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THE HEADLINES

 

QUAL-COMEUPPANCE

Somebody at Qualcomm is getting laid tonight, amirite? *Looks around room, sees one guy wearing a vest nodding his head*

The chipmaker came to a settlement with Apple yesterday under which the iPhone maker agreed to pay past due royalties. The settlement includes an undisclosed payment from Apple to Qualcomm, a six-year licensing deal with a two-year option to extend, and a multiyear chipset supply agreement.

The two companies have been at odds for years. The drama began in 2017 when Apple and the FTC filed separate lawsuits against Qualcomm claiming that the chipmaker was charging unfair prices for its modem chips and should not be allowed to tack on additional licensing fees for its patents.

In response, the chipmaker claimed that Apple was stealing its technology and working with its suppliers to recreate products, effectively violating the patents that Qualcomm owned.

Despite the legal drama, both parties determined that coming to an agreement outweighed the cost of a lengthy legal battle. And both companies’ shares were rewarded. Qualcomm shares rose 23% and Apple’s stock remained mostly unchanged.

Global affair

The agreement will officially put to rest all global legal battles between the two. It seems as though the writing was on the wall for Timmy iPhone’s legal team to make a deal. It had already lost similar decisions in Germany and China, restricting the sale of Apple products that featured Qualcomm’s modems.

 

COLLECTION BASKET

One day after a fire ripped through the iconic spire and roof of Notre Dame cathedral in Paris, companies and wealthy financiers around France have vowed to provide “straight cash homie,” in order to rebuild the church. Companies like Kerning, LVMH, and L’Oreal have pledged upwards of $700M.

Francois-Henry Pinault, whose Artemis is a controlling stakeholder in Kering, pledged $113M to the rebuild fund, while LVMH’s Bernard Arnault gave $225M and offered builders access to his team of creative and architectural resources.

And it’s not just France who is concerned with the rebuilding of the iconic Parisian landmark. Yesterday Tim Cook announced that Apple would be donating to the recovery efforts as well. Hey Siri, what’s a flying buttress?

And Apple isn’t alone on this side of the pond. Founder of KKR Henry Kravis and his wife Marie-Josee also plan to “go fund” the project. According to French President Macron, the goal is to have the church finished within 5 years. What’s your excuse La Sagrada Familia?

 

TURNED OFF

Play-sta-tion.

The hormonal teenager in all of us just died a little bit. Sony appears to be cracking down on sexual content in PS4 games. An entire generation may never know what it’s like to get Michael De Santa’s rocks off with a lady of the night in a seedy part of Los Santos.

The Japanese gaming and electronics giant has developed in house guidelines to combat sexual content in video games, the first effort of its kind in the industry. Have no fear, there will still be plenty of uber-realistic death and violence.

The reason?

Welp, apparently not everyone is a 14-year-old boy who appreciates a crop-topped tomb raider. While Japan is much more tolerant of smut, Sony fears that allowing adult content of the softcore variety in its videogames will alienate markets like the US where the #MeToo movement has begun to shift public perception.

Plus, with the spread of services like Twitch, NSFW game footage is finding its way into the live-streams of younger viewers. And Sony ain’t got time for that. Instead of dealing with angry moms named Karen, the company has chosen to crack down.

So what’s at stake?

A lot.

PlayStation, the world’s most popular gaming system, with more than 94M units sold, will be the first console to set overarching guidelines. And the backlash from game developers was immediate. At risk? More than $11B (2018) in PS4 game sales.

 

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IN OTHER NEWS

• Netflix and chill out with the sky-high expectations. Netflix shares fell during after-hours trading following the streaming service’s Q1 earnings announcement. The reason? Hulu’s big brother appears to be a grower and a shower abroad, but not so much domestically. In foreign markets, NFLX added 7.9M customers, up 31% vs. the same period last year, but the company only managed to add 1.7M viewers in the US compared to 2.3M during Q1 2018.

 

• T-Mobile and Sprint are facing another seemingly insurmountable obstacle in their quest to create the most mediocre mobile carrier since Cricket Wireless. Yesterday the $26B merger was dealt a blow by the US Justice Department which believes the combination of the third and fourth largest carriers may present an unacceptable threat to competition. Slow cooker Sunday with T-Mobile CEO John Legere is about to be lit.

 

• “It could be worse, we could be Wells.” – Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan, probably. Bank of America dropped its Q1 financials on Tuesday and despite a record profit, shares got pummeled on an outlook that can best be described as “meh.” A first-quarter profit that rose 6% to $7.3B wasn’t enough to offset lower net interest income guidance. B of A’s CFO expects the measure of profitability to be roughly half of what it was last year, approximately 3%.

 

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