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(Bloomberg) — Take-Two Interactive Inc. offered a forecast for revenue in the current quarter that missed analysts’ estimates, sending shares lower as investors await news on timing of the highly anticipated next installment of the Grand Theft Auto franchise.

Adjusted revenue will be $808 million to $858 million in the fiscal fourth quarter, Take-Two said in a statement on Monday, while earnings per share, excluding some costs will be 78 to 88 cents. Analysts had predicted revenue of $918 million and earnings per share of $1.15. The shares fell in extended trading.

Take-Two is the parent company of several video game labels including Rockstar and 2K Games. It operates the lucrative NBA 2K franchise as well as Grand Theft Auto Online, one of the world’s most popular video games. Last week, Rockstar said development of a new Grand Theft Auto game was “well underway,” sending the shares up 7.4%. The previous version of the title has sold more than 160 million units, making it one of the best-selling video games of all time.

But the New York-based company’s remastered versions of old Grand Theft Auto titles in November were a disappointment to fans and it delayed the release of Grand Theft Auto V for the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X to March. Take-Two has three other titles slated for release in the current period, including WWE 2K22, Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands and OlliOlli World.

In early January, Take-Two announced plans to purchase Zynga, a move to break into the fast-growing market for smartphone games and bring titles like Grand Theft Auto Online to mobile. The transaction is expected to make Take-Two a leader in the $93 billion global mobile-game market, with that sector expected to comprise more than half of net bookings in fiscal 2023, up from an estimated 12% in fiscal 2022, the company said at the time. It was the video game industry’s largest acquisition ever until a week later when Microsoft Corp. said it was buying Activision Blizzard Inc. for $69 billion. Take-Two has itself been mentioned by analysts as a potential acquisition target as the video game indstry is expected to undergo continued consolidation.

For the fiscal third quarter, Take-Two reported adjusted revenue of $866.12 million missing analysts’ estimates of $871.1 million. Earnings per share were $1.32, beating estimates of $1.12. Take-Two shares slid about 2% in extended trading after the results. They are down about 15% over the past year.

The company raised its outlook for fiscal year 2022, and now expects net bookings of $3.37 billion to $3.42 billion. Take-Two said it has “the strongest and most diverse pipeline” in the company’s history, including new intellectual properties as well as sequels to many beloved franchises.

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(Bloomberg) — Cathie Wood, the founder and CEO of Ark Investment Management, said Monday that consumers are starting to rebel against rising auto prices and warned that manufacturers could be stuck with a glut of inventory. 

“Auto manufacturers enjoyed pricing power during the COVID-related supply shock but may regret moves that, along with soaring oil prices, have accelerated the shift to electric vehicles,” she wrote in a tweet. “This inflation is transitory.”

Wood, who has previously said that companies “overreacted” to supply chain bottlenecks, retweeted a thread from ARK analyst Sam Korus in which he argued that auto demand may not be sustainable at current price levels. 

Read More: Ark’s Wood Says Companies ‘Overreacted’ to Supply Bottlenecks

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(Bloomberg) — Hytera Communications Corp., a Chinese technology company, was accused by U.S. prosecutors of stealing trade secrets for mobile radio technology developed by Motorola Solutions Inc.

Hytera recruited and hired Motorola employees to take proprietary information from internal databases from 2007 to 2020, according to a 21-count federal indictment unsealed Monday in Chicago. The names of others charged in the indictment remained sealed.

In 2020, Motorola won a $764.6 million civil court verdict against its Chinese rival after a jury concluded Hytera stole critical trade secrets for two-way radio technology used by school officials, utility workers and construction crews. 

Hytera denied stealing technology and said it developed its products on its own. It has appealed the verdict and accused Motorola of abusing its superior market power to hobble competition.

Read More: FCC Proposes Ban on Chinese Surveillance Cameras, Other Products

An arraignment date for the criminal case against Hytera hasn’t been set, the Department of Justice said in an emailed statement. 

U.S.-based representatives of Hytera didn’t respond to emails and a voicemail seeking comment on the indictment. 

Range of Secrets

The indictment accuses Hytera of stealing a broad range of secrets including source code, designs of operation architecture and security features. Hytera was a former distributor of Motorola radios until it began luring away former Motorola employees and developed a rival product.

Motorola said the charges “underscore the calculated and deliberate character of Hytera’s illegal activity directed at Motorola Solutions.”

The indictment “alleges that Hytera engaged in a decade-long criminal conspiracy to steal and use Motorola Solutions’ trade secrets and proprietary information in order to develop and sell digital mobile radios,” said Motorola Solutions General Counsel Mark Hacker. 

The Chicago-based company said it will continue to pursue civil litigation in multiple jurisdictions. It has filed lawsuits against Hytera in the U.S., China, Germany and Australia. Hytera has sued Motorola as well.

The criminal case is U.S. v. Hytera Communications Corp., 20-cr-688; the lead civil case is Motorola Solutions Inc. v. Hytera Communications Corp., 17-cv-1973; U.S. District Court, Northern District of Illinois (Chicago).

(Updates with comment from Motorola Solutions beginning in eighth paragraph.)

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(Bloomberg) — Apple Inc. acquired a startup called AI Music that uses artificial intelligence to generate tailor-made music, according to a person with knowledge of the matter, adding technology that could be used across its slate of audio offerings.

The purchase of AI Music, a London-based business founded in 2016, was completed in recent weeks. The company had about two dozen employees before the deal.

Technology developed by AI Music can create soundtracks using royalty-free music and artificial intelligence, according to a copy of its now-defunct website. The idea is to generate dynamic soundtracks that change based on user interaction. A song in a video game could change to fit the mood, for instance, or music during a workout could adapt to the user’s intensity.

On its LinkedIn page, AI Music said its goal is to “give consumers the power to choose the music they want, seamlessly edited to fit their needs or create dynamic solutions that adapt to fit their audiences.” The startup had earlier deals with advertising companies to create more engaging ads that played different music depending on the audience.

A representative of Cupertino, California-based Apple declined to comment. 

While relatively small, the deal is one of the tech giant’s few acquisitions in the past year. Apple’s last reported purchase was also for a music company: Primephonic. That startup ran a classical music streaming service that Apple intends to turn into an app tied to Apple Music this year. 

Apple dramatically slowed down its acquisition spending during 2021, devoting only $33 million to deal payments over the fiscal year, according to a filing in October. That’s down from $1.5 billion in 2020 and $624 million in 2019.

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(Bloomberg) — Peter Thiel, the tech investor and conservative provocateur who has advised Mark Zuckerberg for nearly two decades at Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc., will step down from the company’s board after Meta’s annual shareholder meeting in May. 

Thiel, 54, who became a director in 2005 after an early investment in Facebook, plans to increase his political support of former President Donald Trump’s agenda during the 2022 election and doesn’t want his political activities to be a distraction for Facebook, according to a person close to Thiel.

His focus will be on backing Blake Masters, JD Vance and others who advance the Trump agenda, the person added, referring to Republican candidates for U.S. Senate. 

“Peter is truly an original thinker who you can bring your hardest problems and get unique suggestions,” Zuckerberg said in a statement. “He has served on our board for almost two decades, and we’ve always known that at some point he would devote his time to other interests.” 

Thiel helped elect Trump president in 2016 by donating money and speaking on his behalf at the Republican National Convention. When Trump became president, Thiel worked on his transition team while nominating colleagues to fill government positions, including former Thiel Capital Chief of Staff Michael Kratsios, who served as the chief technology officer of the White House until last year. Thiel has continued to support Trump while meeting with members of the Republican Party and members of the far-right in recent years.

Thiel’s departure will mark the end of one of the most productive — and harshly criticized — partnerships between a chief executive officer and an investor in all of business. Thiel has been a close adviser to Zuckerberg ever since the duo met through Napster co-founder Sean Parker, when Facebook was still just a social network for college campuses. Thiel was instrumental in shaping Zuckerberg’s ethos during the early days of Facebook and its relentless pursuit of growth. 

That relationship continued even as Thiel became more and more controversial in the technology industry, and became a frequent target for Facebook critics and unhappy employees.

Thiel, who is also a co-founder and chairman of Palantir Technologies Inc., was known to advise Zuckerberg on political issues. He was among those reportedly encouraging the CEO not to fact-check political advertisements in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election, a move that many believe benefited Trump. He also joined a dinner with Zuckerberg and Trump at the White House in 2019. 

Many Facebook employees were upset with Thiel’s role in backing Trump in 2016 given the former president’s stance on immigration, and allegations of sexism and racism against then-candidate Trump. But Zuckerberg defended Thiel and his role on Facebook’s board in an internal post to employees in October 2016. “We can’t create a culture that says it cares about diversity and then excludes almost half the country because they back a political candidate,” he wrote at the time. 

Thiel was one of the first venture capitalists to see the potential in Zuckerberg’s vision. He became the first outside investor in Facebook when he loaned the then-Harvard undergrad $500,000 in 2004.

The bet validated Thiel’s instincts and acclaim as an investor but it had the potential to be far more lucrative. He sold most of his stake in 2012 through a prearranged stock-trading plan at an average price of less than $20 a share.  

Those share sales generated more than $1.1 billion in proceeds for the billionaire, before taxes. Had he maintained his stake at its pre-IPO level however, his holding in Meta would now be worth ten times as much.

Masters, a former student of Thiel’s who co-wrote “Zero to One” with him, is running for Senate as a Republican from Arizona. Masters still oversees Thiel’s personal investment vehicle, Thiel Capital. 

Vance, who previously invested on behalf of Thiel, is running for the Senate as a Republican from Ohio who is a “conservative outsider.” Vance is best known for his 2016 memoir “Hillbilly Elegy” and is campaigning on promises to abolish the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and push back against gun laws.

(Updates with Zuckerberg statement in fourth paragraph)

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(Bloomberg) — Equitable Group Inc., a  Canadian online banking firm, agreed to take over digital rival Concentra Bank for C$470 million ($371 million) to bulk up its assets and expand its business with credit unions.

Equitable is buying Credit Union Central of Saskatchewan’s 84% stake in Concentra, and also struck agreements with investors representing most of the remaining 16% of shares, according to a statement Monday. 

The deal expands Equitable’s personal banking portfolio by C$7.4 billion in loans and gives it a business that provides wholesale banking and trust services to 90% of Canadian credit unions outside of Quebec. Equitable was founded in 1970 as a trust company and now has 325,000 Canadian customers through its Equitable Bank subsidiary, which operates entirely online. 

The deal is “one of the most important and consequential” transactions in the company’s history and “accelerates our growth plan by several years,” Equitable Chief Executive Officer Andrew Moor said in the statement.

Equitable, based in Toronto, is financing the purchase through a fully committed credit facility and C$200 million of new equity raised through a bought deal. The transaction is expected to close in the second half of the year, subject to regulatory approvals.

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(Bloomberg) — Village Roadshow Films Ltd. sued Warner Bros. claiming the entertainment giant is simultaneously releasing films in theaters and on WarnerMedia’s HBO Max service to drive subscription revenue for the streaming service, depriving the filmmaking company of theater revenue.

In the lawsuit filed Monday in state court in Los Angeles, Village Roadshow said it co-owns intellectual property rights on almost 100 films that it has paid Warner Bros. more than $4.5 billion to produce and distribute for 25 years.

It’s the latest battle between film producers and stars and distributors who are relying on new forms of revenue from streaming services. “Black Widow” star Scarlett Johansson sued Walt Disney Co. last year, claiming the release of the film on the Disney+ streaming service deprived her of theater revenue. She settled the suit in September.

WarnerMedia hatched a secret plan codenamed “Project Popcorn” to reduce box office and ancillary revenue from films to prop up HBO Max, which benefits only Warner Media, according to the complaint. Village Roadshow pointed specifically to the rush to release “The Matrix Resurrections” last year so HBO Max subscribers could watch it the same day it hit theaters.

Warner Bros. said in a statement that it has no doubt it’ll win the case.

“This is a frivolous attempt by Village Roadshow to avoid their contractual commitment to participate in the arbitration that we commenced against them last week,” Warner Bros. said.

Warner Bros. “sole purpose in moving the release date of ‘The Matrix Resurrection’ forward was to create a desperately needed wave of year-end HBO Max premium subscriptions from what it knew would be a blockbuster film, despite knowing full well that it would decimate the film’s box office revenue and deprive Village Roadshow of any economic up-side that Warner Bros. and its affiliates would enjoy,” according to the complaint.

Warner Bros. claims it released “The Matrix Resurrections” on HBO Max at the same time as in theaters because of the pandemic. But Village Roadshow says other films such as “Spiderman: No Way Home” were released only in theaters in late 2021 and broke box-office records. “Spiderman: No Way Home” sold almost $750 million worth of tickets in the U.S. and Canada since its release, and $1.8 billion internationally, according to BoxOffice Mojo.

“The Matrix Resurrections” on the other hand grossed $37 million in U.S. and Canadian theaters while the original “Matrix” took in $172 million in 1999.

Village Roadshow says it co-owns with Warner Bros. titles such as the The Matrix trilogy, Joker, the Ocean’s series, “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” and “Edge of Tomorrow.” Its copyright ownership gives allows it co-create, co-invest the derivative rights to the franchise films, according to the complaint.

The case is Village Roadshow Films v. Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc., California Superior Court (Los Angeles)

(Updates with Warner statement)

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