Apple, Microsoft, Amazon and Google were the four leading global brands at the end of 2023, according to consulting firm Interbrand. They’re are also four of the world’s five most valuable companies.

The other is Nvidia, which for a time this week, surpassed Microsoft to become the largest company in the world by market cap.

But despite its $3.1 trillion valuation (it reached $3.3 trillion before a two-day slide), Nvidia doesn’t even crack the top 100 most iconic names on Interbrand’s most recent list, which is populated by such companies as McDonald’s, Starbucks, Disney and Netflix.

Nvidia’s historic rise in valuation — the stock has climbed almost ninefold since the end of 2022 — has been driven almost entirely by demand for its graphics processing units (GPUs) that are at the heart of the boom in generative artificial intelligence and, more broadly, by the hype over AI. Nvidia has over 80% of the market for chips used to train and deploy AI software like ChatGPT. A handful of huge tech companies are the primary buyers of its chips.

The speed of Nvidia’s ascent and its relative lack of contact with consumers along the way combines to put the 31-year-old company’s brand recognition on Main Street far behind its allure on Wall Street. No. 100 on Interbrand’s list for 2023 is Japanese camera maker Canon, with Dutch brewer Heineken at No. 99.

“As a product company recently moving onto a global stage, Nvidia has not had time, nor has it dedicated resources, to change its role of brand and strengthen its brand to protect future revenue,” Greg Silverman, Interbrand’s global director of brand economics, said in an email. The risk for Nvidia, Silverman added, is that its “weak brand strength will limit how valuable it will be, despite its market cap heights.”

A spokesperson for Nvidia declined to comment.

Nvidia’s annual revenue growth has exceeded 200% in each of the past three quarters. For fiscal 2025, revenue is expected to almost double from a year earlier to over $120 billion, according to LSEG.

The company’s data center GPUs, which made up 85% of sales in the most recent quarter, are installed in massive facilities, and typically require a team of expensive data science and supercomputing experts to configure them to efficiently create AI software.

By contrast, Apple, ranked No. 1 by Interbrand, makes the vast majority of its money by selling iPhones and other devices to consumers across the globe. Microsoft, ranked second, is an enterprise sales giant, but is ubiquitously known for its Windows and Office software. Third-ranked Amazon strives to be consumers’ everything store, and No. 4 Google is, for many people, the front door to the internet.

Rounding out Interbrand’s top 10 are South Korean electronics giant Samsung, along with three car companies (Toyota, Mercedes-Benz and BMW), Coca-Cola and Nike.

Further down the list, at No. 24, is Nvidia rival Intel, which is best known for making the processor at the heart of laptops and PCs and for its long-running “Intel Inside” advertising campaign. Even Hewlett Packard Enterprise, a company that builds servers, made the list at No. 91.

However, a competing survey shows that Nvidia’s brand value is catching up to that of its peers.

In a ranking of the 100 most valuable global brands published this month by Kantar BrandZ, Nvidia landed at No. 6, leaping 18 places from its prior survey. The brand’s overall valued jumped 178% in a year to an estimate of about $202 billion. Kantar surveys enterprise buyers to evaluate brands that primarily sell to other businesses to come up with a total estimate of brand value.

“Nvidia is pound for pound as relevant and meaningful to that B2B buyer that’s looking to make big, large purchases in-house for their company as Apple is to the consumer who’s buying an iPad or a Mac,” Marc Glovsky, senior brand strategist at Kantar, told CNBC.

And while Nvidia may not be a name known to your parents — or your kids — it does have resonance in a particular corner of the consumer world. Just ask your hard-core gaming buddy.

When Nvidia was founded in 1991, AI was a nascent field. The company’s primary focus was on designing chips that could draw digital triangles quickly, a basic capability that led to a huge expansion in 3D games.

For years, Nvidia, and its GeForce brand and green logo were well known to the type of people who tweaked their computers to run the most advanced games. Nvidia provides the chips for the Nintendo Switch console, which has shipped over 140 million units around the world.

Unlike Intel, Nvidia never put its name in front of consumers with flashy ad campaigns. And gaming is now just a nice side business for chipmaker. In the latest quarter, it accounted for $2.6 billion of revenue, or 10% of total sales, rising 18% year over year.

When it comes to Nvidia’s most important products, companies and institutions vying for its AI chips have to go through an extensive quoting and sales process, often through a computer-equipment company, like Dell or HPE. Those vendors sell complete systems, including memory, a central processor and other parts. Even experts who want to train AI models are more likely to rent Nvidia access through a cloud provider than build their own server clusters.

Still, Nvidia’s name recognition is rapidly increasing. Among retail investors, Nvidia has emerged as the most widely held stock, according to data collected and published last month by Vanda Research.

And while the name didn’t make Interbrand’s top 100 list for 2023, the firm’s data shows its brand awareness quadrupled in the past 12 months, which will help when it’s time for the next ranking, Silverman said.

Maybe by then people will know how to say its name, a topic that’d been the source of debate on obscure gaming forums. The company pronounces it en-VID-ia.

WATCH: The ‘Magnificent Seven’ should have another good earnings season

Amazon on Thursday reported fourth-quarter results that sailed past analysts’ estimates, and gave strong guidance for the current quarter. The stock climbed more than 8% in extended trading.

Here are the results:

• Earnings per share: $1.00 vs. 80 cents expected by LSEG, formerly known as Refinitiv
• Revenue: $170 billion vs. $166.2 billion expected by LSEG

Wall Street is also watching several other numbers in the report:

• Amazon Web Services: $24.2 billion vs. $24.2 billion, according to StreetAccount
• Advertising: $14.7 billion vs. $14.2 billion, according to StreetAccount

Amazon said first-quarter sales will be between $138 billion and $143.5 billion, representing growth of 8% to 13%. Analysts were expecting revenue of $142.1 billion, according to Refinitiv.

Amazon easily topped Wall Street’s expectations for earnings, indicating that CEO Andy Jassy’s efforts to rein in costs are paying off. Net income surged to $10.6 billion, or $1.00 per share, compared to $278 million, or 3 cents per share, a year earlier.

The company laid off 27,000 employees between late 2022 and mid-2023, and ended some of its more unproven bets. It has continued to look for ways to trim expenses in other areas, such as its fulfillment business. In January, it announced cuts in Prime Video, MGM Studios and Twitch, among other units.

Amazon CFO Brian Olsavsky told reporters on Thursday that the company will continue to take a careful approach on new investments, but that it doesn’t see 2024 “as a year of efficiency type thing.”

“We’re going to continue to invest in new things and new areas and things that are resonating with customers,” Olsavsky said. “Where we can find efficiencies and do more with less, we’re going to do that as well.”

Revenue jumped 14% to $170 billion in the fourth quarter. The period reflects results from the holiday shopping season and Amazon’s October Prime Day event, both of which the company said exceeded its expectations.

“This Q4 was a record-breaking Holiday shopping season and closed out a robust 2023 for Amazon,” Jassy said in a statement. “As we enter 2024, our teams are delivering at a rapid clip, and we have a lot in front of us to be excited about.”

Sales at Amazon Web Services climbed 13% in the fourth quarter to $24.2 billion, in line with Wall Street’s forecast. That marks a slight uptick from the previous quarter, when sales expanded 12%, but it’s a deceleration from the year-ago period, when sales grew 20%.

For the past year, growth in AWS has slowed, as businesses trimmed their cloud spend. But Olsavsky said the company is seeing those cost optimizations diminish, and new workloads are picking up. He said there has been “a lot of interest” in AWS’ generative artificial intelligence products, such as “Q,” an AI chatbot for businesses.

Jassy said on a conference call with analysts that generative AI services remain a “relatively small” business, but the company believes they could drive “tens of billions of dollars” in revenue within the next several years.

Ahead of its earnings release Thursday, Amazon announced a generative AI shopping assistant, dubbed Rufus, which it’s testing among a subset of users in the U.S.

Amazon’s profitable advertising unit saw sales grow 27% year over year to $14.7 billion. Last month, the company began showing ads on Prime Video content, in a move analysts project will generate substantial new revenue for the business. Olsavsky said the company has seen “a lot of enthusiasm” from advertisers, but that Amazon plans to keep ad loads low.

Netflix shares sank more than 8% on Thursday after a quarterly earnings report that was largely positive but left Wall Street excited and uncertain about key revenue drivers.

The selloff in Netflix shares follows a 60% year-to-date rally, boosted by the rollout of its cheaper, ad-supported plan and a crackdown on password sharing, both of which were supposed to boost the streaming giant’s growth.

Netflix offered few details on those initiatives on Wednesday in its quarterly report, and its second-quarter earnings missed expectations.

“I think people expected a lot more revenue growth in the third quarter, plus there was weakness [average revenue per membership]” said analyst Michael Nathanson of MoffettNathanson.

Netflix’s average membership revenue showed weakness last quarter as the streamer focused on its stated revenue drivers instead of raising prices. The company this week removed its cheapest ad-free plan, urging customers to opt for the cheaper ad plan instead.

Chief Financial Officer Spencer Neumann said on Wednesday’s earnings call that price increases have been put on the backburner with the new sharing policy in place. On the advertising side, he said, the company expects a “gradual increase in revenue,” adding that “it’s not expected to be a big contributor this year.”

The ad-supported plan, which launched late last year, has so far signed up about 1.5 million subscribers, a small fraction of total subscribers, according to a report by The Information on Wednesday.

Netflix executives declined to provide details on the ad-supported level in the company’s pre-recorded earnings call.

“Most of our revenue growth this year has come from volume growth through new paid memberships, and that’s largely driven by our implementation of paid sharing,” Neumann said. “This is our main revenue acceleration for the year, and we expect that impact … to build up over several quarters.”

But with uncertainty surrounding how long revenue-boosting initiatives will take to take hold, it’s difficult to forecast Netflix’s earnings over the next two years, making the future murky, according to Wall Street analysts.

“Buyer expectations are high,” Wells Fargo analyst Steven Cahol said in a note before Netflix reported earnings on Wednesday.

However, in a post-earnings note, Cahol said “patience is a virtue” and called out investors who are “over-enthusiastic about paid sharing”, noting that revenue growth will take longer.

“This is not an overnight thing,” Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters said on Wednesday’s call with investors.

Netflix forecast third-quarter revenue of $8.5 billion, up 7% year-over-year.

The streaming giant fared better than its legacy media rivals, and its surge in subscriber growth showed its strength as others struggle and brace for a tumultuous rest of the year as they seek streaming profits and face strikes by Hollywood actors and writers.

Netflix said on Wednesday it added 5.9 million customers, but after last year’s first subscriber loss in a decade sent its stock into a downward spiral, the company said it would shift focus to revenue growth and forecasts.

I’ve been testing Apple’s new $249 AirPods Pro (second generation) for several weeks. They are available to order now and will hit stores on Friday. Of all the things Apple introduced earlier this month, these are the ones I’m most excited about.

I love my old set of pros, but the upgraded headphones have features I didn’t even know I wanted.

This is why I think you should buy Airpods Pro (2nd generation).

When you’re using AirPods Pro and you’re not in noise canceling mode, you’re in what Apple calls transparency mode. When you press and hold the grip of your AirPods and you can hear the sound of the sound being sealed or filtered, you’re switching between noise canceling mode and transparency mode.

The great thing about the new AirPods Pro is that when you’re in transparency mode, you can actually hear what’s going on around you. The older version blocks some of the sound even when you’re in transparency mode. Often when I wear my old pros, I would have to take one out during a call. Now I can hear everything clearly as long as the transparency mode is on.

This advancement is made possible by Apple’s new H2 chip. Thanks to the H2, there’s also a feature called Adaptive Transparency Mode that automatically blocks out sharp noises like a siren or a motorcycle. This feature can be turned on or off. I like to wear it to protect my ears from very loud decibels when walking around a busy city.

The H2 chip also made active noise cancellation even better. Apple says the next-generation AirPods Pro provide double the noise cancellation, and I could hear the difference.

While on a plane that usually has very loud ambient noise, I was able to completely tune out the loud hum of the engine and air conditioning while watching Netflix. When the guy sitting next to me started trying to make small talk, I didn’t hear him and just pointed at my headphones. ugh

There’s a new feature that even shows you how much noise is being removed. When you use your AirPods Pro (2nd generation) with your Apple Watch, you can see the noise reduction in real time.

Touch control on the new Pros lets you turn the volume down or up by gently sliding up or down on the AirPods handle.

I was initially afraid that this would be too sensitive, but after a few weeks of use, I’m happy to report that I’ve never accidentally activated this feature. I often fall asleep with my AirPods on, so I was impressed that the volume controls didn’t activate when I tossed and turned.

The new AirPods also come with a new MagSafe charging case. You can even use your Apple Watch charger for the new pros, which is very convenient.

In addition to easier charging, the battery life of the new AirPods is significantly better. Overall, Apple says battery life has improved by 33%. You now get up to 30 hours of total listening time while active noise cancellation is on. That’s six hours more than the previous generation.

If you’ve read my previous reviews, you may have noticed a common theme: I lose things a lot. The new AirPods Pro have a built-in speaker that plays sound so you can find your lost AirPods.

The new AirPods case also comes with a new U1 chip, so you can use the Find My app to see the exact location of the last place you left your AirPods.

There is a strap loop on the side of the case that allows you to attach your AirPods to your wrist or handbag. I haven’t tried straps yet as they are sold separately by third parties, but I can see how this would help me keep up with them.

The new AirPods Pro have superior sound for several reasons. First, there’s a new extra-small ear tip, so hopefully people who say their AirPods fall out of their ears or who don’t get a good seal will see this as a solution.

There’s also a new feature called Custom Spatial Audio. By using your phone’s front-facing camera, your iPhone remembers the size of your ears and helps ensure that the sounds you hear are tailored to your individual ear size.

There are songs on Apple Music that are specifically designed for spatial audio, and you can really hear the difference. When you’re in the AirPods settings, you can even play sound by going to the tab under Spatial Audio that says See and hear how it works. You can see how much more immersive the sound quality is when spatial audio is enabled.

One complaint I hear a lot about AirPods is that previous generations claim to seamlessly and intelligently switch between whatever device you’re using, but that feature doesn’t work well. I think this may have been fixed with the new pros.

I was in my kitchen cooking, watching my iPad with my AirPods. When I received a call I was able to seamlessly switch to the call and then when the call ended I went back to watching my show. When I finished watching my show, I asked Siri to play the podcast I wanted to listen to on my iPhone, and I was able to stop listening on my iPad and pick up right where the podcast last left off.

I really appreciated this seamless transition. Difficulty connecting to Bluetooth and switching between devices can drive you crazy, especially when working remotely. Being able to jump to different devices without doing a hard reset on Bluetooth was a luxury I didn’t miss.

I have nothing bad to say about the new AirPods Pro. They are comfortable to wear, the noise canceling and transparency modes are significantly better, and the battery life has improved. You’ll be hard pressed to lose them with all the new features, you can control the volume without having to touch your phone, and most importantly, the sound quality is excellent.

When I was too lazy to dig into my bag and get my new AirPods Pro, I listened to an audiobook with the older AirPods. I could totally hear and feel the difference. Not only do I recommend buying the new Pros, my advice to previous generation AirPods owners is to upgrade if you have the money. I think you will notice a big difference.

WATCHING: Apple launches iPhone 14

Disney CEO Bob Chapek continues to make decisions that distance himself from his predecessor Bob Iger.

As CNBC reported earlier this year, Iger disagreed with several decisions made by Chapek as Disney CEO, including his reorganization of the company and his handling of Florida’s controversial “Don’t Say Gay” law.

The latest breach is a 38% price increase for Disney+, announced last week as part of a series of announcements surrounding Disney’s new ad-supported service, which will launch on December 8. Disney+, without ads, will increase from $7.99 per month to $10.99 per month. Disney+ with ads will start at $7.99 per month.

Chapek’s pricing strategy differs from the philosophy Iger espouses, according to people familiar with the two men’s thinking. Iger wanted Disney+ to be the cheapest major streaming offering, said the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the discussions are private. That way, customers will see Disney+ as a stronger proposition than its competitors, even if they think content on other services may be more robust. It’s also why Iger argued that Disney+ should be separated from Hulu and ESPN+, a strategy that Capek has maintained so far.

At $7.99 a month with ads, Disney+ will now be more expensive than several other ad-supported products, including NBCUniveral’s Peacock ($4.99) and Paramount Global’s Paramount+ ($4.99), though it will remain cheaper from HBO Max on Warner Bros. Discovery ($9.99) . At $10.99, ad-free Disney+ will not only be more expensive than Peacock and Paramount+, but it will also be more expensive than Amazon Prime Video ($8.99), which also does not include ads.

Disney+ without ads will still significantly undercut Netflix ($15.49) and HBO Max ($14.99). Disney’s bundled offering of Disney+, Hulu with ads and ESPN+ with ads will cost $14.99 per month, up $1 from the previous price.

“We launched at a very attractive price point across all the platforms we have for streaming,” Chapek said last week. “I think it was easy to say that we’re probably the best value in streaming. Since that initial launch, we have continued to invest heavily in our content. We believe the increase in investment over the last two-and-a-half years against a very good price point that we have plenty of room for price value.”

Iger’s strategy was to slowly raise prices over time, targeting a $1 per month increase each year for the near term, the people said. This happened in March 2021, when Capek was CEO and Iger was still chairman. Disney+ jumped from $6.99 to $7.99. Iger stepped down from the Disney chair in December.

The slow price increase will allow Disney to suck up as many users as possible at each price point – $6.99, $7.99, $8.99, etc. Iger declined to comment on Disney+’s new pricing. A Disney spokesman declined to comment on the differences between Chapek’s and Iger’s strategies.

Capek’s decision to increase Disney+ by $3 per month, from $7.99 to $10.99, suggests he is shifting Disney’s strategy from maximizing subscriber growth to emphasizing profitability. The pricing decision goes hand-in-hand with Čapek’s decision not to pay for streaming rights to the Indian Premier League, the country’s top cricket league. Capek also decided to raise the price of ESPN+ by $3 per month, from $6.99 to $9.99.

Without the Indian Premier League starting in 2023, Capek lowered Disney’s guidance, first made in 2020, that Disney+ would have 230 million to 260 million subscribers by the end of 2024. Disney’s new subscriber forecast by the end in 2024 it is 215 million to 245 million.

In the final two years of Iger’s tenure, in 2020 and 2021, a cut in streaming guidance likely would have sent Disney shares sharply lower. Instead, Disney shares were barely budged last week when CFO Christine McCarthy announced the news on a conference call and rose 6% on the day after Disney’s earnings, which included a 15 million gain from Disney+ subscribers in the quarter.

The change is related to the collective deterioration of Netflix investors this year, which has affected the entire video streaming industry.

Capek is betting that investors are fine with a smaller total addressable market of streaming subscribers if paying customers lead to a profitable business. Disney’s streaming services lost $1.1 billion last quarter. Big price spikes should bring the streaming business to profitability by the end of 2024 even with lower total subscribers, Čapek said last quarter. Still, it’s notable that Disney had previously planned to break even on streaming by 2024, even before the price hike.

Netflix’s growth so far has reached around 220 million global subscribers. Shares are down more than 60% this year after Netflix lost subscribers in the first half of the year and plans to add just 1 million paying customers in the third quarter.

The decline in Netflix’s valuation gives cover to executives such as Chapek and the CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery’s David Zaslav to prioritize profit over subscriber growth.

Disney is also making strides to show the market that it now needs to focus on average revenue per user, not just adding Disney+ subscribers. Disney made a point during its third-quarter earnings call last week to separate its “core Disney+” subscribers from its India-based Disney+ Hotstar subscribers to demonstrate the much higher average revenue per user for Disney+. Average revenue per Disney+ subscriber was $6.29 per month at the end of Disney’s fiscal third quarter. ARPU per Hotstar subscriber was $1.20 per month.

Disney plans to have 135 million to 165 million core Disney+ subscribers by the end of 2024 and “up to” 80 million Hotstar customers.

By pricing Disney+ with ads at $7.99, Disney+’s current price, Capek is favoring a higher ARPU over accumulating data on how many customers might be willing to pay for Disney+ at a lower price that won’t subscribe to $7 ,99. Capek seemingly already knows the market for Disney+ at $7.99 in the US and Canada, because that’s the price of Disney+ right now.

Another motivation for Iger to undercut the competition with incremental increases was that Disney could get a good idea of ​​demand trends as they increased Disney+ by $1 per month year after year, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Capek could learn how many subscribers would be interested in Disney+ at, say, $4.99 a month if he made that an introductory price with ads. His decision to start at $7.99 again suggests he’s more interested in short-term profitability than in quick wins from subscribers who could turn into higher-paying customers over time.

It also suggests he’s confident the price increase won’t lead to a drop in demand for Disney+.

“We don’t believe there will be any significant long-term impact on our churn as a result” of the price spikes, Chapek said.

WATCH: Streaming viewing surpasses cable for first time, according to Nielsen.

To the delight and dismay of football fans across the United States, the era of NFL games appearing exclusively on a streaming service is upon us.

Amazon Prime Video is the home of Thursday Night Football this coming season, marking the first time in league history that a streaming service will be the stand-alone carrier for a package of national games. The era begins on August 25 with a preseason game between the San Francisco 49ers and the Houston Texans. The first regular season game for Amazon will be on September 15 when the Los Angeles Chargers play the Kansas City Chiefs in Week 2 of the NFL season. The local broadcast stations for the teams playing in a given week will also carry the games on the air.

Amazon signed a deal with Nielsen this week to measure TV shows, a sign of confidence that it expects solid ratings. Eighty million U.S. subscribers watched Amazon Prime Video at least once in the past year, the company said in May. For context, Netflix ended the second quarter with 73.3 million paid monthly subscribers in the US and Canada. Disney+ ended its most recent quarter with 44.5 million subscribers in the US and Canada.

People who want to watch the games will need to sign up for an Amazon Prime account, which costs $14.99 per month or $139 per year, or a Prime Video membership, which is $8.99 per month.

To drive viewers to NFL broadcasts, which cost Amazon $1 billion a year, live games will start playing automatically when people log on to Amazon.com. The games will also be featured prominently on the Prime Video home screen to alert subscribers that they are taking place in real time.

Viewers will be given the choice to watch, record or start from the beginning of the show. If they don’t want to continue recording individual games, they will also have the option to record the entire Thursday night slate of games for the season.

Amazon is also debuting other new tech features. On most platforms (still working on a deal with Roku) it will offer “x-ray stats” that will allow viewers to see real-time stats on screen. In addition to standard stats like yards and touchdowns, they will include so-called next-generation numbers like average throw times for quarterbacks and yards after contact for running backs and receivers. Players will wear uniforms enhanced with Amazon Web Services chips, allowing for instant updates.

Amazon will also have a customer package of highlights via X-Ray that updates through the game for viewers who missed the early action and want to catch up. For Fire TV users, viewers will be able to speak commands like “show me stats” or “play the last touchdown” into the remote.

Continuing the trend set by Disney’s ESPN and Paramount Global, Amazon will also offer alternative shows for people who want less serious TV, starting with the popular YouTube comedy group Dude Perfect. Amazon plans to add other alternative feeds over time.

Some growing pains are expected. For example, Amazon is bracing for feedback from frustrated viewers whose Internet speeds may not be able to handle a live stream, or from viewers who aren’t yet familiar with streaming navigation.

“Without bandwidth and channel limitations that limit the choice of linear platforms, our promise is to constantly listen to our customers, iterate and intentionally develop new and better ways for more fans to enjoy the games,” said Amazon spokesman Tim Buckman.

As for its main stream, Amazon is confident that viewers will be satisfied. Although Apple TV+ received a lot of initial pushback for trying to be different with its Major League Baseball games, Backman said Amazon’s goal is to be great at providing the basic game-viewing experience before getting creative .

For its play-by-play, Amazon tapped broadcast legend Al Michaels, who left NBC’s “Sunday Night Football,” along with longtime college football analyst Kirk Herbstreit.

Disclosure: NBC and CNBC are units of NBCUniversal.

If Disney+’s subscriber growth is any indication, rumors that the global streaming market is close to saturation have been proven false.

On Wednesday, the Walt Disney Company said total Disney+ subscriptions grew to 152.1 million in the fiscal third quarter, more than the 147 million analysts had forecast, according to StreetAccount.

The company’s shares rose by about 5% after the end of the session.

The streaming space has been in a state of turmoil in recent weeks, as Netflix revealed another drop in subscribers and Warner Bros. Discovery has announced a change in content strategy. While Netflix expects subscriber growth to rebound, the uncertainty has analysts and investors wondering what the future holds for the broader industry.

Also on Wednesday, the company unveiled a new pricing structure that includes ad-supported Disney+ as part of an effort to make its streaming business profitable.

In the fiscal third quarter, Disney+, Hulu and ESPN+ lost a combined $1.1 billion, reflecting the higher cost of content on the services. Disney’s average revenue per user for Disney+ also fell 5% in the quarter in the U.S. and Canada due to more customers accepting cheaper multi-product offerings.

Starting December 8 in the US, Disney+ with ads will cost $7.99 per month — currently the price of Disney+ without ads. The cost of ad-free Disney+ will rise 38% to $10.99 — an increase of $3 per month.

Disney also posted better-than-expected earnings on both the top and bottom lines, boosted by increased spending at domestic theme parks.

Here are the results:

• Earnings per share: $1.09 per share versus expectations of 96 cents, according to a Refinitiv survey of analysts
• Income: $21.5 billion versus an estimate of $20.96 billion, according to Refinitiv
• Total Disney+ Subscriptions: 152.1 million versus 147.76 million expected, according to StreetAccount

Disney’s Parks, Experiences and Products division saw revenue rise 72% to $7.4 billion in the quarter from $4.3 billion in the same period last year. The company said it has seen increases in attendance, room nights occupied and cruise ship sailings.

It also touted that its new Genie+ and Lightning Lane products helped boost average ticket revenue per capita in the quarter. These new digital features were introduced to prepare the guest experience and allow park visitors to bypass the lines for the main attractions.

This is breaking news. Please check back for updates.

Netflix is ​​accelerating its foray into video games with plans to double its catalog of offerings by the end of the year, but so far few of the streaming giant’s subscribers are playing.

Since last November, the company has been rolling out the games as a way to keep users engaged between editions of the show. Games are available to subscribers only, but must be downloaded as separate apps.

The games have been downloaded a total of 23.3 million times and average 1.7 million users daily, according to Apptopia, an app analytics company. That’s less than 1% of Netflix’s 221 million subscribers.

The importance of gaming to Netflix’s overall strategy has likely increased in recent months as the company faces increasing competition for users’ attention. In the second quarter, Netflix lost nearly one million subscribers after losing 200,000 subscribers in the first quarter — the first subscriber decline in more than a decade.

In a letter to shareholders last year, Netflix named Epic Games and TikTok as among its biggest competitors for people’s time.

“One of Netflix’s many advantages in pursuing the strategy is the ability to drive engagement after a show first airs on the platform,” said Prosek Partners analyst Tom Forte.

Still, Netflix COO Greg Peters said last year that the company had been “many months and really, frankly, years” into studying how games could keep customers on the service.

“We’re going to experiment and try a bunch of things,” Peters said during the company’s fourth-quarter earnings conference call. “But I would say that the eyes we have on the long-term prize are really centered more around our ability to create properties that are connected to the universes, the characters, the stories that we’re building.”

The company’s current catalog of 24 game apps spans a variety of genres and Netflix shows like “Stranger Things: 1984.” Several are modeled after popular card games, such as Mahjong Solitaire and Exploding Kittens.

The catalog will grow to 50 games by the end of the year, including “Queen’s Gambit Chess,” based on the hit Netflix series, according to a company representative.

Netflix has been coy about how it plans to make video games a core part of the company’s strategy, not just a side hobby.

“We’re still intentionally keeping things a little quiet because we’re still learning and experimenting and trying to figure out what kind of things are actually going to resonate with our members, what kind of games people want to play,” Leanne Lumb, head of Netflix external games, said during a panel at the Tribeca Film Festival in June.

Netflix hinted earlier this year that it would license popular intellectual property for its new gaming additions.

“We’re open to licensing, access to a big game IP that people will recognize,” Peters said in January. “And I think you’re going to see some of that happen in the next year.”

Netflix has brought in outside developers for its current catalog, but has acquired three video game developers in the past year.

All this contributes to growing investments. Netflix doesn’t disclose how much it’s spending to grow its video game segment, but the effort is capital-intensive. Netflix’s acquisition of Finnish developer Next Games cost the streamer about $72 million.

Forrester analyst Mike Proulx noted that Netflix has been slow to invest in games and that it still appears to be what he considers “more of a test and experiment at this stage.” He noted that most people don’t associate Netflix with gaming.

So far, Netflix’s game download numbers are far below the leading mobile games – Subway Surfers, Roblox and Among Us, to name a few — each of which has more than 100 million downloads, according to Apptopia. However, downloads have been slowly picking up since May after a downward trend that began in December.

“We need to please our members by having the absolute best in class,” Netflix co-CEO and co-founder Reed Hastings said in January. “We have to be great at it. There’s no point in just being in it.”

World Wrestling Entertainment’s 2021 annual report lists a risk factor specifically for the fallout from Vince McMahon’s retirement — an event that happened last week.

“The unexpected loss of the services of Vincent K. McMahon could adversely affect our ability to develop popular characters and creative storylines or otherwise adversely affect our operating results,” WWE wrote in a Dec. 31 corporate filing. “The loss of Mr. McMahon due to unexpected retirement, disability, death or other unexpected termination for any reason could have a material adverse effect on our ability to develop popular characters and creative storylines or otherwise adversely affect our operational results.’

That sounds bad for WWE shareholders. So what happened to WWE stock when McMahon announced his unexpected retirement after the bell on Friday? They rallied, rising more than 8% on Monday.

The jump was due to heightened investor sentiment that a sale was imminent. Newly appointed co-CEO Nick Hahn openly discussed the concept of a sale earlier this year, months before McMahon stepped down amid a Wall Street Journal investigation that revealed payments to women who alleged sexual abuse and infidelity. WWE has since confirmed $14.6 million in previously unreported expenses paid by McMahon personally.

“As we say, we’re open for business,” Hahn said in March on The Ringer’s “The Town” podcast.

The timing of the deal may depend on the upcoming renewal of WWE’s US television rights, which is set for mid-2023. An acquirer may decide that it makes more sense to purchase the company than to strike a temporary rights deal. Fox owns the rights to “Smackdown” and NBCUniversal owns the rights to “Raw,” both WWE TV properties. Both deals close in the fourth quarter of 2024.

Speaking with “The Town’s” Matthew Belloni, Khan singled out Comcast’s NBCUniversal as a potential buyer. NBCUniversal’s Peacock currently holds the exclusive live streaming rights for WWE.

“If you look at what NBCU/Comcast lacks, which they need, and I think this is a factual statement, they don’t have the intellectual property that some other companies have. They certainly don’t have Disney’s treasure trove of IP, nor should they,” Hahn said. “I think they see us as an organization that has a treasure trove of intellectual property. Much of it is still untapped… Now it’s up to us to monetize it properly and show the community exactly what we have. “

Global media companies are on the hunt for intellectual property they can use as the basis for recurring TV series and movies and theme park attractions for those who own them. WWE is also attractive as an acquisition because the media owner can sell real-time advertising on live programming and potentially get audiences to pay for traditional pay TV, a declining but lucrative revenue stream. WWE’s “Raw” currently airs on the USA Network, an NBCUniversal cable network. By comparison, the National Football League nearly doubled its projected television revenue in its last rights renewal deal last year.

WWE has steadily increased annual revenue over the past decade thanks to its media deals and live events. It said Monday that second-quarter revenue is now expected to be $328 million for the quarter, up 23% from a year ago, with operating income of about $70 million, a 52% increase from a year earlier.

There are not many entertainment companies of global scale that are offered for sale at a price that is easily digestible for many potential suitors. WWE is not in talks to sell, according to a person familiar with the matter. But McMahon’s retirement could open the door to a flood of offers that might be too good for the company to turn down. WWE, whose shares are up about 40% this year despite broader stock declines, has a market valuation of around $5 billion. The stock fell about 3% on Tuesday after The Wall Street Journal reported that McMahon’s payments were being investigated by federal authorities.

Comcast, Disney, Warner Bros Discovery, Paramount Global, Apple, Amazon and Netflix make sense to acquire given their streaming ambitions, MKM Partners analyst Eric Handler wrote in a note to clients.

A WWE spokesperson declined to comment.

Also possible is the new executive leadership – Cannes; co-CEO and McMahon’s daughter Stephanie McMahon; Stephanie’s husband, Paul “Triple H” Levesque – will see this as a time to reform WWE.

While it’s far-fetched to think that Vince McMahon, still WWE’s largest shareholder, won’t be involved in the company’s major decisions, Levesque, who took over creative control from McMahon, may have the opportunity to freshen up the storylines and introduce new talents. McMahon, who turns 77 in August, no longer holds executive positions at the company.

McMahon may also view the sale now as an exit from weakness, which he may see as antithetical to his public persona as someone who is always on top.

“We suspect the Street will interpret Mr. McMahon’s retirement as a precursor to an eventual sale to WWE,” Citi analyst Jason Bazinet said in a note to clients. “We’re not sure that’s a reasonable conclusion, as WWE will still be a controlled company with 100% of the Class B shares held by the McMahon family.”

Disclosure: Comcast is the parent company of NBCUniversal, which owns CNBC.

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