant to appease regulators.
David Marcus,
the Meta executive who oversaw the launch of what would become Diem, left the company last year.
Write to Peter Rudegeair at Peter.Rudegeair@wsj.com and Liz Hoffman at liz.hoffman@wsj.com
Copyright ©2022 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
Appeared in the January 27, 2022, print edition as ‘Facebook Gives Up Crypto Effort.’
Meta Platforms’ Head of Communications Leaves Company
More than three billion people world-wide use Meta Platforms’ networks, including Facebook.
Photo:
Tony Avelar/Associated Press
Meta Platforms Inc.’s
FB -0.20%
head of communications said he is leaving the company in a Friday afternoon post to employees, creating a void at the top of the department managing the controversies surrounding the tech giant.
John Pinette
had overseen the company’s external communications since 2019. Prior to joining what was then Facebook, Mr. Pinette handled business and philanthropic dealings for deceased Microsoft co-founder
Paul Allen.
He also ran communications for
Alphabet Inc.’s
Google in Asia and advised
Microsoft Corp.
co-founder
Bill Gates
in past jobs.
“Today will be my last day at Meta,” Mr. Pinette wrote in the post. “I know the team will continue to thrive as you do some of the most important—and most difficult—work in Communications.”
Mr. Pinette declined to comment further when reached late on Friday. A Meta spokesman didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Mr. Pinette was known as someone who tried to build cordial relations with reporters.
Beginning in September, The Wall Street Journal published a series of articles, called The Facebook Files, that revealed harm caused by the social-media company’s platforms, as identified by its own researchers, and its challenges in addressing them. The articles were based in part on thousands of documents produced by an internal whistleblower. They detailed matters including how Facebook’s algorithm fosters discord and how its researchers concluded that its platforms, notably Instagram, could hurt teen mental health.
The disclosures were the subject of multiple congressional hearings and pushed the company to put a tighter lid on internal research.
In an article last month, the Journal reported that Meta Chairman and Chief Executive
Mark Zuckerberg
had ordered his subordinates to respond more forcefully to the bad publicity.
Meta’s communications department includes hundreds of employees and is responsible for everything from promoting the company’s products to responding to press inquiries about activity on its platforms, which are used by more than three billion people world-wide.
Write to Meghan Bobrowsky at Meghan.Bobrowsky@wsj.com
Copyright ©2022 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
Appeared in the January 8, 2022, print edition as ‘Meta’s Head of Communications Leaves.’
WSJ Tech Live Conference Features Interviews With Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, CEOs of ViacomCBS and Reddit
The Wall Street Journal is hosting its virtual Tech Live conference with top executives, technologists and policy makers to discuss a range of issues including the lasting impact of Covid-19, as businesses grapple with disrupted supply chains, a shrinking labor force and the continuing chip shortage.
The conference launches at a time when lawmakers are re-examining big tech on issues ranging from privacy to competition. The Wall Street Journal’s investigation of
Facebook Inc.
has also led to new momentum for tougher tech laws, including special online protections for children.
Here is a rundown of interviews. Access to the conference is complimentary for Journal subscribers. You can see more details here.
First, starting at 11:15 a.m. ET,
ViacomCBS Inc.
VIAC -0.32%
Chief Executive
Robert Bakish
discusses the company’s investments in content and plans to increase global subscribers, following a recent leadership revamp at Paramount Pictures.
The conference then features conversations about the cutting edge of transportation. Grab Holdings Inc. co-founder Hooi Ling Tan will discuss plans to go public in a record-setting special-purpose acquisition and the company’s future in last-mile deliveries and financial services at 11:40 a.m. ET. Two astronauts who traveled to the edge of space with actor William Shatner will talk about their space tourism experience at 12:05 p.m. ET. Later, one of the top researchers in artificial intelligence,
Raquel Urtasun,
will speak about the future of autonomous trucking at 12:40 p.m. ET.
Investor
Alexis Ohanian
speaks at 12:15 p.m. ET on his latest venture capital endeavor, Seven Seven Six, which has focuses on founders’ well-being at a time of increased burnout and always-on work culture.
Alphabet CEO
Sundar Pichai
speaks at 2 p.m. ET on Google’s evolving workplace culture, privacy concerns and regulatory challenges, as the company battles antitrust lawsuits domestically and a $5 billion antitrust fine in Europe. Then, Reddit CEO
Steve Huffman
will discuss the social media platform’s global expansion, as the popularity of “meme stocks” helped to catapult the platform to a $10 billion valuation.
Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai in Switzerland last year.
Photo:
fabrice coffrini/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
Online educator Sal Khan talks about the future of virtual learning at 3:15 p.m. ET, followed by Cameo CEO Steven Galanis, who will speak about the growing opportunities for content creators to monetize their fan bases.
Arm Holdings CEO
Simon Segars
speaks at 4:35 p.m. ET about the continuing chip supply issues, in light of companies like
Apple Inc.
designing their own microchips. Following that, Xbox head
Phil Spencer
will speak about cloud gaming and the future of the console.
At 5:30 p.m. ET, the day concludes with basketball star and Los Angeles Lakers forward Carmelo Anthony who will speak about his tech investments, including his investment with Overtime Sports Inc.
Copyright ©2021 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8