DIS - Wall Street Breakfast Podcast: Dominion Fox News Settle Defamation Case

2023-04-19 07:02:23 ET

Listen on the go! Subscribe to Wall Street Breakfast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify Dominion, Fox News ( FOX ) settle $1.6B defamation case for reported $788M. Netflix ( NFLX ) flags as subscribers beat, but revenue slows in Q1.Tesla ( TSLA ) cuts U.S. prices for sixth time this year ahead of Q1 results. Learn more about these stocks with Seeking Alpha Premium .

This is an abridged transcript of the podcast.

• A settlement in the defamation case between Dominion voting systems and Fox News. The decision comes one day after a delay in the trial.

• Today is stock of the week Wednesday. We’re hearing from Kirk Spano. He’s the Investing Groups Leader of Margin of Safety Investing on Seeking Alpha. And today’s he’s talking about not just one stock but an industry. *audio from Kirk Spano*

• Tesla is cutting prices in the United States again. One version of the Model 3 is now less than $40K.

OUR TOP STORY

Dominion Voting Systems and Fox News (NASDAQ: FOX ) (NASDAQ: FOXA ) have settled their $1.6B defamation case for $787.5M.

The trial was supposed to last six weeks but it barely even started.

Here’s what happened…

After an unexplained one-day delay, the trial formally began Tuesday morning by wrapping up jury selection.

The judge postponed the beginning of opening statements until after lunch.

The reason for this was so as to not break up the two parties' arguments.

Court was set to resume after lunch at 1:30 but more than 2 hours passed.

Then the judge returned to the courtroom saying that the parties had resolved their case.

This surprise announcement came with just half an hour left in the court's scheduled day. And it came with attorneys seated at their tables, prepared to deliver the high-profile opening arguments for their side.

Dominion attorneys say the settlement represents "accountability and a ringing endorsement of truth and democracy."

Fox news said they were pleased to have reached a settlement with Dominion Voting Systems. The company said it is hopeful that their decision to resolve this dispute “allows the country to move forward from these issues.”

Now the focus turns to Smartmatic, another voting machine company that is similarly suing Fox News for $2.7B in damages.

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Netflix reported earnings on Tuesday.

*audio from Seeking Alpha Associate News Editor Kevin Curran*

That was Seeking Alpha Associate News Editor Kevin Curran reporting on Netflix.

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Today is stock of the week Wednesday.

We’re hearing from Kirk Spano. He’s the leader of the Investing Group Margin of Safety Investing.

He’s looking to the future.

*audio from Kirk Spano*

That audio is from the most recent episode of the Investing Experts podcast. You can get it wherever you get your podcasts. The show takes a real deep dive into all things investing.

This particular episode with Kirk also highlights the space stocks where he has an interest, one that was not in his portfolio and another that was and he says he should’ve held on to it.

It’s a great episode.

I’ll leave a link in show notes.

NOW MORE ON THE MARKET

Wall Street recorded a largely flat performance on Tuesday, as the latest round of earnings reports did little to move the overall market.

The Nasdaq ( COMP.IND ) and Dow ( DJI ) closed fractionally lower, while the S&P 500 ( SP500 ) ended +0.1%.

Seven of 11 S&P sectors ended in positive territory. However, the action was generally tame across the board, with no market segment moving more than 1% in either direction. Industrials, Energy, Info Tech and Materials all posted modest gains. Utilities, Health Care and Communication Services recorded losses.

Like with the stock market, bond trading was muted during the day. The 10-year yield ( US10Y ) dipped 1 basis point to 3.58%, while the 2-year yield ( US2Y ) rose 2 basis points to 4.21%.

MORE OF OUR TOP STORIES

Tesla is cutting prices again…

For the sixth time this year, Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA ) is cutting prices in the United States for some of its Model Y and Model 3 vehicles.

In the U.S., the prices of Model Y AWD, Long Range and Performance vehicles have been lowered by $3,000.

As for the Model 3, the standard range RWD went from $41,990 to $39,990, marking the first time Tesla ( TSLA ) offered a vehicle under $40,000.

Tesla ( TSLA ) is set to report its Q1 numbers today after market close. The current consensus EPS estimate is $0.86 and revenue estimate is $23.46B .

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After cutting off 7,000 employees lately, the Walt Disney Company (NYSE: DIS ) is considering another wave of layoffs next week, affecting around 15% of the workforce in its entertainment sector.

According to Bloomberg, affected employees will be notified of the job losses by April 24.

Thousands of positions in the entertainment sector, as well as corporate responsibilities and staff in every country where Disney operates, are set to be impacted, according to people familiar with the situation.

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Opendoor Technologies (NASDAQ: OPEN ) is laying off about 560 more jobs, or 22% of the company's workforce.

In November 2022, the company -- which uses artificial intelligence systems among other technologies to buy and sell homes -- said it cut about 18% of the company's headcount at the time.

The bulk of the job cuts announced on Tuesday featured the company's operations unit.

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Meta Platforms (NASDAQ: META ) is reportedly about to execute more of its planned job cuts.

The metaverse-focused social-media company had notably moved to cut 11,000 positions in November, and said in March that it would follow up with another 10,000 cuts in coming months.

Vox is reporting that a round of cuts expected today will cut loose about 4,000 jobs.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg had previously said that April cuts would largely land on tech jobs, while another round in May would have a greater impact on the business side of Meta.

Meta reports earnings next week.

Just last week on stock of the week Wednesday we heard from Julian Lin the leader of the Investing Group, Best of Breed Growth Stocks on Seeking Alpha. If you remember, he said he had two top undervalued stock picks. We heard his thoughts on one of those picks, SentinelOne. But the other pick was Meta Platforms.

If you haven’t listened to that episode of the Investing Experts podcast, I’ll leave the link for you in show notes.

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Google (NASDAQ: GOOG ) (NASDAQ: GOOGL ) is reportedly planning to launch a long-rumored foldable phone in June, opening a new competitive front in the luxury-phone space with rival Samsung ( OTCPK:SSNLF ).

CNBC reported citing internal communications, The Pixel Fold will get an announcement at Google's annual I/O developer conference on May 10.

The device is expected to cost upwards of $1,700, according to the report.

It’ll weigh 10-ounces, a bit bigger than Samsung's Galaxy Z Fold 4 that comes in a buck less than $1,800.

The report says the Google phone will have a larger battery claimed to last 24 hours and it’ll be water resistant.

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Now let’s take a look at the markets as of 6:20 am. Ahead of the opening bell today, Dow, S&P and Nasdaq futures are pointing lower. The Dow is down 0.5%. The S&P 500 is also down 0.5% and the Nasdaq is down 0.8%. Crude oil is down 1.6% at less than $80 a barrel. Bitcoin is down 2.5% at $29,166.

In the world markets, the FTSE 100 is down 0.4% and the Dax is down 0.1%.

On today’s economic calendar, at 10:30 am EIA Petroleum Inventories and at 7pm the Fed’s John Williams will discuss the economic and policy outlook at a New York University event.

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