Target gift card discount day 2023 is almost here. Get 10% off gift cards this weekend. - USA TODAY

Target has an early gift for holiday shoppers. It’s bringing back its annual discount on gift cards. 

Target’s gift card sale returns this weekend. The sale starts Saturday and continues through Sunday.

Target shoppers can get a 10% discount on gift cards. 

How do Target gift card deals work?

The 10% discount is available in stores and online for Target gift card purchases. 

You can get 10% off store gift card purchases up to $500. Savings top out at $50.

How to join Target Circle loyalty program

The special offer is only available to members of Target Circle, Target’s loyalty program. The loyalty program is free to join. Here's a guide to how to save money with Target Circle.

When will Target gift cards go on sale?

The annual gift card sale used to last one day, but in 2020, Target extended the sale to two days.

Gift cards are popular holiday presents

Gift cards are popular holiday presents. 

The National Retail Federation says gift cards were one of the top gifts over Thanksgiving weekend.

The top gifts were clothing and accessories (bought by 49% of those surveyed), toys (31%), gift cards (25%), books, video games and other media (23%), and personal care or beauty items (23%).

More than half of holiday shoppers – 55% – said they would like to receive gift cards this year.

Adblock test (Why?)

Target gift card discount day 2023 is almost here. Get 10% off gift cards this weekend. - USA TODAY
Read More

Cash versus bonds? Pros weigh what to buy for the next 2 years and beyond - CNBC

Adblock test (Why?)

Cash versus bonds? Pros weigh what to buy for the next 2 years and beyond - CNBC
Read More

Microsoft joins OpenAI's board with Sam Altman officially back as CEO - The Verge

Sam Altman.

Sam Altman is officially OpenAI’s CEO again.

Just before Thanksgiving, the company said it had reached a deal in principle for him to return, and now it’s done. Microsoft is getting a non-voting observer seat on the nonprofit board that controls OpenAI as well, the company announced on Wednesday.

“I have never been more excited about the future,” Altman said in a memo to employees shared with The Verge. “I am extremely grateful for everyone’s hard work in an unclear and unprecedented situation, and I believe our resilience and spirit set us apart in the industry. I feel so, so good about our probability of success for achieving our mission.”

With three of the four board members who decided to suddenly fire Altman now gone, OpenAI’s new board consists of chair Bret Taylor, Larry Summers, and Adam D’Angelo, the only remaining holdout from the previous board.

OpenAI adding Microsoft to the board as a “non-voting observer” means that the tech giant will have more visibility into the company’s inner workings but not have an official vote in big decisions. Microsoft is a major investor in OpenAI, with a 49 percent stake in the for-profit entity that the nonprofit board controls. Until now, it’s had no visibility into that board. That led to a big surprise when Altman was ousted, threatening what has quickly become one of the most important partnerships in tech.

A spokesperson for Microsoft declined to comment on who from the company would fill its observer seat.

In his memo to employees, Altman said that he harbors “zero ill will” towards Ilya Sutskever, OpenAI’s co-founder and chief scientist who initially participated in the board coup and changed his mind after nearly all of the company’s employees threatened to quit if Altman didn’t come back. “While Ilya will no longer serve on the board, we hope to continue our working relationship and are discussing how he can continue his work at OpenAI,” Altman said.

“The fact that we did not lose a single customer will drive us to work even harder for you,” he told employees.

Below is Sam Altman’s full memo shared with OpenAI employees on Wednesday:

I am returning to OpenAI as CEO. Mira will return to her role as CTO. The new initial board will consist of Bret Taylor (Chair), Larry Summers, and Adam D’Angelo.

I have never been more excited about the future. I am extremely grateful for everyone’s hard work in an unclear and unprecedented situation, and I believe our resilience and spirit set us apart in the industry. I feel so, so good about our probability of success for achieving our mission.

Before getting to what comes next, I’d like to share some thanks.

I love and respect Ilya, I think he’s a guiding light of the field and a gem of a human being. I harbor zero ill will towards him. While Ilya will no longer serve on the board, we hope to continue our working relationship and are discussing how he can continue his work at OpenAI.

I am grateful to Adam, Tasha, and Helen for working with us to come to this solution that best serves the mission. I’m excited to continue to work with Adam and am sincerely thankful to Helen and Tasha for investing a huge amount of effort in this process.

Thank you also to Emmett who had a key and constructive role in helping us reach this outcome. Emmett’s dedication to AI safety and balancing stakeholders’ interests was clear.

Mira did an amazing job throughout all of this, serving the mission, the team, and the company selflessly throughout. She is an incredible leader and OpenAI would not be OpenAI without her. Thank you.

Greg and I are partners in running this company. We have never quite figured out how to communicate that on the org chart, but we will. In the meantime, I just wanted to make it clear. Thank you for everything you have done since the very beginning, and for how you handled things from the moment this started and over the past few days.

The leadership team–Mira, Brad, Jason, Che, Hannah, Diane, Anna, Bob, Srinivas, Matt, Lilian, Miles, Jan, Wojciech, John, Jonathan, Pat, and many more–is clearly ready to run the company without me. They say one way to evaluate a CEO is how you pick and train your potential successors; on that metric I am doing far better than I realized. It’s clear to me that the company is in great hands, and I hope this is abundantly clear to everyone. Thank you all.

Jakub, Szymon, and Aleksander are exceptional talents and I’m so happy they have rejoined to move us and our research forward. Thank you.

To all of you, our team: I am sure books are going to be written about this time period, and I hope the first thing they say is how amazing the entire team has been. Now that we’re through all of this, we didn’t lose a single employee. You stood firm for each other, this company, and our mission. One of the most important things for the team that builds AGI safely is the ability to handle stressful and uncertain situations, and maintain good judgment throughout. Top marks. Thank you all.

Satya, Kevin, Amy, and Brad have been incredible partners throughout this, with exactly the right priorities all the way through. They’ve had our backs and were ready to welcome all of us if we couldn’t achieve our primary goal. We clearly made the right choice to partner with Microsoft and I’m excited that our new board will include them as a non-voting observer. Thank you.

To our partners and users, thank you for sticking with us. We really felt the outpouring of support and love, and it helped all of us get through this. The fact that we did not lose a single customer will drive us to work even harder for you, and we are all excited to get back to work.

Will Hurd, Brian Chesky, Bret Taylor and Larry Summers put their lives on hold and did an incredible amount to support the mission. I don’t know how they did it so well, but they really did. Thank you.

Ollie also put his life on hold this entire time to just do everything he could to help out, in addition to providing his usual unconditional love and support. Thank you and I love you.

So what’s next?

We have three immediate priorities.

● Advancing our research plan and further investing in our full-stack safety efforts, which have always been critical to our work. Our research roadmap is clear; this was a wonderfully focusing time. I share the excitement you all feel; we will turn this crisis into an opportunity! I’ll work with Mira on this.

● Continuing to improve and deploy our products and serve our customers. It’s important that people get to experience the benefits and promise of AI, and have the opportunity to shape it. We continue to believe that great products are the best way to do this. I’ll work with Brad, Jason and Anna to ensure our unwavering commitment to users, customers, partners and governments around the world is clear.

● Bret, Larry, and Adam will be working very hard on the extremely important task of building out a board of diverse perspectives, improving our governance structure, and overseeing an independent review of recent events. I look forward to working closely with them on these crucial steps so everyone can be confident in the stability of OpenAI.

I am so looking forward to finishing the job of building beneficial AGI with you all—best team in the world, best mission in the world.

Love, Sam

And here’s the full memo OpenAI board chair Bret Taylor sent to employees:

On behalf of the OpenAI Board, I want to express our gratitude to the entire OpenAI community, especially all the OpenAI employees, who came together to help find a path forward for the company over the past week. Your efforts helped enable this incredible organization to continue to serve its mission to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity. We are thrilled that Sam, Mira and Greg are back together leading the company and driving it forward. We look forward to working with them and all of you.

As a Board, we are focused on strengthening OpenAI’s corporate governance. Here’s how we plan to do it:

● We will build a qualified, diverse Board of exceptional individuals whose collective experience represents the breadth of OpenAI’s mission – from technology to safety to policy. We are pleased that this Board will include a non-voting observer for Microsoft.

● We will further stabilize the OpenAI organization so that we can continue to serve our mission. This will include convening an independent committee of the Board to oversee a review of the recent events.

● We will enhance the governance structure of OpenAI so that all stakeholders – users, customers, employees, partners, and community members – can trust that OpenAI will continue to thrive.

OpenAI is a more important institution than ever before. ChatGPT has made artificial intelligence a part of daily life for hundreds of millions of people. Its popularity has made AI – its benefits and its risks – central to virtually every conversation about the future of governments, business, and society.

We understand the gravity of these discussions and the central role of OpenAI in the development and safety of these awe-inspiring new technologies. Each of you plays a critical part in ensuring that we effectively meet these challenges. We are committed to listening and learning from you, and I hope to speak with you all very soon.

We are grateful to be a part of OpenAI, and excited to work with all of you.

Thank you,

Bret Taylor Chair, OpenAI

Developing...

Adblock test (Why?)

Microsoft joins OpenAI's board with Sam Altman officially back as CEO - The Verge
Read More

Why Bill Ackman thinks the economy will soon need a Fed rate cut - MarketWatch

Stock markets are setting up for another day of gains, thanks to Fed Gov. Christopher Waller, who sparked fresh optimism that the central bank is done hiking rates.

One of the biggest expectations for the coming year is that the Fed will pivot to cuts in 2024. Our call of the day is from hedge-fund manager Bill Ackman who doesn’t disagree, saying that needs to be done ASAP.

“I...

Master your money.

Subscribe to MarketWatch.

Get this article and all of MarketWatch.

Access from any device. Anywhere. Anytime.

Subscribe Now

Already a subscriber? Log In

Adblock test (Why?)

Why Bill Ackman thinks the economy will soon need a Fed rate cut - MarketWatch
Read More

U.S. Steel closes Granite City furnace 'indefinitely,' warns 1,000 of layoffs - St. Louis Post-Dispatch

GRANITE CITY — The last operating blast furnace at U.S. Steel’s plant in Granite City will remain idled indefinitely, the company said Tuesday, extending a closure first billed as temporary.

The company on Tuesday also notified 600 additional employees that they might lose their jobs.

U.S. Steel spokeswoman Amanda Malkowski, however, said the company only expected to lay off a portion of those.

And a local union official said he thought the plant would keep operating with the same number of workers, at least for now.

The fate of the Granite City plant has been in question since last summer, when U.S. Steel revealed plans to sell a portion of the facility to Chicago-based SunCoke Energy in a deal that would eliminate nearly 1,000 of 1,450 jobs at the plant.

The companies are still in discussion.

People are also reading…

Then, lending further uncertainty, U.S. Steel said this summer that it was considering a sale of the company.

The Pittsburgh-based steel company has not made any public announcements about finalizing either potential transaction.

The Granite City facility has two blast furnaces, used to make steel. One was previous shut down.

This fall, U.S. Steel shut down the second temporarily, predicting the closure would last less than six months.

But in a layoff notice filed with area officials, dated Tuesday, the company told 1,000 employees it now expects the closure will continue longer.

Of those, 400 workers were already on temporary layoff from the site. The notification this week warned 600 more that permanent layoffs could be on the horizon.

Dan Simmons, president of United Steelworkers Local 1899, said Tuesday afternoon that he expected the plant to keep operating with the same number of workers for now.

The company estimated that, of the 1,000 total workers who received the notices, 60% might ultimately be affected, Malkowski said.

The changes will begin as early as Jan. 28, according to the notice.

When the decision to idle the blast furnace was first announced in September, the company blamed softening demand from the automotive industry, due to the sprawling United Auto Workers strike. Officials pushed back on the company’s assertion that the strike was to blame: U.S. Rep. Nikki Budzinski, D-Illinois, cast it as an attempt to “pit working people against one another.”

The UAW walkout at the Big Three automakers — Ford, General Motors and Stellantis — ended in late October.

On Tuesday, U.S. Steel said the move to idle the blast furnace indefinitely was made to balance its production with customer demand.

The company’s steel rolling and finishing operations at the site will continue, using metal slabs from other facilities.

Granite City Mayor Mike Parkinson said he is already thinking about the buildings and land that will be left vacant as parts of the plant close. He said he is concerned with how those areas will be maintained, and is raising the issue with U.S. Steel.

“I’m going to force them to start thinking about that,” Parkinson said. “My citizens deserve better.”

Steel shutdown: U.S. Steel will cut 950 jobs at its Granite City Works when it ends primary steel production there. David Nicklaus and Jim Gallagher say the mill's age made the closing inevitable, despite protection provided by steel tariffs.

David Nicklaus ,  Chris Drury

0 Comments

The business news you need

Get the latest local business news delivered FREE to your inbox weekly.

Adblock test (Why?)

U.S. Steel closes Granite City furnace 'indefinitely,' warns 1,000 of layoffs - St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Read More

Charles T. Munger, Much More Than Warren Buffett's No. 2, Dies at 99 - The New York Times

A billionaire himself, he was the witty vice chairman of Mr. Buffett’s powerhouse investment firm Berkshire Hathaway. But he had far more influence than his title suggested.

Charles T. Munger, who quit a well-established law career to be Warren E. Buffett’s partner and maxim-spouting alter-ego as they transformed a foundering New England textile company into the spectacularly successful investment firm Berkshire Hathaway, died on Tuesday in Santa Barbara, Calif. He was 99.

His death, at a hospital, was announced by Berkshire Hathaway. He had a home in Los Angeles.

Although overshadowed by Mr. Buffett, who relished the spotlight, Mr. Munger, a billionaire in his own right — Forbes listed his fortune as $2.6 billion this year — had far more influence at Berkshire than his title of vice chairman suggested.

Mr. Buffett has described him as the originator of Berkshire Hathaway’s investing approach. “The blueprint he gave me was simple: Forget what you know about buying fair businesses at wonderful prices; instead, buy wonderful businesses at fair prices,” Mr. Buffett once wrote in an annual report.

That investing strategy was a revelation for Mr. Buffett, who had made his name in the 1950s buying troubled companies at deep discounts. (He called them “cigar butts,” because investing in them, he said, was like “picking up a discarded cigar butt that had one puff remaining in it.”)

Mr. Munger counseled Mr. Buffett that if he wanted to build a large, sustainable company that would outperform other investors, he should buy solid brand-name companies. “He was the architect and I was the general contractor,” Mr. Buffett said of their relationship.

Mr. Buffett and Mr. Munger in 2003. They first met by happenstance in 1959 and soon found themselves talking on the phone about strategies for hours nearly every day. Eric Francis/Getty Images

The partnership, spanning more than 50 years, produced one of the most successful and largest conglomerates in history. Among other properties, Berkshire, which is based in Omaha, owns the insurance giant Geico and the Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad company and holds stakes in Coca-Cola, American Express, IBM, Wells Fargo and other corporate heavyweights. By 2022 it had about 372,000 employees.

Mr. Munger, an erudite man who sprinkled his conversations with references to Cicero, Albert Einstein, Mark Twain and Confucius, was widely known for his witty common-sense maxims, so much so that they were called Mungerisms and collected in books, including “Poor Charlie’s Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger” (2005).

“Envy is a really stupid sin,” goes one, “because it’s the only one you could never possibly have any fun at.” Another: “The ethos of not fooling yourself is one of the best you could possibly have. It’s powerful because it’s so rare.”

Mr. Buffett and Mr. Munger would talk to each other on the telephone for hours every day, Mr. Buffett from his office in Omaha (their mutual hometown) and Mr. Munger from Los Angeles.

“We’ve never had an argument,” Mr. Buffett said. Repeating one of Mr. Munger’s favorite lines, Mr. Buffett said that when they did differ, Mr. Munger would say, “Warren, think it over and you’ll agree with me because you’re smart and I’m right.”

Mr. Buffett and Mr. Munger were the faces of Berkshire’s annual meeting in Omaha, what became known as the Woodstock of Capitalism. They would hold forth in front of tens of thousands of rapt Berkshire shareholders, answering questions for up to six hours and dispensing their investment wisdom.

“The trouble with making all these pronouncements is people gradually begin to think they know something,” Mr. Munger told the audience in 2015. “It’s much better to think you’re ignorant.” He added, “If people weren’t so often wrong, we wouldn’t be so rich.”

Mr. Munger and Mr. Buffett appeared on giant screens at Berkshire Hathaway’s shareholder meeting in Omaha in 2015. The annual event became known as the Woodstock of Capitalism.Nati Harnik/Associated Press

Many of those listeners had become vastly wealthy themselves by investing with Mr. Buffett and Mr. Munger. A $1,000 investment in Berkshire made in 1964 is worth more than $10 million today.

Mr. Munger was often viewed as the moral compass of Berkshire Hathaway, advising Mr. Buffett on personnel issues as well as investments. His hiring policy: “Trust first, ability second.”

A Lawyer’s Son

Charles Thomas Munger was born in Omaha on Jan. 1, 1924, the son of Alfred Case Munger, a lawyer, and Florence (Russell) Munger. As a boy he worked Saturdays in a grocery store then owned by Mr. Buffett’s grandfather. (Mr. Buffett worked there for a time himself, but the two did not meet until much later.) At 17, Charles went to the University of Michigan to major in mathematics, but in his sophomore year, after the attack on Pearl Harbor, he enlisted in the Army Air Corps.

Promoted to second lieutenant, he was dispatched to the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena to train as a meteorologist. In Pasadena he met Nancy Huggins, daughter of a local shoe store owner, and they married, he at 21 and she at 19. They went on to have three children.

Soon he was assigned to Nome, Alaska, where he developed a talent that would serve him well.

“Playing poker in the Army and as a young lawyer honed my business skills,” Mr. Munger told Janet Lowe in her 2000 book “Damn Right! Behind the Scenes with Berkshire Hathaway Billionaire Charlie Munger.”

“What you have to learn is to fold early when the odds are against you,” he said, “or if you have a big edge, back it heavily, because you don’t get a big edge often, so seize it when it does come.

Shareholders wore badges in support of Mr. Munger at the annual meeting in 2022.Chandan Khanna/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Even before his discharge from the Army in 1946, Mr. Munger, who once said he had a black belt in chutzpah, applied to Harvard Law School, from which his father had graduated, even though he had desultory work habits and no undergraduate degree. He was accepted only after intervention by a fellow Nebraskan, Roscoe Pound, a retired dean of the school and a family friend.

Graduating with honors, Mr. Munger returned to California and began practicing law. He eventually struck out on his own by founding the law firm Munger, Tolles & Olson. But his life had begun to unravel: He and his wife divorced; their only son, Teddy, died of leukemia at 9 years old; and he suffered financial reverses.

With Mr. Munger practically broke, his daughter Molly complained to him about his beat-up yellow Pontiac. “Daddy, this car is just awful, a mess,” she said. “Why do you drive it?” As recounted in Ms. Lowe’s biography, he replied, “To discourage gold diggers.”

Seeking to rebuild, and drawing on his preternatural math skills (“I always took math courses because I could get an ‘A’ without doing any work,” he said), he began investing on the side, in stocks, businesses and real estate.

“It soon occurred to me that I’d rather be one of our rich and interesting clients than be their lawyer,” he said.

His investments generated his first million dollars.

Mr. Munger married Nancy Barry Borthwick in 1956, and he met Mr. Buffett by happenstance three years later. Mr. Munger had flown back to Omaha to organize the affairs of his recently deceased father when he was invited to lunch at the local Omaha Club. There he was introduced to Mr. Buffett by a mutual friend.

Later that week, Mr. Munger attended a dinner party to which Mr. Buffett had also been invited. They hit it off and spent the evening talking. Mr. Buffett later recalled, “He was rolling on the floor laughing at his own jokes, and I thought, ‘That is my kind of guy.’ I do the same thing.”

Days later, they and their wives went to lunch at Johnny’s Cafe.

As quoted in “The Snowball,” Alice Schroeder’s 2008 biography of Mr. Buffett, Nancy Munger at one point asked her husband, “Why are you paying so much attention to him?” Mr. Munger replied: “You don’t understand. That is no ordinary human being.”

‘A Passion to Get Rich’

The men soon found themselves on the phone nearly every day talking about investing strategies. “Warren obviously had a better business model than I did,” Mr. Munger said, referring to his billing by the hour for his legal services. “He kept pointing out to me that I had an insane way of making a living, and that his was better and that I should do what he was doing.”

Mr. Munger was won over. “Like Warren, I had a considerable passion to get rich,” Mr. Munger was quoted as saying in Roger Lowenstein’s book “Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist” (1995). “Not because I wanted Ferraris — I wanted the independence. I desperately wanted it. I thought it was undignified to have to send invoices to other people.”

Mr. Munger began investing side by side with Mr. Buffett, in companies like Westco Financial and See’s Candies, before officially joining him as vice chairman. For the first year, he said, “I kept one toe in the law firm in case my capitalist career cratered.”

Together they built Berkshire into a $500 billion-plus juggernaut whose original shares posted annual gains averaging 21.6 percent between 1965 and 2014, more than twice the 9.9 percent rise for the Standard & Poor’s 500. (The company got its name when, early on, Mr. Buffett took over a fading Massachusetts textile manufacturer called Berkshire Hathaway.)

Mr. Munger in 2017. He wanted to become rich, he said, “not because I wanted Ferraris — I wanted the independence.”Lucy Nicholson/Reuters

The money Mr. Munger made far surpassed his greatest expectations, he said, but it could have been even more. He said his biggest mistakes were not bad investments, but investments Berkshire failed to make.

He and Mr. Buffett “were offered a stake in McDonald’s way early” and decided against it, he said.

“We should have bought a big block of Wal-Mart young,” he added. “That was billions that we should’ve made. We avoided the pharmaceutical industry entirely, and it was the easiest industry to make a lot of money out of all the ones around, and we never made a nickel out of it.”

Mr. Munger used his many nickels for an unusual philanthropic passion: architecture. He gave away hundreds of millions of dollars to university architecture projects, including $65 million for the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

At least one of his projects caused controversy: His design for a windowless dorm room building at the Santa Barbara campus, for which he contributed $200 million, was criticized by some architects and students. He defended it as efficient and effective.

Active Into His 90s

Mr. Buffett remained a vocal proponent of philanthropy through his Giving Pledge, an organization he founded with Bill and Melinda Gates to persuade billionaires to give away at least half their fortunes. But Mr. Munger was conspicuously not on the list. He said it was not that he did not want to sign the pledge. He said his wife, Nancy, who died in 2010 at 86, had wanted her half of the estate passed to the children, “and so I more than did that.” He added: “I felt it would be hypocritical for me to be a big pledger. I’ve already violated the total spirit of it.”

Mr. Munger is survived by two daughters from his first marriage, Wendy and Molly Munger; a daughter from his second marriage, Emilie Munger Ogden; three sons from that marriage, Charles Jr., Barry and Philip; two stepsons, William and David Borthwick; 15 grandchildren; and seven great-grandchildren.

A treasured retreat of his was a northern Minnesota wilderness compound on Star Island in Cass Lake, where his grandparents began summering in 1932 and which became the extended-family seat. In addition to Los Angeles, he had a home in Hawaii.

Under Mr. Buffett and Mr. Munger, Berkshire invested heavily in newspapers, among them The Washington Post, The Buffalo News and The Omaha World-Herald. Mr. Munger himself was the chairman of the Daily Journal Corporation, a newspaper publisher, from 1977 to 2022.

He remained active in Berkshire Hathaway into his 90s while serving for decades as chairman of Good Samaritan Hospital in Los Angeles, to which he lavishly donated. A Republican, he was also outspoken in support of Planned Parenthood.

Perhaps in another life Mr. Munger, with all his drive and self-assurance, would have been the chief of a giant corporation. But he had no regrets about making his fortune in the shadow of Mr. Buffett.

“I didn’t mind at all playing second fiddle to Warren,” he said in an interview for this obituary. “Ordinarily, everywhere I go I am very dominant, but when somebody else is better, I’m willing to play the second fiddle. It’s just that I was seldom in that position, except with Warren. But I didn’t mind it at all.”

Alex Traub contributed reporting.

Adblock test (Why?)

Charles T. Munger, Much More Than Warren Buffett's No. 2, Dies at 99 - The New York Times
Read More

Disney town hall - Fox Business

Tigress Financial Chief Investment Officer Ivan Feinseth joined ‘Varney & Co.’ to discuss the U.S. markets and Disney’s optimistic stock price. 

Disney chief executive Bob Iger acknowledged during a company-wide town hall Tuesday that his second stretch at the helm since returning a year ago has proven more difficult than he expected.

Iger made that admission to ABC News anchor David Muir, who moderated the event before Disney employees, and asked if the job has been more challenging than he had anticipated, according to multiple reports.

Bob Iger attends the "Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny" red carpet during the 76th annual Cannes film festival at Palais des Festivals on May 18, 2023 in Cannes, France.  (Getty Images / Getty Images)

"I knew that there were myriad challenges that I would face coming back," Iger said, according to Variety, and The Wall Street Journal reported the CEO continued, "I must say there were many more of them than I anticipated."

He added, "I won't say that it was easy, but I've never second guessed the decision to come back, and being back still feels great."

DISNEY TURNS 100 AS CEO BOB IGER TRIES TO FIX MEDIA GIANT

According to Variety, Iger did not make any major announcements during the sit-down at New Amsterdam Theatre in New York, where he was joined by Disney Entertainment co-chairs Dana Walden and Alan Bergman, Disney parks chairman Josh D'Amaro, and ESPN chairman James Pitaro.

The Walt Disney Co. logo appears on a screen above the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.  (AP Photo/Richard Drew, File / AP Images)

Ticker	Security	Last	Change	Change %
DIS	THE WALT DISNEY CO.	92.49	-2.67	-2.80%

The Walt Disney Co.

The Journal reported Iger said he plans to build the "modern version of the Walt Disney Company" over the next year, but the CEO provided scant details. He also downplayed previous comments he made to CNBC over the summer about potentially selling off media assets.

Iger returned to the role of Disney CEO in November 2022, a position he previously held from 2005 to early 2020. Since his return, he has sought to "quiet the noise" in culture wars after his predecessor made moves that irked conservatives and sparked a high-profile political showdown. 

DISNEY CEO BOB IGER VOWS TO ‘QUIET THE NOISE’ IN CULTURE WARS

Former CEO Bob Chapek took a public stand against a Florida bill that bars teachers from providing instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten through third-grade classrooms. That escalated into a battle with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, which resulted in the Republican-led state legislature revoking Disney World’s self-governing authority in the state, sparking legal actions from both sides that are ongoing.

A sign near an entranceway to Walt Disney World on MAY 22, 2023 in Orlando, Florida. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images / Getty Images)

Disney has also been embroiled in a battle with activist investor Nelson Petz, who faced off with company leadership in January.

In the board fight with Disney that kicked off 2023, Peltz said in a press release that the entertainment giant had lost its way over the course of recent years "resulting in a rapid deterioration in its financial performance from a consistent dividend-paying, high free cash flow generative business into a highly leveraged enterprise with reduced earnings power and weak free cash flow conversion."

DISNEY FACING ACTIVIST INVESTOR NELSON PELTZ AGAIN

Disney pushed back on Peltz’s claims, arguing in a regulatory filing that he "does not understand Disney’s businesses and lacks the skills and experience to assist the board in delivering shareholder value in a rapidly shifting media ecosystem." The company also said the hedge fund’s analysis of its financial transactions was flawed.

It is recently-released fourth-quarter financial results, Disney reported overall revenue for the three-month period of $21.24 billion and net income of $246 million.

Crowds pack and fill Main Street USA at the Magic Kingdom Park at Walt Disney World in Orange County, Florida, on June 1, 2022. (Joseph Prezioso/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images / Getty Images)

"While we still have work to do to continue improving results, our progress has allowed us to move beyond this period of fixing and begin building our businesses again," Iger said during an earnings call earlier this month.

At the time, he identified hitting "sustained" profitability in streaming business, turning ESPN into a "preeminent digital sports platform," making improvements at its film studios and "turbocharging" growth in its Experiences segment as four "key building opportunities." Its parks and cruises fall under the Experiences segment.

GET FOX BUSINESS ON THE GO BY CLICKING HERE

The entertainment giant indicated earlier this month it would trim $2 billion more in costs, raising its annual savings goal to $7.5 billion.

Disney shares have gained over 10% this year, behind the S&P 500's 18%+ rise. 

FOX Business' Eric Revell and Aislinn Murphy contributed to this report.

Adblock test (Why?)

Disney town hall - Fox Business
Read More

Stock market news today: Rally pauses, but stocks still head for blowout month - Yahoo Finance

Roku soars on fresh Wall Street upgrade

Roku stock (ROKU) climbed about 8% on Monday after Cannonball Research upgraded shares to Buy from Neutral, citing "more meaningful" upside to current fiscal 2024 estimates.

"Our thesis is not based on an expectation of an improvement in the advertising market trends. Instead, we assume a continuation of the trends we have seen since Q2 full-year 2022," Cannonball Research analyst Vasily Karasyov wrote in a note published on Sunday.

Platform revenue — which includes ad sales, revenue from distribution deals, and over-the-top streaming service The Roku Channel — is expected to total roughly $3.37 billion in fiscal 2024, according to consensus estimates compiled by Bloomberg.

Current 2024 sell-side projections are calling for a 17.5% boost in video advertising, which rebounded in the third quarter, coupled with a decline of 7.7% in distribution and media and entertainment (M&E) advertising.

"Both of these, in our view, leave room for upside provided the macro conditions don’t deteriorate noticeably," Karasyov said.

The analyst, who also pushed his price target to $116 a share, up from the prior $88, added the connected TV market is on track to grow about 16% in fiscal 2023 — with Roku continuing to be the market leader.

"Even before the likely beat, ROKU should outgrow the market by ~400 [basis points] this year," he said.

The upgrade comes after Roku reported strong fourth quarter guidance and pointed to further signs of recovery in its ad revenue.

The company, which has enacted a slew of cost-cutting measures including layoffs in an effort to bring down operating expenses, said it remains committed to positive adjusted EBITDA for full-year 2024, "with continued improvements after that."

Adblock test (Why?)

Stock market news today: Rally pauses, but stocks still head for blowout month - Yahoo Finance
Read More

Black Friday shoppers spent a record $9.8 billion in U.S. online sales, up 7.5% from last year - CNBC

Black Friday shoppers pick out clothing in a Lacoste store as retailers compete to attract shoppers and try to maintain margins on Black Friday, one of the busiest shopping days of the year, at Woodbury Common Premium Outlets in Central Valley, New York, U.S. November 24, 2023. 

Vincent Alban | Reuters

Black Friday e-commerce spending popped 7.5% from a year earlier, reaching a record $9.8 billion in the U.S., according to an Adobe Analytics report, a further indication that price-conscious consumers want to spend on the best deals and are hunting for those deals online.

"We've seen a very strategic consumer emerge over the past year where they're really trying to take advantage of these marquee days, so that they can maximize on discounts," said Vivek Pandya, a lead analyst at Adobe Digital Insights.

Black Friday's spending spike reflects a consumer who is more willing to spend than in 2022, when gas and food prices were painfully high.

Pandya noted that impulse purchases may have played a role in the Black Friday growth since $5.3 billion of the online sales came from mobile shopping. He noted that influencers and social media advertising have made it easier for consumers to get comfortable spending on their mobile devices.

Still, shoppers are price-sensitive, managing tighter budgets due to last year's record inflation and interest rates. According to the Adobe survey, $79 million of the sales came from consumers who opted for the 'Buy Now, Pay Later' flexible payment method to stretch their wallets, up 47% from last year.

The best-selling categories of Black Friday, the Adobe report found, were electronics like smartwatches and televisions, along with toys and gaming. Meanwhile, home-repair tools underperformed. Pandya said top sellers directly correlated to whichever products had the best discounts.

Adobe gathers its data by analyzing one trillion visits to U.S. retail websites, 18 product categories and 100 million unique items. It does not track brick-and-mortar retail transactions.

A Mastercard analysis of this year's Black Friday sales found that in-store sales rose just over 1% versus online sales, which grew by over 8% compared to last year.

"I do think the paradigm has changed around the in-store Black Friday experience, the long lines and things like that," said Adobe's Pandya.

Consumers are "more in the driver's seat" when they are online shopping, he added, because it is easier to make side-by-side price comparisons and secure a better price.

Retailers are aware of the rise of deal-hunting consumers and want to capture as many of them as possible. Companies like Best Buy and Lowe's have both announced higher discounting levels. Other retailers like Target and Ulta Beauty have rolled out pop-up promotions that offer 24-hour discounts on certain brands and items.

Black Friday kept the momentum going from the day before on Thanksgiving when online sales totaled $5.6 billion, according to a prior Adobe analysis.

Adobe expects the spending strength to hold over the weekend and through Cyber Monday with the biggest bargains still ahead. The report forecasts that online shoppers will spend roughly $10 billion over the course of Saturday and Sunday, and a record $12 billion on Cyber Monday.

But spending will likely begin to taper off deeper into the holiday season, according to Pandya. Cyber Monday, as the last major deal day of the holiday season, could be the final spending spike on non-essential goods for the rest of the year.

"We do expect growth to weaken because those discounts will weaken and they are dictating a lot in terms of buyer behavior this season," said Pandya.

He noted that there are always gift-givers who procrastinate their holiday shopping so spending could continue to trickle in late into December. But the real growth surges, he said, "end up being in November and Thanksgiving week."

Adblock test (Why?)

Black Friday shoppers spent a record $9.8 billion in U.S. online sales, up 7.5% from last year - CNBC
Read More

Honda recalls select Accords and HR-Vs over missing piece in seat belt pretensioners - ABC News

Recall is due to a missing piece in the front seat belt pretensioners.

ByThe Associated Press

November 25, 2023, 11:47 AM

FILE - People walk near the logo of Honda Motor Company at a showroom Tuesday, Feb. 8, 2022, in Tokyo. Honda is recalling several hundred thousand 2023-2024 Accord and HR-V vehicles, Saturday, Nov. 25, 2023, due to a missing piece in the front seat belt pretensioners, which could increase injury risks during a crash. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko, File)

The Associated Press

NEW YORK -- Honda is recalling select 2023-2024 Accord and HR-V vehicles due to a missing piece in the front seat belt pretensioners, which could increase injury risks during a crash.

According to notices published by Honda and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration earlier this week, the pretensioners — which tighten seat belts in place upon impact — may be missing the rivet that secures the quick connector and wire plate. This means that passengers may not be properly restrained in a crash, regulators said.

The NHTSA credited the issue to an error made during assembly. More than 300,000 Accords and HR-Vs are potentially affected.

As of Nov. 16, Honda had received seven warranty claims, but no reports of injuries or deaths related to the faulty pretensioners, according to documents published by the NHTSA.

For consumers impacted by this recall, dealers will inspect all cars and potentially replace the seat belt pretensioner assembly at no cost. Those who have already paid for these repairs at their own expense may also be eligible for reimbursement.

Honda estimates that less than 1% of the potentially affected vehicles will require a replacement. The vast majority are expected to be satisfied by an inspection alone, a Honda spokesperson told The Associated Press on Saturday.

Notification letters will be sent via mail to registered owners of the affected vehicles starting Jan. 8, 2024. Replacement parts should be available to dealers by the end of the month, the spokesperson said, but consumers can go to an authorized Honda dealer for the inspection now.

For more information about the recall, consumers can visit the NHTSA website and Honda's and online recall pages.

___

This story corrects references to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Related Topics

---

---

Adblock test (Why?)

Honda recalls select Accords and HR-Vs over missing piece in seat belt pretensioners - ABC News
Read More