Media & Entertainment

Alphabet Inc. is positioned to extend a streak of earnings beats into its next quarterly report, according to Zacks Investment Research. Over the last two quarters, the company's average earnings surprise was 154.94%. In the most recent quarter, Alphabet was expected to post earnings of $2.88 per share but reported $9.11 per share, a surprise of 216.32%, following the prior quarter's result of $5.11 per share against a consensus estimate of $2.64 per share, a surprise of 93.56%. Alphabet currently has an Earnings ESP of +1.20% and a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold), a combination that Zacks research shows produces a positive surprise nearly 70% of the time.

Alphabet holds a positive Zacks Earnings ESP of +1.20% ahead of its next quarterly report, a signal that analysts have grown bullish on its near-term earnings potential. The company has an established record of topping estimates, with an average surprise of 154.94% over the past two quarters. In the most recent quarter, Alphabet was expected to post earnings of $2.88 per share but reported $9.11 per share, a surprise of 216.32%, while the prior quarter's consensus estimate of $2.64 per share gave way to actual earnings of $5.11 per share, a surprise of 93.56%. Combined with its Zacks Rank #3 (Hold), the positive Earnings ESP suggests another beat is possibly around the corner, as stocks with that combination produce a positive surprise nearly 70% of the time.

Deutsche Bank has laid out three scenarios for Meta Muse, forecasting that the product could generate $36.3 billion in sales by 2030 in its most optimistic case. The middle case projects about $10.7 million, while the base case puts revenue potential at roughly $2.4 billion. The forecasts were detailed on page seven of a Deutsche Bank note, and Yahoo Finance Executive Editor Brian Sozzi said he double-checked the top figure to confirm it was $36.3 billion and not $36.3 million. Sozzi noted Meta's stock has climbed roughly 23 to 24 percent over the past month on optimism about Muse, citing strong downloads and early use cases. He also discussed Meta's talent push, including the hiring of the former MongoDB chief executive, with a former Meta chief technology officer who said Mark Zuckerberg personally recruits key leaders.

Firy announced on Monday that it completed the sale of its 10.5% stake in Exit Games back to the company for $55M in cash. The deal closed on October 2, with Firy receiving the full proceeds and adding the cash to its balance sheet. Firy originally invested $50M in July 2021, making the sale a roughly 1.1x return on its investment. The company said the cash provides flexibility to pursue other opportunities, while noting its realized return was about 22 times the average five-year distribution multiple for 2021-vintage U.S. venture funds.

Deutsche Bank analyst Benjamin Black estimates Meta's Muse AI agent could generate up to 8% of the company's revenue by 2030, roughly $36 billion in sales, with a lower-end forecast of $2.4 billion. Muse has already been downloaded more than 5.1 million times, according to Sensor Tower, and Meta has signed commerce deals with Shopify and PayPal. Meta also debuted the Muse Charm in late September, a standalone pocket device built exclusively for voice interaction with the Muse agent, and CEO Mark Zuckerberg showcased a shift toward "personal superintelligence" with the Meta VR Glasses, a 100-gram spatial computing device priced at $1,299 with 5K micro-OLED displays, tethered puck processing, and native eye and hand tracking. On the smart eyewear front, Meta launched the third-generation Ray-Ban Meta Gen 3 glasses starting at $249, alongside camera-free Ray-Ban Meta Audio glasses for open-ear listening and AI voice interaction. Meta's stock is up 25% inside of a month.

Alphabet's Zacks Consensus Estimate for the current quarter has risen 0.9% over the last 30 days to $2.95 per share, a change of +2.8% from the year-ago quarter. For the current fiscal year, the consensus earnings estimate of $20.55 points to a change of +90.1% from the prior year and has moved +0.3% over the past 30 days, while the next fiscal year's estimate of $14.82 indicates a change of -27.9% and has changed +0.5% over the past month. The consensus sales estimate for the current quarter of $111.36 billion indicates a year-over-year change of +27.3%, and estimates of $433.8 billion and $548.69 billion for the current and next fiscal years indicate changes of +26.5% and +26.5%, respectively. Alphabet reported revenues of $103.62 billion in the last reported quarter, up 26.8% year over year, with EPS of $9.11 versus $2.31 a year ago, beating the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $101.28 billion by 2.31% on revenue and posting an EPS surprise of +216.32%. The stock carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) and a Zacks Value Style Score of D, indicating it trades at a premium to its peers.

B-Ray Media announced it plans to use 12 million yuan of its own funds to increase capital in its associate Chengdu Tianfu Film Co., Ltd., and will complete a combined 30 million yuan capital increase plan together with its controlling shareholder Chengdu Media Industry Group Co., Ltd. Tianfu Film will add 30 million yuan in new registered capital this time. After the capital increase, registered capital will rise from 50 million yuan to 80 million yuan. Chengdu Media Industry Group will subscribe 18 million yuan of new registered capital with 18 million yuan in cash, and B-Ray Media will subscribe 12 million yuan of new registered capital with 12 million yuan in cash. Because Chengdu Media Industry Group is B-Ray Media's controlling shareholder, this joint capital increase constitutes a related-party transaction but does not constitute a major asset restructuring. In the 12 months before the disclosure date of this announcement, the company and the same related party and its controlled related legal persons had already conducted related-party transactions totaling 7.7734 million yuan that require cumulative calculation. With the proposed 12 million yuan capital increase, the cumulative amount over 12 consecutive months has reached more than 0.5 percent of the absolute value of the company's most recent audited net assets, so the matter must be submitted to the board of directors for review and disclosed. Financial data show that as of June 30, 2026, Tianfu Film had total assets of 77.8303 million yuan and net assets of 49.4721 million yuan. From January to June 2026, it achieved operating revenue of 7.6763 million yuan and a net loss of 993,500 yuan. In 2025, it achieved operating revenue of 18.6965 million yuan and net profit of 677,100 yuan. B-Ray Media said this capital increase will help optimize Tianfu Film's financial structure and safeguard its investment progress in key film and television projects. After the capital increase is completed, the shareholding ratios of all parties will remain unchanged, with B-Ray Media still holding 40 percent of Tianfu Film and Chengdu Media Industry Group holding 60 percent.

Global Securities, or GBS, says King Gen Public Company Limited, or KGEN, is entering a turnaround phase, raising its stake in Omoda & Jaecoo Manufacturing (Thailand) Company Limited, which operates the electric vehicle plants for the OMODA JAECOO and CHERY brands, from the current 43.7% to 51% in early July, and then to 60% in late July to early August. This will shift revenue recognition from the share of profit of an associate to full consolidation of both revenue and profit. Management expects that after the stake increase, revenue will grow significantly year on year to 25 billion baht, with a net profit margin of 2.5-3.0%, or roughly 600-700 million baht. Previously, KGEN reported second-quarter 2026 profit of 37 million baht, up 171% quarter on quarter and 152% year on year, after losses in the first quarter of 2026 and the second quarter of 2025. The main driver was the share of profit from its investment in that associate, whose production line began operating on 20 April 2026, while revenue from sales and services grew to 227 million baht, up 8% quarter on quarter and 36% year on year. Bookings for JAECOO and OMODA electric vehicles at the Big Motor Sale 2026, held from 21-30 August 2026, totaled 5,028 units, with deliveries scheduled for September to October 2026, an additional factor supporting revenue and profit growth. The current share price still cannot be assigned a P/E ratio because the company has posted continuous losses from 2022 through the first six months of 2026, though earnings are expected to turn around from 2026 onward. The stock trades at a P/BV ratio of 2.58 times, above its one-year, two-year and three-year averages of 2.56, 2.30 and 2.10 times respectively.

Scholastic reported a first-quarter net loss of $71.2 million, or $3.77 per share, on revenue that slipped 4% to $216.8 million, while management left its full-year targets untouched. The quarter is the quietest stretch of Scholastic's year, making up only 14% of full-year revenue last year, so the real test is the fall, where Book Fairs bookings and fair counts are both running ahead of last year and the company is reaching new school communities including Christian schools. Content catalysts are stacking up: an HBO adaptation of Harry Potter arrives this Christmas, a new Dog Man title lands in November alongside a Hunger Games film, and entertainment revenue rose 48% to $20.1 million on heavier production activity. The balance sheet improved as net debt fell to $86.8 million from $242.8 million a year earlier, largely on sale-leaseback deals completed in December 2025, and the company bought back $25.8 million of its own stock during the quarter. Still, education revenue fell $9.7 million to $30.4 million amid higher district staffing costs and the end of ESSER pandemic relief funding in March, overhead climbed $5 million to $23.3 million, and free cash use for the quarter was $110.8 million, worse than last year's $100.2 million, leaving full-year adjusted EBITDA targets of $135 million to $145 million and free cash flow of $35 million to $40 million to be built on top of a first-quarter adjusted EBITDA loss of $63.6 million.

Zhejiang Publishing Media announced on September 30 that it plans to invest 100 million yuan to establish a wholly owned subsidiary, Zhejiang Wending Digital Intelligence Technology, to promote deep integration between its core publishing business and digital intelligence technologies. The new subsidiary has registered capital of 100 million yuan, with the company holding 60 percent directly, wholly owned subsidiary Zhejiang Xinhua Bookstore Group holding 20 percent, Zhejiang Education Publishing Group holding 10 percent, and Zhejiang Electronic Audio and Video Publishing House holding 10 percent. Funding comes from its own resources, and the subsidiary will be consolidated into the company's financial statements upon completion. On the same day, the company also announced a partnership with Dunhong Asset to launch the Zhejiang Publishing Future Venture Capital Fund Partnership. The fund has a planned size of 126 million yuan, and the company, as a limited partner, will subscribe 125 million yuan from its own funds, accounting for 99.21 percent of the fund's total committed capital. The fund will focus mainly on core technology research and development and industrial application in frontier technologies. Dunhong Asset was founded in 2015, with directly managed and co-managed funds totaling over 14 billion yuan in paid-in capital. Its core management includes CEO Yuan Guoliang and partners Xiong Jia and Yu Wenchao. In terms of performance, in the first half of 2026, Zhejiang Publishing Media achieved revenue of 4.607 billion yuan, down 9.5 percent year on year, and net profit attributable to the parent of 646 million yuan, down 4.4 percent year on year.

Truist Securities said Meta Platforms is gaining an early edge in the emerging AI-agent market through its large consumer audience and advertising ecosystem, even as OpenAI and Google appear to have stronger capabilities for open-ended reasoning. Truist said Meta's Muse and OpenAI's newly launched Dots are approaching the market from opposite directions, with Muse consumer-focused and expanding into small businesses while Dots is aimed initially at developers and power users. Truist sees Meta's biggest advantage as distribution rather than raw AI model power, noting Muse is integrated into platforms such as Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp and can connect with business tools including Shopify, QuickBooks, Stripe, Canva and Slack. Truist said Muse had recorded 2.8 million early downloads, giving Meta a potentially powerful distribution advantage as the agent market develops, though it noted both products remain very early, with Muse live for only a few weeks and Dots newly launched. Truist maintained its Buy rating on Meta and its $763 price target, versus a Sept. 29 price of $738.79, based on a five-year discounted cash-flow model.

Alphabet reportedly won two separate US antitrust cases in late September, easing immediate legal pressure on Google. Google is helping form a cross industry coalition focused on AI data center development ahead of the 2026 US midterm elections, expected to address questions around power use, data sourcing and community impact from large scale AI computing hubs. The antitrust decisions support the view that Alphabet can keep rolling out AI powered features across Search, YouTube and Google Cloud without immediate structural remedies that break its distribution. The AI data center coalition cuts both ways, aligning with the potential to monetise AI infrastructure and long duration power contracts while spotlighting the risk that regulators and communities could still cap how far Alphabet can push energy hungry AI workloads. Analysts have already flagged regulatory pressure and high capital intensity as two of the biggest swing factors for the company.

Disney has reached a wide-ranging new content licensing agreement with Netflix, bringing a collection of movies and TV shows, including existing "Ice Age" films and the "Percy Jackson and the Olympians" series, to its rival streaming platform. The deal is set to bring a slate of Disney+ originals, Pixar movies, and 20th Century Studios titles to Netflix viewers globally, with title availability and launch timelines varying depending on the markets, according to a statement from the companies. Under the agreement, the first two seasons of the Disney+ original series "Percy Jackson and the Olympians" will be streaming on Netflix from Oct. 4 for three months as part of a promotional campaign ahead of its Season 3 premiere on Disney+ on Nov. 20. All five "Ice Age" films will also be available on Netflix worldwide beginning Oct. 4 in a separate promotional campaign ahead of the theatrical release of the franchise's sixth movie, "Ice Age: Boiling Point," on Feb. 5. Additionally, select Disney-branded films from Walt Disney Animation Studios and Pixar, including Oscar-winner "Soul," "Elio," and "Raya and the Last Dragon," will also be available for streaming on Netflix globally early next year.

Meta announced Petal on Sept. 21, a roughly 4,300-mile subsea cable connecting the U.S. and France that is expected to enter service in 2029 and will be the first to deliver petabit-scale capacity across an ocean. The cable will carry 1 petabit per second, or about 125,000 gigabytes per second, double what today's most advanced transoceanic cables can handle, using two-core fiber that fits two light paths inside each strand. Petal is one piece of a much larger seafloor empire: Meta says it has invested in more than 20 subsea cable projects touching every continent except Antarctica, led by Project Waterworth, announced in February 2025, which will stretch more than 31,000 miles and connect the U.S., Brazil, South Africa, India, and other regions across five continents. Petal is being developed with Japan's NEC and Sumitomo Electric Industries, with French telecom Orange handling the landing on France's Atlantic coast, while Waterworth will be wholly owned by Meta, only its third solely owned cable according to telecom research firm TeleGeography. Meta has not disclosed what Petal or Waterworth will cost, but TechCrunch reported before Waterworth's announcement that the project could top $10 billion, a small slice of the company's expected capital expenditures of $130 billion to $145 billion this year, nearly double the $72.2 billion it spent in 2025.

Meta Platforms has reportedly classified some of its artificial intelligence data centers as "pilot models" to claim federal research and experimentation tax credits, a move that reduced its tax bill by $3.9 billion in 2025, up from $2 billion in 2024 and $700 million in 2023, according to a New York Times report citing company filings. The classification, which describes certain AI data centers to the Internal Revenue Service as experimental work, remains a gray area, and Meta's accountants have raised concerns that the IRS could challenge the treatment, people familiar with the company's operations told the Times. The tax claims reportedly involve chips Meta purchases for its AI data centers, including Nvidia GPUs, and the Times also reported that Meta's auditor, EY, has promoted the tax strategy to other AI companies. Meta spokesperson Andy Stone told the publication that the company has invested $200 billion in research and development over the past five years, including $57 billion in the last year, using tax incentives established by Congress to support domestic investment in research, technology and jobs. The tax perk comes as Meta's AI investments weigh on its finances, with quarterly free cash flow of just $784 million, roughly $8 billion below the year-ago period, and the company is among several major technology companies, including Amazon, Microsoft and Alphabet, spending heavily on AI infrastructure.

ZoomInfo announced Agent Teams on October 1, a native AI agent orchestration layer built directly into its existing GTM Studio environment at no additional cost, making it the first major GTM data vendor to embed agent orchestration as a standard platform capability rather than a premium tier. The feature requires no new SKU, no separate contract, and no additional purchase, and ships with more than 50 ready-made agents that run against ZoomInfo's GTM Context Graph, a data layer connecting more than 100 million companies, 500 million contacts, and billions of buying signals. The architecture comes from DoubleO.ai, which ZoomInfo acquired on September 30 for undisclosed financial terms, one day before the launch. Every play operates through a Playbook configuration layer with audit trails and credit estimates, addressing a trust gap highlighted by Cisco research at RSA 2026 showing 85% of organizations experimenting with agentic AI but only 5% in broad production, and by Gartner's projection that more than 40% of agentic AI projects will be canceled by the end of 2027. Agent Teams ships with native integrations into Salesforce, HubSpot, Outreach, Salesloft, Slack, and Gmail, and connects to Salesforce Agentforce, HubSpot Breeze, Microsoft Copilot Studio, Claude, and ChatGPT. ZoomInfo has not published reliability benchmarks or performance metrics for Agent Teams, and the specific plays described are vendor-reported capabilities.

Magnite's fair value estimate has been lifted to US$29.67 from US$27.67, a roughly 7% increase, as analysts rework price targets around the Google AdTech ruling and the company's role among independent supply side platforms. The revised model assumes revenue growth of 7.66%, down slightly from 7.72%, a profit margin of 14.74% versus 14.53% previously, and a future P/E multiple of 40.94x compared with 38.44x, while the discount rate stays at 9.67%. Several firms, including BofA, StoneX, Craig Hallum, B. Riley, BTIG, Benchmark, Evercore ISI, Wells Fargo and Scotiabank, have raised their Magnite price targets through August and September 2026. Craig Hallum and B. Riley tie their higher targets to the Google AdTech ruling and remedies, viewing the outcome as supportive for independent supply side platforms, while StoneX highlights the court decision requiring Google tools to interoperate with rivals through Prebid. B. Riley cautions that any financial impact from the remedies could be gradual because of appeals and phased implementation.

Alphabet has unveiled Argon, the flagship of its Gemini 4 generation, months later than promised after the company scrapped Gemini 3.5 Pro, which Sundar Pichai had said would arrive in June. Google says Argon matches OpenAI's Astra and Anthropic's Opus on key coding and cybersecurity tests, though its own results show it trailing on two of the four coding tests included, and the model has no public release date, going only to select cybersecurity partners under the Trump administration's voluntary pre-release access process. Google is competing on price rather than raw capability, pricing Argon at $2 per million input tokens and $10 per million output tokens with cached input tokens discounted 95%, which Jefferies analyst Brent Thill calls a particularly important competitive move at about half the cost of some rival models. The delay came amid leadership churn, with DeepMind founder and chief executive Demis Hassabis stepping aside and several Gemini leaders leaving while Anthropic and OpenAI kept releasing new top models. The infrastructure side is stronger: Google Cloud revenue grew 82% year over year to $24.8 billion in Q2, customers have lined up a $514 billion backlog, cloud now makes up a little more than 20% of Alphabet's revenue, and its cloud market share has climbed to 14% from 12% at the end of 2025, while Alphabet projects 2026 data center capital spending of $195 billion to $205 billion.

Cable One, Inc. announced it is in advanced discussions with GTCR LLC, certain of its existing lenders and a consortium of leading private lending institutions regarding financing transactions to address certain of the Company's forthcoming capital needs. Cable One said it is working towards enhancing its capital structure to position the company to drive growth in shareholder value. Chief Executive Officer Jim Holanda said the contemplated financings are intended to strengthen Cable One's overall financial position, while GTCR Managing Director Stephen J. Jeschke said GTCR has been working closely with Cable One to facilitate a potential transaction that would bring new capital into the business. No definitive agreements have been entered into, and there can be no guarantee that any transaction will materialize. Separately, Cable One and GTCR agreed to extend the deadline for completion of Cable One's purchase of the 55% remaining stake it does not already own in Mega Broadband Investments Holdings LLC to October 9, 2026.

The combined company formed by the $110 billion merger of Paramount and Warner Bros. will be named Skydance, Paramount CEO David Ellison announced. Ellison said the name was chosen to preserve the distinct identities and legacies of both Paramount and Warner Bros. while giving the combined company an identity of its own. Skydance is the production company Ellison founded in 2006 and merged with Paramount in 2025. On Wednesday, Paramount named Mattel CEO Ynon Kreiz as co-CEO of the new company alongside Ellison, and Bloomberg reported the merger is expected to be finalized next week. The press release announcing Kreiz said the combined company will be guided by four strategic priorities: winning in content, becoming the most technologically capable media company, maximizing operational efficiencies, and earning trust.

Versant has reached a multi-year renewal of its distribution agreement with Verizon, keeping its portfolio of brands available to Verizon customers. The long-term deal covers USA Network, MS NOW, CNBC, Oxygen True Crime, Golf Channel, E!, and SYFY. With the Verizon agreement complete, Versant said it has now successfully renewed all distribution partnerships expiring in 2026. Chief Revenue and Business Officer Dave Pietrycha called Verizon a valued distribution partner and said the renewal reflects the value the portfolio delivers to distributors and audiences. Verizon SVP of Consumer Growth Matt Coakley said the company looks forward to continuing the partnership alongside a diverse array of premium programming available to Fios customers. Terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

The combined company formed by the merger of Paramount and Warner Bros. will be named Skydance, Skydance chief executive David Ellison said in a post on X. Ellison said the new name was chosen to preserve the identities and legacies of both studios while giving the combined company its own corporate identity. "Both have distinct identities, extraordinary legacies, and brands that have resonated with audiences for generations," Ellison said. "We never wanted a new corporate identity to diminish, alter, or overshadow either one." He said Paramount and Warner Bros. have together shaped more than a century of entertainment and culture, and that the combined company would seek to build on the strengths of both studios, with Skydance focusing on "bold, quality storytelling" as a "creative-first home" for filmmaking and other content. The combined company intends to give Paramount and Warner Bros. the opportunity to expand their audiences globally while benefiting from Skydance's scale and capabilities, Ellison added.

Meta Platforms shares surged approximately 27% in September, closing the month at $725.18 after hitting an intraday 52-week record of $779.82 on Sept. 24, marking the stock's strongest monthly performance in nearly four years. The rally was driven primarily by the Sept. 8 launch of Muse, Meta's personal AI agent, which became the top free app in Apple's U.S. App Store with over 3.4 million downloads in its first few weeks, surpassing ChatGPT. Analysts responded positively, with JPMorgan raising its price target to $920 and Monness Crespi lifting its target to $830, both citing Muse's success. Meta is expanding monetization through subscription tiers priced at $20 and $100 per month, and TD Cowen analysts estimate Muse could reach 1 billion daily active users by 2031 and generate potentially $27 billion in annual revenues. The company also launched its Meta Enterprise Platform in late September to sell software, APIs and AI solutions directly to enterprise clients and developers, while its core advertising business saw revenues rise 27.5% year over year in the second quarter of 2026.

TNL Mediagene agreed to sell its Japanese business for $5.5M to an investor group led by CEO Motoko Imada as the company continues to evaluate strategic alternatives. Under the agreement, the company will sell all shares of TNL Mediagene, the holding company for Mediagene and Infobahn, to MI Company, an acquisition vehicle formed by the investor group. The deal includes at least $2.5M in cash at closing, with the remaining consideration subject to specified adjustments and a secured promissory note due December 31, 2026, and is expected to close by October 30, 2026. Following the deal, TNL Mediagene will retain its Taiwan business and continue evaluating strategic alternatives involving its capital structure and ownership. TNMG's stock price jumped about 30% on Friday pre-market hours.

Krungsri Securities has maintained its buy recommendation on Plan B Media Public Company Limited, or PLANB, with a target price of 8.10 baht based on a DCF method and a WACC of 8.1%. It assesses that the investment in iCare, a subsidiary of COM7, has the potential to generate incremental profit of approximately 170 million baht per year after deducting financial costs, representing an upside of about 11% to profit in 2027. If profit share before financial costs is considered, it is expected at approximately 200 million baht per year, or an upside of 11-13%. PLANB subscribed to 1,126 million newly issued iCare shares worth 860 million baht at 0.764 baht per share, giving it a 46.28% stake after the capital increase, with COM7 holding an equal proportion. Krungsri stated that the purchase price of the iCare shares represents a P/E of only 6 times, below the insurance business group average of 9 times, and it expects PLANB's net profit in 2026 and 2027 to grow 14% and 25% respectively from recognition of its profit share from COM7. These projections do not yet include the positive effects of the iCare deal, which therefore represents upside to the previous profit forecast for 2027. However, the share purchase still requires approval from the shareholders' meetings of COM7 and iCare, as well as consent from the Office of the Insurance Commission, or OIC. The process is expected to be completed by the end of 2026, and iCare will not have the status of a subsidiary of PLANB.

PLANB shares rose 5.56% to 7.60 baht on trading value of 249.79 million baht after Globlex Securities issued a "buy" recommendation following a deal to subscribe to new shares in iCare, an insurance business under the COM7 umbrella, worth 860 million baht. The transaction will give PLANB a 46.28% stake in iCare, funded entirely with borrowed money. The deal still requires approval from the COM7 shareholders' meeting on November 6, 2026, the iCare shareholders' meeting on November 9, 2026, and the Office of the Insurance Commission, with completion expected by the end of 2026. Globlex expects PLANB to recognize a profit share from iCare of about 211 million baht in 2027, or a return of roughly 25% against the 860 million baht investment, while borrowing costs stand at about 3.5% per year. Globlex also raised its 2027 net profit forecast by 7.2% to 1.836 billion baht and its 2028 forecast by 7.5% to 2.027 billion baht.