6 Most Important Things in Business Today

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Mar 13, 3:29PM EDT · Published Aug 10, 5:17AM EDT

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6 Most Important Things in Business Today — © artisteer / iStock

The housing market has started to falter. According to MarketWatch:

The housing market hit a sudden and “significant” slowdown in the past few weeks that could continue in coming months, Redfin Corp.’s chief executive said Thursday afternoon.

The real-estate brokerage and website company announced second-quarter earnings Thursday afternoon that beat expectations, but the company’s third-quarter forecast came in short of what Wall Street was projecting. On a conference call to discuss the results, Chief Executive Glenn Kelman reported that Redfin had pulled down its forecast after “an unexpected drop in Redfin’s bookings growth in the past three weeks, slowing traffic growth in a weakening real-estate market.”

The board of Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ: TSLA) has started to probe the plans of CEO Elon Musk to take the company private. According to Reuters:

Tesla Inc’s board has not yet received a detailed financing plan from CEO Elon Musk, and is seeking more information about how he will take the U.S. electric car maker private in a proposed deal worth $72 billion, people familiar with the matter said on Thursday.

While Tesla’s board has held multiple discussions about Musk’s proposal, which first became public on Tuesday, it has not yet received specific information on who will provide the funding, one of the sources said.

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Samsung has launched a new smartphone. According to The Wall Street Journal:

Samsung Electronics Co.’s newest flagship device unveiled Thursday looks much like last year’s model, reflecting slowing innovation in smartphones that has contributed to a historic dip in industry sales.

The world’s biggest smartphone maker introduced the Galaxy Note 9 at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center about two weeks earlier in the year than its predecessor was revealed in 2017—a bid to bolster plummeting phone sales before rival Apple Inc.’s expected release of its fresh lineup of iPhones next month.

The revenue of office-sharing company WeWork has doubled. According to The Wall Street Journal:

WeWork Cos. on Thursday disclosed it raised another $1 billion in funding from SoftBank Group Corp., as the shared-office company continues its rapid growth by doubling revenue but piling up losses, according to newly released financial information on Thursday.

The New York-based company said its loss in the first half of the year more than tripled to $723 million from the year-ago period as it accelerates opening new spaces and spends more to market them. Revenue for the first half of this year more than doubled to $763.8 million.

Newsprint tariffs will tear into the profits of newspapers. According to The New York Times:

The Trump administration’s decision to impose tariffs on Canadian newsprint is hastening the demise of local newspapers across the country, forcing already-struggling publications to cut staff, reduce the number of days they print and, in at least one case, shutter entirely.

Shares of newspaper company Tronc Inc. (NASDAQ: TRNC) rose on a rumored buyout. According to The New York Post:

Tronc shares shot up again on Thursday with the news that the private equity firm Donerail Group is the company that is eyeing the owner of the Chicago Tribune, New York Daily News, Baltimore Sun and other papers for a takeover.

Donerail is headed by Will Wyatt, a former activist investor at Starboard Value. Reuters reported the news about Donerail shortly after 2 p.m., and Tronc shot up to $18 before dipping to close at $16.96, up 32 cents on the day.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.