How many people play Farming Simulator 25? Player count
How many people play Farming Simulator 25? Player count
Farming Simulator 25 allows players to create and develop their very own farms, with a plethora of animals, products, and crops to choose from. Raising animals and harvesting crops is a rewarding experience, and many love the realism and progression Farming Simulator offers.
You’ll need to put in the hours though, as farm work isn’t easy. Speaking of which, if you’re wondering how many are online dedicating their time to their virtual farm, here’s the Farming Simulator 25 player count.
Farming Simulator 25 player count
Farming Simulator 25 has 44,265 live players on Steam at the time of writing (November 13, 2024), and an all-time peak player count of 126,761 on Valve’s platform, according to SteamDB. The all-time peak was reached on its release date of November 12, 2024, which saw players flocking to start their farming journey.
These numbers are only for players enjoying the game via Steam on PC, and as the game is available through other platforms on PC and also consoles, the player count is likely much higher than what’s found on SteamDB.
Credits to Giants Software
Is there a player count for Farming Simulator 25 on consoles?
Farming Simulator 25 is also available on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S consoles, but unfortunately, we do not have access to the player count numbers on these platforms. However, it’s safe to assume that the player count would be much higher if the player count was accumulated for all the platforms the game is available on.
The game also features cross-platform play and a multiplayer feature for up to 16 players on a dedicated server and up to 6 on console servers. The multiplayer feature is very popular for Farming Simulator and it’s likely one of the main reasons for its high player count, as people are hopping on to create a farm on the massive maps with friends.
If the devs, Giants Software, ever decide to release details on the Farming Simulator 25 player count or sales numbers across all of the platforms the game is available on, we’ll be sure to update this piece with all the relevant information.
If you’re one of the many playing Farming Simulator 25, how are you finding the game? Let us know in the Insider Gaming forum.
Interested in more Farming Simulator 25 guides? Check out everything you need to know about the Collectors Edition and all the new additions in Farming Simulator 25.
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Red Magic 10 Pro+, Red Magic 10 Pro With Snapdragon 8 Elite ‘Extreme Edition’ Chip Launched: Price, Specifications
Red Magic 10 Pro+, Red Magic 10 Pro With Snapdragon 8 Elite ‘Extreme Edition’ Chip Launched: Price, Specifications
Red Magic 10 Pro+ and Red Magic 10 Pro were launched in China as the latest gaming-focused smartphones from ZTE sub-brand Nubia. Both models have similar internals, aside from the battery and charging speeds. They run on a Snapdragon 8 Elite “Extreme Edition” version paired with up to 24GB of RAM and 1TB of internal storage. Both handsets sport a 1.5K resolution display and feature a triple rear camera setup. The Red Magic 10 Pro+ has a 7,050mAh battery with support for 120W fast charging, while the Red Magic 10 Pro has a smaller 6,500mAh battery that can be charged at 80W.
Red Magic 10 Pro+, Red Magic 10 Pro Price and Availability
RedMagic 10 Pro+ pricing starts at CNY 5,999 (roughly Rs. 72,000) for the 16GB + 512GB version, and it is available in a Dark Knight colourway. The Deuterium Front Transparent Dark Night and Silver Wing colour variants (translated from ********) are priced at CNY 6,299 (roughly Rs. 74,000) for the same RAM and storage configuration. The 24GB + 1TB variant is priced at CNY 7,499 (roughly Rs. 88,000).
The special edition Red Magic 10 Pro Golden Saga model with 24GB and 1TB of storage and a golden finish is priced at CNY 9,499 (roughly Rs. 1,11,000).
Meanwhile, the Red Magic 10 Pro price starts at CNY 4,999 (roughly Rs. 58,000) for the 12GB + 256GB model. It is priced at CNY 5,499 (roughly Rs. 64,000) for the 12GB + 512GB version. It also comes in Dark Knight, Deuterium Front Transparent Dark Night and Transparent Silver Wing colours.
Both models are currently up for pre-orders in China and deliveries are slated to begin on November 18.
Red Magic 10 Pro+, Red Magic 10 Pro Specifications
The dual-SIM (Nano) Red Magic 10 Pro+ and Red Magic 10 Pro runs on Android 15-based Redmagic AI OS 10.0 and sports a 6.8-inch 1.5K(1,216×2,688 pixels) BOE Q9+ AMOLED display with up to 144Hz refresh rate, a 960Hz touch sampling rate, up to 2,000nits peak brightness, and 2,592Hz PWM dimming. The new handsets run on the Snapdragon 8 Elite ‘Extreme Edition’, paired with up to 24GB of RAM and 1TB of storage.
RedMagic 10 Pro Photo Credit: Nubia
For optics, the Red Magic 10 Pro+ and Red Magic 10 Pro feature a triple rear camera setup, comprising a 50-megapixel OmniVision OV50E40 sensor, a 50-megapixel ultrawide sensor and a 2-megapixel macro sensor. Selfies and video calls are handled by a 16-megapixel under-display front-facing camera.
The Red Magic 10 Pro series is equipped with the company’s ICE X cooling technology that comprises a 5,200 sq mm superconducting copper foil and has a 12,000 sq mm 3D vapour chamber for thermal management. Both handsets have a dual X-axis linear motor for haptics. Connectivity options on the smartphones include 5G, 4G LTE, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, NFC, USB Type-C port, and a 3.5mm audio jack. They have 520Hz gaming shoulder keys, three microphones and stereo speakers.
Nubia has equipped the Red Magic 10 Pro+ with a 7,050mAh battery that supports 80W fast charging, while the Red Magic 10 Pro has a 6,500mAh battery with 120W charging support.
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Elon Musk, Trump will meet with House *********** conference
Elon Musk, Trump will meet with House *********** conference
Elon Musk, chief executive officer of Tesla Inc., left, and former US President Donald Trump, prior to a campaign event at the Butler Farm Show in Butler, Pennsylvania, US, on Saturday, Oct. 5, 2024.
Justin Merriman | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Elon Musk on Wednesday will join President-elect Donald Trump for his first post-election meeting with the House *********** conference in Washington, D.C., an adviser to Trump told NBC News. Trump and Musk flew to the nation’s capital together from Florida aboard Trump’s plane.
The development is the latest example of how Musk, the world’s richest man and one of the top backers of Trump’s winning campaign, has grown his presence and influence in the future president’s orbit.
The Tesla and SpaceX CEO has spent the last week in Palm Beach, Florida, where Trump, from his resort home Mar-a-Lago, has been assembling his second administration. Musk has been alongside Trump in nearly every meeting, The New York Times reported.
Read more CNBC politics coverage
On Tuesday evening, Trump announced that “the Great Elon Musk” and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy would lead an outside commission called the “Department of Government Efficiency,” which aims to “dismantle Government Bureaucracy” and cut regulations.
The announcement included a quote from Musk: “This will send shockwaves through the system, and anyone involved in Government waste, which is a lot of people!”
This is breaking news. Please check back for updates.
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******* leader Scholz to seek December confidence vote
******* leader Scholz to seek December confidence vote
******* Chancellor Olaf Scholz says he will ask for a vote of confidence on December 16, paving the way forward for an early parliamentary election in February.
Scholz declared his plans for a vote of confidence during a speech in parliament on Wednesday, one week after his three-party coalition government collapsed.
He had initially wanted to have an early election only by late March – before the vote that is regularly scheduled for September 2025.
However, the centre-right opposition pushed for a quicker vote in the parliament to speed up the next election.
In the end, party leaders across the political spectrum agreed on Wednesday on the two dates for the vote of confidence and the new election.
Scholz on Wednesday also appealed to parties in parliament to pass measures in the time left before the election, stressing that Germans did not need to make a choice between security and prosperity.
He said there should be agreement on increasing child benefit and tackling fiscal drag.
Scholz also said Europe had a responsibility towards Ukraine but that aid money should not lead to cuts in pensions or care at home.
“Let us work together for the good of the country until the new election,” he said.
with Reuters
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Secret Level creator says he hopes the Concord episode will show the potential the story had
Secret Level creator says he hopes the Concord episode will show the potential the story had
The creator of Prime Video’s upcoming video game anthology series Secret Level says he hopes the Concord episode will show the potential the game had.
Secret Level, which was announced during Gamescom‘s Opening Night Live presentation this year, is a new “******-animated anthology series” featuring original stories set within the worlds of various video game series.
There are 15 episodes in total, including stories set in the worlds of such video games as Pac-Man, Armored Core, Mega Man, Spelunky, The Outer Worlds 2, Sifu, Unreal Tournament and Exodus.
Now, in an interview with Rolling Stone, series creator Tim Miller said there were never any plans to remove the Concord episode, following the game’s disastrous launch and Sony’s decision to remove it from ***** after just 11 days.
Miller – who directed Deadpool, Terminator: Dark Fate and Love, ****** & Robots – said that during the course of the three years he spent working on the series, he enjoyed a healthy relationship with the team at Concord developer Firewalk and feels bad that their efforts ended badly.
“There was no nicer, more invested group of developers than the team on Concord,” he recalled. “I honestly don’t understand why it didn’t work. I know that they were trying to do the best they could, and they were a talented group of artists, so I feel terrible for that.”
He also notes that while Concord will never return as a game, and while Firewalk has since been closed down, he hopes its presence as part of Secret Level will show what could have been, and highlight the story that could have won players over.
“I don’t feel bad that it’s a part of the show,” he explained, “because I think it’s an episode that turned out really well, and you can kind of see the potential of this world and the characters.
“If it’s the remaining vestige of that product, I hope the developers feel that it’s in some way worthy, just a little bit, of the blood, sweat, and tears they put into it.”
Secret Level will arrive on Amazon Prime Video on December 10
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Deadly ****** Involving Bulldozer Becomes More Sinister
Deadly ****** Involving Bulldozer Becomes More Sinister
Read the full story on The Auto Wire
Deadly ****** Involving Bulldozer Becomes More Sinister
We covered before how a father and high-profile CEO along with his teenage daughter were ******* in a freak bulldozer accident in a Utah canyon during the summer. Now, new information in that case indicates the driver who was towing that bulldozer lied to police and is now facing felony charges as a result.
Someone crashed their Rolls-Royce allegedly in a street race.
It was July 6 when Richard Hendrickson, CEO of Lifetime Products, along with his 16-year-old daughter Sally were hit by a bulldozer which toppled off a flatbed trailer and onto their GMC Sierra in Ogden Canyon. Both were pronounced ***** at the scene.
Two ****** passengers in the Sierra survived with non-life-threatening injuries.
Recently, local station KSL obtained charging documents which indicate police concluded the bulldozer was too heavy for the truck that was towing it and that it wasn’t secured properly. But the driver allegedly lied about both points at the scene of the ****** to investigators. Now he’s in big trouble.
Back in October, the man was arrested and hit with several felony charges. Obviously, this is an ongoing legal case so the man who was towing the bulldozer is considered innocent until proven guilty in court. But police seem confident enough that he lied and was at fault.
In general, we have to say if you’re ever involved in a ******, fatal or not, just tell police the truth as far as you know and understand it. We’ve seen many other crashes where drivers have lied and later been caught in that lie with indisputable evidence.
Considering how many people are rolling around these days with dashcams and other recording technologies, it’s easier than ever to prove someone has lied about what led up to a ******.
Image via Utah Highway Patrol
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Botany Manor, one of the best games of 2024, is finally coming to PlayStation
Botany Manor, one of the best games of 2024, is finally coming to PlayStation
VGChartz’s Lee Mehr: “The lynchpin to Botany Manor’s success is it being like an orderly garden: a well-attended array of various flowers with nary a dastardly weed in sight. It may not capture the next mind-blowing concept within the genre, nor overwhelm you with a wild barrage of challenges, but there’s an understated value in being among the most succinct within its field. To briefly trade flower comparisons for vegetables, it’s like an onion where every layer adds to the greater whole. Something would feel off if more were added just for its own sake. By hyper-focusing on the brightest brainteasers, quality level design that effectively uses every square inch, and an incredibly clean (if simple) visual design for players to immediately understand, Balloon Studios finds fertile ground between tranquility and challenge.”
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Personal luxury goods market to shrink for first time since GFC
Personal luxury goods market to shrink for first time since GFC
The storefronts of Dolce & Gabbana, Tiffany & Co. and Patek Philippe are seen as people enter Icon Siam, a luxury shopping mall located on the Chao Phraya River, on June 12, 2024 in Bangkok, Thailand.
Lauren Decicca | Getty Images News | Getty Images
The personal luxury goods market looks set to face its first slowdown since the Global Financial Crisis this year, as macroeconomic uncertainty and a pronounced slowdown in China weigh on consumer spending, according to the Bain & Company’s annual luxury report .
This is the first slowdown in demand for personal luxury goods — which include clothing, bags, jewelry and cosmetics — in 15 years, excluding the Covid-19 lockdown *******, according to the Wednesday findings.
Higher costs and falling customer loyalty saw shoppers shun high-end brands in 2024, denting company profits and likely to cause the sector to contract by a projected 2% over the full-year *******, the report showed.
It noted that overall luxury spending is forecast to remain flat year-on-year in 2024 at around 1.5 trillion euros ($1.59 billion), even as segments including autos, travel and fine wine record modest growth.
China weakness weighs heavy
Global economic uncertainty and inflationary pressures have emerged as common threads in the earnings reports of luxury labels this year, with LVMH, Burberry and Gucci-owner Kering all posting repeated revenue misses.
But it’s dwindling demand from the key ******** market that has proven especially concerning for the sector, as the economy has struggled to rebound from a Covid-19-era slowdown.
Even Cartier-owner Richemont, which had been an outlier in the wider sectoral downturn, last week reported a 1% fall in sales in the first half of its fiscal year, due in part to weakened demand from China.
“Mainland China has experienced a sharp slowdown, worsening throughout the year as domestic spending decreased due to lackluster consumer confidence,” Bain & Company noted.
Sustained weakness in the China market could weigh further on the luxury sector in 2025, according to the report, which nevertheless cited this as a lower probability outcome and instead pointed to a gradual recovery in the second half of next year as its more “realistic scenario.”
Luxury demand in Europe and the U.S. has shown signs of gradual improvement quarter-on-quarter this year, with Japan leading the way due to favorable currency exchange rates. As such, the report forecast the sector will grow slightly next year, barring any major economic headwinds.
Pockets of growth
The report also pointed to glimmers of light for the sector, with luxury cars and hospitality, fine wines and gourmet dining all recording gains this year.
Luxury travel particularly emerged as an area of growth, with consumers increasingly switching their spending toward experiences, social events and wellness.
Small personal items, such as eyewear and beauty, also saw an uptick, as shoppers opted for “small indulgences” rather than ******* buys, the report said.
Nevertheless, it noted that luxury brands would need to do more to attract and retain their increasingly fickle consumer base, especially within the younger Gen-Z segment covering people born between 1997 and 2012.
“50 million luxury consumers have either opted out of the luxury goods market or been forced out of it in the last two years. This is a signal for brands that it’s time to readjust their value propositions,” said Claudia D’Arpizio, partner at Bain & Company and lead author of the study.
“To win back customers, particularly the younger ones, brands will need to lead with creativity and expand conversation topics. Simultaneously, they must keep their top customers front and center, surprising and delighting them while rediscovering one-to-one human interactions,” she added.
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Apple and A24 are developing a Sam Bankman-Fried movie written by Lena Dunham
Apple and A24 are developing a Sam Bankman-Fried movie written by Lena Dunham
Apple and art house film company A24 are in early development on a film about convicted crypto scammer Sam Bankman-Fried with a script written by Lena Dunham, Variety reported. The project will be based on the Michael Lewis book Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon that many critics found overly deferential to Bankman-Fried.
The book describes the dizzying rise and equally vertiginous fall of Bankman-Fried and his FTX crypto exchange and Alameda hedge fund. However, it paints the FTX founder as a benevolent prodigy and glosses over the fact that he embezzled billions of dollars from customers and spent it on things like celebrity endorsements, political donations and high-end real-estate purchases.
FTX was worth billions at its peak, but the exchange eventually collapsed and Bankman-Fried was convicted of ****** and sentenced to 25 years in prison. Most FTX customers will get their original investments back, plus interest, but that’s based on a bitcoin price of around $17,000 — and the current price is nearly five times that.
Basing the film on Lewis’s fawning hagiography isn’t a promising start. Hopefully, Dunham or other writers will also draw on far better books (like Numbers Go Up by Zeke Faux) that show the dark, scammy side of crypto promoters like Bankman-Fried and the entire industry in general.
Apple Original Films and A24 have announced other collaborations recently, including the Spike Lee and Denzel Washington film High and Low. Other scripted FTX projects are also in the works, including a limited Amazon Prime series from the Russo brothers based on the 2022 FTX collapse.
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Tetris Forever is the real story of Tetris – and it’s fascinating | Tetris
Tetris Forever is the real story of Tetris – and it’s fascinating | Tetris
Believe me when I say: I truly thought I knew the story of Tetris. The puzzle game’s journey from behind the iron curtain in 1980s Moscow to multi-million-selling video game has been the subject of countless articles, a greatly entertaining book and a recent film. I have played Tetris in various forms for more than 30 years, from the Game Boy to the Nintendo Switch, even in VR. So when I loaded up Tetris Forever, an interactive documentary on Tetris’s 40-year history from the developers-slash-archivists at Digital Eclipse, I wasn’t expecting to learn anything new. I was proven very wrong.
Did you know about Hatris, the 1990 Tetris follow-up that involved stacking colourful hats on top of heads? I did, vaguely, but I did not know about the semi-authorised twist on that game put out by Spectrum Holobyte the same year, a mildly horrifying swap-and-drop puzzler that had players stacking up mouths, noses and eyes to try to make human faces. They called it Faces…tris III, which suggests that whoever named it gave up halfway through. No wonder it wasn’t a hit. I didn’t know that Henk Rogers, the charismatic Dutch-********* who played a huge part in turning Tetris into a global phenomenon, spent his student years surfing and diving in Hawaii before (his words) chasing a girl to Japan and coding the country’s first bestselling RPG in 1984.
Tetris Forever is comprised of five chapters, presented as timelines with an absolute treasure trove of images and video from Tetris’s 40-year history, and faithful, playable recreations of the game that show how it has evolved since Alexey Pajitnov coded the game as something to entertain himself while working in Moscow’s computer research centre. It’s a good four hours’ worth of stuff, at least. There’s camcorder footage from Henk’s famous visit to Moscow, where he turned up completely unauthorised at a Russian government building to ****** for the rights to publish Tetris on the Game Boy. There’s fascinating footage from Nintendo of America in the 1980s, and photos of Henk and Pajitnov with the infamously hard-to-impress former Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi, with whom Rogers struck up a fruitful business friendship over games of Go.
Alongside the 15 playable versions of Tetris from throughout its history, game boxes and adverts and marketing material are digitally recreated in perfect detail for you to examine and pan around. And of course, there’s plentiful on-camera interview footage – not just from Rogers and Pajitnov, but from the other people who played a part in Tetris’s history, too.
What emerges here is a much fuller picture of Tetris’s history than the Apple TV film, which glossed over quite a lot of detail, especially about the four-way scrap over the rights to Tetris in the 1980s. Here, no detail is spared. Admittedly this does turn the second and third chapters into a bit of a shaggy dog story, as we hear about every last detail, but when it comes to gaming history this detail is important even when it threatens to be boring. This all paints such an interesting portrait of the games industry in the 1980s, which in the US and Europe was truly a wild west of have-a-go coders and entrepreneurs – often coders themselves – shopping games around the place and occasionally getting very rich off them. This contrasts strongly with the situation in Japan, whose gaming scene was dominated by a few stiffly traditional companies with enormous respect for process, and of course with Russia and the ******* Union, where it was straightforwardly forbidden to do any kind of business deal with a foreign company.
Tetris as it first appeared, on the Electronika 60 in 1985 Photograph: Digital Eclipse/The Tetris Company
This might all sound terrifically nerdy and, well, it is – Digital Eclipse makes super comprehensive reissues that truly respect the history of the games involved. Tetris Forever is not a general-audience documentary, but one for people with a keen interest in gaming history. The playable versions of Tetris and other connected games, meanwhile, are impressively faithful, but obviously the versions that everyone really wants to play – the Game Boy and NES versions – remain within Nintendo’s vicelike grip. For what it’s worth, Tetris Effect is still the best version of Tetris in my opinion – it was made by Tetsuya Mizuguchi, famed ********* developer of synaesthesic music games, who also appears a lot in this documentary footage.
Tetris has come to feel eternal, and there’s something almost spiritual about playing a recreation of its first version, made for the Electronika 60 computer out of square brackets and exclamation marks lined up on a flickering ******-and-green screen. Playing it, I feel a small echo of what I feel when I look at the Rosetta Stone in the British Museum. It is an amazing thing, a rare example of a perfect game that despite all the drama outlined in this documentary and all the various version over the years, is still pretty much unchanged after 40 years.
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Home Depot Stock: Targeting 12% in 2024 and 25% More in 2025
Home Depot Stock: Targeting 12% in 2024 and 25% More in 2025
Home Depot struggled in Q3 but sustained growth via acquisitions and raised its guidance.
Analyst trends point to a 12% rise in share prices this year, and technical indications suggest another 25% will come in 2025.
Capital returns are strong and will continue in 2025, aiding the updraft in share prices.
Home Depot (NYSE:) is moving higher on the combined forces of outperformance and an expectation for tailwinds to develop in 2025. Better-than-expected consumer trends, acquisitions, and the pro-business drive outperformance in 2024, leading the company to improve guidance against a backdrop of negative sentiment. Tailwinds will form in 2025 as policy headwinds ease and Trump’s business and consumer-friendly policies spur activity, specifically in the housing market.
The forecast for interest rate cuts has eased from its peaks set a few months ago but ******** favorable, with the base rate expected to fall another 50 basis points or more by the end of the year. The takeaway for investors is that Home Depot outperforms and builds leverage through acquisitions ahead of an expected shift in economic fundamentals. It raised guidance for 2024, and the forecasts for 2025 are likely cautious because of tailwinds expected to develop. That means the stock is positioned for the analysts’ upgrade cycle to continue, and with the stock already near record highs, a new high is likely. The technical indications suggest an additional 12% advance once the critical resistance is broken, and a larger 35% gain is possible over the next four quarters.
Home Depot Grows With Acquisition of SRS
Home Depot struggled in Q3, with comp sales declining, but the weakness was far less than anticipated. All the analysts tracked by MarketBeat had lowered their estimates during the quarter, setting the bar very low. The company’s $40.2 billion net revenue is up 6.6% primarily because of the acquisition of SRS, which is expected to add about $10 billion in annualized revenue, worth about 6% of the 2025 consensus estimate. Comps are down 1.3% across the network and 1.2% in the core U.S. market.
Margin news is also favorable, with margin contraction being less than expected. Acquisition and growth-related impairments impacted the company’s cash flow and margin, but the 70 basis point decline allowed for leveraged performance on the bottom line. The company’s $3.78 in adjusted EPS fell $0.07 compared to last year or 180 basis points, outpacing the consensus by 350 bps and the top-line strength by 100. The salient point is that an adjusted operating margin of 13.8% allowed for income growth despite the contraction, helping to sustain the company’s robust financial outlook.
Guidance was raised, helping to lift market sentiment. The company raised its full-year revenue guidance to up 4%, including the addition of SRS and the extra 53rd week, nearly 100 basis points above the consensus estimate. Earnings guidance is also favorable, with operating margin expected to hold steady sequentially and adjusted earnings expected to fall only 1% for the year.
Home Depot Builds Value With SRS Acquisition
The worst that can be said about the SRS acquisition is that it increased the company’s debt and leverage, but the impact will be short-lived. The company is a solid cash-flow producing machine and can tackle the debt, running at 10X equity in late 2024. The offsetting factor is the positive impacts of the acquisition on the balance sheet, which include increased current and total assets, with total assets up nearly 28% and lagged by a 23% increase in liability.
Shareholder equity is up 300% and will likely grow as debt is reduced. Regardless, the cash flow outlook and balance sheet are sufficient to sustain the capital return program, including the dividends and buybacks. The dividend is worth $9.00 and yields more than 2.10%, with shares near record highs and the distribution is expected to grow in 2025. Buybacks reduced the share count by 0.5% at the end of the quarter and are also expected to continue in 2025.
Home Depot Tracking for New Highs
The trend in analysts’ sentiment ahead of the release is unlikely to end now that guidance for Q4 is in. The trend includes improving sentiment and price expectations with fresh coverage entering the picture, sentiment firming, and the price target increasing. The consensus target is near $466 and is up 25% over the last year, 500 basis points in the month leading into the release. The consensus implies fair value near the all-time high, but the revision trends suggest a move to the high-end range near $466 is likely. A move to $466 could happen quickly once the all-time high is surpassed.
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CPI inflation October 2024:
CPI inflation October 2024:
Inflation perked up in October though pretty much in line with Wall Street expectations, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Wednesday.
The consumer price index, which measures costs across a spectrum of goods and services, increased 0.2% for the month. That took the 12-month inflation rate to 2.6%, up 0.2 percentage point from September.
The readings were both in line with the Dow Jones estimates.
Excluding food and energy, the move was even more pronounced. Core CPI accelerated 0.3% for the month and was at 3.3% annually, also meeting forecasts.
Stock market futures nudged higher following the release while Treasury yields fell.
Energy costs, which had been declining in recent months, were flat in October while the food index increased 0.2%. On a year-over-year basis, energy was off 4.9% while food was up 2.1%.
Despite signs of moderating elsewhere, shelter prices continued to be a major contributor to the CPI move. The shelter index, which carries about a one-third weighting in the broader index, climbed another 0.4% in October, double its September move and up 4.9% on an annual basis. The category was responsible for more than half the gain in the all-items CPI measure, according to the BLS.
The readings took inflation further away from the Federal Reserve’s 2% goal and could complicate the central bank’s monetary policy strategy going forward, particularly with a new administration taking over the White House in January.
President-elect Donald Trump’s plans to implement more tariffs and government spending have the potential both to boost growth and aggravate inflation, which ******** a substantial problem for U.S. households despite easing off its meteoric peak in mid-2022.
Consequently, traders in recent days have scaled back their anticipation for Fed rate cuts ahead. The central bank already has lopped off 0.75 percentage point from its key borrowing rate and had been expected to move aggressively ahead.
However, traders now expect just another three-quarters of a point in cuts through the end of 2025, about half a point less than priced in prior to the presidential election.
This is breaking news. Please check back for updates.
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Stellar Blade Developer Expects The Game To Be Even ******* On PC, Aiming For 2025 Launch
Stellar Blade Developer Expects The Game To Be Even ******* On PC, Aiming For 2025 Launch
Stellar Blade developer Shift Up has revealed more details on the game’s upcoming PC release, and it has high expectations for the platform. In the studio’s Q3 2024 earnings report, Shift Up confirmed that Stellar Blade is “being considered within 2025” for a PC release–something it has spoken about in the past.
“Considering recent trends such as Steam’s expanding market share in the AAA game sector and the global success of ****** Myth: Wukong, we expect the performance on PC to exceed that on consoles,” Shift Up said in its report. To put that into context, ****** Myth: Wukong had a strong launch in August with 10 million copies sold in its first three days on PC and PS5, and within two weeks, that figure climbed to 18 million.
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Stellar Blade – NieR:Automata DLC Trailer
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****** Myth: Wukong was developed by ******** studio Game Science and one of the company’s biggest external investors believes that it will sell 30 million copies over its lifetime, a figure that can potentially be reached with its upcoming expansion. In comparison, Stellar Blade reached 1 million sales on PS5 by the end of June.
Shift Up also mentioned that sales on PS5–where Stellar Blade is exclusively available for now–continue to remain stable, thanks in part to the studio constantly updating the game and releasing new DLC for it. “With the addition of the Nier: Automata DLC and ongoing marketing activities, we plan to maintain the IP’s popularity until the platform expansion,” Shift Up explained.
The Nier: Automata DLC for Stellar Blade will be available starting November 20, and in addition to some stylish outfits inspired by the game’s co-protagonist 2B, there’ll be a new hairstyle for heroine Eve to equip, as well as a photo mode will be added to the game.
“A strong battle system and exciting moments make Stellar Blade more than just an imitator,” Imran Khan wrote in GameSpot’s Stellar Blade review.
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AirPods Pro hacked using Faraday cage and microwave as a jammer to fool geofencing — enthusiast activates hearing aids feature in AirPods Pro in geoblocked India
AirPods Pro hacked using Faraday cage and microwave as a jammer to fool geofencing — enthusiast activates hearing aids feature in AirPods Pro in geoblocked India
An India-based tech enthusiast who bought a pair of AirPods Pro 2 for their hard-of-hearing grandma to use as hearing aids, discovered that the feature is geoblocked in India due to regulatory restrictions. So, instead of throwing in the towel and calling it a day, Rithwik Jayasimha (@thel3l) and their Lagrange Point tech enthusiast guild built a Faraday cage and a microwave jammer to spoof their location and unlock the hearing aid feature on the earbuds.
According to the group, hearing aids in India cost between INR 50,000 and INR 800,000 (approximately $600 to $9,500), putting it out of range of most users. On the other hand, AirPods Pro 2 is just half the price of the cheapest hearing aids at INR 24,900 (around $300), making it an excellent substitute for those with hearing problems. To use earbuds as hearing aids, you need to be in a country where Apple doesn’t geoblock the feature, run iOS or iPadOS 18.1 or newer, have the AirPods Pro 2, and ensure that it uses the 7B19 firmware or newer.
Although Jayasimha had all the hardware and software needed to setup the AirPods Pro 2 as hearing aids, they were located in an unsupported location—India—so they decided to spoof their location and fool Apple into thinking that they’re located in the U.S. This is easier said than done, because even though they’ve spoofed the IP location and locale of the iPad they were using to setup the earbuds, the device still knows that they were in India.
After several rounds of testing and trial-and-error, one of their companions mentioned that the iPad used the SSIDs and MAC addresses that the routers around them broadcast to determine their location. So, even if the iPad didn’t have cellular and had its GPS turned off, it was still able to accurately place the region it’s in. The group then decided to put the iPad and an ESP32 board that cycles through a hundred Wi-Fi SSIDs that are located in Menlo Park, California in a makeshift Faraday cage (a cardboard box lined with aluminum foil outside) and then place it on top of a microwave going full blast to overpower and jam any 2.4G Wi-Fi signals in its immediate vicinity.
Image 1 of 5
(Image credit: Rithwik Jayasimha/Lagrange Point)
(Image credit: Rithwik Jayasimha/Lagrange Point)
(Image credit: Rithwik Jayasimha/Lagrange Point)
(Image credit: Rithwik Jayasimha/Lagrange Point)
(Image credit: Rithwik Jayasimha/Lagrange Point)
They then ran a script on a MacBook that instructed the iPad to reboot and turn on its Wi-Fi antenna five minutes after that. The first few attempts *******, though, requiring the group to adjust their Faraday cage, microwave jammer, and a few restarts. But, finally, after approximately three hours of fiddling around, the Mac Console reported that the iPad is showing itself as located in the U.S. With that result, the group pulled the iPad out of the makeshift cage, connected the AirPods to the device, and the Hearing Aid setup process popped up on the screen. Success!
With proof of concept done, the group repeated the process a couple more times and built a more permanent Faraday cage. Now that they have the process down pat, they offered a hearing aid unlocking camp at Lagrange Point to allow anyone in the Bengaluru area to benefit from the feature. That way, it will allow more people to afford hearing aids without having to spend more than $500. If you’re nowhere near Lagrange Point’s office, you can recreate their detailed process and unlock the feature on your own without needing to travel there (or to a country that has the feature turned on).
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3 Top Stocks Crushing Q3 Earnings With Strong 2024 Guidance
3 Top Stocks Crushing Q3 Earnings With Strong 2024 Guidance
Hims & Hers tripled consensus EPS estimates in Q3 while raising Q4 guidance thanks to its compounded GLP-1 treatment business.
Payoneer is profiting off the growth in cross-border business payment volumes, which is growing 25% YoY.
Astera Labs is riding demand in faster connectivity for AI workloads at data centers and on the cloud.
Every earnings season has its share of outperformers, companies that report blowout quarters and raise their forecasts. The market reacts quickly sending shares sharply higher. The third quarter of 2024 earnings season is no different. If you want to track the best of the best when it comes to crushing consensus estimates, here are 3 stocks to keep on your radar.
Hims & Hers Health: Riding the GLP-1 Supply Shortage
Telehealth platform operator Hims & Hers Health (NYSE:) has been a growth machine in terms of revenue and subscribers. The platform offers personalized health solutions and prescriptions for erectile dysfunction, hair loss, weight loss, ******* health, behavioral health, and skin care. Users can get prescriptions delivered discreetly upon an online medical consult. The medical sector fintech puts users on an automatic delivery schedule with recurring billing for their treatments.
Hims & Hers started offering GLP-1 compounds in May of 2024, which are non-FDA evaluated substitute treatments like compounded Semaglutide during periods of a supply shortage of the branded medicine. In this case, Novo Nordisk (NYSE:) Semaglutide medicine Ozempic and Wegovy and Eli Lily (NYSE:) dual agonist GLP-1 drugs Mounjaro and Zepbound. This has caused a surge in revenue, as evidenced by its blowout third quarter of 2024 results.
Hims & Hers reported Q3 2024 EPS of 32 cents, tripling consensus estimates for 10 cents. Revenue skyrocketed 77.1% YoY to $401.56 million, crushing $382.2 million consensus estimates.
Subscribers grew 44% YoY to 2 million. The company provided upside guidance for Q4 2024 revenue of $465 million to $470 million, crushing 4421.12 million consensus estimates.
Eli Lilly petitioned the FDA to curtail compounded Tirzepatide sales, claiming there was no longer a supply shortage and for safety concerns since compounds aren’t regulated. The FDA decided to limit the sales of compounded GLP-1 treatments. This triggered a lawsuit from the Outsourcing Facilities Association, which caused the FDA to reconsider taking Tirzepatide off the ***** shortage list.
Hims & Hers sells its compounded GLP-1 injections for as low as $199 a month versus $1,100 or more for the monthly injections of branded GLP-1 drugs like Wegovy and Zepbound. For now, Hims & Hers continues to sell its version of GLP-1 compounds, and they have announced the purchase of a U.S. compounding facility. Hims & Hers plans to bring liraglutide, the first generic GLP-1, to market in 2025.
Payoneer: Profiting on Cross-Border Business Payments
Digital payment services provider Payoneer Global (NASDAQ:) offers a payment infrastructure platform enabling customers to manage cross-border payments. Companies with international business use the platform as a one-stop global multicurrency account to service their accounts payable and accounts receivable needs. Payoneer enables freelancers on popular platforms like Upwork (NASDAQ:) and Fiverr International (NYSE:) to receive payments from international clients. The company is building a full-service financial stack for global small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs).Payoneer reported Q3 2024 EPS of 11 cents, more than doubling consensus estimates for 4 cents. Revenues surged 19.4% YoY to a record $248.3 million, beating consensus estimates for $225.44 million. Transaction volume grew 25% YoY.
Payoneer issued upside full-year 2024 revenue guidance of $950 million to $960 million versus $926.13 million consensus estimates. Adjusted EBITDA is expected between $255 million to $265 million. Payoneer CEO John Caplan believes the company is “at the beginning” of its growth trajectory. They have increased the growth rate for ideal customer profiles (ICPs) for four straight quarters to 11% YoY and ARPU for five straight quarters to 20%.
Astera Labs: Riding the AI ***** in Data Centers and Cloud Connectivity
Astera Labs (NASDAQ:) designs and produces semiconductor chips that improve the latency and efficiency of data transfer in electronic devices. They offer connectivity solutions for cloud and AI infrastructure, including servers, computers, data centers and cloud systems. The demand growth of high bandwidth memory (HBM) for AI workloads is a growth driver for Astera as its chips make faster data transmission possible.
Astera reported Q3 2024 EPS of 23 cents, beating consensus estimates by 6 cents. Revenues surged 206% YoY to $113.1 million, crushing the $97.5 million consensus estimate.
Astera Labs CEO Jitendra Mohan stated, “Our business has now entered a new growth phase with multiple product families ramping across AI platforms based upon both third-party GPUs and internally developed AI accelerators. With an expanding product portfolio, including the new Scorpio Fabric Switches, we are cementing our position as a critical part of AI connectivity infrastructure, delivering increased value to our hyperscaler customers, and unlocking additional multi-year growth trajectories for Astera.”
The company issued upside EPS guidance for the fourth quarter of 2024 of 25 cents to 26 cents versus 18 cents, with revenues of $126 million to $130 million firmly above consensus estimates for $107.94 million.
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Personal luxury goods market to shrink for first time since GFC
Personal luxury goods market to shrink for first time since GFC
The storefronts of Dolce & Gabbana, Tiffany & Co. and Patek Philippe are seen as people enter Icon Siam, a luxury shopping mall located on the Chao Phraya River, on June 12, 2024 in Bangkok, Thailand.
Lauren Decicca | Getty Images News | Getty Images
The personal luxury goods market looks set to face its first slowdown since the Global Financial Crisis this year, as macroeconomic uncertainty and a pronounced slowdown in China weigh on consumer spending, according to the Bain & Company’s annual luxury report .
This is the first slowdown in demand for personal luxury goods — which include clothing, bags, jewelry and cosmetics — in 15 years, excluding the Covid-19 lockdown *******, according to the Wednesday findings.
Higher costs and falling customer loyalty saw shoppers shun high-end brands in 2024, denting company profits and likely to cause the sector to contract by a projected 2% over the full-year *******, the report showed.
It noted that overall luxury spending is forecast to remain flat year-on-year in 2024 at around 1.5 trillion euros ($1.59 billion), even as segments including autos, travel and fine wine record modest growth.
China weakness weighs heavy
Global economic uncertainty and inflationary pressures have emerged as common threads in the earnings reports of luxury labels this year, with LVMH, Burberry and Gucci-owner Kering all posting repeated revenue misses.
But it’s dwindling demand from the key ******** market that has proven especially concerning for the sector, as the economy has struggled to rebound from a Covid-19-era slowdown.
Even Cartier-owner Richemont, which had been an outlier in the wider sectoral downturn, last week reported a 1% fall in sales in the first half of its fiscal year, due in part to weakened demand from China.
“Mainland China has experienced a sharp slowdown, worsening throughout the year as domestic spending decreased due to lackluster consumer confidence,” Bain & Company noted.
Sustained weakness in the China market could weigh further on the luxury sector in 2025, according to the report, which nevertheless cited this as a lower probability outcome and instead pointed to a gradual recovery in the second half of next year as its more “realistic scenario.”
Luxury demand in Europe and the U.S. has shown signs of gradual improvement quarter-on-quarter this year, with Japan leading the way due to favorable currency exchange rates. As such, the report forecast the sector will grow slightly next year, barring any major economic headwinds.
Pockets of growth
The report also pointed to glimmers of light for the sector, with luxury cars and hospitality, fine wines and gourmet dining all recording gains this year.
Luxury travel particularly emerged as an area of growth, with consumers increasingly switching their spending toward experiences, social events and wellness.
Small personal items, such as eyewear and beauty, also saw an uptick, as shoppers opted for “small indulgences” rather than ******* buys, the report said.
Nevertheless, it noted that luxury brands would need to do more to attract and retain their increasingly fickle consumer base, especially within the younger Gen-Z segment covering people born between 1997 and 2012.
“50 million luxury consumers have either opted out of the luxury goods market or been forced out of it in the last two years. This is a signal for brands that it’s time to readjust their value propositions,” said Claudia D’Arpizio, partner at Bain & Company and lead author of the study.
“To win back customers, particularly the younger ones, brands will need to lead with creativity and expand conversation topics. Simultaneously, they must keep their top customers front and center, surprising and delighting them while rediscovering one-to-one human interactions,” she added.
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Tech Life: The dangerous job of online moderating
Tech Life: The dangerous job of online moderating
We hear from a former moderator in Kenya who was left traumatised by his previous job.
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Phil Spencer Confirms Xbox is Planning an Xbox Handheld, But It’s a Few Years Away
Phil Spencer Confirms Xbox is Planning an Xbox Handheld, But It’s a Few Years Away
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November 13, 2024
Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer has confirmed that Xbox is planning an Xbox handheld console, but it’s a few years away from release.
The news comes from a new interview with Bloomberg. Spencer said that the company is currently working on prototypes and considering what it [a handheld console] might do.
Spencer said the “expectation [internally] is that we would do something” in that category of the handheld console market.
However, if you’re currently saving up the pennies in hopes of buying such a console soon, Spencer promptly squashed any false expectations and said that such a device is still a few years out.
Nonetheless, rumors of Xbox’s next-generation console and a handheld device have been circulating for some time. In March 2024, Windows Central’s Jez Corden claimed that Xbox was already prototyping an Xbox handheld. Other rumors also circulated that Xbox could be planning to release its next-generation console sooner than PlayStation.
On the Xbox Two podcast, Corden said, “I know that they’ve [Xbox] have got handheld prototypes right now”. Corden soon clarified that these are “new prototypes” and not the old prototypes often referred to.
Earlier this year, Xbox announced that its next-generation console would be “unique” and “powerful.” But apart from usual buzzwords, its currently not clear on what exactly that entails.
What do you think of Xbox working on its own handheld console? Let us know in the comments or our new community forum!
For more Insider Gaming coverage, check out the news that Shawn Fonteno almost quit GTA 5
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When the boss doesn’t want to hear about your stress
When the boss doesn’t want to hear about your stress
Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain
Employees who struggle with stress on the job will often get help from mental health and stress management resources provided by their employers.
But a new study from the University of Iowa Tippie College of Business finds that when stress causes an employee to become disengaged from their work and their performance suffers, managers are less likely to provide the resources that might help.
The study, “Under Pressure: Employee Work Stress, Supervisory Mentoring Support, and Employee Career Success” was published in the journal Personnel Psychology.
Emily Campion, assistant professor of management and entrepreneurship and study co-author, said there comes a point where a manager may perceive that their stressed-out worker requires more resources and attention than their productivity warrants, so managers are less likely to provide the resources needed to help.
“Managers have only so many resources at their disposal and if they spend too many resources on a single person, they can’t spend as many resources on other employees,” said Campion.
The researchers gathered data by asking a series of survey questions to more than 500 employees and managers in the U.S., U.K., and Hong Kong, asking about employee stress and manager responses to that stress. Campion said they found some evidence that “broadcasting your stress can actually repel support.”
That lack of support leads to a downward spiral, where the employee becomes further disengaged, which adds more stress, and so on. Ultimately, this leads to lower career satisfaction and promotability ratings, and fewer promotions, adding even more stress.
She said managers can step in early by providing stress management resources, which is easier when the worker has not yet disengaged. Eventually, though, they simply don’t have the resources.
What should employees do when they’re struggling with stress? Campion cautions the findings are not a reason for employees to hide their stress. Instead, she said employees should alert managers as soon as they’re starting to feel stress, before it leads to disengagement and reduced performance.
If the stress is about a certain task, that should be communicated to the manager. Though not explicitly addressed in the study, Campion suggests that broad feelings of stress may be perceived by managers as a more abstract problem rather than something that is identifiable and solvable, but can still be addressed with support services such as employee assistance programs (EAP). Campion said most employers encourage employees to use them and that they should not be viewed as just being there for public relations or recruiting purposes.
At the same time, she said employers should not be quick to blame employees. Managers should take their employees’ claims of stress seriously and identify stressed employees early before they become disengaged.
More information:
Berrin Erdogan et al, Under Pressure: Employee Work Stress, Supervisory Mentoring Support, and Employee Career Success, Personnel Psychology (2024). DOI: 10.1111/peps.12662
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Perplexity AI Begins Experimenting With Ads on Its Search Platform
Perplexity AI Begins Experimenting With Ads on Its Search Platform
Perplexity AI, the company behind the eponymous artificial intelligence (AI) search platform, announced on Tuesday that it will begin experimenting with ads this week. An earlier report highlighted the company’s plans of incorporating ads by the end of the year to boost its revenue. The AI firm says that ads will be shown in a format that does not clutter or ruin the user experience of the platform. Additionally, it highlighted that all ads will be marked as sponsored to inform users when an ad is being displayed.
How Perplexity Plans to Show Ads on Search Results
In a blog post, the AI-powered search engine shared details of how it plans to implement ads on the service. Claiming that it will not duplicate the SEO industry’s use of “arbitrary tactics to improve their rankings at the expense of user utility”, Perplexity says it will instead show ads in a format that is “transparent” and generate a user’s curiosity about a brand.
Perplexity will display ads as “sponsored follow-up questions” and “paid media” on the side of an answer. The ads will include a question that directly delves into the brand’s offerings. The AI firm also highlighted that if a user clicks on the sponsored question, the response will not be written or edited by the brand, and instead Perplexity’s AI will be used to generate an authentic answer.
The company also revealed that Indeed, Whole Foods Market, Universal McCann, and PMG are its initial brand partners, and users can expect to see ads from these firms in the coming days. While Perplexity plans to start its ad tests this week, they will only be shown to users residing in the US.
Perplexity says that the move to show ads will allow it to generate revenue and share it with its publisher partners. Perplexity pays partnering publishing companies to use their articles and data to generate response to queries.
“Experience has taught us that subscriptions alone do not generate enough revenue to create a sustainable revenue-sharing program. Especially given how rapidly our publisher program is growing, advertising is the best way to ensure a steady and scalable revenue stream,” Perplexity added.
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An under-the-radar Trump trade that will benefit from pro-crypto stance and deregulation
An under-the-radar Trump trade that will benefit from pro-crypto stance and deregulation
President-elect Donald Trump’s second term could mean more gains for Block , according to Bernstein. “The crypto piece is obvious – bitcoin is ~3% of ****** profits and SQ has been strategically focused on bitcoin mining hardware and self-custody wallet,” analyst Harshita Rawat told clients. “But SQ has also come under regulators’ scrutiny (FinCen, CFPB) recently around its Cash App and Afterpay businesses. Lower regulatory scrutiny may also mean that SQ can lean into more Cash App products (e.g., on lending, commerce).” SQ YTD mountain SQ, year-to-date Rawat also sees potential for Block’s inclusion in the S & P 500 and an acceleration of Square ****** payment volume – which is the total dollar amount of card payments processed by sellers using the Square platform – heading into next year. The President-elect has taken a pro-crypto stance during his time on the campaign trail , pledging to ensure that the federal government doesn’t sell off its bitcoin holdings. Trump has also vowed to unseat U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Gary Gensler, who has been more aggressive with regards to regulation. Wall Street is already largely bullish on the name, with 36 of the 48 analysts covering it having a strong buy or buy rating. Its average price target of $88.18 reflects around 1% upside from Tuesday’s close. This comes as the stock has surged nearly 13% in 2024 and more than 25% in the past one month. A more favorable regulatory environment could also spell gains for Visa , which has rallied around 19% this year, according to Bernstein. Back in September, the Department of Justice sued the world’s biggest payments network , accusing it of having an ******** monopoly over debit payments. “The DOJ lawsuit likely shaved some turns off of Visa’s multiple,” the analyst said. “While it is unlikely that the DOJ pulls the case, it’s possible that President-elect Trump names a more pro-business Head, who might be more amenable to a weaker settlement with Visa.” With that in mind, Rawat likes Visa over Mastercard in the near term. She also said that Capital One’s planned acquisition of Discover Financial Services – the likelihood of which has increased since the election’s outcome – could also dampen Mastercard shares in the long term. That stock has seen the biggest year-to-date gains of the three, rising around 24%.
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AstraZeneca boosts U.S. investment on confidence in economy
AstraZeneca boosts U.S. investment on confidence in economy
The office building of biopharmaceutical company AstraZeneca is being seen in Shanghai, China, on May 23, 2024.
Nurphoto | Getty Images
A version of this article first appeared in CNBC’s Healthy Returns newsletter, which brings the latest health-care news straight to your inbox. Subscribe here to receive future editions.
AstraZeneca said it is doubling down on its investment in its U.S. business, a move that comes just one week after Donald Trump’s election win.
AstraZeneca announced plans for $2 billion in new spending on research and development, bringing its total capital investment in the country to $3.5 billion by the end of 2026. The cash will be used to boost the company’s research and development, as well as its manufacturing footprint in the U.S.
The British-Swedish pharmaceutical giant expects the new investment to create more than 1,000 jobs, “contributing to the growth of the U.S. economy,” according to a release. The company said it currently has 17,800 U.S. employees working across 17 sites in 12 states.
AstraZeneca said the expanded footprint will include a research and development center in Cambridge, Mass., manufacturing plants in Maryland and Texas and other sites at unspecified locations across the West and East coasts.
AstraZeneca called the investment the first in a series of steps toward hitting its revenue target of $80 billion by 2030 – a goal set earlier this year.
The drugmaker is now one of the first major foreign companies to announce plans to invest in the U.S. after Trump’s victory.
Several companies similarly announced major U.S. investments during Trump’s first term. Trump would often try to take credit for those investments, even if it was hard to prove a connection to his administration.
But AstraZeneca declined to explicitly say whether there was a link between Trump winning a second term and its increased spending in the U.S.
During a media call after the company’s earnings release Tuesday, AstraZeneca CEO Pascal Soriot said the investment is a “testimony of our confidence in the U.S. economy – of the U.S. marketplace over the next few years.”
Soriot, during a separate event in New York City on Tuesday, also told reporters that the drugmaker has been looking at the expanded investment “for a number of months.”
A previous version of a Tuesday report from the Wall Street Journal suggested the company was motivated by other factors: A source familiar with the matter told the outlet that AstraZeneca’s new investment came in response to the election results and is a bet that a second Trump administration would amend certain elements of President Joe Biden’s signature Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA. The current version of the report no longer mentions the IRA.
That legislation, signed into law in 2022, includes provisions that aim to lower prescription ***** costs for seniors, such as allowing Medicare to negotiate medication prices with manufacturers. AstraZeneca and other drugmakers have acknowledged that the IRA, particularly its Medicare price talks, is a headwind to their businesses. AstraZeneca’s diabetes treatment Farxiga was among the 10 drugs targeted in the first round of negotiations, which set new prices for 2026.
But Soriot on Tuesday pushed back on the idea that the company’s decision was based around potential changes to the IRA. During the media event, he joked that “I sort of dream sometimes” of the IRA being repealed, “but not to that extent.”
He also said some of the IRA’s provisions are “good things,” such as a $2,000 cap on out-of-pocket spending for Medicare Part D enrollees starting in 2025.
Soriot said the company believes that the IRA is “here to stay,” adding the decision to boost its investment in the U.S. is “not so much” based on “policies specific to our industry.”
“It’s more a general belief that the economy will remain strong. And if you have a strong economy, hopefully, that drives investments in innovation, sure, in our industry, but also many other industries,” he told reporters. “We want to tap into this innovation in the U.S.”
When asked about Trump’s tariff policies, Soriot said it is “probably more relevant to other industries and certainly other companies.”
Trump has threatened to slap a tariff of up to 60% on all goods imported to the U.S. from China. But Soriot called his tariff policy “irrelevant” to AstraZeneca because the company does not source products from China for the U.S.
The products AstraZeneca commercializes in the U.S. are manufactured in its several plants across the country, “and we’re investing in even more now,” he told reporters.
Feel free to send any tips, suggestions, story ideas and data to Annika at *****@*****.tld.
Latest in health-care tech: General Catalyst’s HATCo to buy Summa Health for $485 million
A subsidiary of the venture capital firm General Catalyst has agreed to purchase Summa Health, an integrated health system in Ohio, for $485 million, according to a release on Thursday.
The two organizations first announced the acquisition plans in January, but the terms were previously undisclosed. Summa said Thursday that the deal will help it eliminate $850 million in existing debt when combined with its current cash. The health system had about $859 million in debt as of Sept. 30, according to financial filings.
Summa operates across five counties in northeast Ohio, and it supports more than 1,000 inpatient beds across its network of hospitals, community-based health centers and its multi-specialty group practice. General Catalyst ***** the groundwork for the acquisition last year when it announced a new company called the Health Assurance Transformation Company, or HATCo, which it said operates on “decades-long” timelines.
Buying a hospital is an unprecedented move in the venture industry, but the fund’s goal is not to cut costs at Summa, HATCo executives told CNBC this winter. Instead, the company will work to generate new revenue streams for Summa by bringing in new technology and models of care.
“This is not like a turnaround, this is not a distressed system,” HATCo CEO Dr. Marc Harrison said in a January interview.
The company has committed $350 million in capital funding to Summa over the first five years, which will be used to invest in tech and ensure the health system has the resources it needs for routine workflows, according to Thursday’s release. HATCo has also committed an additional $200 million over the first seven years, which is intended “for strategic and transformative investments.”
HATCo will evaluate tech solutions from a range of different companies, not just those within General Catalyst’s portfolio. The tech companies HATCo taps to use within Summa will be on the mature side, not early-stage startups, Harrison added.
As part of the acquisition, Summa will switch from a non-profit to a for-profit organization. The health system said that once the deal closes, the remaining funds will be used to support a new health-focused community foundation for the greater Akron area.
“We will be able to invest in and grow our team in ways we could not achieve as an independent organization,” Summa executives said in the release. “And while the structure and model of Summa Health will shift when we become part of HATCo, our priorities will not change and our providers, employees and leadership team will transition to the new entity.”
The deal is still subject to regulatory approval. Representatives for General Catalyst and Summa did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Read more about why HATCo is acquiring Summa here.
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Pelican News
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