#company

Larry made a bad bet on AI and will cost him his island and fortune.. His age clearly shows in his lack of judgment to put all eggs into one AI basket and will now be the poster child of the AI collapse. Laying off employees that were keeping the company afloat to adapt an unproven and premature AI approach that costs too much to run is a recipe for disaster. Oracle is now a sinking ship drowning in debt. It won’t be long before it becomes a $5 stock

For those that don't know, CUSA is surrounded by woods and open space. The area has lots of wildlife. Fox, geese, and others. All those working there have never had issues with this. Wildlife happens. Enter CFS. Decoy coyotes are now ALL OVER the parking lot and building. Being randomly and regularly moved by the new security guy that CFS apparently demanded we employ. CFS are soft, overly privileged, and clueless. I can't with them. I wonder if they know about the wildlife with no legs that get into the building or the 2 legged varieties that call the river bank "home".

Guess who would be the buyer of EviCore. Maybe UHC, or CVS?

I've not looked into the annual reports but do we know how this debt is doing given the company has never done so well on paper?

Anyone got any emergency meeting invite from the manager?

they were gathering attendance statistics, how much we use Copilot, p4v activity. Do you know about some other statistics being gathered?

Dell is a sinking turrd of a company. Everybody knows it.

What is the company’s policy on mari--ana? Do they still test HQ employees?

This would make Verizon truly an AI-first company

Wellsfargo is annoying employees and so they are taking money to other banks, I am doing it too, Laid off , retired employees doing it too.
Wells should come up with some plan to retain good employees and keep them happy.

Best part of the call “is this recorded?” 😜

My last working day with Citi was 06/30, non-working notice period is 7/1-8/29. So far still haven't received the shipping box to return the company property. Can anyone share how soon do people who get laid off receiving the shipping box after the last working day? Thanks!

This company would be nothing without them.

All new leadership coming from the outside.. And all from the same group who is moving from Company to Company

I was listening to a podcast and the discussion was with a management consultant. I think they summed up the issue with Phillips 66 and this management team:

“…the macro implications of a society that is maximizing profit is that it's going to be minimizing other goods that aren't easy to quantify.”

Under Greg, there was a balance to things—a purpose. He cared about people and the legacy of the company. Yes, he was not perfect, but you knew he cared about the company, the industry, and the people.

I believe that is gone. We are just focused singularly on making more money, trying to beat the competition, and just catering g to shareholder interests. It is interesting that, despite that focus, we are falling further behind, while also giving up the soul of the company and are experiencing an erosion of culture.

In our search for profit, Phillips has abandoned its commitment to people, developing people and taking chances on people with promise. Instead, we give people a job description and tell them it is on them to prove they have the skills for the next role. We talk only in terms of shareholder interests, returns on equity/investment, and tell people we must always be focused on beating MPC, VLO and a group of companies that the management team and board are focused on.

Am I wrong? Would like other perspectives. Is Phillips still committed to people and the interests of the communities and customers we serve?

Come to think of it, I have been with the company for 10 years and almost never hear about customers. Why is that?

Any truth to it?

Communications giant Verizon $VZ reports its Q2 earnings next week – July 24 – with Wall Street analysts becoming increasingly worried about the impact of competition from Elon Musk’s newly listed SpaceX $SPCX.

VZ’s share price is up 10.4% in the year-to-date, helped by its cost-cutting program to boost efficiencies and M&A such as its $20 billion purchase of fiber-optic internet provider Frontier Communications.

Wall Street expects Verizon to report earnings per share of $1.28 in Q2, up from the $1.22 it reported in the same period last year. Revenues are tipped to come in at $35.23 billion, up from $34.44 billion last time.

What Do Analysts Say?

Scotiabank Four-star TipRanks-rated analyst Maher Yaghi recently lowered his price target to $51.50 from $54.50 but kept an Outperform rating on the stock. It came as part of a report into the telecommunication services sector. Yaghi said he was adjusting some multiples on these stocks down to “investor trepidation to increased satellite competition”. However, he said he continues to favor Verizon in the sector.

The competition is likely to refer to the continued expansion of Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite services. Its growth is set to be rocket-fueled by the recent IPO of parent company SpaceX $SPCX.

Indeed, Bernstein analyst Laurent Yoon gave a similar reasoning after lowering his price target on VZ to $44 from $49, keeping a Market Perform rating on the shares.

“While SpaceX’s Starlink is unlikely to have a substantial near-term impact for telecom companies, it represents another competitor in an already mature and highly penetrated broadband market,” he said. Yoon believes the presence of Starlink implies subscriber gains for one provider will increasingly come at the expense of another, making market share shifts more consequential. “Uncertainty surrounding Starlink is unlikely to be resolved anytime soon,” he said.

There has been much industry commentary about whether Starlink would be forming an MVNO – Mobile Virtual Network Operator – partnership with a major telecoms company or operate as an independent mobile carrier. Indeed, SpaceX is reportedly now considering launching a Starlink retail product and could build its own terrestrial U.S. mobile network.

Five-star TipRanks-rated Wells Fargo analyst Steven Cahall believes Verizon has “the most to lose and the most to gain from an MVNO with Starlink,” applying a 40% probability to such a deal. He noted that a VZ-Starlink Mobile MVNO “would be mid-to-high single digit percentage accretive to EBITDA/EPS by 2032.”

He recently initiated Verizon at Equal Weight with a $43 price target and named it Wells Fargo’s most preferred telco.

It's the major rounds that happen occasionally and everybody gets all panicked about. But there are constant cuts, happening all the time, with just a few people here and there. You aren't noticing because you're not paying attention to anything smaller scale. Don't assume you're safe just because there won't be any major rounds before September or whenever.

Leave belk off resume…unless you have a huge gap in years….other big box retailers (mostly all clothing retail) will not even interview a person with belk on their resume. Belk is considered the red head stepchild of the retail world.

Whos having a corporate visit soon?

Hey Jeff, can I make a t-shirt request? Can you make me a t-shirt that says:

"I worked at Dell for 20 years and all I got was this stuupid t-shirt."

Thanks

Target is requiring its merchandising employees to return to the office four days per week, an increase from the previous three-day mandate. This change affects buyers, planners, and inventory management staff. The company stated that increased in-person collaboration will lead to faster decision-making and stronger partnerships. This move aligns with a broader trend of companies increasing in-office requirements for employees. The new policy takes effect in early September.

Minneapolis, Minnesota

https://www.startribune.com/target-calls-entire-commercial-unit-back-to-minneapolis-hq-four-days-a-week/601868134

The most amusing part of the article is the premise itself that IBM can re-achieve any sort of relevance after this decimation.

https://www.barrons.com/articles/ibm-stock-price-fall-sell-87657335

The blue chip’s biggest wipeout on record will force the company to reinvent itself—again.

By Mackenzie Tatananni |
Updated July 17, 2026, 4:27 pm EDT / Original July 17, 2026, 1:00 am EDT

IBM has been forced to reinvent itself many times in the past. After its biggest wipeout on record this past week, it will have to do so again.

Big Blue had been riding high. Yes, there were problems in consulting, as signaled by Accenture’s woes, and in software, tipped off by weakness in ServiceNow and its sector peers. But the stock was trading at an all-time high as recently as June 2 as investors looked at the company’s near-monopoly in mainframe computing, its quantum computing effort, and its prospects as an artificial-intelligence winner.

They were wrong. IBM stock tumbled 25% this past Tuesday, its worst single-day drop on record, following a rare pre-announcement of its quarterly results. Such a move is highly unusual for the company, which is traditionally disciplined when it comes to financial reporting. The last time IBM pre-announced earnings was in October 2008, in an effort to reassure investors it was on track to meet targets during the global financial crisis.

Investors faced a different reality this time around, as IBM posted second-quarter earnings and revenue that missed Wall Street forecasts. While there were plenty of problems—slowing software and consulting sales, a massive reallocation of technology spending by its customers to chips, servers, and other AI needs—the biggest drag on the company’s performance was its infrastructure business. That includes its legacy mainframes—the massive computers enterprises like banks and credit-card networks rely on to process billions of calculations and transactions in real time.

Big Blue is undoubtedly the dominant force in this space. A 2022 study by Celent, commissioned by IBM, found its Z Mainframe Servers line processed more than half of the world’s transactions by value. But that didn’t help the division’s performance during the second quarter. Infrastructure revenue fell, as expected, but the 7% decline was significantly faster and harder than IBM had anticipated. Not only did fewer companies buy the actual mainframe hardware, they also bought less of the high-margin software required for tasks like banking and credit-card payments.

CEO Arvind Krishna attributed the results to poor execution. “We did not adapt and move quickly enough, and numerous large deals failed to close on the timelines we expected, driving the majority of our shortfall,” he wrote in a letter to shareholders.

The 25% drop was massive—and partly justified, even as it erased nearly $70 billion in market capitalization. “The stock had become a crowded AI infrastructure winner and was trading near all-time highs, so any sign of execution issues was going to get punished,” says Dan O’Regan, managing director of equity trading at Mizuho Securities. “That said, a move of this magnitude suggests the market is now pricing in a much more prolonged slowdown than what management has implied.”

It didn’t help that analysts had set high expectations heading into the print. Morgan Stanley, for one, had predicted upside in infrastructure and software that was already priced into the stock. Oppenheimer, which downgraded the stock on Wednesday, had anticipated “no surprises in business trajectory,” making the sudden pre-announcement a true blindside.

Analysts were quick to move to the sidelines following IBM’s earnings miss, asserting that Big Blue would have to lean on major acquisitions or close deals that slipped past the quarter’s deadline to recover lost ground. Now Oppenheimer is questioning the company’s ability to achieve double-digit software revenue growth through 2027. The 5% growth in the latest quarter was sharply below the firm’s 12% estimate.

The bigger issue might be whether IBM’s infrastructure business itself is being disrupted. Even before Tuesday’s plunge, IBM stock had been lagging behind the broader market after stumbling earlier in the year as fears of AI disruption began to take hold. One of the most significant drops occurred in February, when AI start-up Anthropic unveiled a COBOL modernization playbook for its Claude Code tool, claiming it could dramatically streamline updates to the outdated programming language that runs on IBM mainframes. Historically, the immense complexity and cost of migrating off these systems protected IBM’s highly profitable mainframe business—a protective moat AI now threatens to dissolve.

IBM stock closed on Wednesday at 16.54 times 12-month forward earnings, its lowest price/earnings ratio since June 2024. But that says less about where IBM is now than where it was before. As recently as June 2, the stock was trading for more than 25 times, above the S&P 500’s 21.52—a premium valuation that might not have been deserved.

“Lower prices make an asset more attractive,” BNP Paribas analyst Stefan Slowinski says. “I just caution investors that, out of all the companies I cover, IBM probably has the lowest organic growth currently and the lowest organic growth outlook. That needs to be reflected in the valuation.”

Shares plunged 26% by Friday’s close, capping off their worst week in history. As tempting as it may be to scoop them up after such a tumble, IBM still has a lot of work to do.

In the worst-case scenario, investors fear that IBM’s enterprise clients—massive businesses with sprawling IT setups—are redirecting their budgets toward AI instead of Big Blue’s traditional offerings. At best, the company was simply caught off guard by a sudden capital expenditure shift, as Krishna asserted, and can reclaim that lost ground in coming quarters.

Slowinski is one of the most bearish voices on the Street, rating the stock at Underperform. “IBM’s strategy is to use its cash flow to acquire higher-growth software assets in order to improve its growth profile,” he says. “But it has a business in consulting, in software, in mainframe, where all of them are low-single-digit organic growers. And the prospects of that improving organically is very slim.”

As Mizuho’s O’Regan sees it, the setup from here depends less on the AI narrative and more on management proving it can consistently execute.

“The market wants proof that this is an execution stumble, not the beginning of a structural slowdown in demand,” O’Regan explains. “As a stock, the days of getting the benefit of the doubt are probably over for now.”

At least until the next metamorphosis begins to take shape.

Quite the pivot for a rudderless ship

Remember, the 52 week high and low are $37.42 and $82.62. Those are shocking results.

Any idea?

Q. Why did the Japanese car companies beat the American car companies ?

The answer may surprise you but this is why T is dying as a whole due to layoffs.

The Japanese car companies had eight people rowing the boat and one person steering .
The American car companies had eight people steering, and one person rowing.

When the American car company lost the race, they fire the person rowing the boat.

That is the thinking behind how management and HR and how people are picked .

Can we talk about this? Because I'm struggling to see how this is fair.

INC USUI team, has money for lavish dinners, unlimited upscale travel, "collecting points," cruise dinners, events... you name it. But somehow when it comes to their own TIS USUI counterparts? Layoffs.

Some people got told their roles "weren't sustainable." Weren't sustainable, but the boat outings were?
Make it make sense...........
If there's money for unlimited daily fine dining and over spend, there is money to keep people employed. Let's stop pretending this is about resources. It's about priorities. And right now, the people actually doing the work are not the priority.
You don't get to blow money left and right and then turn around and lay people off like it's a budget issue. That's not leadership. That's a failure of judgment, plain and simple. Shame on your leadership.
To everyone who got impacted, this is not on you. This says nothing about your worth or your work. You deserved so much better than this.
#Layoffs #Accountability #WorkplaceCulture #Leadership

https://www.therobarcher.com/p/fridays-court-hearing-could-shape

Dear EMHC Team,

After several site visits, I have identified a recurring operational concern: an alarming level of cranial uniformity among the male population.

At this point, I am no longer confident that there are multiple individuals involved. It is entirely possible that EMHC employs one bald gentleman who simply changes safety glasses and shirts throughout the day.

For safety and identification purposes, I propose the following corrective actions:

1. Mandatory name tags with large font.
2. Optional mustache differentiation program.
3. Assignment of unique call signs (e.g., Bald Eagle, Bald Eagle II, The Chrome Dome, Captain Reflective Surface).
4. Investigation into whether baldness is an unofficial leadership competency at EMHC.

Please advise whether this phenomenon is due to genetics, stress, or prolonged exposure to refinery air.

Respectfully,

A Concerned Observer

https://www.404media.co/ice-to-pay-thomson-reuters-125-million-to-find-voter-fraud/

Why is bpX exempt from attendance data tracking?

Has anyone heard anything on if they are getting an offer or not?

layoffs across the sw org again…

Since there is a post around location strategy, what about groups having to be together?

Any news or updates for co-location strategy?