The Rundown - Fubo to Merge with Disney's Hulu + Live TV, WWE to Make Netflix Debut

Episode Date: January 6, 2025

Stock market update for January 6, 2025. Follow our new Instagram account ⁠⁠⁠@TheRundownDaily

Public.com presents the rundown. Your daily market update in five minutes. My name is Adad Mani, and today is Monday, January 6th. In today's episode, we tell you why the U.S. dollar is dropping this morning and why it has to do with tariffs. We also tell you about huge news regarding Disney and a potential merger with an up-and-coming streamer. Then stick around to the end of the show to find out why chip stocks are flying and why this weapons company has been one of the best performing stocks, and it has to do with AI and subscriptions.

All right, let's go. Stocks finally got a win on Friday to wrap up the first week of the year. After five days of being in the red, the S&P added 1.3%, and the NASDAQ was up 1.8%. That was great to see, and let's hope that momentum will carry into this week. Now, something that caught my eye this morning is the value of the U.S. dollar. We don't only talk a lot about currencies on this show, but I wanted to mention that the dollar is dropping this morning after reports that Donald Trump might have a less aggressive tariff

plan as originally feared. A report in the Washington Post, Trump is considering imposing tariffs on just critical imports and not a blanket tariff on all countries. And that was a relief to investors all over the world and currencies like the euro, Australian dollar, and the Chinese yuan rallied on this news. I still think there's some uncertainty on what the the new administration's going to do about tariffs. But the market seems to be excited about the possibility of not seeing a blanket tariff. We'll see how it all plays out. Trump is being sworn in as president in two weeks.

And speaking of presidents, the stock market will be closed on Thursday in honor of former President Jimmy Carter, who passed away on December 29th. So this will be the third straight short week in a row. Now, despite only four days of trading, we do have an interesting week coming up, especially Friday. On Friday, we're getting the December jobs report. So we'll see if the rate. cuts by the Fed is helping the labor markets or if conditions are getting worse. We're also

getting earnings reports from Delta Airlines, Walgreens, and Constellation brands. And finally, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in the TikTok ban case. So there's a lot happening this week. We'll be covering everything here on the rundown. So if you haven't already, hit the subscribe button, hit that notification bell so you're notified as soon as an episode goes up to stay in the loop. Still blows my mind that TikTok might actually be banned in like two weeks. Let's run through some Big story this morning, Disney is in talks to merge Hulu with Fubo TV. Now, to be more specific, Disney is planning to merge Hulu's live TV service with Fubo TV. Because remember, Hulu is also a streaming service, which is like Netflix, where you can watch shows on demand,

but they also have a live TV subscription, which is like a cable subscription, but through the internet. So Disney's plan is to merge the live TV version of Hulu with Fubo TV, which is also a platform for live TV. Now, details are still coming out about this deal, but the reports are saying that this combined company will be 70% owned by Disney, and the rest of it will be owned by Fubo TV. And if this merger goes through, this new combined company would be the second largest online TV provider with 6.2 million subscribers second only to YouTube TV. They're still the top dog. And again, keep in mind, the regular Hulu streaming service is not included in this deal.

It's still going to continue to operate as normal under the Disney umbrella. Now, another big part of this deal is that Fubo would drop its lawsuit that it has against Disney, Warner Brothers, and Fox. Disney, Warner Brothers, and Fox were teaming up to launch a streaming service catering to sports fans. The streaming service was called Venue. And Fubo did not like that because Fubo was a streaming service that also catered to sports fans. Because it's estimated that venue would have controlled about 60 to 80% of live sports content. They sued to block the release of this venue streaming service, claiming that it wasn't fair that, Disney, Warner Brothers, and Fox, which owned the sports rights, were allowed to launch a streaming service.

While Fubo had to pay these companies to get access to their channels that carried the sports programming. I'm kind of simplifying this a little bit, but this lawsuit seemed to be working. Fubo actually won its injunction request to the U.S. court system blocking the release of the streaming platform last summer. So now with this potential merger, that lawsuit will go away and should clear the path for Disney, Warner Brothers, and Fox to release this venue streaming service. I'm sure more details will come out over the next few days, but the market reaction has been wild. I just pulled up Fubo's stock chart on public.com. The stock is up more than 120% in pre-market trading. Personally, I'm pretty excited about this because I currently have a YouTube TV subscription

because I'm a big sports fan, and they just keep raising their prices. So if Fubo can offer a better service or if this venue sports streaming service is a better alternative, I would switch in a heartbeat. So we'll see what happens. Now, sticking with the streaming theme, let's talk about Netflix because they are are debuting their next big live event tonight. The company is going to be streaming the first episode of WWRWA. It's the beginning of a 10-year partnership that Netflix paid $5 billion for last year. Now, I'm not a big WWE guy. I used to watch it when I was a kid, but I haven't really

watched much of it, but they have a loyal, dedicated fan base. Raw began airing back in 1993, and it's the longest-running weekly episodic series on television, which was kind of surprising to me. And it's another example of how streaming companies have traditional media companies against the ropes. WWRWA has been on USA Network for most of its time since it began more than 30 years ago. Now, part of WWE's value to Netflix is its massive global audience. It's not just popular in the U.S. It's popular everywhere. They have more than 1 billion followers across social media.

So this live event tonight is probably going to do some pretty solid viewership numbers. Netflix will be streaming it in the U.S., Canada, Latin America, and we'll start streaming it in India starting in April. I think this was a solid deal by Netflix, and I think it's a good move by WWE to continue to grow their global audience. Let's talk about some stocks making moves today. Shares of Uber are rising this morning after the ride-hailing company announced a $1.5 billion stock repurchase program. Uber is buying more than 18.5 million shares in Q1,

and it's an acceleration of the company's previously announced $7 billion stock repurchase program they announced last year. And whenever companies do share buybacks, investors love that. Shares of Uber are up more than 4% this morning on this news. Another winner this morning are chip stocks. Chip stocks are up after Foxcon reported its highest Q4 revenue in the company's history with 15% growth in the period. Foxcon attributed this performance to AI demand, and it's known to be the assembling partner for Apple and also Nvidia.

And this AI enthusiasm continues with Microsoft announcing plans to spend $80 billion on AI data centers in fiscal 2025. So the AI hype not slowing down anytime soon. Shares of Nvidia and AMD are up 3% this morning and Micron is up more than 5% this morning. Now on the flip side, shares of paychecks are down due to the company being in advance talks to buy a competing payment processing company Paycor HCM. Investors didn't like this news of the acquisition and shares of paychecks are down

around 5% while shares of paycore are up around 24%. Let's wrap the show with a fun fact. The fifth best performing stock in the S&P 500 in 2024 was Axon, which is a company that makes tasers and weapons for police and government agencies. The stock was up 130% in 2024. And when I first saw this, I was pretty shocked, given that last year it was all about AI. It was kind of surprising to see a weapons company in the top five.

But diving deeper, I realized that Axon is also a tech company with a growing AI in cloud business. In fact, that business generated more than $880 million in revenue. So, yeah, even weapons companies these days have a subscription service. And unlike a streaming subscription service, which has a high turn rate, Axon's customers are police departments and government agencies, which means they're probably less likely to cancel their subscription. We talked more about Axon and the other top five best performing stocks in the S&P in this

past weekend's deep dive episode. So go check that out if you missed it. Well, all right, guys, that's the run. down for today. If you guys enjoyed today's episode, consider giving us a five-star rating on Apple and Spotify. Vote in today's Spotify poll. Leave us a comment on Spotify. Follow our Instagram account for bonus content and clips of the show. All that engagement really does help us out and it helps other people find the show. Thank you guys so much for listening. Shout out to Mike and Connor for all the help behind the scenes and we'll see you guys back

here tomorrow. This is the rundown. Your real-time resource for news events and trends in the markets. All views presented in the show reflect the opinions of the guests. You should not take any mention of a publicly traded security as recommendation to buy, sell or hold that security. Run down guests are not financial advisors and are not affiliated with public holdings or its subsidiaries. You should make your own financial and investment decisions or consult. Respected professionals. Learn more at public.com disclosures. In partnership with Zaidmati, Roperate, registered securities are offered by open to the public investing incorporated, member FINRA and SIPC.