This is a published version of the Forbes Daily newsletter, you can sign-up to get Forbes Daily in your inbox here.
Good morning,
At a storied company like Disney, the streaming era is bringing a windfall.
The company said it expects a more than $1 billion profit in its streaming division next fiscal year, as it reported better-than-expected earnings and guidance Thursday. Investors celebrated and shares reached their highest price since early May, ending up 6%.
Disney said it expects a $875 million jump in operating profits for its direct-to-consumer entertainment division—which includes its Disney+, Hulu and ESPN+ streaming services—for the 12-month period ending next September.
Still, the entertainment giant remains more than 40% below its all-time high share price from March 2021, and has lagged behind the broader market and rival Netflix.
FIRST UP
Tesla’s post-election rally lost steam again Thursday, with its stock entering correction territory as shares of the company led by centibillionaire Elon Musk suffered their second 5% or worse loss in three days. The decline was accelerated by a Reuters report on the Trump transition team reportedly moving to end the $7,500 federal tax credit for electric vehicle purchasers. Still, Tesla stock is up 23.8% since last Tuesday.
President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for attorney general, Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, resigned from his House seat Wednesday, but despite making a name for himself in Congress, he hasn’t made an enormous amount of money. It’s doubtful that Gaetz needs much cash, since his father has a fortune of about $35 million, per his Florida disclosures.
MORE: The House Committee on Ethics has been investigating Gaetz on allegations including sexual misconduct, illicit drug use and accepting improper gifts, and had been scheduled to vote Friday on whether or not to release its report, according to Punchbowl News. Forbes found five examples in which lawmakers or congressional staff opted to publicly share details about ethics investigations involving members or staffers who had resigned or were on their way out.
BUSINESS + FINANCE
The U.S. is reportedly investigating Citigroup’s connection to Suleiman Kerimov, a sanctioned Russian billionaire whom American officials say financially benefited from corruption in the Russian government. The Justice Department, the FBI and the IRS are probing the services Citigroup provides for Heritage Trust, which holds assets belonging to Kerimov, people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg.
WEALTH + ENTREPRENSHIP
Alexandre Arnault, son of LVMH CEO and world’s fifth-richest person Bernard Arnault, was named deputy chief executive of the Moët Hennessy brand, positioning him as a contender to succeed his father as head of the luxury goods conglomerate. Arnault is known for his celebrity ties, which he wielded for marketing campaigns during his four-year stint revamping the Tiffany & Co. brand.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Oracle cofounder Larry Ellison traded off the No. 2 spot on Forbes’ billionaire list Thursday, the latest exchange of the title between the two tech billionaires since September. Ellison’s estimated net worth reached $228.4 billion in the late afternoon, narrowly overtaking Bezos’ net worth of $227.3 billion and placing him behind Tesla chief Elon Musk.
TECH + INNOVATION
General Motors-owned robotaxi and self-driving car company Cruise agreed to pay a $500,000 fine and admitted to submitting a false report after an accident involving one of its vehicles in San Francisco last year. A pedestrian was injured after being struck and dragged approximately 20 feet by a robotaxi, and Cruise eventually suspended its operations last year after multiple safety-related incidents.
MONEY + POLITICS
President-elect Donald Trump selected vaccine skeptic and former independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as the head of the Department of Health and Human Services, tanking shares linked to vaccine developers such as Moderna, Pfizer and Novavax late Thursday. Novavax and BioNTech closed down more than 7%, with almost all of the losses coming after news broke of the selection, while Moderna’s stock closed down 5.6%, bringing the stock to its lowest point of the year.
The parent company of the satirical publication The Onion announced Thursday it purchased Alex Jones’ Infowars franchise, which was auctioned off this week to help pay the nearly $1.5 billion Jones owes the families of the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre for falsely claiming the school shooting was staged. An attorney representing some Sandy Hook families told Forbes the divestment of Infowars’ assets by The Onion “will meaningfully hinder Jones’ ability to do more harm.”
Billionaire Elon Musk, who has been one of Trump’s most prolific supporters and has been acting as an adviser to the president-elect, met with Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations earlier this week, The New York Times reported. Since Trump’s victory, Musk has reportedly taken on a significant role in Cabinet appointments and conversations with other world leaders.
SPORTS + ENTERTAINMENT
Formula 1 racing legend Nico Rosberg has been rebranding himself as an entrepreneur since claiming his final checkered flag in 2016, and now he’s getting behind the wheel of his most ambitious endeavor yet: managing a fund. In April, his Monaco-based firm Rosberg Ventures announced the creation of a “fund of funds,” which pools capital and deploys it primarily through other VC firms, and Rosberg tells Forbes he has secured $100 million in assets under management.
TRENDS + EXPLAINERS
As conversations bubble up about what to keep and cut when it comes to the federal budget, one word that keeps resurfacing is entitlement. An entitlement typically means a benefit that is guaranteed, often by law, like Social Security and Medicare. But entitlement spending is separate from discretionary spending, and the benefits will still be paid if there’s a deficit and even if—as is the case now—Congress has not passed a budget.
DAILY COVER STORY
McDonald’s Stunt Pushed Trump Past Harris On TikTok
TOPLINE In the final days of this month’s presidential election, pollsters and pundits insisted that the race was as tight as it could be—statistically tied. But on TikTok, the data told another story: former President Donald Trump had surpassed Vice President Kamala Harris in a dramatic shift of Americans’ online attention.
On October 22, then-candidate Trump filmed scenes of himself preparing food at a Philadelphia-area McDonald’s franchise, and on TikTok, official Team Trump accounts flooded viewers’ feeds with the McDonald’s scenes, breaking through to a larger TikTok audience than either candidate had yet seen. Just one of Trump’s McDonald’s videos alone—with more than 63 million views and 7.3 million likes—received more engagement than VP Harris’s top five videos on the platform combined.
Today, TikTok has 170 million users in the United States, more than the total number of Americans who voted in the 2020 presidential election. The platform, which is owned and controlled by the Chinese tech giant ByteDance, for years downplayed its role as a place for political discourse in an effort to stem concerns about Chinese government control over the app.
But that strategy changed last year, after Congress began seriously considering, and subsequently passed, a bill that would force ByteDance to sell TikTok or see it banned in the United States. If TikTok was going to face a ban, its role as a political platform could help its defense, because political discourse is one of the most protected forms of speech under the First Amendment.
During the campaign, Trump, who first tried to ban TikTok in 2020, reversed his position on the app after meeting with Republican megadonor and ByteDance investor Jeffrey Yass earlier this year. In the days following his reelection, Trump’s staff has reiterated that he now hopes to stop the ban bill from taking effect, though repealing or amending the existing law would require an act of Congress.
WHY IT MATTERS “This is a reminder of the alarming power that social media companies have over our political discourse,” says Forbes senior writer Emily Baker-White. “TikTok and ByteDance got to decide how many people President-elect Trump and VP Harris’s posts would reach—and they got to watch the effects of that reach in real time. Whether or not TikTok can ultimately avoid a ban, it is worth recognizing the critical role it played in this election, and the role that it and its competitors will likely continue to play in our civic society moving forward.”
MORE The Battle Over How Much Politics To Allow On TikTok
FACTS + COMMENTS
Bluesky, a text-based social media platform that is a competitor to X, is seeing usage spike as X users flee the Elon Musk-owned platform following President-elect Donald Trump’s victory. Bluesky operates as a “decentralized” social media platform, where users can create their own servers to store data:
1.5 million: The number of new users Bluesky has added over the past week, a company spokesperson told Forbes
14.5 million: The platform’s total users, which pales in comparison to the 250 million people who use X each day, according to a statement from the company in March
2019: The year Bluesky was conceived as a research project by Twitter’s then-CEO and cofounder Jack Dorsey
STRATEGY + SUCCESS
If you’re looking for ways to lower your total tax bill in 2024, don’t wait: Most strategies call for action before the end of the year. For instance, you can max out your 401(k) or other tax-deferred retirement plan with your employer, or make a charitable donation to a donor-advised fund, which is tax-deductible. And if you have a large taxable gain one year, it may be worth considering if you have any losses to reduce the tax impact.
VIDEO
QUIZ
Mark Zuckerberg, the billionaire founder of Meta, recorded an acoustic cover of a song with T-Pain as an anniversary gift for his wife. What song is it?
A. “Get Low”
B. “Drop It Like It’s Hot”
C. “Empire State of Mind”
D. “Low”
Check your answer.
Thanks for reading! This edition of Forbes Daily was edited by Sarah Whitmire and Chris Dobstaff.