Latest news with #MetaPlatformsInc
Bloomberg
5 days ago
- Business
- Bloomberg
Blackstone Snaps Up Stakes in Office Buildings Leased by Meta
Blackstone Inc. 's real estate business purchased stakes in two office properties in Bellevue, Washington, that are leased by Meta Platforms Inc. Owner Shorenstein Investment Advisers sold an interest in two buildings, known as Blocks 5 and 6, to funds affiliated with Blackstone Real Estate, according to a statement Wednesday.
Straits Times
16-06-2025
- Business
- Straits Times
WhatsApp to show ads, offer paid subscriptions for first time
Advertisers can pay to promote their WhatsApp Channel and give it prominent placement within the Updates tab. PHOTO: AFP WhatsApp to show ads, offer paid subscriptions for first time SAN FRANCISCO - Meta Platforms Inc will begin showing ads inside its WhatsApp messaging service, opening a new potential revenue stream while the company invests heavily in artificial intelligence and other long-term projects. The ads will appear in WhatsApp's 'Updates' tab, a section of the app that's separate from a user's inbox and private conversations. The tab gets 1.5 billion visitors per day, Meta said on June 16. That tab is home to Status, WhatsApp's version of disappearing Stories, which will now carry ads. Advertisers can also pay to promote their WhatsApp Channel and give it prominent placement within the Updates tab. Channels allow brands or celebrities to post to a group of followers, like a giant email blast. As part of the advertising push, WhatsApp will also let Channel operators sell subscriptions, meaning they can create special messages just for a group of paying customers. Meta won't take a cut of any subscriptions sold through the app at launch, but eventually plans to charge 10 per cent of sales, Ms Alice Newton Rex, vice-president of product at WhatsApp, said in an interview. Meta has been spending aggressively in 2025 on AI, including to improve the large language models that underpin generative AI features in its products. The company also just agreed to invest US$14.3 billion (S$18.28 billion) for a 49 per cent stake in Scale AI, an AI data labelling startup, according to a person familiar with the deal. The expense has added pressure on Meta's main advertising business to continue growing to support the expanding AI effort. The company has spent years slowly developing a business to accompany the private messaging service acquired for US$19 billion in 2014. Advertising has never been considered a great fit given the intimacy of a private messaging inbox. Meta instead built WhatsApp to cater to small businesses, including efforts to build out digital payments and shopping features. Those services have been targeted especially in countries outside the US, such as India and Brazil, where the WhatsApp is the dominant messaging app. While payments, in particular, has been a slow moving effort given various regulatory concerns, Meta makes billions of dollars each year selling click-to-message ads on Instagram and Facebook that send users to a WhatsApp chat conversation with the advertiser. It also allows businesses to pay to reach customers on the app who have opted to receive their direct messages. Part of Meta's challenge historically has been balancing the desire to generate revenue with a desire to give WhatsApp users privacy. Meta's other advertising products are hyper-targeted and often rely on a user's personal information or browsing history. WhatsApp messages are end-to-end encrypted, and user privacy was a major promise from co-founders Jan Koum and Brian Acton, who pledged they would never sell ads inside WhatsApp. They left Meta in 2018 and 2017, respectively. WhatsApp ads will use broad, general targeting like a user's location, language preferences, and Channels that they follow, Ms Newton Rex said. Meta won't take a person's Facebook or Instagram information to target them with ads on WhatsApp unless they've explicitly linked their accounts, she added. 'We're not going to interrupt people's personal messages with ads,' Ms Newton Rex said. 'If you just want to carry on using WhatsApp for messaging and calling, then you'll never see them at all.' WhatsApp will begin a global rollout of ads beginning June 16, but it will take time for all users to start seeing them, she added. BLOOMBERG Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.
Bloomberg
11-06-2025
- Business
- Bloomberg
US Stocks Waffle as Traders Weigh US-China Trade Progress
US stocks oscillated between small gains and losses on Wednesday, as traders look past an upbeat report on cooling consumer prices and assess the outlook for global trade. The S&P 500 Index rose 0.1% as of 9:39 a.m. in New York, leaving it just 1.6% from its Feb. 19 record after Washington and Beijing said they had reached a trade framework. The Nasdaq 100 Index climbed 0.2%, putting it within 1% of its peak. A basket tracking the Magnificent Seven stocks including Nvidia Corp., Alphabet Inc. and Meta Platforms Inc. rose just 0.5%.
Yahoo
10-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
20 stocks of companies that have improved profit margins and are expected to grow quickly
Every quarter, after the majority of companies in the S&P 500 have reported their earnings results, we look at profit margins and revenue growth. The idea is that increasing sales rapidly while improving profit margins can only be a good thing. We last ran this quarterly screen in May. While the data was current and highlighted positive developments, that screen only looked back. Fund manager who sold Tesla, just in time, says investors are overlooking these tech bargains 'I prepaid our mom's rent for a year': My sister is a millionaire and never helps our mother. How do I cut her out of her will? A local restaurant has a 5% container charge and 3% kitchen-service fee. Is this as nuts as it sounds? 'The situation is extreme': I'm 65 and leaving my estate to only one grandchild. Can the others contest my will? I bought my mother-in-law a condo — and she took out a $30,000 car loan. Now she refuses to get a roommate. Now that we're between earnings seasons, it is a good time for a screen that incorporates improving profitability and anticipated sales growth. We have done this with the S&P 500 SPX, taking the sales estimates out to 2027. To run the screen, we began with the components of the S&P 500, for which quarterly gross profit margins and operating profit margins are available from FactSet for 455 companies. These figures aren't available for many companies in the financial sector because banks and insurers have their own industry-based measures of profitability. FactSet calculates the margins in a uniform manner, which means some of the data provider's calculations may differ from the margins reported by the companies. A company's gross margin is its net sales, less the cost of goods or services sold, divided by sales. Net sales are sales minus returns and discounts, such as coupons. The cost of goods or services sold includes the actual expenses when making the items or providing the services. Gross margin is an indicator of pricing power and core efficiency. A company's operating margin incorporates more expenses that aren't directly related to the production of goods and services. It can be summarized as earnings before interest and taxes, divided by sales. Here is a summary of the new screen for improved margins and estimated sales growth: Here are the 20 in the S&P 500 that passed the screen and have the highest expected compound annual growth rates (CAGR) for revenue from calendar 2025 through calendar 2027. The quarterly margin comparisons are to the right and you might need to scroll the table to see all of the data: Meta Platforms Inc. Ticker Est. sales CAGR from 2025 through 2027 Gross margin year-earlier gross margin Operating margin year-earlier operating margin Eli Lilly and Co. LLY 18.7% 82.53% 80.91% 45.29% 34.44% Oracle Corp. ORCL 17.6% 66.43% 65.23% 42.46% 41.81% DoorDash Inc. DASH 17.4% 45.51% 41.42% 10.69% 3.22% Insulet Corp. PODD 17.1% 72.79% 70.16% 20.32% 17.14% Broadcom Inc. AVGO 17.1% 64.59% 56.07% 54.46% 46.77% Teradyne Inc. TER 16.5% 59.95% 56.44% 24.66% 18.07% Fair Isaac Corp. FICO 16.5% 82.43% 79.89% 49.94% 45.69% Advanced Micro Devices Inc. AMD 15.9% 45.98% 39.61% 20.81% 15.93% Uber Technologies Inc. UBER 14.5% 32.58% 30.48% 12.49% 8.86% Monolithic Power Systems Inc. MPWR 14.2% 55.40% 55.13% 28.27% 22.66% Micron Technology Inc. MU 13.5% 37.22% 18.53% 48.34% 32.47% Workday Inc. Class A WDAY 13.1% 75.94% 75.33% 12.90% 6.61% CoStar Group Inc. CSGP 12.6% 76.71% 76.26% 0.61% -2.00% Meta Platforms Inc. META 12.6% 82.11% 81.84% 50.70% 47.83% Fortinet Inc. FTNT 12.4% 80.96% 77.48% 31.39% 25.77% Intuit Inc. INTU 12.4% 83.05% 82.38% 50.58% 49.03% Enphase Energy Inc. ENPH 12.0% 46.29% 42.55% 15.45% -2.68% Quanta Services Inc. PWR 11.6% 11.62% 10.85% 7.25% 6.42% Netflix Inc. NFLX 11.5% 49.31% 46.95% 68.30% 68.24% Seagate Technology Holdings PLC STX 11.4% 35.19% 25.50% 23.33% 12.39% Source: FactSet Combinations of improving margins and high expected growth rates are compelling, but a stock screen has its limits. If you are interested in any individual stocks for investment, you should do your own research and form your own opinions about companies' long-term prospects. One way to begin that process is to click on the tickers for more information. Read: Tomi Kilgore's detailed guide to the information available on the MarketWatch quote page Don't miss: 10 nuclear stocks expected to rise as much as 94% after Meta-Constellation deal Risky stocks and safe-haven gold are both aiming for records. Who will blink first? I have $1,000 in credit-card debt. Will I be able to hide my inheritance from the bank? 'He failed in his fiduciary duty': My brother liquidated our mother's 401(k) for her nursing home. He claimed the rest. I help my elderly mother every day and drive her to appointments. Can I recoup my costs from her estate? My son, 39, will be released from prison in 2030. Do I leave him my $100K life insurance? Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
The Star
08-06-2025
- Business
- The Star
American corporate cash levels starting to decline
NEW YORK: The latest earnings period brought what might be an early warning sign about credit quality for high-grade US companies. Cash levels at blue-chip companies are shrinking when excluding results from the most cash-rich corporations. Among members of the S&P 500 that have posted results, cash levels for the latest quarter fell nearly 1% compared with the last three months of 2024. That's according to a Bloomberg News analysis that focuses on non-financial companies with less than US$30bil of cash. The group's cash holdings, now at US$1.14 trillion, have broadly been declining since the third quarter of 2023, when they peaked at US$1.21 trillion. While companies are still generally performing well, shrinking cash levels can be a sign of business slowing and profits falling. That's a particular concern now as escalating trade wars potentially boost the cost of foreign inputs, weigh on profits, and increase inflation. Bond prices for many US companies leave little room for error. Spreads, or risk premiums, on US high-grade corporate debt averaged just 0.85 percentage points last Friday, the tightest level since March. The average level for the last two decades is closer to 1.5 percentage points. 'It's actually a dangerous position to be in,' said Michael Contopoulos, deputy chief investment officer at Richard Bernstein Advisors. 'If you bring down cash balances and you find yourself having to deal with higher inflation and higher volatility, your debt is going to get punished.' For the biggest cash generators, the story is different. Giants from Meta Platforms Inc to Microsoft Corp and Nvidia Corp generally posted strong earnings this quarter. The top 12 biggest holders of cash saw their holdings rise about 1.4%, to around US$756.7bil. The dozen companies, which also include companies outside of the technology industry like Johnson & Johnson, each have more than US$30bil of cash and marketable securities on their books and hold in total about 40% of the S&P 500's cash. The biggest companies can distort averages, and by some measures many high-grade companies aren't looking great. Leverage levels, for example, have been better about 80% of the time over the last two decades, a UBS Group AG analysis found. But by other measures, companies are still performing well. Investment-grade firms are holding more cash as a share of their assets than they have on average over the past decade, according to data from S&P that analysed North American companies. — Bloomberg
