Business & Markets

AUSTIN, Texas — Tesla reported third-quarter revenue of $28.05 billion, roughly flat from a year earlier. Adjusted earnings of 48 cents a share beat the 43 cents analysts polled by LSEG expected. Automotive revenue fell 3%. Net income attributable to common shareholders dropped 29% on CNBC's figures, to $787 million, or 22 cents a share. Electrek reported that operating income fell 56% as spending on AI and Optimus outpaced gross profit. Auto gross margin excluding regulatory credits recovered to above 18%. Free cash flow was $1.53 billion, down 62% from a year earlier, while capital expenditures more than doubled to $3.73 billion. Shares slid more than 3% in extended trading, and the stock is down 14% this year. The report came a day after Elon Musk told investors on SpaceX's earnings call that a merger of the two companies would be a good idea.

WASHINGTON — The Federal Trade Commission sued on Oct. 19 to block Platinum Equity portfolio company PlayPower from buying rival BCI Burke. The agency says the deal would combine two of the largest makers of commercial outdoor playground equipment. Twelve state attorneys general joined the complaint, including Tennessee's. The suit was filed in federal court in the Northern District of California and seeks a permanent injunction. The complaint alleges the deal would eliminate head-to-head rivalry and raise prices for schools, churches and parks departments. It says the top five suppliers already hold 85% to 90% of the U.S. market. Bloomberg Law reports the FTC is also seeking a temporary restraining order. The commission voted 2-0 to authorize the suit. PlayPower has said it is confident in the merits of the combination.

REDWOOD CITY, Calif. — Electronic Arts said Wednesday it is restructuring its studios business and laying off about 3% of its global workforce. Variety, citing EA's last reported headcount of 14,500, puts that at around 400 people. The company is closing BioWare and its Edmonton, Alberta, office after deciding not to continue early development of a new Mass Effect game. Respawn and DICE will team up on a Star Wars: Battlefront 3 project. The moves are the first major steps since EA went private this summer. EA said in its announcement that it did not take the BioWare decision lightly. The company has not published a full breakdown of the cuts by studio, and details on severance have not been made public.

An analysis by SEO consultant Marie Haynes, reported by Search Engine Land on October 21, finds ChatGPT sent 0.62 percent as many sessions as Google organic search. The study covered 12 months of GA4 data from 100 websites and more than 145 million sessions. Counting other large language models lifts the figure to 0.73 percent. Among the 55 sites that track conversions, 13.8 percent of ChatGPT visitors converted, against 3.02 percent for Google organic visitors. Even so, Google organic produced 27 times as many conversions as all AI chatbots combined. Haynes says ChatGPT referral growth stopped in August 2025 and declined afterward. Search Engine Land notes the write-up gives no industry mix, reporting dates or conversion definitions, and does not measure changes in Google traffic.

Google said on October 15 that it is placing more inline links in AI Mode and AI Overviews and showing them higher in responses more often. The post, from Search product vice president Hema Budaraju, also describes two tests. One is a dedicated section at the top of an answer pointing to the one or two official pages for a task. The other is clickable creator and publisher names on video results in AI Mode. Trade coverage notes Search Console's AI reporting does not break out clicks from these answers. A randomized experiment with 1,100 users, reported by Search Engine Land in September, found forcing searches into AI Mode cut the share of searches leading to an outside website by 18.8 percentage points.

MENLO PARK, Calif. — Meta reported third-quarter revenue of $64.60 billion, up 26%, according to its filing. Operating income fell 37% to $12.99 billion after a $9.9 billion legal charge. Diluted EPS was $3.83, and the company said it would have been $7.40 without the charge. Capital spending in the quarter was $34.91 billion. Meta narrowed its 2026 capex range to $135 billion to $145 billion and raised its expense outlook to $175-179 billion. It also proposed a new class of shares for capital raising, employee pay and acquisitions. CNBC reported the stock rose about 2.5% in extended trading. Tesla beat expectations with adjusted EPS of 48 cents on $28.05 billion in revenue, but its shares gave up early gains and traded about 2% lower after hours. 24/7 Wall St. reported Tesla's operating income fell 56% to $718 million.

NEW YORK — U.S. stocks rose on Wednesday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 360.21 points, or 0.69%, to close at 52,856.09. The S&P 500 rose 0.58% to 7,757.17, and the Nasdaq Composite added 1.05% to 26,702.86, according to CNBC. The volatility index fell to 16.68. Gains were led by AI-related names after results from SpaceX and Super Micro. The 10-year Treasury yield held near 5.13%, according to Trading Economics. Kitco, citing futures pricing, reported roughly an 83% chance the Fed holds rates at its Oct. 27-28 meeting and about a 94% chance rates are higher by Dec. 9. Brent crude was near $111. Futures slipped Thursday after the Tesla and Meta reports. Weekly jobless claims are due Thursday, and preliminary October PMIs on Friday.

NEW YORK — Netflix reported third-quarter revenue of $12.87 billion, up 12% from a year earlier. CNBC said that was in line with Wall Street expectations, helped by membership growth and a March price increase. Earnings of 87 cents a share topped the 82 cents analysts expected, according to Stocktwits. Shares fell about 5% to 6% in after-hours trading on Tuesday, to roughly $64.66, according to Seoul Economic Daily. That is more than 40% below the level of a year earlier. The company guided fourth-quarter revenue to about $13.44 billion and lowered its 2026 revenue outlook to $51.1 billion, up 13%. Seoul Economic Daily described the quarter as the slowest growth in three years. The company also said last week it was cutting about 1,000 jobs, according to Stocktwits.

WASHINGTON — PJM Interconnection, the country's largest grid operator, has not reopened its one-time backstop auction for about 6.8 GW of new capacity. The window was to have run from Sept. 30 to Oct. 21. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on Sept. 29 accepted a $555 per MW-day offer cap but found PJM's cost-allocation, transmission-owner exit and load-collateral provisions may be unjust and unreasonable. Chair Laura Swett called the late filing a "mess" in a concurrence. PJM postponed the auction the next day and had set no new date, according to Utility Dive. Separately, FERC this month rejected PJM's proposal to curtail power to new data centers that bring no generation, saying it could intrude on state jurisdiction, The Hill reported. NRC and FERC commissioners are scheduled to meet today on grid reliability, nuclear plants and cybersecurity.

SULLIVAN COUNTY, Ind. — Amazon, American Electric Power and X-energy announced Monday a joint development agreement to explore a 960-MW nuclear plant at the former Breed coal plant site in Sullivan County, Indiana, just south of Terre Haute. The plant would use 12 of X-energy's Xe-100 high-temperature, gas-cooled small modular reactors. AEP would operate it, and Amazon would be the first customer for its output. Unlike many new projects pairing power with data centers, it would connect to the public grid, though Amazon says the power would also serve its data centers. The project is at an early stage with no final investment decision, according to the Carnegie Endowment's summary of industry reports. It is the second Amazon-X-energy deal and three times the size of the first. The companies have said they aim for 5 GW of new nuclear capacity by 2039. The project is separate from the state's Candu study.