Jan 23 (Reuters) – Spotify Technology SA (SPOT.N) said on Monday it plans to cut 6% of its workforce and would take a related charge of up to nearly $50 million, adding to the massive layoffs in the technology sector in preparation for a possible recession.
The tech industry is facing a demand downturn after two years of pandemic-powered growth during which it had hired aggressively. That has led firms from Meta Platforms Inc (META.O) to Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) to shed thousands of jobs.
“Over the last few months we’ve made a considerable effort to rein in costs, but it simply hasn’t been enough,” Chief Executive Daniel Elk said in a blog post announcing the roughly 600 job cuts.
“I was too ambitious in investing ahead of our revenue growth,” he added, echoing a sentiment voiced by other tech bosses in recent months.
Spotify’s operating expenditure grew at twice the speed of its revenue last year as the audio-streaming company aggressively poured money into its podcast business, which is more attractive for advertisers due to higher engagement levels.
Reuters Graphics
At the same time, businesses pulled back on ad spending on the platform, mirroring a trend seen at Meta and Google parent Alphabet Inc (GOOGL.O), as rapid interest rate hikes and the fallout from the Russia-Ukraine war pressured the economy.
The company, whose shares rose 5.8% to $103.55, is now restructuring itself in a bid to cut costs and adjust to the deteriorating economic picture.
It said Dawn Ostroff, the head of content and advertising, was leaving after an over four-year stint at the company. Ostroff helped shape Spotify’s podcast business and guided it through backlash around Joe Rogan’s show for allegedly spreading misinformation about COVID-19.
The company said it is appointing Alex Norström, head of the freemium business, and research and development boss Gustav Söderström as co-presidents.
Spotify had about 9,800 full-time employees as of Sept. 30.
($1 = 0.9196 euros)
Reporting by Eva Mathews in Bengaluru; Editing by Sherry Jacob-Phillips and Shailesh Kuber
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Dec 30 (Reuters) – A grad student seeking a criminal justice degree from Washington State University has been arrested and charged with first-degree murder in the stabbing deaths of four University of Idaho students more than six weeks ago, officials said on Friday.
Police in eastern Pennsylvania acting on a fugitive arrest warrant took Bryan Christopher Kohberger, 28, into custody on Thursday night, according to James Fry, chief of police in Moscow, Idaho, where the University of Idaho campus is located. Fry said Kohberger resides in Pennsylvania.
Kohberger was arraigned in Pennsylvania and remained jailed without bond awaiting a hearing on Tuesday to determine whether he will waive extradition and return voluntarily to Idaho to face charges in the high-profile case, said Latah County, Idaho, prosecutor Bill Thompson.
Thompson said Kohberger was charged with four counts of first-degree murder and felony burglary in a crime that unnerved the small college town in Idaho’s northwest panhandle where the four victims – three women and a man in their early 20s – were slain.
The four were all found fatally stabbed on the morning of Nov. 13 inside the off-campus house where the three women lived, two of them staying in one room, and one sharing her room with the fourth victim, her boyfriend.
Two other female roommates in the house at the time were unharmed, apparently sleeping through the killings. Police said the cellphone of one of the survivors was used to call emergency-911 when the bodies were first discovered.
“This is not the end of this investigation. In fact it is a new beginning,” Thompson told a news conference.
The victims – identified as Ethan Chapin, 20, of Conway, Washington; Xana Kernodle, 20, of Avondale, Arizona; Madison Mogen, 21, of Coeur d’Alene, Idaho; and Kaylee Goncalves, 21, of Rathdrum, Idaho – all suffered multiple stab wounds, Fry said. Some of the bodies also showed defensive wounds, Fry said, suggesting they had tried to fend off their attacker.
NIGHT OUT BEFORE KILLINGS
[1/5] The Sigma Chi fraternity house, where victim Ethan Chapin was a member, is pictured after four University of Idaho students were found killed in their residence on November 13 in Moscow, Idaho, U.S., November 30, 2022. REUTERS/Lindsey Wasson
Chapin and his girlfriend, Kernodle, had attended a fraternity party the night before, while Mogen and Goncalves, who were best friends, had visited a local bar and food truck. Both pairs returned to the house shortly before 2 a.m. The two other roommates had gotten home about an hour earlier.
Authorities say they believe the slayings occurred between 3 and 4 a.m. on Nov. 13.
The victims appeared to have been killed with a knife or some other “edged” weapon, police have said. Fry said the murder weapon has not been recovered, though police had found a car they were searching for in connection with the killings.
Authorities said Kohberger was a graduate student at Washington State University (WSU) in Pullman, Washington, about 10 miles from the University of Idaho campus.
WSU issued a statement on Friday saying its police department and Idaho law enforcement officers searched both Kohberger’s apartment residence and his office on campus.
It said Kohberger “had completed his first semester as a PhD student in WSU’s criminal justice program earlier this month,” suggesting he had remained on campus, just miles away from the crime scene across the Idaho state line, for a number of weeks before returning to Pennsylvania.
Asked at the press conference in Moscow whether authorities there were seeking additional suspects, Fry said, “We have an individual in custody who committed these horrible crimes, and I do believe our community is safe.”
Fry said his department had received more than 19,000 tips from the public and had conducted more than 300 interviews as part of its investigation, assisted by state police and the FBI. He and Thompson urged anyone who knew anything about the accused killer to come forward.
He declined to offer a possible motive for the crime or to give any details about the investigation, such as how authorities traced Kohberger to Albrightsville, Pennsylvania, a small community in the Pocono Mountains resort region about 90 miles north of Philadelphia, where he was arrested.
Thompson said more details would emerge publicly from a probable-cause affidavit that summarizes the factual basis for the charges but remains under court seal until the suspect is physically back in Idaho to be served his arrest warrant.
Reporting by Rich McKay in Atlanta and Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Additional reporting by Brendan O’Brien in Chicago and Jonathan Allen in New York; Editing by David Gregorio and Neil Fullick
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WASHINGTON, Dec 20 (Reuters) – The U.S. Senate planned to take its first vote on a $1.66 trillion government funding bill on Tuesday, as lawmakers scrambled to pass the measure and avert a possible partial government shutdown beginning on Saturday.
The total funding proposed by the sweeping bill, is up from the approximately $1.5 trillion the previous year.
It includes other measures agreed on by negotiators from both parties, including a ban on the use of TikTok on government-owned devices and clarification of Congress’s role in certifying elections, an attempt to avoid a repeat of the violence of Jan. 6, 2021.
Senate and House of Representatives leaders aim to pass the 4,155-page bill and send it to Democratic President Joe Biden by the end of the week to ensure no interruptions to the government’s activities.
“We’re going to get going on this process today,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said, referring to a planned Tuesday vote that would be the first in a series of steps clearing the way for passage by Friday.
While some conservative Senate Republicans have raised objections to the bill, as have House Republicans who would prefer to delay a deal until they take the majority on Jan. 3, top Senate Republican Mitch McConnell said most of his caucus supports it.
“We’re moving toward completing the business for the year,” McConnell told reporters. “And I think in a highly productive way from the point of view of the vast majority of Senate Republicans.”
Failure could bring a partial government shutdown beginning Saturday, just before Christmas, and possibly lead into a months-long standoff after Republicans take control of the House on Jan. 3, breaking the grip of Biden’s Democrats on both chambers of Congress.
Budget experts found fault with the bill’s size.
“This budget is too late and too big,” said Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. She noted that much of the spending increases are to keep pace with inflation, but added, “a lower number would help bring inflation down.”
Included in the bill is $44.9 billion in emergency assistance to Ukraine and NATO allies and $40.6 billion to assist communities across the United States recovering from natural disasters and other matters.
The Ukraine funds would be used for military training, equipment, logistics and intelligence support, as well as for replenishing U.S. equipment sent to Kyiv. It also includes funding to prepare for and respond to potential nuclear and radiological incidents in Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin has not ruled out the use of nuclear weapons in the conflict with Ukraine.
Included in the Ukraine package is $13.4 billion in economic aide and $2.4 billion to help resettle Ukrainians in the United States.
The military aid would be on top of the record $858 billion in U.S. defense spending for the year, which is up from last year’s $740 billion and also exceeds Biden’s request.
On the non-defense side of the ledger, the bill’s negotiators have set funding at $800 billion, a $68 billion increase over the previous year. This includes increased healthcare funding for poor children.
WISH LIST
Democrats and Republicans alike had aimed to tuck as many legislative wish-list items as possible into the “omnibus” bill funding the government through the end of this fiscal year on Sept. 30, 2023, without derailing the whole package.
This was the second year in a row Congress included funding for hundreds of largely unrelated projects requested by individual lawmakers. Congress had abandoned such “earmarks” a decade ago after a series of corruption scandals, but have brought them back in recent years as a way to build legislative buy-in for spending bills.
Among the most significant add-ons is the bipartisan Electoral Count Act, which overhauls and clarifies Congress’ certification process for presidential elections.
Democrats and many Republicans see the measure as crucial to avoiding a repeat of the chaos that occurred almost two years ago when a mob of Donald Trump supporters attacked the Capitol building in an attempt to overturn Biden’s victory.
U.S. lawmakers also included a proposal to bar federal employees from using Chinese app TikTok on government-owned devices. And they backed a proposal to lift a looming deadline imposing a new safety standard for modern cockpit alerts for two new versions of Boeing Co’s (BA.N) 737 MAX aircraft.
Measures left out include legislation that would have provided citizenship to “Dreamer” immigrants, who illegally entered the United States as children.
Criminal justice reform advocates also came away largely empty-handed, after a compromise measure that would have dramatically lessened the sentencing disparity between crack cocaine and powder cocaine collapsed.
The cannabis industry also suffered a defeat after a closely watched measure that would have shored up banking regulations for legal marijuana companies was excluded.
Reporting by Richard Cowan and Gram Slattery in Washington, additional reporting by Doina Chiacu and Andy Sullivan in Washington and Jahnavi Nidumolu in Bengaluru; Editing by Scott Malone and Jonathan Oatis
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Gram Slattery
Thomson Reuters
Washington-based correspondent covering campaigns and Congress. Previously posted in Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo and Santiago, Chile, and has reported extensively throughout Latin America. Co-winner of the 2021 Reuters Journalist of the Year Award in the business coverage category for a series on corruption and fraud in the oil industry. He was born in Massachusetts and graduated from Harvard College.
Nov 11 (Reuters) – Actor Alec Baldwin filed a lawsuit on Friday against the armorer and three other crew members over the deadly shooting on the set of the Western movie “Rust,” in which a gun that Baldwin was using during rehearsal killed cinematographer Halyna Hutchins.
Baldwin’s suit was filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court as a cross complaint stemming from a previous suit in which a different member of the crew named Baldwin and the others as defendants.
It is one of many pieces of litigation stemming from the tragedy of Oct. 21, 2021, which is also under criminal investigation and could result in New Mexico state charges.
Baldwin’s cross complaint names armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, first assistant director Dave Halls, prop supplier Seth Kenney and prop master Sarah Zachry.
An attorney for Gutierrez-Reed, Jason Bowles, said in an email on Saturday that, “Baldwin is responsible for this tragedy.”
Attorneys for Halls and Kenney did not immediately respond to requests for statements in their clients’ defense. Reuters could not locate an attorney for Zachry.
All four were also named as defendants along with Baldwin in the original lawsuit filed by a script supervisor who claimed the shooting caused her severe emotional distress.
Baldwin’s cross complaint alleges negligence and seeks damages to be determined at trial for the “immense grief” he endures.
“This tragedy happened because live bullets were delivered to the set and loaded into the gun, Gutierrez-Reed failed to check the bullets or the gun carefully, Halls failed to check the gun carefully and yet announced the gun was safe before handing it to Baldwin, and Zachry failed to disclose that Gutierrez-Reed had been acting recklessly off set and was a safety risk to those around her,” Baldwin’s cross complaint said.
The suit was written by Luke Nikas, an attorney for Baldwin who is with the firm Quinn Emanuel.
Hutchins was killed when a revolver Baldwin was rehearsing with during filming in New Mexico fired a live round that hit her and movie director Joel Souza, who survived.
In a television interview, the actor said he did not pull the trigger of the Colt .45 revolver and it fired after he cocked it.
An FBI forensic test of the single-action revolver found it “functioned normally” and would not fire without the trigger being pulled.
Reporting by Daniel Trotta; Editing by Leslie Adler and Daniel Wallis
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SAO PAULO, Oct 23 (Reuters) – A few days before Brazil’s first round of voting in this month’s general election, a 13-second TikTok video electrified supporters of President Jair Bolsonaro: soccer star Neymar coming out in favor of his re-election bid.
The video posted on Sep. 29 showed Neymar dancing to a campaign jingle highlighting Bolsonaro’s position on the ballot, and the president was quick to share it on social media.
Even as the Paris St Germain forward kept mum on his post apart from lip-syncing the song, the move threw down the gauntlet for other footballers to show their support for the far-right leader, including internationals Thiago Silva and Daniel Alves.
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Without mentioning Bolsonaro by name, they shared posts with some of his catch phrases, including slogans popular with Brazil’s evangelical Christians, who back him overwhelmingly. In a country where evangelical churches have made major inroads in poorer communities, eroding the Catholic majority, many footballers wear their evangelical faith on their sleeve.
“There is this slogan that I love,” Alves said, using a stock Bolsonaro phrase: “Brazil above everything, God above all.”
Bolsonaro lost the first round to his leftist challenger Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva by a tighter-than-expected margin, setting up an Oct. 30 runoff.
The outpouring on social media bolstered the growing anecdotal evidence that many of Brazil’s most prominent soccer players now lean to the right.
Many players favor conservative politicians because of their own life stories, said sports commentator Juca Kfouri, noting that most soccer stars in Brazil come from poor neighborhoods and reach stardom through their own talents.
“So they tend to be self-centered and repeat that authoritarian speech about meritocracy,” said Kfouri, who has endorsed Lula.
Anthropologist Roberto DaMatta also highlighted soccer as an important tool for advancement in Brazil, but added that without deeper research it would be difficult to reach a firm conclusion about players’ political preferences across the board.
“It would be pretty speculative.”
‘WE’RE ON THE SAME SIDE’
Neymar’s video has been watched nearly 60 million times on Bolsonaro’s Instagram account alone.
While sharing it, the president linked his potential victory to the record-extending sixth World Cup title Brazil will pursue this year in Qatar.
Before Neymar, the likes of Tottenham Hotspur’s Lucas Moura and Fluminense’s Felipe Melo had thrown their lot in with Bolsonaro, but the endorsement from the national team’s number 10 triggered an even wider reaction. He was joined by retired players such as 2002 world champion Rivaldo and former Inter Milan goalkeeper Julio Cesar.
“Neymar, we are on the same side again,” Cesar said.
Lula has also gathered a handful of soccer endorsements, but fewer current stars.
Many of his most prominent supporters in the sport are former players linked to Brazil’s 1980s campaign to end military dictatorship, such as former Brazil international Walter Casagrande Junior.
As a union leader at the time, Lula was a thorn in the side of the generals who ruled the country for two decades – a military regime which Bolsonaro has been quick to defend.
“I’m not a radical leftist, I’m just for democracy,” Casagrande told Reuters. “We are living in chaos. The Bolsonaro administration is destroying the country.”
Former Brazil manager Vanderlei Luxemburgo, Lyon icon Juninho Pernambucano and 1994 world champion Rai are also backing Lula. Rai’s older brother, the late soccer star Socrates, marched against the military regime and started a pro-democracy movement alongside Casagrande at the Corinthians club in the 1980s.
Awarding a prize named after Socrates at the Ballon d’Or ceremony on Monday, Rai made an “L” sign with his hand while citing Brazil’s election, a well-known sign of support for Lula.
Among current players, Bayer Leverkusen forward Paulinho and Vizela right-back Igor Juliao were among the few to openly back the former president, who governed from 2003 to 2010.
Top footballers’ embrace of Bolsonaro has jibed with a growing tradition among conservative Brazilians who don the national team’s famous yellow jersey in street demonstrations, as Bolsonaro himself has done occasionally.
Will the players’ political stance affect Brazilians’ support for them in the World Cup?
“I don’t think so,” Kfouri said. “When the matches start, people forget it all”.
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Reporting by Gabriel Araujo; Editing by Christian Plumb and Josie Kao
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Sept 28 (Reuters) – Some major advertisers including Dyson, Mazda, Forbes and PBS Kids have suspended their marketing campaigns or removed their ads from parts of Twitter because their promotions appeared alongside tweets soliciting child pornography, the companies told Reuters.
DIRECTV and Thoughtworks also told Reuters late on Wednesday they have paused their advertising on Twitter.
Brands ranging from Walt Disney Co (DIS.N), NBCUniversal (CMCSA.O) and Coca-Cola Co (KO.N) to a children’s hospital were among more than 30 advertisers that appeared on the profile pages of Twitter accounts peddling links to the exploitative material, according to a Reuters review of accounts identified in new research about child sex abuse online from cybersecurity group Ghost Data.
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Some of tweets include key words related to “rape” and “teens,” and appeared alongside promoted tweets from corporate advertisers, the Reuters review found. In one example, a promoted tweet for shoe and accessories brand Cole Haan appeared next to a tweet in which a user said they were “trading teen/child” content.
“We’re horrified,” David Maddocks, brand president at Cole Haan, told Reuters after being notified that the company’s ads appeared alongside such tweets. “Either Twitter is going to fix this, or we’ll fix it by any means we can, which includes not buying Twitter ads.”
In another example, a user tweeted searching for content of “Yung girls ONLY, NO Boys,” which was immediately followed by a promoted tweet for Texas-based Scottish Rite Children’s Hospital. Scottish Rite did not return multiple requests for comment.
In a statement, Twitter spokesperson Celeste Carswell said the company “has zero tolerance for child sexual exploitation” and is investing more resources dedicated to child safety, including hiring for new positions to write policy and implement solutions.
She added that Twitter is working closely with its advertising clients and partners to investigate and take steps to prevent the situation from happening again.
Twitter’s challenges in identifying child abuse content were first reported in an investigation by tech news site The Verge in late August. The emerging pushback from advertisers that are critical to Twitter’s revenue stream is reported here by Reuters for the first time.
Like all social media platforms, Twitter bans depictions of child sexual exploitation, which are illegal in most countries. But it permits adult content generally and is home to a thriving exchange of pornographic imagery, which comprises about 13% of all content on Twitter, according to an internal company document seen by Reuters.
Twitter declined to comment on the volume of adult content on the platform.
Ghost Data identified the more than 500 accounts that openly shared or requested child sexual abuse material over a 20-day period this month. Twitter failed to remove more than 70% of the accounts during the study period, according to the group, which shared the findings exclusively with Reuters.
Reuters could not independently confirm the accuracy of Ghost Data’s finding in full, but reviewed dozens of accounts that remained online and were soliciting materials for “13+” and “young looking nudes.”
After Reuters shared a sample of 20 accounts with Twitter last Thursday, the company removed about 300 additional accounts from the network, but more than 100 others still remained on the site the following day, according to Ghost Data and a Reuters review.
Reuters then on Monday shared the full list of more than 500 accounts after it was furnished by Ghost Data, which Twitter reviewed and permanently suspended for violating its rules, said Twitter’s Carswell on Tuesday.
In an email to advertisers on Wednesday morning, ahead of the publication of this story, Twitter said it “discovered that ads were running within Profiles that were involved with publicly selling or soliciting child sexual abuse material.”
Andrea Stroppa, the founder of Ghost Data, said the study was an attempt to assess Twitter’s ability to remove the material. He said he personally funded the research after receiving a tip about the topic.
Twitter’s transparency reports on its website show it suspended more than 1 million accounts last year for child sexual exploitation.
It made about 87,000 reports to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, a government-funded non-profit that facilitates information sharing with law enforcement, according to that organization’s annual report.
“Twitter needs to fix this problem ASAP, and until they do, we are going to cease any further paid activity on Twitter,” said a spokesperson for Forbes.
“There is no place for this type of content online,” a spokesperson for carmaker Mazda USA said in a statement to Reuters, adding that in response, the company is now prohibiting its ads from appearing on Twitter profile pages.
A Disney spokesperson called the content “reprehensible” and said they are “doubling-down on our efforts to ensure that the digital platforms on which we advertise, and the media buyers we use, strengthen their efforts to prevent such errors from recurring.”
A spokesperson for Coca-Cola, which had a promoted tweet appear on an account tracked by the researchers, said it did not condone the material being associated with its brand and said “any breach of these standards is unacceptable and taken very seriously.”
NBCUniversal said it has asked Twitter to remove the ads associated with the inappropriate content.
CODE WORDS
Twitter is hardly alone in grappling with moderation failures related to child safety online. Child welfare advocates say the number of known child sexual abuse images has soared from thousands to tens of millions in recent years, as predators have used social networks including Meta’s Facebook and Instagram to groom victims and exchange explicit images.
For the accounts identified by Ghost Data, nearly all the traders of child sexual abuse material marketed the materials on Twitter, then instructed buyers to reach them on messaging services such as Discord and Telegram in order to complete payment and receive the files, which were stored on cloud storage services like New Zealand-based Mega and U.S.-based Dropbox, according to the group’s report.
A Discord spokesperson said the company had banned one server and one user for violating its rules against sharing links or content that sexualize children.
Mega said a link referenced in the Ghost Data report was created in early August and soon after deleted by the user, which it declined to identify. Mega said it permanently closed the user’s account two days later.
Dropbox and Telegram said they use a variety of tools to moderate content but did not provide additional detail on how they would respond to the report.
Still the reaction from advertisers poses a risk to Twitter’s business, which earns more than 90% of its revenue by selling digital advertising placements to brands seeking to market products to the service’s 237 million daily active users.
Twitter is also battling in court Tesla CEO and billionaire Elon Musk, who is attempting to back out of a $44 billion deal to buy the social media company over complaints about the prevalence of spam accounts and its impact on the business.
A team of Twitter employees concluded in a report dated February 2021 that the company needed more investment to identify and remove child exploitation material at scale, noting the company had a backlog of cases to review for possible reporting to law enforcement.
“While the amount of (child sexual exploitation content) has grown exponentially, Twitter’s investment in technologies to detect and manage the growth has not,” according to the report, which was prepared by an internal team to provide an overview about the state of child exploitation material on Twitter and receive legal advice on the proposed strategies.
“Recent reports about Twitter provide an outdated, moment in time glance at just one aspect of our work in this space, and is not an accurate reflection of where we are today,” Carswell said.
The traffickers often use code words such as “cp” for child pornography and are “intentionally as vague as possible,” to avoid detection, according to the internal documents. The more that Twitter cracks down on certain keywords, the more that users are nudged to use obfuscated text, which “tend to be harder for (Twitter) to automate against,” the documents said.
Ghost Data’s Stroppa said that such tricks would complicate efforts to hunt down the materials, but noted that his small team of five researchers and no access to Twitter’s internal resources was able to find hundreds of accounts within 20 days.
Twitter did not respond to a request for further comment.
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Reporting by Sheila Dang in New York and Katie Paul in Palo Alto; Additional reporting by Dawn Chmielewski in Los Angeles; Editing by Kenneth Li and Edward Tobin
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Yves Guillemot, CEO of Ubisoft, speaks on stage during the Ubisoft E3 conference at the Orpheum theatre in Los Angeles, California June 15, 2015. REUTERS/Mario Anzuoni
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‘We can do whatever we want,’ founder CEO says
Ubisoft to create three mobile games with Netflix
Tencent deal comes on heels of M&A wave in gaming industry
PARIS, Sept 10 (Reuters) – Ubisoft (UBIP.PA), France’s biggest video games maker, is still open to other partners after a deal in which China’s Tencent (0700.HK) will raise its stake in the company, its co-founder and CEO Yves Guillemot said on Thursday.
Guillemot’s comments, made at a closed press event whose content the company asked not to be made public before a showcase event online on Saturday, came on the heels of a rough day for Ubisoft’s stock, which tumbled 17% after the group announced Tencent would become its single biggest shareholder with an overall stake of 11%. read more
The deal values the “Assassin’s Creed” maker at about $10 billion.
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“We remain totally independent and we can act with any outside company if we want to,” said Guillemot, who along his four brothers founded Ubisoft in 1986. “That was a big negotiation with Tencent,” he added. “We can do whatever we want.”
Traders and analysts have said the Tencent deal, which sees the world’s largest games firm by revenue enter into a shareholder pact with the Guillemots, removed the speculative appeal of Ubisoft shares.
The group has long been seen as a takeover target as the Guillemots hold a minority stake in the group. Still, the Guillemot brothers managed to fend off a raid by French tycoon Vincent Bollore via his media group Vivendi (VIV.PA).
Smaller mobile video game maker Gameloft, formerly led by Yves Guillemot’s brother Michel, was gobbled up by Vivendi six years ago.
The secretive siblings, sons of agricultural traders from a small town in Brittany, western France, have vowed to protect their independence, a goal which Yves Guillemot, 62, reasserted on Thursday. “Our first intention is to own our destiny,” he said.
MEANINGFUL PROGRESS
That prospect was tested recently by a combination of weak financial results and allegations of sexual harassment, that led to a revamp of the company’s governance and pledges to change a corporate culture described as sexist by some former employees.
“Yes, we stumbled, and we acknowledge that”, Guillemot said. “We learned a lot along the way and have made meaningful progress with concrete action plans collectively led by our leaders.”
Ubisoft burnt through about 200 million euros in cash operationally during its 2020/2021 financial year, having generated 169 million of operational cash flow the year before.
The company’s financial woes came on top of several delays in the release of new video games and heightened pressure on management, in the midst of a boom and M&A wave in the video game industry.
These were notably marked by Microsoft’s plan to acquire “Call of Duty” maker Activision Blizzard for $69 billion.
As part of its plan to return to growth, Ubisoft is aiming to deploy its three “pillar” games – “Assassin’s Creed”, “Far Cry” and “Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six” – on all digital platforms, Guillemot said.
The group aims for these three brands to reach a total of 2 billion euros in annual revenue within five years, Guillemot said.
Guillemot said “Assassin’s Creed” will release its next edition “Mirage” in 2023. Ubisoft is also partnering with streaming platform Netflix (NFLX.O) to develop three original mobile games, including one based on Assassin’s Creed.
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Reporting by Mathieu Rosemain; Editing by David Holmes
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Aug 12 (Reuters) – Peloton Interactive Inc (PTON.O) said on Friday it would cut jobs, shut stores and raise prices on its exercise equipment including treadmills and top-end bikes as it undertakes a company-wide revamp to shore up its revenue and improve cash flow.
Shares of the company surged about 11% in afternoon trade after the company said in a memo it would cut about 800 jobs and reduce its retail presence in North America.
Under Chief Executive Officer Barry McCarthy, Peloton has implemented a slew of measures including cost cuts to steady its business as a pandemic-driven demand for its treadmills and exercise bikes quickly fizzles.
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On Friday, the company outlined a plan to aggressively reduce its retail presence in the United States and eliminate a number of jobs in warehouses and customer support teams.
Shifting final mile delivery to third-party logistics providers will reduce per-product delivery costs by up to 50%, McCarthy said in the memo seen by Reuters.
The company is also raising prices of its Bike+ and Tread machines in five markets, including the United States and Canada. (https://bit.ly/3peZhNv)
The company, which lowered the prices for its products earlier this year, said it would now raise prices by $500 to $2,495 on Bike+ and by $800 to $3,495 on Tread in the United States.
McCarthy, a former Netflix Inc (NFLX.O) executive, said he was aiming to boost Peloton’s software engineering team, terming it as “right investments” to drive growth.
($1 = 1.2782 Canadian dollars)
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Reporting by Nathan Gomes and Kannaki Deka in Bengaluru; Additional reporting by Deborah Sophia; Editing by Krishna Chandra Eluri and Anil D’Silva
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FILE PHOTO: The cast of “Friends” appears in the photo room at the 54th annual Emmy Awards in Los Angeles September 22, 2002. From the left are, David Schwimmer, Lisa Kudrow, Matthew Perry, Courteney Cox Arquette, Jennifer Aniston and Matt LeBlanc. REUTERS/Mike Blake/File Photo/File Photo/File Photo/File Photo
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BEIJING, Feb 13 (Reuters) – Chinese fans of U.S. sitcom “Friends” have expressed dismay online after noticing censorship in recently released episodes of the beloved show, including of LGBT issues.
Several major Chinese streaming sites, including Tencent (0700.HK), Baidu’s IQiyi Inc (IQ.O), Alibaba’s Youku, and Bilibili (9626.HK), started showing a version of the first season of the show on Friday, its first re-release in China for several years.
But fans soon noticed parts of the long-running show were different to what they had seen before and complained of censorship which included the removal of lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans-related content, as well as mistranslations.
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In one example, a conversation where a main character, Ross, explained his wife was a lesbian, was deleted.
Another scene where another character, Joey, suggested going to a “strip joint” was translated as “go out to play” on the version shown on Tencent Video. Reuters confirmed the Tencent version of the re-released season included those changes.
In recent years, China has shut tens of thousands of websites and social media accounts that contained what it said was illegal content as well as “vulgar” and pornographic material.
“I resolutely boycott the castrated version of ‘Friends’,” said one user on China’s Twitter-like Weibo.
“This is a defiling a classic,” said another.
A third user said “if you can’t show the complete version under the current atmoshphere, then don’t import it.”
The discussion was a “hot search topic” on Weibo on Sunday.
But in a sign the discussion itself may have caught the attention of censors, searches on Weibo on Sunday for several variations on the hashtag or search term #Friendshasbeencensored produced either zero or limited recent results.
‘Friends’ has a vast fan base in China. Many watched it on pirated DVDs or downloads after the hit 10-season show first aired in the 1990s.
Chinese streaming site SOHU TV bought the broadcasting rights to the show but this ended in 2018, the company said.
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Reporting by Albee Zhang and Martin Quin Pollard; Editing by Lincoln Feast.
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
The Netflix logo is seen on a TV remote controller, in this illustration taken January 20, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration
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LOS ANGELES, Jan 20 (Reuters) – Netflix Inc dashed hopes for a quick rebound after forecasting weak first-quarter subscriber growth on Thursday, sending shares sinking nearly 20% and wiping away most of its remaining pandemic-fueled gains from 2020.
The world’s largest streaming service projected it would add 2.5 million customers from January through March, less than half of the 5.9 million analysts had forecast, according to Refinitiv IBES data.
Netflix tempered its growth expectations, citing the late arrival of anticipated content, such as the second season of “Bridgerton” and the Ryan Reynolds time-travel movie “The Adam Project.”
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Shares of Netflix plummeted nearly 20% to $408.13 in after-hours trading. Competitor Walt Disney Co (DIS.N), which has staked its future on building a strong streaming business, saw its shares sink 4%. Streaming device Roku Inc (ROKU.O) fell 5%.
Nasdaq futures dropped almost 1%, showing traders expect the tech-heavy index to open lower on Friday.
Netflix added 8.3 million customers from October to December, when it released a heavy lineup of new programming including the star-studded movies “Red Notice” and “Don’t Look Up” and a new season of “The Witcher.” Industry analysts had projected 8.4 million.
The company’s global subscriber total at the end of 2021 reached 221.8 million.
In a letter to shareholders, Netflix said it believed the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and economic hardships in several parts of the world like Latin America may have kept subscriber growth from rebounding to levels seen before the pandemic.
COVID “created a lot of bumpiness” that made it hard to project subscriber numbers, “but all the fundamentals of the business are pretty solid,” Co-Chief Executive Ted Sarandos said in a post-earnings video interview.
The company posted adjusted earnings per share of $1.33, crushing analyst consensus estimates of 82 cents. Revenue hit $7.71 billion, in line with estimates.
Netflix last week raised prices in its biggest market, the United States and Canada, where analysts say growth is stagnating, and is now looking for growth overseas.
The company rode a roller coaster during the pandemic, with steep growth early in 2020 when people were staying home and movie theaters were closed, followed by a slowdown in 2021. Netflix picked up more than 36 million customers in 2020, and 18.2 million in 2021.
Netflix’s subscriber growth in 2022 had been expected to stabilize and return to the pace logged before the pandemic, when it added 27.9 million subscribers in 2019, analysts say. The company’s upcoming slate includes new installments of “Ozark” and “Stranger Things” and a three-part Kanye West documentary.
“The pandemic lockdowns pulled forward tons of demand and it is taking longer than expected to normalize,” said Pivotal Research analyst Jeff Wlodarczak.
Competitors including Disney and AT&T Inc’s (T.N) HBO Max, are pouring billions into creating new programming to grab a share of the streaming market.
Netflix said competition “may be affecting our marginal growth some,” but added that it was still growing in every country where new streaming options have launched.
“Even in a world of uncertainty and increasing competition, we’re optimistic about our long-term growth prospects as streaming supplants linear entertainment around the world,” Netflix said in its shareholder letter.
In their video interview, executives sought to reassure investors that Netflix’s long-term prospects were bright. Sarandos said the service had not seen a decline in customer engagement or retention and he projected the switch to streaming from traditional television would continue to open opportunities worldwide. The stock remained down nearly 20%.
“The pace of the migration may be a little hard to call from time to time when there are kind of very global events or even local conditions,” Sarandos said, “But it’s absolutely happening. There’s no question of that.”
The company is looking for new ways to attract customers including with mobile video games. Netflix said it released 10 games in 2021, was pleased with the early reception and would expand its gaming portfolio in 2022.
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Reporting by Lisa Richwine and Dawn Chmielewski in Los Angeles; Additional reporting by Eva Mathews and Tiyashi Datta in Bengaluru and Noel Randewich in Oakland, Calif.; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila and Lisa Shumaker
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.