1.Facebook :-Facebook Inc launched its first smart glasses on Thursday in a step toward its aim of offering true augmented-reality spectacles.
The glasses, which were created in partnership with Ray-Ban maker EssilorLuxottica, allow wearers to listen to music, take calls or capture photos and short videos and share them across Facebook’s services using a companion app. Facebook said the glasses line, called “Ray-Ban Stories,” would start at $299.
The social media giant, which reported revenue of about $86 billion in 2020, makes most of its money from advertising but has invested heavily in virtual and augmented reality to support augmented reality glasses.
Facebook’s chief scientist said last year the company was five to 10 years away from being able to bring to market “true” AR glasses, which would superimpose virtual objects onto the wearer’s view of the real world.
2.General Motors:-General Motors Co will give its best-selling Chevrolet Silverado large pickup truck models a makeover next spring to fix competitive shortcomings that have left Chevy in third place in one of the most lucrative vehicle market segments in the world.
Catching up with rival trucks from Stellantis NV and Ford Motor (NYSE:F) Co, most 2022 Silverado models will get larger dashboard screens and new connectivity technology featuring built-in Google voice commands and software.
Chevrolet also will add a 420-horsepower Silverado ZR2 designed for rugged off-road adventures – or to give the appearance that the owner would have them. The Silverado ZR2 will chase Ford’s F-series Raptor and the Ram TRX from Stellantis, which are attention-getting performance models for those brands.
The current Silverado, launched in early 2019, has been outflanked in sales by rival Stellantis NV’s Ram pickup. The Ram in 2018 got a makeover with a more refined interior and a 12-inch (30.5 cm) dashboard screen that was closer in style to a Tesla Model S sedan than a conventional pickup truck.
3.WELLS FARGO--A top U.S. banking regulator fined Wells Fargo $250 million and placed new restrictions on the bank’s business after finding shortcomings in its earlier efforts to pay back customers it had previously harmed.
The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency said the bank had not met the requirements of a 2018 consent order, when the regulator ordered the bank to pay back customers who were charged excessive or improper fees.
“Wells Fargo has not met the requirements of the OCC’s 2018 action against the bank. This is unacceptable,” said acting Comptroller Michael Hsu in a statement.
Specifically, the OCC said Wells Fargo’s efforts to identify and pay back customers who had been previously harmed by the bank were insufficient, citing “significant deficiencies” in its earlier attempt.
In 2018, Wells Fargo agreed to a joint $1 billion settlement with regulators, who found the bank had wrongly layered insurance on hundreds of thousands of drivers and routinely assessed excessive and improper fees on homebuyers.
As part of that earlier consent order, the bank had been directed to create a program to identify wronged customers and pay them restitution.
In a statement, Wells Fargo Chief Executive Charles Scharf said the new penalty shows more work is needed to address “significant, longstanding deficiencies.”
“Our work to build the right foundation for a company of our size and complexity will not follow a straight line. We are managing multiple issues concurrently, and progress will come alongside setbacks. That said, we believe we’re making significant progress,” he added.
4.GAMESTOP CORP: Shares in GameStop Corp carved out a tiny gain on Thursday after dropping as much as 10.5% earlier in the session even as the video game retailer’s silence on its turnaround plan led its army of individual investors to question the meteoric rise in its share price this year.
The company posted a 25% jump in quarterly sales, but its executives gave no new details for a plan to refashion itself from a mostly brick-and-mortar retailer. The company recently raised more than $1 billion in fresh equity.
GameStop shares closed up 0.2% at $199.18 after touching a low of $178 during the session. Thursday’s close was more than 10 times its close of $18.84 at the end of 2020. But it compared poorly with a $483 peak reached in January, when the stock was seeing wild swings at the height of a battle between small-time traders and Wall Street hedge funds.
Thursday marked the stock’s first time finishing in positive territory in the session after an earnings update after declining the last four times. And GameStop had fallen close to 30% after its previous two updates.
“This is the third time that investors have expected GameStop management to articulate its strategy and the third time the company failed to do so,” wrote Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter, who rates it “underperform” with a $50 price target.
“We think that GameStop will continue to promise and to fail to deliver a strategy to its investors, and will seek ways to increase online sales while it holds investors at bay.”
.5.EBAY – eBay is one of the world’s largest online marketplace platforms, connecting millions of buyers and sellers globally.
The company goes back to the mid-1990s, and while most know it for its namesake marketplace website, eBay holds a diversified portfolio of investments, which has provided the company with great returns and potential synergies.
The $48-billion company holds investments in companies like Adevinta, Adyen, Kakao Bank, and other Korean businesses, valued at around $13 billion. eBay plans to sell most of its shares in these businesses, and only hold minority stakes to set up various synergies with them. (See EBAY stock charts on TipRanks)
Along with more than $7.6 billion in cash and equivalents in Ebay’s balance sheet, the company enjoys fantastic liquidity, which is likely to be utilized in what eBay has historically done best: return capital to shareholders. I’m bullish on the stock.
