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Walmart Reaches Video-Streaming Deal to Offer Paramount+ to Members

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Walmart Inc.

WMT 0.29%

said it has agreed to a deal with

Paramount Global

PARA 1.41%

to offer the entertainment company’s Paramount+ streaming service to subscribers of Walmart’s membership program.

Walmart has been exploring a subscription video-streaming deal to draw more people to Walmart+ as it seeks to challenge

Amazon.com Inc.,

which has grown its own Prime membership program to about 200 million global members.

The companies agreed to a 12-month exclusivity agreement and a two-year deal that would give Walmart+ members access to Paramount’s ad-supported streaming service, according to people familiar with the deal. The perk will be available starting in September, Walmart said.

Walmart’s announcement on Monday came after The Wall Street Journal reported the two companies had reached an agreement. Walmart is scheduled to announce quarterly earnings on Tuesday.

The deal is the latest tie-up in the fast-changing streaming industry, where a growing group of companies are looking to bundle content to draw viewers or customers. YouTube is planning to launch an online store for streaming video services and has renewed talks with entertainment companies about participating in the platform. YouTube, which is owned by

Alphabet Inc.,

would join

Apple Inc.,

Roku Inc.

and Amazon, which all have hubs to sell streaming video services.

Walmart executives have held talks in recent weeks to discuss a streaming deal with executives at

Walt Disney Co.

,

Comcast Corp.

and Paramount Global, according to people familiar with the matter.

While this partnership is new, Paramount and Walmart have worked together for years. Paramount has had an office in Bentonville, Ark., dedicated to Walmart, which historically has been a big seller of its consumer products and home entertainment.

Paramount Global runs the Paramount+ service, which has shows such as “Halo,” the “Star Trek” series and “Paw Patrol.” The company said this month that Paramount+ had more than 43 million subscribers at the end of its latest quarter.

Walmart introduced Walmart+ in 2020 and aims to use the service to add new streams of revenue beyond selling goods, as well rival the success Amazon has had with its Prime membership services. A subscription to Walmart+ costs $12.95 a month or $98 a year and includes free shipping on online orders and discounts on gasoline. The retailer has added perks to build interest, such as six months of the

Spotify

music-streaming service.

Walmart said Monday that Walmart+ has had positive membership growth every month since its launch, without specifying membership numbers. A Morgan Stanley survey in May said the service has about 16 million members, compared with about 15 million the previous November.

Amazon has invested heavily to ramp up its own Prime Video service, adding original programming and live sports. Prime Video is included along with free shipping and other perks in its Prime membership, which costs $14.99 a month or $139 a year in the U.S. Amazon also recently added a year of Grubhub’s restaurant delivery services for Prime subscribers.

The deal would give Paramount+ a new avenue for growth in an increasingly competitive streaming market now that all of the major entertainment companies have streaming offerings and growth in the U.S. among many services, such as

Netflix Inc.,

has started to slow.

Write to Sarah Nassauer at sarah.nassauer@wsj.com

The line between Amazon and Walmart is becoming increasingly blurred, as the two companies seek to maintain their slice of the estimated $5 trillion retail market while chipping away at the other’s share, often by borrowing the other’s ideas. Photos: Amazon/Walmart

Copyright ©2022 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

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Business

Disney+ Price Increase Shows Limits of Subscriber-Growth Push

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The growth-at-all-costs phase of the streaming wars is over; now, profits are the priority.

Faced with slowing subscriber growth in their core domestic markets, some streaming services are shifting their focus from adding users to increasing their bottom line. The result is that streamers such as

Walt Disney Co.

DIS 4.68%

,

Netflix Inc.

NFLX -0.58%

and

Warner Bros. Discovery Inc.

WBD 4.43%

are each doing some combination of reducing costs, raising prices and creating new ad-supported tiers that offer content at lower prices to consumers but also establish a new revenue stream for the companies.

The streaming providers said the price increases are warranted because of the amount of content offered. “We have plenty of room on price value,” Disney Chief Executive Officer

Bob Chapek

said Wednesday.

The price increases come as growth has stalled domestically, usually the most-profitable market for streamers. Just 100,000 of the 14.4 million net new subscriptions to its flagship Disney+ service in the most recent quarter came from the U.S. and Canada. Of the rest, about eight million came from India, while about six million came from other countries, including 52 new markets where Disney+ has launched since May.

“Domestically, Disney+ is tapped out,” said analyst Rich Greenfield of LightShed Partners. “Disney is operating under the belief that, just as in their theme parks, they can raise prices dramatically and count on customers not dropping the service.”

Disney said that in early December it will raise the price of its ad-free, stand-alone Disney+ service in the U.S., to $10.99 a month from $7.99, and the company will begin offering an ad-supported tier for Disney+, starting at $7.99. The company also announced increases to one of its bundle packages.

In addition, the company scaled back its projections for total global subscribers to Disney+, largely in response to lower anticipated growth in India, where Disney recently was outbid for the right to stream matches from a popular cricket league.

Markets welcomed news of the price increases and the company’s better-than-expected quarterly results. Shares of Disney rose 4.7% on Thursday to close at $117.69.

Investors and analysts expect higher subscription costs and the introduction of ads to Disney+ to result in higher profits from the streaming segment, but add that price increases risk alienating some customers and increasing the platform’s churn rate, or the percentage of users who cancel the service each month. The U.S. churn rate for Disney+ is already on the rise, increasing to 4% in the second quarter from 3.1% a year earlier, according to the media analytics firm Antenna.

“We do not believe that there’s going to be any meaningful long-term impact on our churn,” Mr. Chapek said about the price increases. He said Disney+ was one of the lowest-priced streaming services when it launched, and has become more valuable over time as it has added more popular shows and movies.

Other companies that focus on streaming video are making similar moves. Warner Bros. Discovery, the newly formed media giant that owns the premium television service HBO and the streaming services HBO Max and Discovery+, reported last week that it had added 1.7 million new subscriptions. As with Disney, about all of Warner Bros. Discovery’s subscription growth came from overseas—its direct-to-consumer segment lost 300,000 domestic subscribers in the quarter.

David Zaslav,

the newly formed company’s CEO, has taken an ax to Warner Bros. Discovery’s spending, scrapping multiple high-budget movies that were in production or near completion and destined for release on HBO Max, including “Batgirl” and “Wonder Twins,” after deciding that the best return on capital for them was a tax writeoff.

“Our focus is on shaping a real business with significant global ambition but not one that solely chases the subscribers at any cost or blindly seeks to win the content spending wars,” said JB Perrette, Warner Bros. Discovery’s head of streaming, on a call with analysts last week.

Warner Bros. Discovery said it expects losses in its streaming business to peak this year, and expects profitability for the segment in 2024. Similarly, Disney, whose direct-to-consumer segment has lost more than $7 billion since Disney+ launched in late 2019, predicts that Disney+ will achieve profitability by September 2024.

Warner Bros. Discovery has signaled it will launch an ad-supported tier of HBO Max next year. The company has alluded to a new pricing strategy focused on the goal of streaming profitability, but it hasn’t revealed pricing details.

“We will shift away from heavily discounted promotions,” Mr. Perrette said.

At Netflix, customer defections jumped after it raised the price of U.S. plans by $1 to $2 a month earlier this year. In the U.S. and Canada, the company lost 1.3 million subscribers during the second quarter, more than twice the 640,000 it lost in the region in the first quarter. Like Disney+, Netflix is now looking to increase the revenue per user that they draw by selling ads.

Doing so helps streaming services make more money from their existing customer bases, while offering an alternative to price hikes, according to industry analysts.

Existing subscribers to Disney+ will be automatically put into the ad-supported tier unless they elect the higher-priced ad-free version, and some shows, such as “Dancing with the Stars,” will stream with no ads on any tier, a Disney executive said. Disney said that in general, the ad load on Disney+ will be lighter than that of other services, and will benefit from consumers who cancel cable subscriptions and replace them with streaming services.

Netflix said in July that it expected some loss of customers following a price hike and that customer departures are returning to the levels where they were before the increase.

The Los Gatos, Calif.-based company has said its coming ad-supported tier of service is likely to appeal to more-price-conscious customers who are willing to pay less in exchange for viewing ads. Netflix hasn’t said how much its ad-backed tier will cost, but it is expected to charge less than the most basic plan that is currently available, which costs $9.99 a month for a single viewer with the lowest video-resolution quality.

While there has been an overall slowdown in net subscriber growth in the U.S. and more consumers jumping between streaming services, the amount of time people spend watching streaming content continues to grow, said Marc DeBevoise, CEO of the video technology company

Brightcove.

That trend makes selling ads a more attractive strategy for streaming services, he said.

“There aren’t more people to get to subscribe, but there are more hours to capture,” he said. “It is still a growing pie of total viewership.”

Write to Robbie Whelan at robbie.whelan@wsj.com and Sarah Krouse at sarah.krouse+1@wsj.com

Corrections & Amplifications
JB Perrette is Warner Bros. Discovery’s head of streaming. An earlier version of this article incorrectly said J.B. Perette. (Corrected on Aug. 11)

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Business

Disney Reports Earnings Surge, Reduces Long-Term Forecast for Disney+ Subscribers

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Walt Disney Co.

DIS 3.98%

reported a better-than-expected 26% jump in revenue Wednesday, driven by record results at its theme parks division and the addition of more new subscribers than projected to its flagship streaming video platform Disney+.

Disney’s results highlight the complex dynamics of the competitive streaming landscape. The company lowered its forecast for future Disney+ growth, raised the prices on its streaming offerings, outlined plans for a new ad-supported tier of Disney+ and said nearly all of the streaming service’s growth is coming from overseas.

The company’s earnings this quarter reflect the difficulties it and rivals, such as

Netflix Inc.,

face in attracting new customers domestically, where streaming options abound and many households use one or more services. Plus, in an increasingly difficult economic environment, some households are rethinking spending on in-home entertainment, industry analysts have said.

Chief Executive

Bob Chapek

said he didn’t think the price changes would result in any meaningful loss of streaming customers. “We believe that we’ve got plenty of price value room left to go,” Mr. Chapek said.

On the company’s call with analysts, Chief Financial Officer

Christine McCarthy

ratcheted down its forecast for Disney+, saying it now expects a total range of 215 million to 245 million subscribers by September 2024, in part because it lost the right to air popular Indian cricket competitions.

A few months ago, Mr. Chapek said the company’s previous target of 230 million to 260 million, set by the company in December 2020, was “very achievable.”

In the three-month period ended July 2, Disney+ gained 14.4 million new subscribers, bringing its global total to 152.1 million subscribers. Analysts were expecting 10 million additions, according to

FactSet.

Wednesday’s report brings Disney’s total subscriber base to 221.1 million customers across all of its streaming offerings, including ESPN+ and Hulu, surpassing Netflix, its chief streaming rival, in total customers. Netflix last month reported it had 220.67 million subscribers.

Disney shares rose about 7% in after-hours trading to $120.11.

Overall for the third quarter, the world’s largest entertainment company reported profits of $1.41 billion, or 77 cents a share, up from $918 million, or 50 cents a share, in the year-ago period. Revenue increased to $21.5 billion, above the average analyst estimate of $20.99 billion on FactSet.

Since 1967, the Florida land housing Disney’s theme parks has been governed by the company, allowing it to manage Walt Disney World with little red tape. WSJ’s Robbie Whelan explains the special tax district that a Florida bill would eliminate. Photo: AP

Sales at the parks, experiences and products division—which includes Disneyland, Walt Disney World and four resorts in Europe and Asia and has historically been Disney’s most profitable segment—reached $7.4 billion for the quarter, a record, and was up 70% from a year earlier. The division posted profits of $2.2 billion for the quarter, up from $356 million a year ago.

“Demand has not abated” at the parks, Ms. McCarthy said. Since reopening in 2021 after pandemic-related closures, Disney’s theme parks haven’t been running at full capacity, but a new online reservations system and ride-reservation apps have helped the company better respond to demand and generate more revenue per visitor.

Over the past year, CEO Bob Chapek and other top Disney executives have signaled an increased focus on international markets for growing its streaming business.



Photo:

Laurent Viteur/Getty Images

Ms. McCarthy said that if economic conditions worsen, Disney could tweak the reservation system to allow more visitors in on certain days, but as of now, demand is outstripping available spots.

Disney’s direct-to-consumer segment, which includes video streaming, lost $1.1 billion in the third quarter, widening from a loss of $293 million a year earlier. Since Disney+ launched in late 2019, the segment has lost more than $7 billion. On Wednesday, Ms. McCarthy said Disney’s estimate for overall spending on content for fiscal 2022 had fallen slightly, from $32 billion to $30 billion.

Disney gave a launch date of Dec. 8 and outlined pricing information for its previously announced ad-supported tier of Disney+ in the U.S., a new product designed to expand the reach of the company’s streaming business.

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What is your outlook for Disney? Join the conversation below.

The price of the ad-free stand-alone Disney+ service will rise from its current level of $7.99 a month in the U.S. to $10.99 a month, or $109.99 a year. The new, basic Disney+ service with ads will cost $7.99 a month.

The premium Disney streaming bundle, which includes ad-free versions of Disney+ and Hulu, as well as a version of sports-focused ESPN+ with ads, will remain at its current price of $19.99 a month in the U.S., while a bundle that includes all three services, but with ads on Hulu, will rise in price by $1 a month, to $14.99.

Mr. Chapek defended the price increases, saying that when it was launched, Disney+ was among the most competitively-priced streaming offerings and that the company has added more and higher-quality content to the service.

“I think it’s easy to say that we’re the best value in streaming,” Mr. Chapek said Wednesday.

Over the past year, Mr. Chapek and other top Disney executives have signaled an increased focus on international markets for growing its streaming business. Disney is spending heavily to produce hundreds of local-language television shows in countries such as India, and over the summer, Disney+ launched in 53 new countries and territories, mainly concentrated in Eastern Europe, the Middle East and North Africa.

Pricing for a Disney+ subscription in many of these new markets runs below the $7.99 a month that American customers pay. Still, Disney+’s average monthly revenue per paid subscriber—a key metric in streaming businesses—stood at $6.27 in North America, compared with $6.29 internationally, excluding Asia’s more inexpensive Disney+ Hotstar service.

Disney+ Hotstar, the service used by Disney’s 58.4 million subscribers in India, produces just $1.20 a month per user. Some analysts and former Disney executives predict that losing cricket streaming rights will result in millions of canceled accounts over the next year.

The flagging growth of North American Disney+ subscriptions is likely the result of a glut of content being released by in movie theaters and on a proliferation of streaming services, as well as fatigue the Star Wars and Marvel superhero movie franchises, said Francisco Olivera, a Disney shareholder who manages a small family fund based in Puerto Rico that has about 15% of its holdings in Disney stock.

The addition of an ad-supported tier, higher prices and possible further integration of the Hulu service in the future, could help reduce subscriber churn and make it easier to achieve profitability, he said.

“It’s a healthier market right now with the parks recovering, so they’re really flexing their muscles on pricing,” Mr. Olivera said.

—Sarah Krouse contributed to this article.

Write to Robbie Whelan at Robbie.Whelan@wsj.com

Corrections & Amplifications
Disney+ launched in 53 new countries and territories over the summer. An earlier version of this article incorrectly said it launched in 54. (Corrected on Aug. 10)

Write to Robbie Whelan at robbie.whelan@wsj.com

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Business

Shopify Says It Will Lay Off 10% of Workers, Sending Shares Lower

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Shopify Inc.

SHOP -14.06%

is cutting roughly 1,000 workers, or 10% of its global workforce, rolling back a bet on e-commerce growth the technology company made during the pandemic, according to an internal memo.

Tobi Lütke,

the company’s founder and chief executive, told staff in a memo sent Tuesday that the layoffs are necessary as consumers resume old shopping habits and pull back on the online orders that fueled the company’s recent growth. Shopify, which helps businesses set up e-commerce websites, has warned that it expects revenue growth to slow this year.

Shopify’s shares fell 14% to $31.55 on Tuesday after The Wall Street Journal first reported on the layoffs. The shares have fallen more than 80% since they peaked in November near $175 adjusting for a recent stock split. The company reports quarterly results on Wednesday.

Mr. Lütke said he had expected that surging e-commerce sales growth would last past the Covid-19 pandemic’s ebb. “It’s now clear that bet didn’t pay off,” said Mr. Lütke in the letter, which was reviewed by the Journal. “Ultimately, placing this bet was my call to make and I got this wrong.”

The Ottawa-based company will cut jobs in all its divisions, though most of the layoffs will occur in recruiting, support and sales units, said Mr. Lütke. “We’re also eliminating overspecialized and duplicate roles, as well as some groups that were convenient to have but too far removed from building products,” he wrote. Staff who are being let go will be notified on Tuesday.

Shopify’s job cuts are among the largest so far in a wave of layoffs and hiring freezes that is washing over technology companies. Rising interest rates, supply-chain shortages and the reversal of pandemic trends, including remote work and e-commerce shopping, have cooled what was once a red-hot tech sector.

Shopify’s job cuts are the first big layoffs the company has announced since Tobi Lütke founded it in 2006.



Photo:

Cate Dingley/Bloomberg News

Netflix Inc.

cut about 300 workers in June as it deals with a loss in subscribers.

Twitter Inc.,

now mired in a legal standoff with

Elon Musk,

laid off fewer than 100 members of its talent acquisition team. Mr. Musk’s own company, electric-vehicle maker

Tesla Inc.,

late in June laid off roughly 200 people, after announcing it would cut 10% of salaried staff.

Other firms, including

Microsoft Corp.

and

Alphabet Inc.’s

Google, said they would slow hiring the rest of the year.

Tuesday’s announcement is Mr. Lütke’s first big move after Shopify’s shareholders approved a board plan to protect his voting power. The job cuts are the first big layoffs the company has announced since Mr. Lütke started the company in 2006.

Shopify’s workforce has increased from 1,900 in 2016 to roughly 10,000 in 2021, according to the company’s filings. The hiring spree was made to help keep up with booming business. E-commerce shopping surged during the pandemic, and many small-business owners created online stores to sell goods and services.

Shopify reported annual revenue growth of 86% in 2020 and 57% in 2021 to about $4.6 billion. However, the company reported a softening this year, and warned that 2022’s numbers wouldn’t benefit from the pandemic trends.

SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS

Did the pandemic have a lasting effect on your shopping habits? Join the conversation below.

In his memo on Tuesday, Mr. Lütke said, “What we see now is the mix reverting to roughly where pre-Covid data would have suggested it should be at this point. Still growing steadily, but it wasn’t a meaningful 5-year leap ahead.”

Shopify has been expanding its business in recent years to provide more services for merchants. It has developed point-of-sale hardware for retailers, launched a shopping app for its merchants to list products and created a network of fulfillment centers to ship orders for its business partners.

In May, Shopify agreed to buy U.S. fulfillment specialist Deliverr Inc. for $2.1 billion in cash and stock. It announced partnerships with Twitter in June and with YouTube earlier this month, allowing users to buy items that Shopify merchants post on those platforms.

Shopify is offering 16 weeks of severance to the laid-off workers, plus one week for every year of service.

Write to Vipal Monga at vipal.monga@wsj.com

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Business

Stocks Pull Back After Last Week’s Rally

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U.S. stocks fell on Tuesday, poised to end the month on a downbeat note after last week’s rally.

The S&P 500 was down 0.4% in afternoon trading, a day after U.S. markets were closed for Memorial Day. After snapping a seven-week losing streak last week, the benchmark index regained ground and was on track to close the month with a slight gain. The Dow Jones Industrial Average shed 0.5%, while the Nasdaq Composite fell 0.1%.

Tuesday’s session will cap another volatile trading month, during which stocks around the world swung wildly as traders tried to assess the outlook for global economies. In the U.S., stocks tumbled shortly after May began and continued falling amid a slew of earnings and economic data that came in worse than expected. 

Throughout the month, profit warnings from companies ranging from

Snap

to

Target

intensified worries about the lingering impact of inflation, and spurred investors to dump shares across several industries.

By mid-May, it seemed the S&P 500 was bound to close in a bear market, defined as a drop of 20% or more from a recent high, before a late-month rally sent stocks higher. The S&P 500 is down about 14% from its January high. 

Professional and individual investors alike waded into last week’s rally in the U.S. markets, finding opportunities to scoop up stocks that have seen their valuations fall. However, the issues that sent stocks declining earlier this month have yet to abate.

Many traders remain worried that the Federal Reserve’s plans to raise interest rates aggressively could tip the U.S. economy into a recession. Meanwhile, concerns about an economic slowdown in China and sustained supply-chain disruptions due to the pandemic and the war in Ukraine have continued to weigh on investors’ minds.

“There’s a bit of market uncertainty just about the pretty rapid rally we’ve had, and whether that can be sustained in a world where inflation is clearly still a factor,” said Brooks Macdonald Chief Investment Officer Edward Park.

European Union leaders took a big step in the economic fight against Moscow over its invasion of Ukraine by agreeing to block 90% of Russian oil imports by year-end. The embargo faced opposition from countries highly dependent on Russian crude, especially Hungary. Photo: Olivier Matthys/Associated Press

New survey data released Tuesday showed U.S. consumer confidence declined slightly in May from the previous months.

Crude prices jumped after European Union leaders said they would impose an oil embargo on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine, but later pared their gains. The sanctions are set to include a ban on insuring ships that carry Russian oil, The Wall Street Journal reported. They would include an exemption for oil delivered from Russia via pipelines, which make up one-third of EU oil purchases from Russia.

Front-month futures for Brent crude, the global benchmark, rose 1% to settle at $122.84 a barrel. West Texas Intermediate, the U.S. marker, slipped 0.3% to $114.67 a barrel.

Nine of the S&P 500’s 11 sectors were down on Tuesday. Consumer-discretionary stocks were the best-performing sector, lifted by a 3.8% rise in the shares of online-commerce giant

Amazon.com.

U.S.-traded shares of

Unilever

surged 9.9% after the consumer-goods company said it would add activist investor Nelson Peltz to its board and disclosed his fund now holds a 1.5% stake.

The S&P 500’s energy sector is on track to finish May with the largest gain among the benchmark index’s 11 groups, extending a trend that has flourished for much of 2022. But even some beaten-down stocks are set to end the month in the green, such as

Netflix,

Robinhood Markets

and

Zoom Video Communications.

“When the S&P 500 is [close to entering] a bear market, that has a big psychological impact on those seeking value,” said

Craig Erlam,

senior market analyst at Oanda. “I think the question repeatedly being asked is, ‘Are we seeing a bottom in the markets?’”

In the bond market, the yield on 10-year Treasury notes rose to 2.842% from 2.748% Friday. Bond yields and prices move in opposite directions.

Bitcoin was trading at about $31,664, according to CoinDesk, rising 1.2% from its price at 5 p.m. ET on Monday.

Overseas, the pan-continental Stoxx Europe 600 fell 0.7%, snapping a four-session winning streak, after eurozone inflation rose faster than expected. Consumer prices rose 8.1% on the year in May—the fastest past since records began in 1997—after climbing at a 7.4% rate in April. The inflation report will likely factor into the European Central Bank’s coming interest-rate decisions. Earlier this month, ECB President

Christine Lagarde

indicated that the central bank could increase its key interest rate in July for the first time in 11 years.

Traders worked on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange on Friday.



Photo:

Courtney Crow/Zuma Press

In Asia, the Shanghai Composite Index rose 1.2% after the city’s government said a two-month lockdown would be lifted Wednesday. The shutdown, designed to limit Covid-19 transmission, had slowed the Chinese economy and added to inflationary pressures elsewhere in the world by gumming up supply chains.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng rose 1.4%. Japan’s Nikkei 225 fell 0.3%.

Write to Caitlin McCabe at caitlin.mccabe@wsj.com, Joe Wallace at joe.wallace@wsj.com and Alexander Osipovich at alexander.osipovich@wsj.com

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Business

Peloton CEO John Foley to Step Down, Firm to Cut 2,800 Jobs

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Peloton Interactive Inc.

PTON 20.93%

plans to replace its chief executive, cut costs and overhaul its board after a slowdown in demand caused the once-hot bike maker’s value to plummet.

Peloton co-founder

John Foley,

who has led the company for its entire 10-year existence, is stepping down as CEO and will become executive chairman, the company told The Wall Street Journal.

Barry McCarthy,

the former chief financial officer of

Spotify Technology SA

and

Netflix Inc.,

will become CEO and president and join Peloton’s board.

The New York company will also cut roughly 2,800 jobs, affecting 20% of its corporate positions, to help cope with the drop-off in demand and widening losses. The cuts won’t affect Peloton’s instructor roster or content.

A little over two weeks ago, activist investor Blackwells Capital LLC called for Peloton to fire Mr. Foley and explore a sale of the company, which the Journal has reported is attracting potential suitors including Amazon.com Inc.

Blackwells reiterated its call Tuesday, saying Mr. Foley should leave the company entirely rather than become executive chairman. The company also released a 65-page presentation in which it estimated a sale could value Peloton above $65 a share. Peloton shares closed Monday at $29.75.

“We are open to exploring any opportunity that could create value for Peloton shareholders,” Mr. Foley said in an interview prior to Blackwells’s Tuesday release. Mr. Foley, a former Barnes & Noble Inc. executive who co-founded Peloton 10 years ago last month, declined to comment further.

The naming of a new CEO could indicate that Peloton sees an independent future for itself, or at least doesn’t want to sell at the current depressed share price. Any deal would likely require Mr. Foley’s support, as he and other insiders have shares that gave them control of over 80% of Peloton’s voting power as of Sept. 30, according to a securities filing.

Former Spotify CFO Barry McCarthy said his strength is a deep understanding of content-driven subscription models.



Photo:

Michael Nagle/Bloomberg News

Once a pandemic darling as homebound customers ordered its exercise equipment and streamed its virtual classes and its valuation soared, Peloton’s fortunes have recently sagged, with its stock until recently trading below its September 2019 IPO price of $29 a share as lockdowns ease and gyms start to fill up again.

The company’s shares fell 2% in early Tuesday trading. The company confirmed news of the leadership changes and reported a second-quarter net loss of $439 million. Peloton also lowered its revenue forecast for its full fiscal year to a range of $3.7 billion to $3.8 billion, down from its prior range of $4.4 billion to $4.5 billion.

The company’s value has fallen from a high of around $50 billion roughly a year ago to around $8 billion last week, before its shares rose 21% Monday on news of potential suitors.

Peloton has said it was planning cost cuts and reviewing the size of its workforce and production levels. Investors have been awaiting details of its plans.

Messrs. Foley and McCarthy said that the company had long been planning to hire a new CEO and that Mr. McCarthy entered the picture in the past few weeks.

“I have always thought there has to be a better CEO for Peloton than me,” said Mr. Foley, 51. “Barry is more perfectly suited than anybody I could’ve imagined.”

Mr. McCarthy, who is in his late 60s and plans to move from California to New York, said his strength is a deep understanding of content-driven subscription models, while Mr. Foley’s is in product development and marketing.

“Together we can make a complete grown-up and build a really remarkable business,” Mr. McCarthy said. He has consulted for Peloton investor Technology Crossover Ventures, sits on the boards of Instacart Inc. and Spotify, and was CFO of the music-streaming service until early 2020.

Peloton is making other personnel changes:

William Lynch,

the company’s president, will step down from his executive role but remain on the board;

Erik Blachford,

a director since 2015, will leave the board; and two new directors will be added.

The new directors are

Angel Mendez,

who runs a private artificial-intelligence company focused on supply-chain management, and

Jonathan Mildenhall,

the former chief marketing officer of

Airbnb Inc.

and co-founder of branding company TwentyFirstCenturyBrand.

Peloton said it expects to cut roughly $800 million in annual costs and reduce capital expenditures by roughly $150 million this year. The company will wind down the development of its Peloton Output Park, the $400 million factory that it said in May it was building in Ohio, and reduce its delivery teams as well as the amount of warehouse space it owns and operates.

“Where the company got over its skis is it built out a cost structure as if Covid was the new normal,” Mr. McCarthy said.

Mr. Foley has said the company is acting to improve its profitability and would share details with earnings. The company reported preliminary second-quarter revenue of $1.14 billion and said it ended the period with 2.77 million subscribers.

Peloton’s Pandemic Rise and Fall

Write to Cara Lombardo at cara.lombardo@wsj.com

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Business

Disappointing Meta, PayPal Earnings Send Shudders Through Stock Market

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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.

How the Biggest Companies Are Performing

Write to Karen Langley at karen.langley@wsj.com

Copyright ©2022 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

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Business

Stocks Close Higher on Final Day of Tumultuous Month

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The S&P 500 rose Monday but closed out its worst month since March 2020 as expectations for higher interest rates erode enthusiasm for stocks.

The broad U.S. stock index retreated 5.3% in volatile trading in January as investors wrestle with the question of how tighter monetary policy will influence equity valuations. High inflation and a strong labor market have led Federal Reserve officials to accelerate their plans for unwinding support for the economy.

The central bank last week signaled that it would begin steadily raising rates in mid-March. Adding to investors’ anxieties in recent weeks: the possibility of a Russian invasion of Ukraine and the surge of the Omicron variant of Covid-19.

The suite of concerns has led to declines across the stock market, with 10 of the S&P 500’s 11 sectors retreating in the new year. Only energy stocks have bucked the downward trend.

“January really snuck up on a lot of people,” said

Wayne Wicker,

chief investment officer at MissionSquare Retirement. “Everybody was predicting volatility, but I think the declines in January probably exceeded expectations.”

The shift by the Federal Reserve unsettles a key support for stocks. Investors credit the central bank’s near-zero short-term interest rates and program of bond-buying with helping fuel the stock market’s run from its lows of March 2020. Even after pulling back in recent weeks, the S&P 500 is trading at about double that month’s closing low.

On the final trading day of January, the S&P 500 advanced 83.70 points, or 1.9% to 4515.55. The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 406.39 points, or 1.2%, to 35131.86. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite advanced 469.31 points, or 3.4%, to 14239.88, chipping away at its monthly losses. The day’s gains built on a rally Friday for all three indexes.

Technology stocks have slumped this month as investors consider how rising interest rates could weigh on the group’s pricey valuations, which are based in part on expectations for growth far into the future.

Microsoft

shares dropped 7.5% in January, while

Nvidia’s

slumped 17%.

The Nasdaq Composite fell 9% in January, its largest one-month decline since March 2020. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fared better, losing 3.3% for the month.

“Tech was just very highly valued, very overbought,” said

Dustin Thackeray,

chief investment officer at Crewe Advisors. “It was certainly due for a pullback.”

Amateur investors took the stock market by storm a year ago, buying up shares of meme stocks like GameStop and AMC Entertainment. Many remember it as a revolution against Wall Street, but in the end, they largely just lined the pockets of major financial firms. WSJ’s Dion Rabouin explains. Illustration: Sebastian Vega

Trading in January has featured big days both up and down, as well as sharp intraday reversals.

“There has been extreme volatility so far this year,” said

Louise Dudley,

an equities portfolio manager at Federated Hermes. “People are particularly worried with the interest-rate expectations continuing to get higher. We’re definitely seeing from the U.S. that they’re very on top of the inflation numbers—they’re going to do everything they can.”

Ms. Dudley said she expects that volatility will lessen as investors get more clarity over whether inflation has peaked and how companies expect to be impacted by higher prices for energy, labor and materials.

Investors are listening for clues about companies’ expectations as corporate earnings season continues. Analysts expect that profits from companies in the S&P 500 rose 24% in the fourth quarter from a year earlier, according to FactSet. About one-third of companies in the index have reported.

Strong earnings reports, coupled with the depth of the stock-price declines in January, make some investors think the market may rise from here.

“I think there’s a good chance that last week marked a short-term bottom,” said

Andrew Slimmon,

senior portfolio manager at Morgan Stanley Investment Management. “The fundamentals have not validated the weakness”

Among individual stocks, shares of

Netflix

jumped $42.78, or 11%, to $427.14 on Monday after a ratings upgrade from

Citigroup

and share purchases by Co-Chief Executive

Reed Hastings.

Still, the stock ended January down 29%, its worst month since April 2012.

U.S.-listed shares of

Sony

rose $4.82, or 4.5%, to $111.66 after Sony Interactive Entertainment LLC said it is buying videogame developer Bungie. Earlier in January Microsoft said it would buy videogame giant

Activision Blizzard.

Citrix Systems

shares fell $3.61, or 3.4%, to $101.94 as the cloud-computing company said it would be taken private in an all-cash acquisition valued at $16.5 billion.

Shares of

L3Harris Technologies

dropped $9.38, or 4.3%, to $209.29 after the aerospace and defense company gave a downbeat revenue outlook. 

Some investors are worried that the reversal of easy-money policies will weigh on tech stocks.



Photo:

Allie Joseph/Associated Press

In bond markets, the yield on the benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury note was little changed, edging up to 1.780% Monday from 1.779% Friday. The monthly yield gain was the largest since March 2021. Yields rise as bond prices fall.

Global oil benchmark Brent crude gained 17% for the month to $91.21 per barrel, its highest settle value since October 2014. Some analysts predict the price of oil will head even higher.

The price of gold slipped in January, losing 1.8% to $1795.00 per troy ounce. Bitcoin fell 17% in January to $38,443.54 at 5 p.m. ET Monday.

Overseas, the pan-continental Stoxx Europe 600 gained 0.7% for the day. In Asia, markets were closed in China and South Korea for a holiday. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng and Japan’s Nikkei 225 each added more than 1%. 

Macau Legend Development

shares fell 19% in Hong Kong after media reports of the arrest of its chief executive over the weekend, on suspicion of money laundering and illegal gambling, including operating online casinos.

Write to Karen Langley at karen.langley@wsj.com and Caitlin Ostroff at caitlin.ostroff@wsj.com

Copyright ©2022 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

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Business

Bitcoin, Netflix, Peloton, Coinbase: What to Watch When the Stock Market Opens Today

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Stock futures are falling after disappointing earnings reports from some popular technology stocks. Here’s what we’re watching at the end of a rough week on Wall Street:

  • Bitcoin’s price fell below $40,000, and crypto stocks were dragged down with it.

    Coinbase

    COIN 0.97%

    dropped 5.6% ahead of the bell, and bitcoin miners

    Marathon Digital

    MARA -0.08%

    and

    Riot Blockchain

    RIOT -0.11%

    slid 7.8% and 8.7% respectively.

  • Netflix

    NFLX -1.48%

    plunged 19% premarket. The streaming giant said it expects to add a much smaller number of subscribers this quarter than it did a year ago as it adjusts to growing competition and lasting disruptions from the coronavirus pandemic. The bad news seemed to rub off on streaming-device maker Roku, which shed 4% premarket.

  • Peloton

    PTON -23.93%

    powered 5.5% higher premarket, but that only makes up a bit of Thursday’s 24% drop. The company is reviewing the size of its workforce and resetting production levels as it adapts to more seasonal demand for its exercise equipment.

A Peloton stationary bike at one of the fitness company’s studios in New York, Dec. 4, 2019.



Photo:

Scott Heins/Getty Images

  • Intel

    INTC -2.95%

    nudged down 0.2%. The company plans to invest at least $20 billion in new chip-making capacity in Ohio.

  • CSX

    CSX -0.03%

    fell 3.2%, though the railroad operator is projecting that shipping volume will rise faster than GDP this year and reported a slight earnings beat.

  • Ally Financial

    ALLY -0.02%

    shares slipped 2.4% premarket after it reported lower earnings per share during the recent quarter from a year prior.

  • Huntington Bancshares

    HBAN -2.51%

    ticked down 4.5% after it also reported a slight drop in earnings per share.

Chart of the Day
  • Europe’s tech scene has struggled to emerge from the shadows of giants in the U.S. and Asia, but friendly local policies and a global overflow of investment capital are now giving the region a gusher of cash.

Write to James Willhite at james.willhite@wsj.com

Copyright ©2022 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

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Business

Get ready for the climb. Here’s what history says about stock-market returns during Fed rate-hike cycles.

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Bond yields are rising again so far in 2022. The U.S. stock market seems vulnerable to a bona fide correction. But what can you really tell from a mere two weeks into a new year? Not much and quite a lot.

One thing feels assured: the days of making easy money are over in the pandemic era. Benchmark interest rates are headed higher and bond yields, which have been anchored at historically low levels, are destined to rise in tandem.

Read: Weekend reads: How to invest amid higher inflation and as interest rates rise

It seemed as if Federal Reserve members couldn’t make that point any clearer this past week, ahead of the traditional media blackout that precedes the central bank’s first policy meeting of the year on Jan. 25-26.

The U.S. consumer-price and producer-price index releases this week have only cemented the market’s expectations of a more aggressive or hawkish monetary policy from the Fed.

The only real question is how many interest-rate increases will the Federal Open Market Committee dole out in 2022. JPMorgan Chase & Co.
JPM,
-6.15%
CEO Jamie Dimon intimated that seven might be the number to beat, with market-based projections pointing to the potential for three increases to the federal funds rate in the coming months.

Check out: Here’s how the Federal Reserve may shrink its $8.77 trillion balance sheet to combat high inflation

Meanwhile, yields for the 10-year Treasury note yielded 1.771% Friday afternoon, which means that yields have climbed by about 26 basis points in the first 10 trading days to start a calendar year, which would be the briskest such rise since 1992, according to Dow Jones Market Data. Back 30 years ago, the 10-year rose 32 basis points to around 7% to start that year.

The 2-year note
TMUBMUSD02Y,
0.960%,
which tends to be more sensitive to the Fed’s interest rate moves, is knocking on the door of 1%, up 24 basis points so far this year, FactSet data show.

But do interest rate increases translate into a weaker stock market?

As it turns out, during so-called rate-hike cycles, which we seem set to enter into as early as March, the market tends to perform strongly, not poorly.

In fact, during a Fed rate-hike cycle the average return for the Dow Jones Industrial Average
DJIA,
-0.56%
is nearly 55%, that of the S&P 500
SPX,
+0.08%
is a gain of 62.9% and the Nasdaq Composite
COMP,
+0.59%
has averaged a positive return of 102.7%, according to Dow Jones, using data going back to 1989 (see attached table). Fed interest rate cuts, perhaps unsurprisingly, also yield strong gains, with the Dow up 23%, the S&P 500 gaining 21% and the Nasdaq rising 32%, on average during a Fed rate hike cycle.

Dow Jones Market Data

Interest rate cuts tend to occur during periods when the economy is weak and rate hikes when the economy is viewed as too hot by some measure, which may account for the disparity in stock market performance during periods when interest-rate reductions occur.

To be sure, it is harder to see the market producing outperformance during a period in which the economy experiences 1970s-style inflation. Right now, it feels unlikely that bullish investors will get a whiff of double-digit returns based on the way stocks are shaping up so far in 2022. The Dow is down 1.2%, the S&P 500 is off 2.2%, while the Nasdaq Composite is down a whopping 4.8% thus far in January.

Read: Worried about a bubble? Why you should overweight U.S. equities this year, according to Goldman

What’s working?

So far this year, winning stock market trades have been in energy, with the S&P 500’s energy sector
SP500.10,
+2.44%

XLE,
+2.35%
looking at a 16.4% advance so far in 2022, while financials
SP500.40,
-1.01%

XLF,
-1.04%
are running a distant second, up 4.4%. The other nine sectors of the S&P 500 are either flat or lower.

Meanwhile, value themes are making a more pronounced comeback, eking out a 0.1% weekly gain last week, as measured by the iShares S&P 500 Value ETF
IVE,
-0.14%,
but month to date the return is 1.2%.

See: These 3 ETFs let you play the hot semiconductor sector, where Nvidia, Micron, AMD and others are growing sales rapidly

What’s not working?

Growth factors are getting hammered thus far as bond yields rise because a rapid rise in yields makes their future cash flows less valuable. Higher interest rates also hinder technology companies’ ability to fund stock buy backs. The popular iShares S&P 500 Growth ETF
IVW,
+0.28%
is down 0.6% on the week and down 5.1% in January so far.

What’s really not working?

Biotech stocks are getting shellacked, with the iShares Biotechnology ETF
IBB,
+0.65%
down 1.1% on the week and 9% on the month so far.

And a popular retail-oriented ETF, the SPDR S&P Retail ETF
XRT,
-2.10%
tumbled 4.1% last week, contributing to a 7.4% decline in the month to date.

And Cathie Wood’s flagship ARK Innovation ETF
ARKK,
+0.33%
finished the week down nearly 5% for a 15.2% decline in the first two weeks of January. Other funds in the complex, including ARK Genomic Revolution ETF
ARKG,
+1.04%
and ARK Fintech Innovation ETF
ARKF,
-0.99%
are similarly woebegone.

And popular meme names also are getting hammered, with GameStop Corp.
GME,
-4.76%
down 17% last week and off over 21% in January, while AMC Entertainment Holdings
AMC,
-0.44%
sank nearly 11% on the week and more than 24% in the month to date.

Gray swan?

MarketWatch’s Bill Watts writes that fears of a Russian invasion of Ukraine are on the rise, and prompting analysts and traders to weigh the potential financial-market shock waves. Here’s what his reporting says about geopolitical risk factors and their longer-term impact on markets.

Week ahead

U.S. markets are closed in observance of the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday on Monday.

Read: Is the stock market open on Monday? Here are the trading hours on Martin Luther King Jr. Day

Notable U.S. corporate earnings

(Dow components in bold)
TUESDAY:

Goldman Sachs Group
GS,
-2.52%,
Truist Financial Corp.
TFC,
+0.96%,
Signature Bank
SBNY,
+0.07%,
PNC Financial
PNC,
-1.33%,
J.B. Hunt Transport Services
JBHT,
-1.04%,
Interactive Brokers Group Inc.
IBKR,
-1.22%

WEDNESDAY:

Morgan Stanley
MS,
-3.58%,
Bank of America
BAC,
-1.74%,
U.S. Bancorp.
USB,
+0.09%,
State Street Corp.
STT,
+0.32%,
UnitedHealth Group Inc.
UNH,
+0.27%,
Procter & Gamble
PG,
+0.96%,
Kinder Morgan
KMI,
+1.82%,
Fastenal Co.
FAST,
-2.55%

THURSDAY:

Netflix
NFLX,
+1.25%,
United Airlines Holdings
UAL,
-2.97%,
American Airlines
AAL,
-4.40%,
Baker Hughes
BKR,
+4.53%,
Discover Financial Services
DFS,
-1.44%,
CSX Corp.
CSX,
-0.82%,
Union Pacific Corp.
UNP,
-0.55%,
The Travelers Cos. Inc. TRV, Intuitive Surgical Inc. ISRG, KeyCorp.
KEY,
+1.16%

FRIDAY:

Schlumberger
SLB,
+4.53%,
Huntington Bancshares Inc.
HBAN,
+1.73%

U.S. economic reports

Tuesday

  • Empire State manufacturing index for January due at 8:30 a.m. ET
  • NAHB home builders index for January at 10 a.m.

Wednesday

  • Building permits and starts for December at 8:30 a.m.
  • Philly Fed Index for January at 8:30 a.m.

Thursday

  • Initial jobless claims for the week ended Jan. 15 (and continuing claims for Jan. 8) at 8:30 a.m.
  • Existing home sales for December at 10 a.m.

Friday

Leading economic indicators for December at 10 a.m.

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