The Great Executive Shuffle of 2019 continued on Wednesday, with Expedia Group announcing the surprise departure of its CEO and CFO after clashing with the company's board over the travel company's direction. Chief Executive Mark Okerstrom and Chief Financial Officer Alan Pickerill will resign their posts effective immediately, with Chairman Barry Diller and Vice Chair Peter Kern managing the company while a new leadership team is chosen.
In a statement, Diller said that Expedia's reorganization, spearheaded by Okerstrom and Pickerill, was "sound in concept" but resulted in the company's disappointing third-quarter earnings results. Diller said the board "strongly [believes] the Company can accelerate growth in 2020" under new management.
Shares of Expedia ($EXPE) shot up more than 5 percent on the news. In contrast, shares of Alphabet ($GOOGL) moved only marginally higher on Tuesday's announcement that Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin were stepping aside and naming Sundar Pichai CEO of Alphabet.
From Expedia to Google, the year has been notable for how many chief executives have resigned, quit, or been forced out. It's happening across sectors like fast food (McDonald's), retail and apparel (Nike, Under Armour, Gap), cloud computing and enterprise software (SAP, ServiceNow), e-commerce (eBay). Some of those executives actually took each other's jobs, with Bill McDermott departing SAP for ServiceNow, and John Donahoe (who used to run eBay) leaving ServiceNow for Nike.
Even Expedia's rival in travel booking, Trivago, lost its CEO last month. And that's not to mention the collapse of WeWork, which forced out its founder and CEO over a disastrous IPO attempt. More than 170 chief executives left just in the month of October, according to Challenger, Gray and Christmas.
There is no single reason for the C-suite exodus. Some, like Steve Easterbrook at McDonald's, were fired over misconduct. Others, like Mark Parker at Nike and Adam Neumann at WeWork, departed amid other scandals. Still others, like Kevin Plank at Under Armour, resigned under the pressure of struggling businesses.
But for some of these executives, their influence in the companies they led doesn't follow them out the revolving door. Brin and Page of Google, for instance, still hold a majority of the voting power in Alphabet, about 25 percent a piece, according to regulatory filings. Because of how many businesses ー particular in Silicon Valley ー structure their Class A and Class B shares, a CEO can step down, but still never really be gone. Just ask WeWork, which had to pay Neumann $1.7 billion to give up his voting rights and walk away.
Chipmaker NVIDIA easily beat its third quarter fiscal 2022 earnings expectations, reporting earnings per share of $1.17 on revenue of $7.1 billion, thanks to success in its gaming and data center divisions. The company is also poised for potential success as tech giants like Facebook and Microsoft push forward with metaverse projects and technology. Daniel Newman, Founding Partner and Principal Analyst at Futurum Research, joins Cheddar News' Closing Bell to discuss NVIDIA's earnings results, chipmaker competition, and more.
Bitcoin is getting a makeover. It's the first upgrade in four years for the cryptocurrency. The Taproot update offers greater transaction privacy and efficiency and will unlock the potential for smart contracts. Jeff Roberts, executive editor of Decrypt, joins Cheddar News to breakdown what this upgrade means for investors.
The nation's largest alcohol e-commerce and delivery platform is getting even bigger. Drizly is now collaborating with 7-Eleven to deliver alcohol in under 60 minutes from 7-eleven's 1,200 stores. The companies plan to expand the collaboration in the coming months. Cathy Lewenberg, COO at Drizly, joins Cheddar News to talk about the new collaboration.
Netlify, a platform that builds, deploys and hosts websites and apps, raised $105 million dollars in a Series D round, now valuing the company at $2 billion. Along with the funding, Netlify is also announcing the acquisition of the company OneGraph. Netlify says OneGraph's technology will drive a new wave of innovation on its platform, by making it easier to compose apps with the best developer tools available. Netlify co-founder and CEO Matt Biilmann joined Cheddar News' Closing Bell to discuss.
Chip Paucek, CEO and co-founder of 2U, an educational tech company, joined Cheddar's "Closing Bell" to talk about the company's $800 million acquisition of online course provider edX featuring curriculum from Harvard and MIT. He noted that added services will provide 2U users with high quality, free options. "Us coming together with edX should allow us to really continue to drive affordability for people to unlock their own potential in a variety of different kinds of programs," he said.
Beginning Christmas Day, the home of the Los Angeles Lakers, Clippers, Kings, and Sparks, the Staples Center, will go by the name Crypto.com Arena after a massive $700 million deal with AEG. Steven Kalifowitz, the chief marketing officer at Crypto.com, and Todd Goldstein, the chief revenue officer at AEG, joined Cheddar to talk about the historic changeover in naming rights and what other changes that fans entering the arena might expect.
Earlier this week, Qualcomm announced an extension of its partnership with BMW as it moves to help build the technology for automated driving. Nakul Duggal, general manager at Qualcomm, joined Cheddar to provide some background on the collaboration and how the company has been able to navigate the global chip shortage amid the pandemic. "We have invested in advance, in very specific packaging capacity and technology, with our suppliers so that we actually have the capacity available to be able to service that demand," Duggal said.
Some of the most popular social media and streaming platforms like Snapchat, Spotify, and Discord were offline for several hours on Tuesday after Google Cloud experienced a technical issue. The problem was resolved as of that afternoon.
