Meta Q1 Sales Up 3% as Social Giant Beats Wall Street Estimates

Disney is the DJIA’s worst performer today with shares down over 8% after reporting fiscal second quarter earnings that were mixed and a bit messy as the company and industry reset.

were expecting Disney to report earnings of $0.88 per share on revenue of $21.7 billion. Disney shares closed Wednesday at $101.13 per share, down 1% today and 13.7% YTD.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Fans of “The Voice” will soon be able to jump into a new immersive virtual world where they can create music, show off their dancing skills, compete in battles, win digital merch — and even audition to be on an upcoming season of the reality-competition series. “The Voice Studios,” from ITV Studios and metaverse developer Virtual Brand Group, is set to debut May 12. The global launch of the Roblox-style virtual world is timed for the final weeks of Season 23 of “The Voice” on NBC. Free for anyone to access, “The Voice Studios” will be located in Vegas City, the entertainment destination in metaverse platform Decentraland (at this link). Its launch follows a virtual pop-up event for “The Voice” last year at the Decentraland Metaverse Music Festival that also was created by VBG.

Smart-TV maker Vizio reported better-than-expected results for the first quarter but still saw total revenue slump 27% as consumers cut spending in a time of ongoing inflation and economic worries.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent Paris-based company Indie Sales has acquired Teddy Lussi-Modeste’s topical third feature, “The Good Teacher,” co-written by “Happening” filmmaker Audrey Diwan. François Civil, the French star of “The Three Musketeers” and “The Wolf’s Call,” stars as a young teacher wrongfully accused of sexual misconduct by a teenage girl from his class. As he faces mounting pressures from the girl’s older brother and her classmates, the situation spirals out of control: Allegations spread, the entire school is thrown into turmoil, and the teacher has to fight to clear his name. “The Good Teacher” marks the second collaboration between Indie Sales and Lussi-Modeste following “The Price of Success” which screened at Toronto and San Sebastián New Directors’ competition. “The Price of Success was picked up by Netflix for a multi-territory deal including the US.

Thania Garcia For a ninth week, Morgan Wallen’s “One Thing at a Time” rules over the albums chart, resisting monumental debut numbers and new releases from K-pop group Seventeen, Eslabon Armado, Jack Harlow and more. In its latest tracking week, as measured by Luminate, Wallen’s “One Thing at a Time” earns the equivalent of 138,000 sales in the United States and 174 million streams of its 36 songs. With another consecutive week at No. 1, the 36-song set joins Wallen’s previous “Dangerous: The Double Album” as the only album to log nine weeks in a row at the summit. The LP dominated the list for 10 weeks without interruption in early 2021 and sits at No. 5 this week in its 118th week in the top 10.

A proposal to turn shop storage space into six flats in Ayr High Street has ‘disaster written all over it’, according to an objector.

Cinemark posted a dramatically smaller loss for the first quarter, besting analyst expectations as the national theater chain saw customers return to the movies.The Plano, Texas-based company said revenue leaped 32% to $610.7 million for the three months ended March 31, compared with $460.5 million for the 2022 first quarter. Analysts polled by Zack’s Investment Services had expected revenue of $569 million.The loss for the quarter came in at $3.1 million, or 3 cents per share.

Apple struggled in a tough economic climate during the quarter ending March 31, but still managed to beat Wall Street expectations.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor The FTC alleges Meta failed to comply with a 2020 privacy order — and as such, the agency wants to impose new restrictions on the social giant, including prohibiting Facebook, Instagram and its other services from monetizing data from users under 18. The FTC also is proposing to prohibit Meta from releasing new or modified products, services or features without “written confirmation” from the third-party assessor overseeing its privacy programs. Under the 20-year settlement with the FTC (reached in 2019 and approved the following year) Meta agreed to pay a record-breaking $5 billion fine and to submit to new oversight by the commission. That was to settle claims that the company violated a 2012 FTC order “by deceiving users about their ability to control the privacy of their personal information.”

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Patrick Harris, after nearly 12 years at Meta and Facebook, has joined Snap as senior VP of partnerships, leading both ad-agency and partnership teams at the company. Harris, who most recently served as Meta’s VP of global channels, is based in New York and reports to COO Jerry Hunter, who previously was Snap’s SVP of engineering. “We are so excited to welcome Patrick to Snap to help us scale our global agency and partnerships businesses. His experiences across both advertising and partnerships made him the perfect candidate to unify and scale Snap’s impact in these areas.” In addition, Snap has hired David Sommer as head of verticals, overseeing the consumer packaged goods (CPG) vertical for the U.S. Also based in New York, Sommer hails from shopping app Fetch, where he was chief commercial officer, following almost 11 years at Meta as head of industry for CPG, retail partnerships and shopper marketing.

Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace. “That’s what I’m hearing here, Chris. But I’ll fight to keep you on the [news] station,” Sanders added with a laugh.Wallace, in good spirit, was quick to jab back.“You poked the bear!” joked Wallace, who has been working in broadcast journalism since 1964 when he was an assistant to Walter Cronkite.

quarterly earnings report.Imax reported quarterly revenue of $86.9 million and earnings of $5.1 million or 4 cents per share on a diluted basis and 16 cents per share on an adjusted basis. That beat Wall Street projections of $77.5 million in revenue and adjusted EPS of 15 cents per share, according to analysts surveyed by Zacks Investment Research.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Amazon, in the midst of paring back its workforce, topped Wall Street forecasts with better-than-expected revenue growth for the first quarter of 2023. The company reported Q1 revenue of $127.4 billion, up 9% year over year, improving over a 7% rise in the year-earlier quarter but still off its historical pace of top-line growth. Net income was $3.2 billion, or 31 cents per share, compared with a net loss of $3.8 billion in Q1 2022 (which included a $7.8 billion loss on its stake in electric-vehicle maker Rivian). The results come as the ecommerce colossus is in the middle of laying off 9,000 workers, on top of the 18,000 job cuts announced in January. On Thursday, the company laid off about 100 employees at Amazon Studios and Prime Video.

Amazon has apparently rediscovered its mojo.

the letter reads.The letter continues, “Evan’s case is the latest in a disturbing trend where journalists are harassed, arrested or worse for reporting the news. The unjust arrest of any reporter, anywhere in the world, is simply unacceptable.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Amid broad cost-cutting moves, Meta is shuttering the Facebook Watch originals group, whose small slate of shows included the hit “Red Table Talk” hosted by Jada Pinkett Smith, Variety has confirmed. A Meta representative confirmed that the company is shuttering its originals group but declined to provide further comment. The news was first reported by Deadline. With the shutdown of Facebook Watch originals, Mina Lefevre, head of development and programing for the group, is leaving the company. Lefevre joined Meta (then called Facebook) in 2017, after serving as MTV’s head of scripted development. At Meta, Lefevre reported to Ricky Van Veen, VP of creative strategy.

EXCLUSIVE: Mina Lefevre, who was Head of Development and Programming at Meta, is departing Facebook’s parent company.

Shares in Meta Platforms jumped 12% in after-hours trading following the company’s report of better-than-expected first-quarter financials.

Roku delivered first-quarter results with some bright spots, including better-than-expected revenue, but the streaming provider said it sees its advertising business remaining challenged.