Facebook Reports Earnings After Announcing an Adjusted News Feed Strategy and Microsoft Moves Ahead with Strong Cloud Strategy
Facebook and Microsoft released earnings after the Closing Bell today. The two tech companies beat expectations for both revenue and earnings per share.
Microsoft saw growth across the board, including in their cloud sector. Intelligent Cloud revenue rose 15% to $7.8 billion.
For Facebook, the social media still had strong earnings despite changing their news feed algorithm. Despite wins on both revenue and EPS, shares fell after the bell.
Keenan Beasley is the co-founder of BLKBOX, a marketing and intelligence agency that works closely with Facebook. Beasley joins Cheddar to give his take on Facebook earnings. Beasley is impressed by the increase of active users and believes ad revenue will just continue to grow. Beasley expects Facebook to produce less ads, but each advertisement will be more valuable, more expensive to buy, and therefore create higher profits for Facebook.
Mental health platform Real recently raised $37 million in a Series B round led by Owl Ventures. Through its mobile app, Real says it provides mental health care at a lower cost than traditional therapy and aims to make mental wellness a part of everyone's daily routine. The company also announced that U.S. soccer star Megan Rapinoe will serve as an adviser to the company. Ariela Safira, Founder & CEO of Real, joins Cheddar News' Closing Bell to discuss.
Catching you up on what you need to know on April 28, 2022, with Elon Musk mocking Twitter's top legal exec Vijaya Gadde on the platform itself, a probe in George Floyd's death finding discrimination within the Minneapolis police force, the latest California drought leading to new water restrictions, and more.
Ford CFO John Lawler joined Cheddar News to talk about the auto giant's Q1 earnings report that beat on revenue and EPS. Despite the good numbers, Lawler spoke to challenges Ford had to navigate. "We also see the continued disruption to the supply chain impacting our production, and that hit us in the first quarter as well. So it kept us from having an even stronger quarter," he said. Lawler noted that chip shortages leading to the supply constraints should ease up throughout the year.
Tech giant Microsoft won a military contract for the production of its IVAS (integrated visual augmentation system) combat goggles, based on its HoloLens ARG tech, worth up to $21.9 billion over 10 years. However, the Pentagon is now saying that the device "has not yet demonstrated the capability to serve as a fighting goggle," and that the Army made mistakes in the program's initial stages by not clearly describing minimum performance standards. While testing continues, concerns have grown outside of the Defense Department to Congress and even within Microsoft itself. Cheddar's Ken Buffa takes a deeper look at the possible boondoggle.
