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FTSE 100
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JSE Top 40
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Last Week’s Highlights
Meta’s massive lay off round
Meta laid off 13% of its workforce. Through a letter to employees, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of the company, informed last week the lay off of 11,000 of its workers. “Today I’m sharing some of the most difficult changes we’ve made in Meta’s history,” Zuckerberg wrote. “We are taking a number of additional steps to become a leaner, more efficient company, cutting discretionary spending and extending our hiring freeze through the first quarter,” he continued. There are concerns about Meta’s rising costs and expenses. These soared 19% year-on-year in the third quarter to $22.1 billion, and additionally, the company’s total sales declined 4% to $27.71 billion in the quarter. Only time will tell whether Zuckerberg’s decision to cut his workforce was correct; meanwhile, following the announcement, Meta’s shares rose 7.7%.
Crypto exchange filed for bankruptcy
Cryptocurrency exchange FTX filed for bankruptcy on Friday and founder Sam Bankman-Fried resigned as CEO. In January, FTX raised $400 million from investors, bringing the company’s value to $32 billion. Several celebrities and top athletes opted to invest their money in cryptocurrencies, which seemed to be the future of business and the economy in general. However, the further explosion of the cryptocurrency industry led to calls for stricter regulation. FTX’s FTT token FTT plummeted 30% on Friday to $2.57, facing a weekly loss of 88%. This affected not only the company itself but all other companies involved in the cryptocurrency and blockchain market as well. Following FTX’s announcement, bitcoin fell 4.3% to $16,803 on Friday afternoon, hitting a two-year low.
Coming Up This Week
Tesla’s exportation plans
Tesla is reportedly considering plans to export electric vehicles made in China to the United States and Canada, which would link its largest factory with its main market. According to information presented by Reuters, Tesla has been evaluating whether Model 3 and Model Y electric vehicles manufactured at the Shanghai Gigafactory could be sold in North America as soon as possible. Speculation is that the process would take place over the next year as long as parts made by Tesla’s China-based suppliers comply with existing U.S. and Canadian regulations. It is unclear whether this information is true because the people who gave the statements declined to be named because they claim that the process the company is going through is “confidential”.
Apple to invest in satellite texting
Apple said it will spend $450 million with US companies to enable its new emergency satellite text messaging feature. The company already announced in September of this year the satellite emergency SOS as a flagship feature in the new iPhone 14 models. This is useful if users are out of range of a cell phone tower, where they can connect to emergency services by pointing their phone to the sky and connecting to one of the 24 Globalstar satellites, the company that operates the satellites that make this feature possible, in low Earth orbit. Apple says the service isn’t fully automated, requiring human-staffed call centers, which is why more than 300 Globalstar employees will work on the service. This new feature, which will be launched later this month through an iPhone software update, would be free for two years, but Apple has not closed the door to a paid subscription in the future.
