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- Closing curtains: "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert" is retiring after a 33-year run.
- Dol-drums: A weaker dollar may give tech giants an unexpected earnings boost.
- Taking charge: Uber's robotaxi deal with Lucid might help it catch up with EV targets.
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The long, slow death of the late night talk show |
The shifting sands of entertainment just swallowed one of America's most successful shows — and with it, sounded the alarm on an iconic entertainment format: the late night talk show. The first to pull the plug of the three major late night shows, Paramount-owned CBS announced on Thursday that it plans to end "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert" after the next TV season, citing a "financial decision." Despite leading the competitive 11:35 pm late night slot for almost a decade, the show has lost more than a third of its TV audience since 2018. |
Despite their clippable formats translating well to social media, long gone are the days when Americans would religiously watch shows hosted by big personalities like Johnny Carson or Jay Leno before bed. With streaming and social media capturing audience attention away from traditional TV, and expensive talent at the center of each show, the bottom line is that the late night model just doesn't make as much sense anymore. Indeed, despite ratings holding up better than some of his peers, Colbert's show has reportedly been losing $40 million a year, with its ad revenue plummeting some 42% since 2018 according to Reuters, as ad dollars followed the eyeballs to TikTok, YouTube, Netflix, and Instagram. Even though there's clearly still some demand for well-polished topical talk shows, services like Netflix are instead investing more into live sports than talking heads — which means "The Late Show" might be one of the first to abandon the genre, but it probably won't be the last. |
There's one major tailwind for the Mag 7 ahead of earnings |
Tariffs are set to rise again, with country-specific duties kicking in next month... yet Wall Street remains firmly unbothered. Major stock indexes notched new highs last week, fueled in part by a strong start to the second-quarter earnings season, with 83% of S&P 500 companies beating expectations so far. And one tailwind helping corporate America's bottom line is the falling US dollar. An unintended byproduct of the "T word," a significant amount of demand for the US dollar has evaporated in the last few months, with the DXY — a weighted average of the USD against six global currencies — down 7% since the start of the year. Perhaps counterintuitively, a lower dollar translates into higher revenue for companies that do a lot of business overseas. In fact, per Goldman Sachs estimates published Friday, every 10% drop in the dollar translates into roughly 2% to 3% gains for S&P 500 earnings per share — and that's already showing up. Last week, companies like 3M, PepsiCo, and Netflix have all attributed their strong Q2 results to favorable foreign exchange. |
But the larger beneficiaries could be the tech giants of the Magnificent 7, which Goldman estimates generate 49% of their combined revenue overseas — far above the S&P 500 average of 28%. Alphabet and Tesla are the first two of the Mag 7 set to report Q2 earnings on Wednesday. Of course, it's not all upside: any parts or services bought from abroad will be more expensive as well, offsetting some of the benefit. These global companies will also face "above-average risk" if trade tensions escalate further, and while a weaker dollar boosts profits on paper, it can also mask deeper concerns — namely, the reasons that the dollar fell in the first place, such as rising federal debt and uncertainty around US growth prospects. |
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Uber's focus on robotaxis might also accelerate its stalling electrification efforts |
Last Thursday, Uber announced a major deal with electric vehicle maker Lucid to create a fleet of robotaxis in the US — sending Lucid stock soaring, closing up more than 36% on the day. The deal signals just how seriously Uber is planning for autonomous rides. The ride-hailing app is set to take a $300 million stake in Lucid and will aim to deploy at least 20,000 custom vehicles from the company, equipped with a self-driving system developed by autonomous technology start-up Nuro, over the next 6 years. Indeed, Uber has pledged to make "multi-hundred-million dollar investments" in both companies to pull off its latest goal of launching its own robotaxi service in a major US city next year. Meanwhile, one of its previous promises — to become a totally zero-emission platform globally by 2040 — is falling to keep pace. |
In May, Uber outlined that 230,000 of its drivers worldwide were using zero-emission vehicles (ZEVs) at the end of Q1, a 60% increase from a year prior. But, as noted by Rest of World, that electrification effort has diminished significantly — particularly in the US, where its ZEV uptake has plateaued. |
While Europe's pro-EV policies, such as tax breaks and congestion charge exemptions for drivers, have seen the share of Uber's on-trip miles completed in ZEVs rise to ~15% in the region, the US and Canada have only seen their ZEV share nudge up slightly in the past year to just 9.1% of miles. Ironically, though, Uber's sudden interest in robotaxis might actually help it meet one of its more overlooked goals, both in the US and globally. Just two days before news broke of the Lucid-Nuro deal, Uber also announced that it's teaming up with Baidu, which runs one of China's largest robotaxi EV fleets. |
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- Cold shoulder: The CEO of Astronomer has officially resigned over that concert video — but not before generating more than 22,000 news articles mentioning the company in just 24 hours, per Muck Rack data cited by Axios.
- Domino's reported that domestic same-store sales grew 3.4% in the second quarter, after adding stuffed crust to its menu for the first time in March.
- Following a preliminary trade deal, China's exports of rare-earth magnets to the US surged 660% in June from the month before.
- Golf star Scottie Scheffler is being likened to Tiger Woods after winning The Open on Sunday — marking exactly 1,197 days between both players' first major win to their fourth.
- High steaks: Beef prices are hitting record levels, having gone up almost 9% since January, per the Department of Agriculture (though Americans seem more bullish on the meat than ever).
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Off the charts: Which US state has long been a legal home to corporate America with its famously business-friendly environment? [Answer below]. (Hint: Lately it's been facing an exodus of high-profile companies like Tesla and SpaceX.) |
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Sherwood Media, LLC produces fresh and unique perspectives on topical financial news and is a fully owned subsidiary of Robinhood Markets, Inc., and any views expressed here do not necessarily reflect the views of any other Robinhood affiliate... See more |
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