*By Carlo Versano*
Shares of Tesla jumped more than 15 percent in the pre-market Monday on news that CEO Elon Musk settled a lawsuit with the SEC over Musk's social media use.
Under the terms of the settlement, Musk will step down as chairman of Tesla ($TSLA) for at least three years but can remain in the chief executive role. He and the company must each pay $20 million in fines. Two independent board members will also be appointed.
Federal regulators sued Musk last week, arguing that his infamous Aug. 7 "funding secured" tweet amounted to securities fraud. The lawsuit was filed after Musk reportedly scuttled a last-minute deal with the agency under which he would resign as chairman and pay a fine but not admit to any wrongdoing. Talks restarted soon after, and by Saturday a new settlement was in place.
The settlement takes care of one major headache for investors, who will now look to the car maker's third-quarter production and delivery numbers, which may be reported as early as Monday. Musk [reportedly] (https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/30/elon-musk-tells-tesla-to-ignore-distractions-hints-at-profitability.html) emailed employees over the weekend, telling them to "ignore all distractions" and that the company was approaching profitability.
Airbnb announced on Thursday that airline industry veteran Fred Reid has joined the company as global head of transportation to lead an intensive push into transportation. “We’re going to explore a broad range of ideas and partnerships that can make transportation better. We haven’t settled on exactly what those will look like,” Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky said in a statement.
Warren Bravo thinks investors will get behind his fish waste-based cannabis concept when his company, Canadian marijuana producer Green Relief, heads to the public market this year. "We are going out, we'll say, sometime this year into the IPO space," Bravo, Green Relief CEO and co-founder, told Cheddar on Wednesday, adding that he's not committed to a specific time frame.
If there's one issue on which President Trump and Congress can work together, it's infrastructure. That's according to Henry Cisneros, a veteran private equity investor and former HUD Secretary under President Bill Clinton.
Firefly is a car-top digital smart screen that benefits ridesharing drivers by giving them a new source of income ー and helps their home cities by providing them with new streams of data, the company's CEO told Cheddar.
"We placed digital smart screens on top of taxi and rideshare cars, and thereby we serve location and time-targeted outdoor advertisements, at the same time our smart screen generates a lot of smart screen data which we share back with municipalities and cities," said Firefly's co-founder and CEO Kaan Gunay.
Social media has helped fuel massive opportunity in the travel industry, but with opportunity, comes cutthroat competition, Trivago CEO Rolf Schrömgens said Wednesday. "People are really traveling in general more. They want to experience stuff, they don't want to buy stuff anymore," Schrömgens told Cheddar.
These are the headlines you Need 2 Know for Wednesday, Feb, 6, 2019.
Abra, a five-year-old crypto company that has historically been focused on remittances, is starting to look like a fintech app itself; it will soon give users the ability to use their bitcoin to invest in traditional assets “like Apple, Amazon, gold and the S&P 500," according to a customer email it sent late Tuesday.
Amazon may have met the David to its Goliath in the epic battle for Long Island City ー provided that Gov. Cuomo doesn't stand in his way. State Sen. Michael Gianaris, who represents New York's 12th district, including Amazon's planned Long Island City outpost, said the tech giant's plan ー promising 25,000 jobs in exchange for billions in city funds ー doesn't even merit negotiation.
Shares of Disney jumped after the bell on Tuesday, boosted by revenue growth in its television and parks divisions. The report was good news for investors looking to gauge Disney’s strength as it deepens its direct-to-consumer offerings in an effort to compete against rivals like Netflix and Apple.
Shares of embattled social media company Snap soared more than 16 percent in extended trading on Tuesday, after beating Wall Street's expectations for its fourth-quarter financial results and reporting relatively stable daily active users year-over-year. Wedbush's Dan Ives said the results showed signs of progress.
