fortune--2020-02-04--How to watch the State of the Union address live online for free—even without cable

While no State of the Union is ever the same, it’s going to be hard to top the circumstances of Donald Trump’s 2020 address.
With an impeachment vote looming in the Senate, the Iowa caucus in disarray and the nation more politically divided than ever, we’re in a reality that even Hollywood would have trouble imagining. And given Trump’s fondness for going off script in speeches, that makes this year’s State of the Union even more unpredictable.
Trump will address the nation from the same House chamber he was impeached less than two months ago. Many political wags are curious if he will address the drama Tuesday night, if he will discuss his reelection or if he’ll focus squarely on his agenda for the coming year.
Hoping to watch, but won’t be in your living room? You have lots of options.
What time does the 2020 State of the Union address start?
U.S. President Donald Trump, center, arrives to deliver a State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Tuesday, Feb. 5, 2019. Alex Wroblewski—Bloomberg via Getty Images
Trump is scheduled to deliver the final State of the Union address of his current term on Tuesday, Feb. 4. The speech will start at 9 p.m. E.T.
Where can I watch the 2020 State of the Union?
The address will be widely covered by all major broadcast networks and cable news channels, each airing it live and having lots of analysis before and after the speech. Multiple online news sites will also stream the event, including Cheddar, Newsmax, Newsy and Yahoo!
How can I watch the State of the Union for free if I don’t have cable?
If you don’t have a cable or satellite subscription, the best way to watch any network-aired program for free on a big screen is with a good HD antenna. The 2020 State of the Union will be broadcast by ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS and Fox—meaning you’re almost certainly going to be able to find at least one channel airing it with a strong signal over the air, which costs nothing beyond the equipment prices. Be sure to test the antenna in multiple locations in your home to find the most reliable signal.
Can I stream the State of the Union live online if I don’t have a cable subscription?
You can—and you have lots of options.
ABC
You can log into ABC.com to watch the address, though you will need to enter a cable service account number. If that’s problematic, the ABC News Facebook page will carry the address.
CBS
CBSN, the network’s online streaming news service, will air the speech. You can also watch on the CBS News Facebook page. And the CBS News livestream on YouTube will carry the State of the Union as well.
NBC
Free options include NBCNews.com, MSNBC.com, and the NBC News app, which will all simulcast the address. You can also watch it live on the Facebook page of NBC News
FOX
You can either log into Fox.com to watch the address or use the Fox Now app. The Fox News YouTube channel and Fox Business Network YouTube Channel will also both stream the address.
PBS
The PBS Newshour livestream on YouTube will carry the address.
CNN
Video coverage will stream on the CNN.com homepage and can be watched on the CNNGo streaming service.
MSNBC
Watch the address on the networks’ Website.
Bloomberg
Coverage will be carried on the network’s streaming online service.
C-Span
The network will broadcast the address live on its Website.
Sky News
Watch the speech on the U.K. news service’s online streaming service
White House
The website of the president’s residence and workplace will air a livestream on its official website.
Looking for a more complete streaming option that extends beyond the State of the Union? Here are a few more places to try:
Locast.org
This free service lets you watch local broadcast channels with no monthly fees or contracts. It only services part of the country, however.
Hulu with Live TV
You can try the service free for a week. Once that’s up, you’ll pay $45 per month.
YouTube TV
After a seven day trial, you can expect monthly charges of $50.
Sling TV
The lower tiered “Orange” plan on Dish Network’s Sling will run you $30 per month. A more comprehensive “Blue” plan bumps the cost to $45-per-month. You’ll have a 7-day free trial first.
AT&T TVNow
Formerly known as DirecTV Now, AT&T’s streaming service will run you $65 per month and up after a 7-day free trial.
What can I expect from President Trump’s speech?
Trump’s expected to focus on “the great American comeback” in this year’s State of the Union. Expect a victory lap about the economy, where he’s polling strongest with Americans. Other topics will likely include increased military spending and lowering health care costs. It’s unclear if Trump will discuss the recent Phase One agreement with China and ongoing trade disputes with other countries. But aids say this will be an “optimistic” speech.
Who is giving the Democratic response to the 2020 State of the Union?
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer speaks at the General Motors Detroit- Hamtramck assembly plant on January 27, 2020 in Detroit, Mich. JEFF KOWALSKY—AFP via Getty Images
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer steps into the national spotlight following Trump’s address, giving the English-language response to the State of the Union. (Rep. Veronica Escobar (D., Texas) will deliver the response in Spanish.)
Whitmer is especially noteworthy as it signals the Democrats view Michigan as a key battleground state in the 2020 election. Whitmer became governor in 2018, defeating then-Republican state Attorney General Bill Schuette. (Trump won the state in 2016.) She previously served in the state’s Senate and House of Representatives.
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fortune--2020-02-05--Peloton revenue miss overshadows strong annual outlook

Tesla shares plunge 17 % , their worst one day drop in eight years

Peloton Interactive, the maker of internet-connected exercise equipment, said sales in the current quarter would be lower than analysts’ forecasts, overshadowing strong earnings in the holiday quarter and a more optimistic forecast for sales this year.
New York-based Peloton said revenue in its fiscal third quarter would be $470 million to $480 million, missing the average projection of $494.2 million. The shares fell as much as 17% in extended trading.
The weak forecast comes after a strong second quarter that saw revenue rise 77% from a year earlier to $466.3 million. Peloton, which sells a stationary bike, a treadmill, and a subscription-based app for live and on-demand classes, reported a loss of 20 cents a share in the three months ended Dec. 31, which was better than analysts’ estimates for a loss of 33 cents. The company raised its forecast for 2020 revenue, projecting $1.53 billion to $1.55 billion, topping analysts’ projections for $1.49 billion.
It’s the second earnings report from Peloton, which floundered after its initial public offering in September as investors pushed the company to re-evaluate its expensive growth ambitions and focus on turning a profit. Recently, analysts have been more favorable toward the stock, encouraged after Peloton lowered the cost of its at-home digital fitness subscription and offered a 30-day bike home trial. Peloton also added an app for the Apple Watch that allows users to track workouts, and the ability to stream classes on Amazon’s Fire TV, moves that analysts said will help expand its user base.
The quarter ending Dec. 31 is one of the most important for Peloton, as it reflects holiday purchases and New Year’s resolutions that often have people committing to new exercise regimes. Analysts were encouraged by indications that the company was seeing strong traffic on Black Friday in November, traditionally one of the biggest shopping days of the year. Peloton got a lot of unwanted attention with a controversial ad it ran before Christmas, but the headlines wound up only increasing interest in the company and it wound up ultimately being a boon for business.
Some 149,000 new subscribers signed on during the quarter, bringing the total to 712,000. Peloton said it now anticipates 920,000 to 930,000 connected fitness subscribers this year, above its previous projection of as many as 895,000. Connected fitness subscribers are people who own a piece of Peloton hardware and pay a monthly subscription to access digital workouts.
“Peloton’s ad proved beneficial, amplifying the brand and driving record search trends across markets,” Raymond James analyst Justin Patterson wrote in a note to clients before the results. “Peloton’s combination of brand, content breadth, and bricks-and-mortar presence provide a customer acquisition and retention edge.”
The first weeks of life as a public company were harsh on Peloton, as investors spurned by the market debuts of Uber Technologies and Slack Technologies punished it for privileging growth over profits. But the stock has recently surpassed its IPO price of $29 and is up more than 12% since its IPO.
“Peloton is one of our best ideas in 2020,” JPMorgan analyst Douglas Anmuth wrote in a recent note, but added that it’s “also one of the most debated stocks in our coverage universe.”
Investors have previously cited concerns about how much Peloton can grow its market given the pricey equipment it sells and increasing competition from companies like Mirror and workout apps from Nike and Aaptiv.
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fortune--2020-02-05--Tesla shares plunge 17%, their worst one day drop in eight years

B & N cancels editions of famous books that one author called ‘ the classics in blackface ’

Investors who like that sensation of their stomach dropping away don’t need to board a roller coaster. They can just buy Tesla shares.
In December, the electric car maker closed at $414.70. By the end of yesterday, the stock was trading at $968.99, or up 114% for the year. Then today, shares plunged more than 17% to $734.70, their worst one-day drop since January 13, 2012, when the share price fell by 19.3%.
As of today’s close, Tesla ranks as the world’s Number 2 automaker by market cap. (Six months ago, it would have been fifth.) And out of a group of automakers, including VW, GM, Ford, Fiat Chrysler, Honda, Daimler, and BMW, Tesla had the lowest annual revenue for the more recently reported full year.
Most analysts are also cautious about the company. Out of 38 analyst ratings obtained from Bloomberg, 16 were negative, 16 neutral, and only 7 were classified as positive.
The company’s evangelists have had a very good 2020 thus far to be sure. But a developing competitive landscape—well-funded startups like Rivian and virtually every big car maker, including GM, Ford, and Volkswagen, are working on EV models—have naysayers believing there is little to no chance the company will earn enough to justify its sky-high share price, which on Tuesday was more than six times bigger than Toyota’s, the largest car maker in the world.
Tesla: present and future
While Tesla is considered an EV pioneer, it’s also an equities heavyweight. The company currently represents 1.1% of the entire value of the Nasdaq Composite Index, with only 11 companies—including Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook, and Intel—having a bigger influence. Its market cap is certainly outsized when compared to other automakers on such metrics as revenue and net income, as the chart below shows.
The bulls, however, believe it’s all about what’s to come. “We believe EV demand is inflecting globally and Tesla is leading the charge,” Dan Ives, managing director of equity research at Wedbush Securities, told Fortune in an email exchange. “The stock is reflecting the good news and much more in the future. Now it’s about continued execution for Musk and company.”
Still, the climb of share prices over the last six months, at least before today, has been fearsome.
“Doubts about Tesla have been put to rest,” David Russell, vice president of market intelligence at TradeStation, wrote in a note to Fortune. “People who worried Elon Musk couldn’t deliver have been proven wrong and now they’re frantically playing catch-up. People should never forget that the stock market is forward looking. Investors price in years of growth before it actually takes place. Tesla moved like this back in 2013 and 2014, followed by half a decade of consolidation. Now it may be doing something similar.”
Forecasting the road ahead
Part of the market’s reaction can also be explained by the tension between the true believers—who think that Tesla is the company that will dominate all auto sales for the foreseeable future—and those who have shorted the stock, thinking that only hype has kept it afloat. Even the shorts can find themselves unintentionally pushing up the price in a rally because they have to buy additional shares to cover their positions.
Bill Selesky, senior research analyst at Argus Research, thinks that the run up has been a combination of all these factors. “It’s hard to tell which part has the most influence,” he told Fortune in an email exchange, “but I think more and more that the market is telling itself that EVs are a real part of the future and there’s no turning back.”
Brad Cornell, emeritus professor of finance at UCLA and managing director at global consulting firm BRG, had shorted 1,000 Tesla shares for a fund he runs, and lost some money in the process. He closed out most of his position, but still had 200 shares shorted.
“When this craziness started, we met and said we don’t understand this,” Cornell said. “We think it’s overvalued but we’re not going to risk out investors’ money.”
Cornell agrees that Tesla is currently the leader in the EV market, “but the competition is finally waking up,” he said. “My suspicion is they’re going to lose money in the quarter ended March and that’s going to cause a lot of problems.”
Cornell pointed to a valuation of Tesla done by a colleague of his: Aswath Damodaran, a professor of finance at NYU’s Stern School of Business. Damodaran initially estimated in June 2019 that within 10 years, the company would have $100 billion in annual revenue (that’s more than four times its 2019 sales) with a 10% pre-tax operating margin (last year, -2.7%), making a current value of a share worth $190. He bought at $180.
With shares closing just over $734 today, it was a great trade. But as with all things Tesla, you just never know what’s going to happen tomorrow.
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fortune--2020-02-05--Casper sold IPO shares for $12

Casper sold IPO shares for $12

Casper Sleep sold shares for $12 each in an initial public offering, at the bottom of a lowered price target, according to a person familiar with the matter who asked not to be identified because the information wasn’t public yet.
The bed-in-a-box retailer marketed 8.35 million shares for $12 to $13 each, after reducing the price target earlier Wednesday from $17 to $19. Dow Jones reported the price earlier.
The offering was led by Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs Group, and Jefferies Financial Group. The company’s shares are expected to begin trading Thursday on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol CSPR.
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fortune--2020-02-05--Why insurers should cover mental health care to lower costs

The latest trend among adolescents is deadly.
The suicide rate for people ages 10 to 14 tripled from 2007 to 2017, according to a recent report from the Centers for Disease Control. And in 2017, suicide was the second leading cause of death for Americans ages 10 to 24.
Doctors like me have long stressed that similar to any physical illness, mental illness can lead to harmful consequences. When left untreated, mental illness can potentiate physical conditions like heart disease, resulting in even more expensive treatment needs. And depressed patients have an increased risk of other major chronic illnesses—like diabetes and stroke.
But all this often goes unacknowledged by the insurance industry. Even in the midst of a youth suicide epidemic, in an effort to cut costs, many payers erect barriers to treatment for common mental illnesses by neglecting legal requirements and setting low reimbursement rates for mental health professionals.
This is more than irresponsible—it’s also counterproductive. If insurers really wanted to keep costs down, they’d expand coverage for mental health services—not limit patient access to care or make it difficult for mental health professionals to accept insurance.
The recent spike in youth suicide is part of a broader public health crisis. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, 17.3 million Americans had at least one major depressive episode in 2017. The nation’s suicide rate has jumped 33% since 1999. And the rate of death from drug overdose rose by nearly 10% between 2016 and 2017.
In one case, a Minnesota resident lost his life after his insurance wouldn’t cover more mental health treatment, according to Bloomberg. He spent a few weeks at a treatment center dealing with a heroin addiction, but his insurance wouldn’t cover a longer stay. Soon after he was brought home, he died of an overdose.
The rise in suicides and drug overdoses have contributed to a three-year decline in U.S. life expectancy—the longest decline in a century.
Many insurers don’t cover mental health services at all. However, a 2008 law requires those that do offer mental health services to make those benefits “comparable” to physical health coverage, according to the American Psychological Association. This federal parity law applies to a number of different insurance plans, including some employer-sponsored coverage and plans purchased through the Affordable Care Act exchanges.
While this law is meant to eliminate the disparities between physical and mental health coverage, insurers have found ways to circumvent that requirement. Health plans have the ability to exclude certain categories from their coverage, according to The Atlantic. For instance, insurers often refuse to cover treatments, ranging from therapy to antidepressants, on the grounds that they aren’t considered of medical necessity.
Consider this report from NPR: A woman in New Mexico struggled with an eating disorder, only consuming about 100 calories daily. She tried entering an inpatient treatment program in 2017, but even after losing 60% of her original body weight, she wasn’t eligible for Medicaid coverage unless she lost another 10 pounds, or entered a psychiatric unit. (She eventually enrolled in another plan, but “it was still an arduous process getting the services approved,” says NPR.)
Insurers also make it hard for patients to find in-network mental health professionals. According to a 2017 survey by the National Alliance on Mental Health, about one-third of respondents said they had difficulty finding a therapist who took their insurance. Meanwhile, just 9% had trouble finding an in-network primary care doctor.
This disparity exists because insurance companies typically pay mental health professionals less than they pay other providers. In 2017, primary care reimbursements were about 24% higher than behavioral reimbursements. And, in 2014, private insurers paid mental health providers 13% to 14% less than what Medicare paid for the same services.
Many mental health professionals simply can’t afford to accept insurance—they’d be forced to close their offices. A 2014 JAMA Psychiatry study found that few mental health professionals accept insurance. And for many who do, they often struggle to offer quality care. A thorough mental health workup can take hours. But due to low reimbursements, some psychiatrists have to pack their schedules to make ends meet—that means spending less time with each patient.
Consequently, many patients are forced to visit providers who don’t accept their insurance, which often means facing prohibitive out-of-pocket costs. According to a recent report from JAMA Network Open that reviewed claims from 2012 to 2017, patients with drug-use disorders paid around $1,200 more on average for out-of-network care annually than patients with diabetes.
Refusing to cover mental health care during a suicide epidemic is absurd. It’s also not economically cost effective: In 2016 alone, treating chronic diseases cost $3.7 trillion in the U.S, according to a Milken Institute report. If insurers invested more on mental health care and expanded coverage, it may actually slash spending on chronic diseases over time. And more importantly, it might save lives.
Liat Jarkon, D.O., M.P.H., is director of the Center for Behavioral Health and Assistant Professor of Family Medicine at NYIT College of Osteopathic Medicine.
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fortune--2020-02-05--B&N cancels editions of famous books that one author called ‘the classics in blackface’

Barnes & Noble is withdrawing a planned line of famous literature reissued with multicultural cover images that has been met with widespread criticism on social media.
There are very talented non-white writers that you could have featured.
This is tantamount to literary "black face."
I prefer independent bookshops to #barnesandnoble #diverseeditions — Original Cynn 💞🗽🕊♍ ♎ (@CynnMmon) February 5, 2020
“We acknowledge the voices who have expressed concerns about the Diverse Editions project at our Barnes & Noble Fifth Avenue store and have decided to suspend the initiative,” Barnes & Noble announced in a statement Wednesday.
The Diverse Editions event at our @BNFifthAvenue location originally scheduled for this evening has been cancelled. Please see our statement: pic.twitter.com/jGquff9MyM — Barnes & Noble (@BNBuzz) February 5, 2020
The author Adriana Herrera had called the books, scheduled to be launched this week, “the classics in blackface.”
“Diverse Editions,” a joint project between Barnes & Noble and Penguin Random House, featured 12 texts, including Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and L. Frank Baum’s The Wizard of Oz. The words are the same, but on the cover, major characters are depicted with dark-skinned illustrations by artists of “different ethnicities and backgrounds,” according to Barnes & Noble.
Barnes & Noble Fifth Avenue to launch sales of classic novels with new covers promoting diversity @amNewYork https://t.co/qidgo3Tdla pic.twitter.com/uNPbP3LJcM — Publishers Weekly (@PublishersWkly) February 4, 2020
“Diverse Editions” was announced at a time when the publishing industry is already facing scrutiny over the novel American Dirt and its depiction of Mexican life and culture. “Absolute TONE-DEAF decision-making,” Mexican-American writer David Bowles, a leading critic of American Dirt, tweeted about “Diverse Editions.”
The decision also comes in February, which is Black History Month, an annual celebration of past and present achievement.
To much disbelief online, the organizers of “Diverse Editions” had said they used artificial intelligence in reviewing more than 100 older books and determining whether the race or ethnicity of a character is specifically stated. Few would argue that Alice from Alice in Wonderland or the title characters of Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde are fitting for a tribute to black history.
“They could have Googled, chosen a dozen books by actual Black authors that are classics & sent those out with fresh covers & a big event,” author MIkki Kendall tweeted. “Add in bringing in contemporary Black authors to discuss these works & the whole thing is a win. They didn’t do the easy or logical thing.”
In its statement Wednesday, Barnes & Noble acknowledged that the new covers were “not a substitute for black voices or writers of color, whose work and voices deserve to be heard.
“The booksellers who championed this initiative did so convinced it would help drive engagement with these classic titles,” according to the bookstore chain. “It was a project inspired by our work with schools and was created in part to raise awareness and discussion during Black History Month, in which Barnes & Noble stores nationally will continue to highlight a wide selection of books to celebrate black history and great literature from writers of color.”
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fortune--2020-02-05--Trump acquitted of all impeachment charges and will remain in office

President Donald Trump won impeachment acquittal Wednesday in the U.S. Senate, bringing to a close only the third presidential trial in American history with votes that split the country, tested civic norms and fed the tumultuous 2020 race for the White House.
A majority of senators expressed unease with Trump’s pressure campaign on Ukraine that resulted in the two articles of impeachment. But the final tallies — 52-48 favoring acquittal of abuse of power, 53-47 of obstruction of Congress’ investigation — fell far short. Two-thirds “guilty” votes would have been needed to reach the Constitution’s bar of high crimes and misdemeanors to convict and remove Trump from office.
The outcome Wednesday followed months of remarkable impeachment proceedings, from Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s House to Mitch McConnell’s Senate, reflecting the nation’s unrelenting partisan divide three years into the Trump presidency.
What started as Trump’s request for Ukraine to “do us a favor” spun into a far-reaching, 28,000-page report compiled by House investigators accusing an American president of engaging in shadow diplomacy that threatened U.S. foreign relations for personal, political gain as he pressured the ally to investigate Democratic rival Joe Biden ahead of the next election.
No president has ever been removed by the Senate.
A politically emboldened Trump has eagerly predicted vindication, deploying the verdict as a political anthem in his reelection bid. The president claims he did nothing wrong, decrying the “witch hunt” and “hoax” as extensions of special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into Russian 2016 campaign interference by those out to get him from the start of his presidency.
The Wednesday afternoon vote was swift. With Chief Justice John Roberts presiding over the trial, senators sworn to do “impartial justice” stood at their desks for the roll call and stated their votes — “guilty” or “not guilty.”
On the first article of impeachment, Trump was charged with abuse of power. He was found not guilty. The second, obstruction of Congress, also produced a not guilty verdict.
Only one Republican, Mitt Romney of Utah, the party’s defeated 2012 presidential nominee, broke with the GOP.
Romney choked up as said drew on his faith and “oath before God” to announce he would vote guilty on the first charge, abuse of power. He would vote to acquit on the second.
Both Bill Clinton in 1999 and Andrew Johnson in 1868 drew cross-party support when they were left in office after an impeachment trial. President Richard Nixon resigned rather than face revolt from his own party.
Ahead of voting, some of the most closely watched senators took to the Senate floor to tell their constituents, and the nation, what they had decided. The Senate chaplain opened the trial with daily prayers for the senators, including one Wednesday seeking “integrity.”
Influential GOP Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, who is retiring, worried that a guilty verdict would “pour gasoline on the fire” of the nation’s culture wars over Trump. He said the House proved its case but it just didn’t rise to the level of impeachment.
“It would rip the country apart,” Alexander said before his vote.
Other Republicans siding with Trump said it was time to end what McConnell called the “circus” and move on. Trump ally GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham said it was a “sham” designed to destroy a presidency.
Most Democrats, though, echoed the House managers’ warnings that Trump, if left unchecked, would continue to abuse the power of his office for personal political gain and try to “cheat” again ahead of the the 2020 election.
During the nearly three-week trial, House Democrats prosecuting the case argued that Trump abused power like no other president in history when he pressured Ukraine to investigate Biden and his son, Hunter Biden, ahead of the 2020 election.
They detailed an extraordinary shadow diplomacy run by Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani that set off alarms at the highest levels of government. After Trump’s July 25 phone call with Ukraine, Trump temporarily halted U.S. aid to the struggling ally battling hostile Russia at its border. The money was eventually released in September as Congress intervened.
When the House probed Trump’s actions, the president instructed White House aides to defy congressional subpoenas, leading to the obstruction charge.
One key Democrat, Alabama Sen. Doug Jones — perhaps the most endangered politically for reelection in a state where Trump is popular — announced he would vote to convict. “Senators are elected to make tough choices,” Jones said
Questions from the Ukraine matter continue to swirl. House Democrats may yet summon former national security adviser John Bolton to testify about revelations from his forthcoming book that offer a fresh account of Trump’s actions. Other eyewitnesses and documents are almost sure to surface.
In closing arguments for the trial the lead prosecutor, Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., appealed to senators’ sense of decency, that “right matters” and “truth matters” and that Trump “is not who you are.”
“The president’s basic lack of character, his willingness to cheat in the election – he’s not going to stop,” Schiff told The Associated Press on Wednesday, predicting more revelations would become public. “It’s not going to change, which means that we are going to have to remain eternally vigilant.”
Pelosi was initially reluctant to launch impeachment proceedings against Trump when she took control of the House after the 2018 election, dismissively telling more liberal voices that “he’s not worth it.”
Trump and his GOP allies in Congress argue that Democrats have been trying to undercut him from the start.
But a whistleblower complaint of his conversation with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy set off alarms. The call had been placed the day after Mueller announced the findings of his Russia probe.
When Trump told Pelosi in September that the call was perfect, she was stunned. “Perfectly wrong,” she said. Days later, the speaker announced the formal impeachment inquiry.
The result was the quickest, most partisan impeachment in U.S. history, with no Republicans joining the House Democrats to vote for the charges, though one GOP congressman left the party and voted for impeachment and two Democrats joined Republicans to oppose. The Republican Senate kept up the pace with the fastest trial ever, and the first with no witnesses or deliberations.
Trump’s legal team with star attorney Alan Dershowitz made the sweeping, if stunning, assertion that even if the president engaged in the quid pro quo as described, it is not impeachable, because politicians often view their own political interest with the national interest.
McConnell, who commands a 53-47 Republican majority, braced for dissent, refusing efforts to prolong the trial with more witnesses, arguing the House should have done a better job.
Some GOP senators distanced themselves from Trump’s defense, and other Republicans brushed back calls from conservatives to disclose the name of the anonymous whistleblower. The Associated Press typically does not reveal the identity of whistleblowers.
Trump’s approval rating, which has generally languished in the mid- to low-40s, hit a new high of 49% in the latest Gallup polling, which was conducted as the Senate trial was drawing to a close. The poll found that 51% of the public views the Republican Party favorably, the first time the GOP’s number has exceeded 50% since 2005.


fortune--2020-02-05--Trump used his State of the Union address to appeal to blue collar workers, but was it enough?

During his third State of the Union speech Tuesday evening, President Donald Trump made a direct appeal to the blue-collar Americans who helped propel him into office in 2016.
The 78-minute speech, which included a surprise Presidential Medal of Freedom ceremony for right-wing commentator Rush Limbaugh, defined the themes that will come to dominate Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign and a potential second term in the White House. Topping that list is what Trump is calling a “blue-collar boom.”
“Since my election, the net worth of the bottom half of wage earners has increased by 47 percent—three times faster than the increase for the top 1%,” said Trump to applause. “After decades of flat and falling incomes, wages are rising fast—and, wonderfully, they are rising fastest for low-income workers, who have seen a 16% pay increase since my election.”
Trump’s 2016 campaign messaging spoke directly to those working-class Americans who felt left out of the economic boom under former President Barack Obama and alienated by the going-ons of establishment in Washington, D.C.
The calls to “drain the swamp” were effective: Hillary Clinton lost key rust-belt states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, as well as the support of white, non-college-educated voters nationally. Many of those voters who swung right had come out to support Obama just four years before.
But in 2020, the President faces a new and difficult challenge. He must convince these voters that he’s made their lives better: a more nuanced and uphill task than exploiting discontent.
“We know the manufacturing sector in the U.S. has been experiencing contraction over the last six months,” says Mark Hamrick, Bankrate.com’s senior economic analyst.
The industry fell into its deepest slump in a decade this December as the trade war with China continued on. But Trump described the U.S. economy as the “best it has ever been,” and claimed we were in the midst of a “great American comeback.”
Laid-off factory workers may find that sentiment divorced from their own.
“[This] might be viewed as a kind of ‘mission accomplished’ claim for the man who vowed to make America great again,” said Hamrick, referencing former President George W. Bush’s premature claims that the war in Iraq was successfully wrapping up.
Trump has made a big point of trying to appeal to Midwest workers with talks of his trade deals and tariffs, but if they’re not feeling the difference in their personal economies, they’ll see through those claims, said Matt Morrison, executive director of Working America, the community affiliate of the AFL-CIO. He pointed to the successful election of Democratic Congressman in Pennsylvania’s typically conservative 18th district as proof. Still, he says, “it’s better to say someone’s name than ignore them altogether.”
Early numbers, however, show that the President’s blue-collar begging amounted to little more than preaching to the choir.
Working America surveyed 1,255 registered and likely voters from Minnesota, Ohio, and North Carolina immediately after the State of the Union address and found that the speech served mostly as a rally for those who had already made up their minds to vote for Trump.
“Of the 2016 Trump voters who tuned into the SOTU, most have already made up their minds to support President Trump’s re-election campaign in 2020 (90%),” the survey, shared first with Fortune, found. “But the 2016 Trump voters who did not watch the SOTU are less sure about who they are voting for in 2020. Only 57% plan on supporting Trump in 2020.”
The median household income of those surveyed was $58,124, and 34% of those surveyed had a college degree.
More must-read stories from Fortune:
—2020 candidates’ positions, and records, on economic issues that affect women
—Coronavirus forces China’s neighbors to make tough choices
—Europe’s refugee crisis is getting worse—for these children
—Fortune Explains: The debt ceiling
—Millions have been purged from voter rolls—and may not even realize it
Get up to speed on your morning commute with Fortune’s CEO Daily newsletter.


fortune--2020-02-05--Jeff Bezos sells $1.8 billion of Amazon stock in two days after surge

In the 15 years after Amazon.com Inc. went public in 1997, Jeff Bezos sold about a fifth of the company for roughly $2 billion. In just the past week, he sold 0.2% of the retailer for $1.8 billion.
Bezos offloaded 905,456 Amazon shares on Friday and Monday under a pre-arranged trading plan, according to filings. That brings his total stock sales to about $12 billion, with two-thirds of those occurring in the past four years, according to calculations by Bloomberg.
The scale of the recent sales — including $2 billion in 2017 and $2.8 billion in 2019 — partly reflects Amazon’s soaring valuation, which closed above $1 trillion for the first time on Tuesday. That means Bezos’s remaining 11% stake is worth $116 billion.
Their size and frequency though also reflects the changing needs of his increasingly public profile.
In the past few years, he’s had a style makeover and rarely been out of the headlines since he and MacKenzie Bezos divorced in 2019. That includes hitting the red carpet with girlfriend Lauren Sanchez, hosting a bash at his Washington mansion for the political and financial elite, and even being part of an international controversy after the incendiary claim that the crown prince of Saudi Arabia was involved in hacking his phone.
It’s a far cry from the low profile Bezos cultivated for years. Like fellow Seattle billionaire Bill Gates, he showed little interest in matching the glitzy lifestyle of other tech titans, such as Oracle Corp.’s Larry Ellison, whose purchases have included a Hawaiian island and super-yacht.
That doesn’t mean Bezos hasn’t spent boatloads of money. As well as properties on both coasts, he has his own rural getaway: 170,000 hectares of desert scrub in Texas, where he indulges his passion for space exploration. He’s previously said that he’s funding rocket company Blue Origin LLC with about $1 billion a year through the sale of Amazon stock.
“The price of admission to space is very high,” Bezos said in 2018, accepting the Buzz Aldrin Space Exploration Award at the Explorers Club Annual Dinner. “I’m in the process of converting my Amazon lottery winnings into a much lower price of admission so we can go explore the Solar System.”
That still leaves plenty left over for other pursuits, from the Washington Post to a clock built in the Sierra Diablo mountain range in Texas that’s designed to run for 10,000 years. He’s also currently house hunting in Los Angeles, according to the New York Post.
His wealth is still soaring. The value of his remaining Amazon stock has climbed by $11 billion this year.
More must-read stories from Fortune:
—All of your questions on filing taxes in 2020, answered
—The health of the economy in nine charts
—Why investors are cooling on “direct-to-consumer” brands
—The coronavirus is already disrupting the global supply chain
—WATCH: Biggest investing opportunities and risks for 2020
Subscribe to Fortune’s Bull Sheet for no-nonsense finance news and analysis daily.


fortune--2020-02-05--Republican Senator Mitt Romney says he will vote to convict Trump

Utah Sen. Mitt Romney will vote to convict President Donald Trump, likely the only Republican senator to favor ousting the impeached President. Romney made his announcement on the Senate floor Wednesday.
Romney called Trump’s actions — the President was impeached on charges of abuse of power and obstructing Congress— “perhaps the most abusive and destructive violation of oath of office that I can imagine.”
Utah Sen. Mitt Romney said Wednesday he will vote to convict President Donald Trump, becoming the first and likely only Republican to break ranks during the Senate’s impeachment trial and favor removing Trump from office.
Romney announced his decision during an eight-minute speech on the Senate floor, as the GOP’s 2012 presidential nominee became the first senator to bolt what so far has been a strict party-line divide over whether to oust Trump. The two men have had a tumultuous relationship since Trump began his successful presidential campaign.
Romney said he believe Trump was guilty of “an appalling abuse of public trust” when he pressured Ukraine’s leaders to investigate political foe Joe Biden.
Romney said as a “profoundly religious” person, he was bound by the oath senators took to administer impartial justice. “My faith is at the heart of who I am,” he said. After he made that remark, he paused for about 11 seconds, seemingly struggling with his emotions.
Romney called his decision about how to judge Trump was “the most difficult decision I have ever faced.”
Trump is virtually certain to be acquitted by the GOP-run Senate, where a two-thirds majority, 67 votes, would be required to remove him. The final votes on the two articles of impeachment were scheduled for later Wednesday afternoon.
Romney called Trump’s actions — the President was impeached on charges of abuse of power and obstructing Congress— “perhaps the most abusive and destructive violation of oath of office that I can imagine.”
More must-read stories from Fortune:
—2020 candidates’ positions, and records, on economic issues that affect women
—Coronavirus forces China’s neighbors to make tough choices
—Europe’s refugee crisis is getting worse—for these children
—Fortune Explains: The debt ceiling
—Millions have been purged from voter rolls—and may not even realize it
Get up to speed on your morning commute with Fortune’s CEO Daily newsletter.


fortune--2020-02-05--Coors Light will Venmo you to help you adopt a dog

Coors Light is hoping to help the nation’s animal shelters lighten their load this Valentine’s Day.
The brewer has announced it will kick in $100 toward the adoption of a shelter dog to the first 1,000 people who apply for the cash.
No beer purchase is required, but you do have to be 21 years or older and you’ll need to submit proof that the adoption occurred between Feb. 4 and Feb. 21 of this year. (You’ll also have to be of legal drinking age.)
The offer isn’t valid for residents of California, Louisiana, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Texas, Virginia or West Virginia.
Coors Light will Venmo the money to people who qualify for the promotion. Limit one pup per household.
Dogs and beer go together like, well, pretzels and beer. Many microbreweries welcome dogs at their tasting rooms. And a North Dakota brewing company recently partnered with a local dog rescue service to put adoptable shelter dogs on its labels.
A Florida brewer did the same thing last January and the campaign managed to reunite a woman with her long lost dog, after she recognized it on the label via a Facebook post.
More must-read stories from Fortune :
—The first coronavirus drug candidate is set for testing in China
—2020 candidates on the issues that matter to working women
—What you need to know about new IBM CEO Arvind Krishna
—HBO’s “McMillion$” shows how cheaters scammed McDonald’s Monopoly
—WATCH: Why CEOs are pessimistic about 2020 business outlook
Subscribe to Fortune’s Bull Sheet for no-nonsense finance news and analysis daily.


fortune--2020-02-05--LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner steps down after 11 years

LinkedIn Corp. Chief Executive Officer Jeff Weiner is stepping down after 11 years in the role and will become executive chairman. Ryan Roslansky, currently senior vice president of product, will become CEO effective June 1, the Microsoft Corp. company said Wednesday in a statement.
LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman hired Weiner, 49, in 2008, and he, in turn, brought on Roslansky later that year. The two helped take the company from a basic job board where resumes were posted to a community that is a much bigger resource for employment opportunities. During Weiner’s tenure, LinkedIn’s revenue increased to more than $7.5 billion in the trailing 12 months from $78 million, the company said. Membership jumped to almost 675 million from 33 million. Weiner guided the company through its initial public offering and the acquisition by Microsoft for $26 billion in 2016.
“Despite the scale and impact we’ve achieved thus far, it still feels like in many respects we’re just getting started,” Weiner said in an email to employees posted on LinkedIn.
Roslansky has served in leadership roles in almost every part of the company’s business. He was instrumental in developing LinkedIn’s influencer program and publishing platform and was key to reshaping the consumer and enterprise applications into one ecosystem. Roslansky will report to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.
Tomer Cohen, currently vice president of marketing solutions, will replace Roslansky as head of product.
More must-read stories from Fortune:
—What you need to know about new IBM CEO Arvind Krishna
—Coronavirus will take a bite out of Apple’s iPhone business. How big?
—Apple’s push into TV is “failing to resonate,” analyst says
—How marketers are increasingly using A.I. to persuade you to buy
—Predicting the biggest tech headlines of 2020
Catch up with Data Sheet, Fortune’s daily digest on the business of tech.


fortune--2020-02-05--Trying to make sense of Tesla’s unbelievable run

On Aug. 7, 2018, Tesla founder Elon Musk tweeted, “Am considering taking Tesla private at $420. Funding secured.”
This was a new wrinkle in corporate governance because the real-life Tony Stark’s social media post came without warning or even consultation with his board. The previous day’s closing price for the stock was $342, so Musk’s newly stated private market valuation for the company was a 23% premium to its current value.
Many scoffed at the time that the company would be worth such a lofty price, which would have valued Tesla at close to $76 billion in terms of market capitalization. The stock price quickly shot up to $380 on the day of Musk’s tweet, but from there the price went into a free fall. From the day Musk made his infamous tweet through early June 2019, the stock price cratered nearly 53%.
At this point, many were leaving the company for dead. But it wasn’t just the financial media and short-sellers who were making dire statements about the electric-car company. Musk himself wrote the following to his own employees after the company was forced to raise $2.7 billion from investors in May 2019: “This is a lot of money, but actually only gives us about 10 months at the Q1 burn rate to achieve breakeven.”
Musk has had a contentious relationship with short-sellers in the past. He tweeted in the spring of 2018, “Short-sellers are value destroyers. Should definitely be illegal.” Well the shorts were out for blood during the rout in Tesla’s stock price. In fact, the percentage of shares outstanding being sold short on May 31, 2019, was nearly 25%. This means one-quarter of investors in the company’s stock were betting against it at that time.
Unfortunately for those short-sellers, the massacre in the stock price didn’t last. Almost without warning, Tesla’s stock price was shot out of the cannon. Since June 3, 2019, when it bottomed, the stock is up more than 400%. It’s up over 185% in the past three months, 100% in the past month, and 55% in the past five days!
The share price was up 10% this past Thursday, 20% this week on Monday, and another 14% on Tuesday (and that’s after falling more than 8% toward the end of the day). The share price has gone parabolic.
By the close of the market on Tuesday afternoon, Tesla’s market cap was more than $161 billion. The company has added $130 billion to its market value in just eight months. General Motors and Ford have a combined market capitalization of $80 billion.
Lessons from this move
I wish I could put a bow on this and share some worthwhile lessons investors could use going forward following this unbelievable rise in Tesla’s shares.
In moves like these, the lessons often remain unclear. By the time this piece is published, I wouldn’t be surprised if Tesla’s shares are either up or down by double digits. The higher the volatility of price moves in an asset, the higher the volatility of investor emotions.
There are millions of investors every day making buy and sell decisions, all with competing opinions, goals, time horizons, and financial resources. But occasionally when these competing opinions come together to form a group, individuals take their cues from the crowd and do things they wouldn’t normally do on their own accord.
The markets often straddle a fine line between the wisdom of the crowds and the madness of the crowds depending on the collective mood of investors.
My only advice to investors looking to handicap what comes next for Tesla’s share price would be to remain humble. Over the long haul, stock prices tend to reflect the underlying fundamentals of the company. But over the short-to-intermediate term, stock prices are driven by trends, emotions, and expectations.
A company like Tesla that is led by an enigmatic CEO, with a wonderful story and an innovative product, can make it difficult to set reasonable expectations. When a new technology is involved, investor opinions can vary widely between pessimism and optimism about what the future may hold for the company.
This is how a company like Tesla can see its share price get chopped in half and then rally more than 400% all within the span of two years. The rise in Tesla’s stock feels crazy, and it’s tempting to pick a side predicting further appreciation or an abrupt end to massive advance.
The short term is never easy to predict when it comes to the markets but even more so when such strong emotions are in play. Someone will time this stock move perfectly, but it will mostly be by chance. No one can predict how far crazy market moves will go or when they’ll come to an end. As professor Meir Statman once wrote, “The market may be crazy, but that doesn’t make you a psychologist.”
Ben Carlson, CFA, is the director of institutional asset management at Ritholtz Wealth Management. He does not have a position in Tesla.
More must-read stories from Fortune:
—All of your questions on filing taxes in 2020, answered
—The health of the economy in nine charts
—Why investors are cooling on “direct-to-consumer” brands
—The coronavirus is already disrupting the global supply chain
—WATCH: Biggest investing opportunities and risks for 2020
Subscribe to Fortune’s Bull Sheet for no-nonsense finance news and analysis daily.


Introducing the #BlackLitChallenge

This is the web version of raceAhead, Fortune’s daily newsletter on race, culture, and inclusive leadership. To get it delivered daily to your inbox, sign up here.
While Barnes & Noble and Penguin Random House struggle with a Black History Month diversity initiative gone wrong, there’s one very savvy book-lover who is getting things right.
Seji Akinrogunde is a 23-year-old mathematics and econometrics student and an avid reader, who discovered the robust online literaturephile community about two years ago. “A couple of months later I started making my own content on YouTube and Instagram,” under the name The Artisan Geek, she tells raceAhead. It was an instant education in diversity and exclusion. “It was a fun little hobby at first, but then I got swept up rather quickly in the publishing world. I realised how hard it was to find diverse representation in basically all corners of publishing and so that got me really fired up to do as much as I could to make a change,” she says.
The idea for the #BlackLitChallenge was formed about a year ago, as she considered how she could highlight the rich diversity of work that exists within Black literature. She is nothing if not thorough. “It started with the creation of The Black Literature Compendium, in which I collected Black literature from across the world and genres.” It’s an astonishingly comprehensive list in a Google doc, cross-referenced by category and country. (I mean, it’s really astonishing.)
Then, she started issuing challenge prompts, common in the online bookish world, designed to help people find and enjoy the diversity within Black writing.
To complete this month’s challenge, you have to choose books that will address four prompts:
One written before the 21 st century
century One with a Black person on the cover
One book in a genre outside of your comfort zone
At least one author who was born outside of the U.S. or U.K.
What helped the movement really get going, she says, was her “choose your own adventure” video series, in which Seji plays an A.I. named Ina, who asks you questions about your tastes, and recommends a book. “Let Ina choose your book,” is a bonus prompt in the challenge, and a sweetly clever way to drive traffic. (Based on my love of magic, Ina recommended Kingdom of Souls, by Lena Barron, which satisfies two prompts for me.)
Seji has found plenty of readers who are keen to play along, a loose network of book lovers and reviewers who support each other and Black authors online.
Sadly, Black book YouTube never seems to get the same traction as white supremacy YouTube.
In a better world, Seji would be a publishing executive. Until then, she dreams of being a freelance mathematician and content creator, and mostly reads in Dutch and English, with occasional forays into German and Japanese. Her selections this month include The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead and Victor LaValle’s Destroyer, a comic book inspired by Frankenstein. (Here’s her review for The Nickel Boys, and her review for Destroyer.)
It’s still early, but she’s happy with the response to the challenge. “Especially on Instagram—it’s been impossible to keep up with all the responses and at the same time participate and continue making the content for the challenge.” All good problems to have.
But she’s determined to keep reading and creating. “I have lots of other things planned, so I’m very excited to see how the rest of the month will unfold,” she says.
Ellen McGirt
@ellmcgirt
Ellen.McGirt@fortune.com
On Point
American Dirt publisher agrees to increase Latinx representation Members of #DignidadLiteraria, an online coalition which formed to highlight Latinx literary talent in the wake of the American Dirt controversy, announced the outcome of a meeting with MacMillan Publishers this week. The company agreed to create an action plan in the next 90 days designed to increase Latinx representation in both staff and authors.“This is a clear victory...We think this is a move in the right direction,” said David Bowles, a writer and #DignidadLiteraria co-founder. “We thank Macmillan for reaching out to us and asking us to come to New York and sit down with them.”
The Guardian
How to get a more diverse corporate board Recommend lower-level executives for outside board seats and encourage them to take them, says Jeff Green, writing in Forbes. It’s worked for Marriott International, whose CEO says it’s a smart way to give high potential stars valuable experience. Boards are feeling the pressure to diversify, and are looking beyond central CEO casting, which is helping the cause. “For the first time, a majority of new directors last year were either women or men of color,” he writes.
Bloomberg
The U.K. media keep mistaking and misidentifying Black women MPs as each other It even happened as one media outlet—The Evening Standard—attempted to cover the mistake made by another, BBC Parliament. Bell Ribeiro-Addy, an MP who represents South London, says it happens all the time. “We are not given the same respect as our white counterparts and that's not right," she says. "It is hard enough for us to get elected here but when we do get here we are not treated as individuals.
BBC
Facebook is still a white supremacist “hate factory” Two months after a Guardian investigation revealed that Facebook was harboring a network of pages run by a company that had been harvesting anti-Muslim sentiment for profit, reporters find that many of the pages are still operational. “[T]wo months after Facebook was made aware of the scheme, an analysis by the Guardian has confirmed that a number of the pages are still feeding off anti-Islamic content to drive readers to the same for-profit, third-party websites.”
The Guardian
On Background
How the trans flag emoji came to be After years of advocacy, the trans flag will be added to the Unicode Standard later this year. It matters, explains Mary Emily O’Hara. Activists, including trans flag creator Monica Helm, sent detailed proposals and were denied.For one thing, inclusion symbols are not interchangeable. “But while the rainbow flag is a universal symbol of queerness, not all trans people identify with same-sex attraction. Besides, a trans flag emoji would help increase visibility and inclusion.” It took a village, including the signatures of employees from Google and Microsoft to get the emoji approved. Well done, all.
Adweek
Stumbling toward thought leadership Maybe you, like me, have stood on a stage in front of a live audience of your peers, your deck of slides at the ready, and suddenly had that stupid hater voice pop into your head to set you back on your imposter heels: “Wow, you are about to be so full of shit.” Let the nightmare come to life! In a truly hilarious presentation (and commentary on the modern age), improv master Anthony Veneziale stepped on the TED stage, was given a lofty persona (he leads an imaginary team at MIT!!!), a Quixotic and compelling theme, and a set of slides he’d never seen before. Damn it, if that man didn’t deliver a near perfect talk, filled with quasi-scientific possibility speak and soaring rhetoric that sounded ridiculously plausible. By the end of it, I was ready to buy his book on the subject, if it had only existed. The whole thing is as delicious as guacamole, trust me.
TED
Tamara El-Waylly produces raceAhead and manages the op-ed program.
Quote
“And America, too, is a delusion, the grandest one of all. The white race believes—believes with all its heart—that it is their right to take the land. To kill Indians. Make war. Enslave their brothers. This nation shouldn't exist, if there is any justice in the world, for its foundations are murder, theft, and cruelty. Yet here we are.”
—Colson Whitehead, The Underground Railroad


fortune--2020-02-05--‘Irishman’ DP Rodrigo Prieto on mastering Martin Scorsese’s cinematic language

“I consider Martin Scorsese to be a master of camera language,” says cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto—and he should know.
Since getting an out-of-the-blue invitation from Scorsese to shoot The Wolf of Wall Street in 2013, Prieto has become the storied filmmaker’s go-to director of photography. He earned an Oscar nomination for 2016’s Silence and again this year for The Irishman.
“Scorsese has a very specific vision of what he wants to achieve,” Prieto tells Fortune. “He designs the shots he wants, but at the same time he makes you feel like it’s your movie too.”
Prieto revered Raging Bull during his film-student years in Mexico City before making his own mark with visually arresting films including Amores Perros, Babel, and Brokeback Mountain. He’s always marveled at Scorsese’s ability to engage moviegoers with characters they’d probably cross the street to avoid in real life.
“So many Scorsese movies center on characters we would normally find despicable,” he says. “Look at Raging Bull, look at Taxi Driver, look at [Leonardo DiCaprio’s swindler character] Belfort in The Wolf of Wall Street! But somehow, you go for the ride, and a lot of that has to do with getting into the mindset of the character through the camera.”
From left: Al Pacino, Scorsese, and Prieto on the set of Netflix’s “The Irishman.” Prieto used a custom-made “three-headed monster” camera rig for the film. Niko Tavernise
To immerse viewers in the world of Irish hit man Frank Sheeran, played by Robert De Niro, Scorsese tasked Prieto with a formidable array of technical challenges. For starters, Prieto and his crew pioneered a custom-designed “three-headed monster” camera rig. Equipped with two “witness cameras” that record ultraviolet light invisible to the naked eye, Prieto’s setup allowed VFX artists to digitally de-age the actors without forcing them to wear the cumbersome sensors and helmet cams normally deployed for motion capture CGI enhancements.
Prieto also filmed scenes of dialogue with two rigs simultaneously, rather than focusing on one actor at a time per normal practice. “That was really difficult because normally, when you light one actor, it impacts the other actor, and usually not in the best way,” Prieto says. “I devised techniques to control the lighting, and somehow we managed.”
And because The Irishman saga spans six decades, Prieto needed to create a visual vocabulary for each era inhabited by De Niro, Al Pacino as Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa, and Joe Pesci in the role of Mobster mentor Russell Bufalino. “Scorsese wanted to give a certain patina to the past,” Prieto says, “because, after all, the movie is about how we remember things and the passage of time.”
‘The Irishman’ and its colorful past
Prieto manipulated his color palette to subtly signal time jumps. “When Scorsese asked me to give each period a different look, I came up with this notion that we remember things through the photographs taken in our past, and those photographs have a certain color because of the emulsions they were printed with at the time,” he says.
“In the ’50s, I found that Kodachrome was very popular. I created something called a Look Up Table that allowed me to match [normal] green to the way that Kodachrome would have reproduced green, which is not necessarily the way your eye sees it. And Kodachrome red is very saturated. That’s why you’ll notice that in our scenes that take place in the ’50s, like when De Niro and Joe Pesci are repairing the truck, their faces are quite red. That’s in emulation of Kodachrome.”
At a bowling alley, Frank Sheeran (De Niro, left) attempts a show of warmth to his daughter Peggy (Lucy Gallina) in front of Russell Bufalino (Pesci). Prieto modeled some of the color palette for the film after the colors captured by Kodachrome and Ektachrome film to evoke the shifting passage of time. Courtesy of Netflix
For the ’60s-era chapter of the story, Prieto modeled his palette after vintage Ektachrome film, which skews toward cyan and blue-green, and translates, Prieto says, into colder blacks and cooler shadows.
For The Irishman’s shocking third act, set mainly in a prison and a nursing home where De Niro’s aging Sheeran spends his final days, Prieto set the mood by using a “bleach bypass” process. “The colors are desaturated, and the blacks become deeper and more contrast-y,” he explains. “I also ‘force-developed’ the motion picture negative to create more of a grainy structure. So from the moment Jimmy Hoffa dies, the images become more grainy and less saturated, as if the meaning of everyone’s life kind of goes away. That felt like the right treatment for the lonely part of Frank’s life when he’s looking for his pills or watching TV all by himself.”
Capturing the De Niro mystique
Prieto made a short film with De Niro a few years ago, but The Irishman essentially offered the DP a master class on the difference between film acting and stage performance. “We shot half the movie digitally for the de-aging, but for the half that did not require visual effects, I operated a film camera,” Prieto says.
“I was blown away when I’d look through the optical eyepiece at De Niro. He would do things by literally not doing anything, but I could feel the performance,” Prieto says, laughing as he recalls the actor’s method intensity. “I’d frame a close-up of De Niro, and his face wouldn’t move at all, yet you could sense all these tremendous emotions that his character is swallowing and burying. Like when De Niro’s character gets on the plane to go to Detroit and kill Hoffa, it’s just a man sitting there, right? But somehow, there’s this magic projected to the camera. I don’t know how he does it.”
The direct approach
In keeping with The Irishman’s title character, the camerawork favored simplicity over elaborate camera movement. Cinematic form followed character function, Prieto says.
“Marty talked to me about how Frank Sheeran approaches his work, which happens to be killing people, in this very methodical way. He scopes the place, he chooses the weapon, he decides how to go in and get out,” Prieto says. “Like clockwork, Frank figures out the most efficient way to do his job, so it was the same with the camera. The most efficient way to film a killing is to just put the camera on a tripod and film it from a distance. Very simple. Very direct. And that’s because Frank’s character is not eloquent. He doesn’t talk a lot. He only says what needs to be said. And so, the camera does the same thing.”
More must-read stories from Fortune:
—How much is an Oscar worth?
—Bombshell‘s Charlize Theron and John Lithgow reflect on the film’s indelible impact
—HBO’s McMillion$ shows how cheaters scammed McDonald’s Monopoly game
—American Factory directors on capturing what “globalization looks like on a human scale”
—Taika Waititi on Kiwi humor, directing as Hitler, and why kids should see Jojo Rabbit
Follow Fortune on Flipboard to stay up-to-date on the latest news and analysis.


fortune--2020-02-05--Disney+ sets return date for ‘The Mandalorian’

The Mandalorian, the breakout hit for Disney+, will be back for its second season before the end of the year, Bob Iger confirmed on a quarterly earnings call Tuesday.
The Star Wars spinoff is set to return this October and expect a much bigger marketing push this time around, now that the company does not have to guard the secret about Baby Yoda’s role in the show.
The Madalorian has driven significant traffic for Disney+. Iger said 65% of the people who watch the show have watched at least 10 other programs or movies. And he sees the show as a way to usher in a new generation of Star Wars fans.
“When [certain international markets, including China] tuned into, or heard about the Skywalker legacy, there was too much that had already gone in the past that was not familiar to them and they didn’t really want to get on board late,” he said. “That’s not true with Mandalorian, because Mandalorian is even though it’s based on, obviously, certain Star Wars elements, characters in places, you don’t have to know anything about the history of Star Wars in terms of an access point or in terms of your interest.”
The Child from The Mandalorian. Courtesy of Disney and Lucasfilm Ltd.
Iger also hinted that a third season of the show is already planned—and spin off programs with certain characters are possible as well.
“The priority in the next few years is television with The Mandalorian Season 2 coming in October, and then more coming from The Mandalorian thereafter, including the possibility of infusing it with more characters and the possibility of taking those characters in their own direction in terms of series,” he said.
More must-read stories from Fortune:
—Seconds-long streaming delays can make or break live entertainment—American Factory directors on capturing what “globalization looks like”
—Charlize Theron and John Lithgow reflect on Bombshell’s indelible impact
—HBO’s “McMillion$” shows how cheaters scammed McDonald’s Monopoly
—Content is king: Inside Netflix’s streaming wars strategy
Follow Fortune on Flipboard to stay up-to-date on the latest news and analysis.


fortune--2020-02-05--Cathay Pacific is asking employees to take unpaid leave as coronavirus causes travel to plummet

As the coronavirus continues to spread across Asia, Cathay Pacific Airlines has asked its all of its 27,000 employees to take three weeks of unpaid leave.
The action, which is voluntary, comes as demand for travel has fallen precipitously amid reduced schedules and increased fear among travelers. The airline, which is the flagship carrier of Hong Kong, said preserving cash is “key to protecting” its business.
Cathay Pacific also announced a 30% cut in services over the next two months, including eliminating roughly 90% of its flights to mainland China. The company is also asking suppliers to cut prices and has instituted a hiring freeze for now.
While Cathay Pacific is the first airline in the region to ask employees to take unpaid leave, it might not be the last. The Chinese government has discouraged travel and demand for flights to the country has plunged as the disease has spread.
Hong Kong Airlines has also cut flights to the mainland and Singapore Airlines (and its low cost subsidiary Scoot) has reduced its capacity on selected routes in the country. In China itself, China Southern Airlines, Air China and others have reduced capacity as well.
Multiple U.S. carriers, including Delta Air Lines, American Airlines, and United Airlines have largely (or completely) suspended service to mainland China since the outbreak, but those carriers are less dependent on the routes and the moves are unlikely to affect employees.
More must-read stories from Fortune:
—The first coronavirus drug candidate is set for testing in China
—The Gates Foundation is pledging up to $100 million to fight coronavirus
—World’s biggest brewers tally costs of coronavirus outbreak as beer sales suffer
—Governments deploy surveillance tech to track coronavirus victims
—Asia worries about big events like the Olympics amid coronavirus spread
Subscribe to Fortune’s Brainstorm Health for daily updates on biopharma and health care.


fortune--2020-02-05--AT&T just added 5G in 13 more cities. Here’s where

AT&T added more than a dozen cities on Wednesday to its faster 5G wireless network for consumers, as the carrier races rivals to extend the next generation of mobile connectivity across the country.
On Wednesday, AT&T said customers with 5G compatible phones can now get the faster connections in cities including Boston, St. Louis, and Dayton, OH (for a complete list of the new cities, see below). That brings AT&T’s 5G coverage, which kicked off in December, to a total of 32 cities for consumers. The carrier also has an even faster version of 5G available only for business customers in parts of 35 cities.
The mobile industry plans to spend tens of billions of dollars over the next few years in a race to build 5G networks, which generally cover only a small area compared to today’s 4G LTE networks. The 5G networks will eventually offer download speeds 10 to 100-times faster than 4G networks, enabling new applications such as realistic virtual reality games on the go and mobile sports broadcasts that let viewers choose which camera angle to watch. While AT&T’s consumer 5G network is in 32 cities now, Verizon reaches parts of 34 cities and Sprint is in nine. T-Mobile says it network is available in most of the country, reaching 200 million homes.
Customers must buy a 5G compatible phone to get the faster download speeds. AT&T currently offers just the Samsung Galaxy Note 10+ 5G for $1,300, but many more 5G-compatible phones are expected to hit the market in the coming months, including some with much lower prices.
Even with a 5G compatible phone, wireless customers won’t always get exceptional speeds. AT&T’s 5G network, which is using airwave bands similar to 4G networks, reaches only double or triple the speed of an average 4G connection. And, as Fortune found in testing the new networks, the highest speeds aren’t always available.
Full list of new AT&T 5G cities:
Bakersfield, Calif.
San Luis Obispo, Calif.
Santa Barbara, Calif.
Oxnard, Calif.
Modesto, Calif.
Liberty, Ga.
Wichita, Kan.
Boston, Mass.
New Bedford, Mass.
Frederick, Md.
St Louis, Mo.
Atlantic City, NJ.
Dayton, OH.
More must-read stories from Fortune:
—What you need to know about new IBM CEO Arvind Krishna
—Coronavirus will take a bite out of Apple’s iPhone business. How big?
—Apple’s push into TV is “failing to resonate,” analyst says
—How marketers are increasingly using A.I. to persuade you to buy
—Predicting the biggest tech headlines of 2020
Catch up with Data Sheet, Fortune’s daily digest on the business of tech.


fortune--2020-02-05--Bakkt aims to turn your rewards points into a wallet you can spend anywhere

Wouldn’t it be great if you could open a digital wallet and view the sum total of all your rewards programs for hotels, pharmacies, and bank cards, all in one place, converted into cash? Then, you could spend all those thousands of unused airline miles as dollars to buy an Apple watch or take your spouse to dinner at the corner pizzeria. Loyalty points you don’t even know you have—the average American has more than a dozen rewards programs—are suddenly as spendable as the bucks in your checking account, just by scanning your rewards app at the checkout counter. What’s more, you can even get cash for video game points you could use only to buy, say, a sword to make your team mightier, and trade points for your Bitcoin on the same wallet.
That’s the vision for a new product that Bakkt, a startup backed by Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), is planning to develop by purchasing a specialist that handles rewards redemptions for America’s biggest sponsors, Bridge2 Solutions of Atlanta. The deal, announced before the market opened on Feb. 5, brings the total capitalization for Bakkt, which counts Microsoft and BCG among its investors, to over $1 billion, minting a new digital unicorn.
Bakkt created the first federally regulated cryptocurrency futures exchange in September, a platform that enables institutions to trade Bitcoin on the ICE U.S. Futures market. But Jeff Sprecher, ICE’s founder and CEO, has always pursued the ultimate goal of transforming the complex payment system requiring merchants to send between 2% and 3% of all purchases to banks, credit card companies, and other intermediaries.
“The legacy payments infrastructure is ripe for disintermediation,” Sprecher tells Fortune. “The Internet should make it possible to create a direct payment system that doesn’t use a third-party set of rails. It hit us that making rewards cash-like would be a step in that direction.”
Jeff Sprecher is the founder, chairman, and CEO of Intercontinental Exchange. Stephane GRANGIER—Corbis/Getty Images
The Bakkt plan addresses a pressing need for the sponsors of big corporate rewards plans, dominated by hotels, airlines, and banks: These companies often have billions of dollars in liabilities sitting on their balance sheets in the form of unused points. The major sponsors in the U.S. alone are sitting on a cache valued at $160 billion. In today’s strong economy, travelers are using their airline rewards points at a relatively low rate. But if the economy turns down, consumers could start cashing in heavily, causing a sudden rush of losses for the carriers. Today, points turn over on average at the extremely slow pace of around 30% a year.
According to the Bakkt team, the CFOs they have spoken to are looking for a platform that enables them to better smooth the rates of redemption by offering to purchase points in a marketplace. Companies will offer customers varying dollars per point based mostly on how likely someone is to cash in. If a frequent business traveler uses around 90% of his or her rewards, the airline might pay 2.5 cents a point; if it’s someone who flies from New Jersey to Florida once a year, but yet has lots of points, the airline might pay 1.5 cents.
The market should work, says Bakkt CEO Mike Blandina, because the sponsors will have the flexibility of setting the price. “Companies are always interested in buying back points at the right price,” says Blandina.
Bridge2 operates many of America’s largest loyalty redemption sites, which hold a combined total of $60 billion ready-to-go rewards. Those are places you visit to see your airline points, then choose from menus offering travel, electronics, and the like, and click through to purchase a flat-screen TV or reserve at a hotel in Orlando. Bakkt intends to keep building its current business with major sponsors.
Now, Bridge2 is testing a pilot program called Loyalty Pay. It would enable sponsors to issue a digital credit card, carrying the merchant’s brand, that would convert rewards to cash.
“If you’re at LaGuardia Airport, you could use the card on your iPhone to buy dinner at a restaurant before catching a flight, in cash, or buy perfume in the duty-free shop,” says Bridge2 president Larry Wine.
According to Bridge2, Loyalty Pay is finding broad acceptance among sponsors and should launch in the next few months, demonstrating willingness on the sponsor side to turn points into currency. But advancing to the product that gathers all rewards in a single wallet, and translates everything to cash, will take longer, though Bakkt isn’t offering a timetable.
A mock-up of the imagined Bakkt wallet that would combine rewards points, cash, and Bitcoin. Courtesy of Bakkt
The idea is to introduce two types of vehicles for paying with points. The first would provide a digital credit card that would be accepted anywhere merchants take Google Pay or Apple Pay. Merchant costs wouldn’t change, and they wouldn’t need to make any adjustments to their point-of-sales terminals. The benefits would go to the folks who can turn sleeping rewards to cash.
It’s the second phase that would disrupt the system—and potentially reap huge savings for merchants. But it would require merchants, like your neighborhood bar, to alter their payments process so they’re linked directly to the Bakkt app. Getting stores onboarded will require a big marketing and persuasion effort. Bakkt’s challenge is to show merchants how they can use their savings from going direct—instead of paying the interchange fee of around 2.5% that goes to banks, credit card companies, and the like—to lower prices or provide their own rewards to customers. The numbers are in Bakkt’s favor. What’s unclear is whether retailers are willing to scrap a system that’s been reliable, though expensive, for decades.
Whatever the outcome, the ultimate goal has loads of appeal to those who have sacrificed unused points or can’t buy what they want with the rewards they’ve accumulated. The app would show a pie chart divided into four slices: cash, crypto, rewards, and game points for systems like Microsoft’s Xbox. Folks could not only make purchases with the app using cash or bitcoin but also seamlessly transfer money from one category to another. Bakkt would handle the trading of points for cash, charging users a small fee. Direct payments would cost a tiny fraction of today’s interchange fee.
“It makes sense, because we’re an exchange company,” says Sprecher. The CEO–—who, by the way, just made a bid for eBay–—is a self-described “car nut” who’s not using the rewards garnered from his hobby. “I buy tons of batteries and other stuff from a local auto supply store, and I’ve accumulated all of these points, but I don’t use them,” says Sprecher. The day the CEO can buy dinner by using his auto supply points as cash at a restaurant that accepts direct payment via Bakkt rewards may be the dawn of a revolution in payments.
More must-read stories from Fortune:
—All of your questions on filing taxes in 2020, answered
—The health of the economy in nine charts
—Why investors are cooling on “direct-to-consumer” brands
—The coronavirus is already disrupting the global supply chain
—WATCH: Biggest investing opportunities and risks for 2020
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fortune--2020-02-05--How much is an Oscar worth?

How much is an Oscar worth?

In the weeks leading up to the 2020 Academy Awards telecast on Sunday, Hollywood studios and Netflix have poured tens of millions of dollars into billboards on Hollywood Boulevard, ads in trade publications, and “very special” screenings in hopes of bringing home an Oscar.
The gold-plated statuette itself is worth only $1, per the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science’s official regulations, which say winners cannot sell their Oscar without first offering to sell it back to the academy for $1. Of course, the industry feels Oscar’s true value is priceless.
“How can you put a price tag on it? There aren’t too many things in the world like it. There are a limited number of them, you can’t buy one, and everyone wants one,” says John Sloss, who has produced or executive produced over 60 films including the Academy Award–winning The Fog of War, Boys Don’t Cry, Boyhood, and last year’s Best Picture winner, Green Book.
The Oscar bestows a stamp of approval, one with the chance to boost a movie’s box office grosses, raise the profile of the talent involved, and cement its reputation for eternity.
“Having an Oscar nomination for a film is like holding a potential lottery ticket,” says Paul Dergarabedian, a senior media analyst at Comscore.
Box office bounce
A couple of decades ago, Oscar-winning movies could generally rely on the “Oscar bounce” at the box office, where they’d see big jumps in ticket sales following a Best Picture win, as was the case with films like Shakespeare in Love (1999) and American Beauty (2000). That’s no longer the case, partially because movies stay in theaters for shorter time periods than they once did.
“Nowadays, the Oscar bounce is more of a nomination bounce,” says Dergarabedian. “The films that are in theaters when nominations are announced generally get a nice bump. By the time of the awards telecast, there’s not much of a bounce, because most movies are completely played out by then.”
While the Oscar bounce hasn’t been as significant as it once was, in recent years, some movies have still seen a decent payout. When Universal Pictures initially released Green Book in November 2018, it had only so-so box office results. After the controversial race relations drama set in the 1960s South won Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor (for Mahershala Ali), and Best Original Screenplay at the 2019 Academy Awards, it enjoyed the biggest Oscar bounce in nearly a decade (since 2010’s The King’s Speech).
An Oscar statuette for the Academy Awards is prepped for shipping at the R.S. Owens manufacturing plant in Chicago. Films used to regularly benefit from an “Oscar bounce” at the box office decades ago, though now, experts say, it’s more of a “nominations bounce.” Tim Boyle—Newsmakers/Getty Images
Timing matters
Films released at the end of the year, which hit theaters just in time to qualify for Academy Awards consideration, are primed to benefit the most from a nomination and/or win. Film studios often hold off on releasing films they deem “Oscar-worthy” until later in the year, partially so they’ll be fresh in Academy voters’ minds.
Aside from Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood, which hit theaters in late July, all of this year’s Best Picture nominees were released later in the year. Little Women and 1917 both hit theaters on Christmas Day and are still flourishing at the box office.
“The newer a film is to the marketplace or the more recent the expansion into wide release, the bigger the potential benefit from Oscar nominations,” says Dergarabedian.
This year, because of an earlier Oscar telecast date, the window between nominations and the awards telecast was limited, which will likely curtail theatrical benefits from a nomination bump. Of course, there’s still the potential to reap rewards from home video and international box office. Aside from 1917 and Little Women, which are still in theaters, all of the Best Picture nominees are available on streaming and/or VOD platforms. They’re also primed to do well on home video.
A day after Parasite, Bong Joon Ho’s Korean-language thriller, earned six Oscar nominations, movie ticketing service Fandango announced that the film debuted at No. 4 on FandangoNow’s top five preordered video titles of all time. “The film’s six Oscar nominations has only increased fan anticipation to watch and re-watch the film as it finally arrives at home,” Fandango managing editor Erik Davis said in a statement.
The timing couldn’t have been better for Parasite’s Blu-ray and DVD release on Jan. 28—more than a week before the Oscar ceremony.
The Netflix factor
Two Best Picture contenders—Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman and Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story—are Netflix releases. Eager for Oscar prestige, the company has reportedly spent at least $60 million on awards season campaigns, per Variety. They won’t experience a theatrical “bounce,” but the nominations (and possible wins) are an added value for the streaming service.
“The theatrical point of [Netflix’s] films is really not significant to their bottom line,” says Dergarabedian. “They’re using their films to increase their subscriber base. Plus, they want the prestige associated with the Oscars.”
Though Netflix’s Roma was nominated for Best Picture and other major awards in 2019, this year seems to represent a turning point for Netflix, which, for the first time ever, received more nominations—24—than any other major Hollywood studio or distributor.
“We don’t have the financial formula yet to figure out whether it’s worth it to Netflix to mount a big Oscar campaign just to get more subscribers. But I don’t think they’d be doing it if they didn’t think it was worthwhile,” says Jonathan Kuntz, film historian and lecturer at the UCLA School of Theater, Film, and Television.
Of course, there’s more to gain from an Oscar win than box office grosses or subscriber growth.
Not a quantifiable figure
“It’s not really about translating to a quantifiable financial value,” says Sloss. “This is not a business that’s primarily motivated by financial gain. Very few people think that film is a very good pure financial investment.”
Still, an Academy Award bestows industry respect—and bragging rights. For some producers, that alone is priceless.
“There is zero downside, to put it mildly, to getting an Oscar nomination or a win. It gives any movie a new lease on life. It gives every movie that gets nominated a prestige factor and a legacy that lives on with the movie,” says Dergarabedian.
More must-read stories from Fortune:
—Bombshell’s Charlize Theron and John Lithgow reflect on the film’s indelible impact
—HBO’s McMillion$ shows how cheaters scammed McDonald’s Monopoly game
—In the age of Twitter, seconds-long streaming delays can make or break live entertainment
—American Factory directors on capturing what “globalization looks like on a human scale”
—Taika Waititi on Kiwi humor, directing as Hitler, and why kids should see Jojo Rabbit
Follow Fortune on Flipboard to stay up-to-date on the latest news and analysis.


fortune--2020-02-05--Spotify expands its podcast empire in a bid to become ‘the world’s leading audio platform’

This article originally ran in Term Sheet, Fortune’s newsletter about deals and dealmakers. Sign up here.
Spotify’s at it again. The music-streaming giant announced plans to acquire The Ringer, a sports and entertainment news company.
The Ringer, which was founded by sports writer Bill Simmons in 2016, boasts more than 30 podcasts in its network. That’s exactly what Spotify has been eyeing. In a news release, Spofity said that it hopes the Ringer deal will help it become “the world’s leading audio platform.” Financial terms weren’t disclosed, but The Ringer reportedly exceeded $15 million in revenue in 2018, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Spotify has been on a podcast acquisition spree in the last year. You might remember the company also acquired Gimlet Media for $230 million, Anchor for more than $100 million, and Parcast for $56 million. Gimlet focuses on producing high-quality narrative podcasts, Anchor helps with distribution and monetization, and Parcast is a scripted-entertainment podcast studio.
At the time of those acquisitions, I wrote that these deals were a no-brainer. Why? Because of the pursuit of influence and engagement.
“People who consume podcasts on Spotify are consuming more of Spotify — including music,” head of Spotify Studios Courtney Holt said at last year’s CES. “So we found that in increasing our catalog and spending more time to make the user experience better, it wasn’t taking away from music, it was enhancing the overall time spent on the platform.”
The bottom line: When users come to Spotify to listen to their favorite Gimlet or Ringer podcast, they will inevitably spend more time engaging with the Spotify platform. Additionally, Spotify will focus on curation and hyper-personalization with its podcast arm, just as it’s done with its music offering.
In an October Fortune feature, Spotify Chief Content Officer Dawn Ostroff offered some insight into the company’s strategy. “Podcasts have been around for years, but they’re still nascent in other ways—the business has been incredibly fragmented,” she said. “It’s an opportunity for Spotify to build and unify the industry at a time when we’re seeing listenership explode.”
SOFTBANK CHANGES: Michael Ronen, a former Goldman Sachs banker who joined SoftBank in 2017, is leaving the firm, the FT first reported. Ronen reportedly plans to pursue something entrepreneurial following his departure, according to a source familiar with the matter.
The FT also reported that SoftBank is currently in discussion about Ron Fisher’s future at the company. (Fisher is one of Masayoshi Son’s longest-serving lieutenants.) Term Sheet has learned that Fisher’s role will likely change, but he is not leaving the firm.
SoftBank has made several investments from its second Vision Fund (including the Alto deal below), and it’s doing so with a $38 billion contribution from SoftBank Group. The firm has not yet raised outside capital from limited partners for its new vehicle.
GOOD NIGHT, TERM SHEET: Term Sheet reader John Prendergass welcomed his newborn daughter on Sunday…and read her Term Sheet as a bedtime story. To us, that’s worthy of a Dad of the Year award! (But I’m also wondering just how many of you are already asleep at work after reading today’s edition…)
Polina Marinova
Twitter: @polina_marinova
Email: polina.marinova@fortune.com
VENTURE DEALS
- Alto, a San Francisco-based digital pharmacy, raised $250 million in Series D funding. Investors include SoftBank Vision Fund 2, GreenOaks Capital, Jackson Square Ventures, Olive Tree Capital and Zola Global.
- Deliverr, a San Francisco-based provider of order fulfillment services, raised $40 million in Series C funding. Activant Capital led the round, and was joined by investors including 8VC, GLP and Ryan Peterson.
- The Zebra, an Austin-based insurance comparison site, raised $38.5 million in Series C funding. Investors include Weatherford Capital, Accel, Silverton Partners, Daher Capital, Floodgate Fund, Ballast Point Ventures, and Keith Melnick.
- Digital Asset, a New York-based blockchain company, raised $35 million in Series C funding. Investors include Samsung Ventures and Salesforce Ventures.
- Turo, a San Francisco-based online rental car marketplace, raised $30 million in Series E2 funding, amounting to a total of $280 million in Series E funding. Investors include Allen & Company LLC, Larry Fitzgerald and 2 Chainz.
- NGD Systems, an Irvine, Calif.-based computational storage startup, raised $20 million in Series C funding. MIG Capital led the round, and was joined by investors including Western Digital Capital Global, Orange Digital Ventures, Partech, BGV and Plug-N-Play.
- floLIVE, a London-based provider of secure, cloud-native connectivity management solutions for the Internet of Things, raised $21.5 million in funding. 83North led the round, and was joined by investors including Dell Technologies Capital, Saban Ventures and Qualcomm Ventures LLC.
- Foxtrot, a Chicago-based app that lets users shop curated collections of drinks, eats and essentials, raised $17 million in funding. Imaginary and Wittington Ventures co-led the round, and was joined by investors including Fifth Wall, Lerer Hippeau, Revolution’s Rise of the Rest Seed Fund, M3 Ventures, The University of Chicago, Collaborative VC, Wasson Enterprise, Bluestein Associates and Barshop Ventures.
- ClearMetal, a San Francisco-based logistics and supply chain data analytics startup, raised $15 million in funding. Eclipse Ventures led the round, and was joined by investors including Prelude Ventures, Innovation Endeavors, NEA, SAP.io, Prologis, PSA Unboxed, DCLI, and the founders of GT Nexus, Navis, and Uber Freight.
- Bravo Sierra, a New York-based non-traditional defense contractor, raised $12 million in Series A funding. Global Founders Capital led the round, and was joined by investors including Mousse Partners, Canaan Partners, Redo Ventures, Grace Beauty Capital and Lapa Capital.
- Convelio, a Paris-based digital freight forwarder specialized in fine-art shipping, raised €9 million in Series A funding. Acton Capital led the round, and was joined by investors including Global Founders Capital.
- Houwzer, a Philadelphia-based real estate brokerage, raised $9.5 million in funding. Edison Partners led the round.
- FreightWeb, a Seattle-based trucking startup, raised $3 million in funding. Investors include Madrona Venture Group and 8VC.
- Casted, an Indianapolis-based software-as-a-service marketing platform for branded podcasts, raised $2.35 million in seed funding. Investors include High Alpha Capital, Elevate Ventures and Tappan Hill Ventures.
- LumaTax, a Seattle-based software-as-a-service company that enables small businesses to comply with sales tax regulations, raised $2 million in funding. Investors include KPMG, Madrona Venture Group, Cowboy Ventures, Greycroft, and Vulcan Capital.
HEALTH & LIFE SCIENCES DEALS
- Verana Health, a San Francisco-based technology company that curates and analyzes real-world clinical data to advance patient care, raised $100 million in funding. GV led the round, and was joined by investors including Bain Capital Ventures, Casdin Capital, and Define Ventures.
- MaaT Pharma, a Paris-based biotechnology company, raised €18 million in Series B funding. Investors include SymBiosis, Seventure Partners, Crédit Mutuel Innovation, and Biocodex.
- Ikarovec, a Cambridge-based developer of novel gene therapies to treat major ophthalmic indications, raised £2.5 million in seed funding. Investors include UKI2S, LifeArc and Parkwalk.
PRIVATE EQUITY DEALS
- Washington Equity Partners made a majority investment in Tube Bending, Inc, a manufacturer and fabricator of tubing and tubing assemblies. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
- Black Dragon Capital will acquire Grass Valley, a San Francisco-based technology supplier of advanced broadcast and media solutions, from Belden Inc. (NYSE: BDC). Financial terms weren't disclosed.
- Industrial Opportunity Partners acquired Competition Cams, Inc, a Memphis, Tenn-based company that specializes in the production of camshafts. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
- Trowbridge, which is backed by Enlightenment Capital, acquired IntelliWare Systems, a Fredericksburg, Va.-based provider of cyber, intelligence, and information technology solutions to the FBI. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
OTHER DEALS
- Dotdash acquired Mother Nature Network, a destination for sustainability, environmental, and responsible living content, and TreeHugger, a publisher dedicated to driving sustainability mainstream, from Narrative Content Group. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
IPOs
- Central Retail Corp, Thailand’s largest retailer, priced its IPO in a deal valued at $2.6 billion, Reuters reports. Read more.
- Locaweb, a Brazilian web services company, will raise 1.2 billion reais ($282 million), through an IPO in the country. Silverlake backs the firm. Read more.
EXITS
- The private investment arm of Koch Industries Inc acquired the remaining equity in cloud-software maker Infor Inc, a New York-based provider of enterprise software, in a deal valued at nearly $13 billion including preferred shares, according to Bloomberg. Read more.
FIRMS + FUNDS
- Andreessen Horowitz, a Menlo Park, Calif.-based venture capital firm, raised $750 million for its third Bio fund. Read more.
- Ecosystem Investment Partners, a Baltimore, Md.-based private equity firm, raised $454.5 million for its fund, Ecosystem Investment Partners IV, L.P.