The Senate has the 60 votes needed to pass legislation that would ban Big Tech platforms from self-preferencing products (see 2206070059), Senate Antitrust Subcommittee Chair Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., and Senate Judiciary Committee ranking member Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, told us Tuesday. They’re waiting for word from Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., about floor time.
Shopify “overshot our prediction” that the share of dollars going through e-commerce vs. physical retail “would permanently leap ahead” following COVID-19 pandemic trends, said President Harley Finkelstein on the company’s Q2 earnings call Wednesday.
Silicon Labs reported strong Q2 revenue performance with supply still catching up to demand, but it’s seeing signs of “more volatility” in recent booking patterns, said Chief Financial Officer John Hollister on the company’s Wednesday Q2 earnings call.
The Senate Commerce Committee on Wednesday advanced two pieces of children’s privacy legislation with overwhelming support, as expected (see 2207210056).
Senate backers of the Chips and Science Act package of U.S. semiconductor incentives and tech competitiveness initiatives and House leaders voiced strong optimism Wednesday that the measure will make it through Congress before the lower chamber recesses Friday for the six-week August break.
LG Display swung to an operating loss of 488 billion South Korean won ($371.9 million) in Q2 from a year-earlier profit of 701 billion won ($531.1 million) on a 19.5% year-over-year revenue decline to 5.61 trillion won ($4.27 billion), reported the panel-maker Wednesday.
Spotify believes it has “pricing power over time, but we’re going to be smart about how and when we implement anything,” said Chief Financial Officer Paul Vogel on the company’s Q2 earnings call Wednesday, citing current macroeconomic uncertainty. Price increases Spotify implemented previously are now a couple quarters old; the company hasn't seen a material change in churn relative to those increases, he said.
Lawmakers and diversity groups disagreed with industry trade groups about a petition for the FCC to require a vast swath of media companies -- including streaming services -- to report diversity data to the FCC. The schism surfaced in comments filed by Friday’s deadline in docket 22-209. “The media and entertainment industry is notorious for excluding people from historically underserved backgrounds,” said a letter of support from 20 Democratic House and Senate lawmakers, including Sen. Corey Booker, D-N.J., and Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-Texas.
The Senate voted 64-32 Tuesday to invoke cloture on Congress’ amended chips package, setting up a potential vote on final passage in the upper chamber for Wednesday. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., was the only Democratic caucus member to vote no. Seventeen Republicans voted in favor.
Corning’s panel maker customers “accelerated” their capacity utilization reductions in Q2, with the “sharpest reduction” taking place in June, when utilization levels plunged "to their lowest levels since the first quarter of 2009 when we were at the height of the financial crisis," said Corning CEO Wendell Weeks on a quarterly earnings call Tuesday. That resulted in a 6% year-over-year Q2 sales decline in Corning’s display-glass business to $878 million, while net profit in the sector was $228 million, down 8% from the same 2021 quarter.