Business

LIKE HIS fellow Victorian beancounters, Edwin Waterhouse made his name in part by unearthing frauds perpetrated during the railway mania that gripped late-19th-century Britain. These days the accounting-and-consulting powerhouse that traces its history to his successful sleuthing more often makes news for failing to detect financial malfeasance—or for engaging in mischief itself. Between 2010 and 2023 it faced around $450m in fines and settlements related to botched audits and other misconduct in various countries. The firm, which now goes by PwC rather than PricewaterhouseCoopers, at least spares Edwin’s memory the indignity of having his name openly tied to the mess. More

A new football season will begin on September 27th: not the Premier League or La Liga, but the annual update of the world’s favourite football video-game. “FIFA”, as the franchise was known from its pixelated debut in 1993, sells nearly 30m copies a year. In-game spending pushes its annual revenue above $3bn, estimates MoffettNathanson, a firm of analysts, which calculates that the title contributes nearly two-thirds of the profit of its publisher, Electronic Arts (EA). Gaming has few bigger names than “FIFA”. More

Kindness is in the air. Publishers produce business books with titles like “The Power of Nice” or, simply, “Kind”. LinkedIn, which is ostensibly a networking site for career-minded professionals, is overrun with sickly videos showing people being improbably generous to the homeless. Firms publicly embrace the values of compassion: one manufacturer of safety-gear talks of “offering grace internally”, which sounds terribly intrusive. More

When Kelly Ortberg landed in the chief executive’s chair at Boeing last month the list of problems he had to confront at the aerospace giant was already daunting. Production of the 737 MAX passenger jet, Boeing’s most important product, has been curtailed after a mid-flight blowout of a fuselage panel in January. Production of the larger 787 Dreamliner has also slowed down owing to supply-chain problems. Plans to launch the even bigger 777X are years behind schedule. Add to that losses at Boeing’s usually lucrative defence division and an embarrassing software failure that left astronauts piloting its Starliner spacecraft stranded on the International Space Station and some may wonder why Mr Ortberg took the job. More

A rare beast may soon lumber across the hills of Silicon Valley: not a $1bn unicorn, nor a $10bn decacorn, but a hectocorn—a startup valued at more than $100bn. OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, is understood to be in talks to raise $6.5bn from investors to fund the expansion dreams of its co-founder, Sam Altman. If it pulls off the deal, OpenAI’s valuation will be about $150bn, making it only the second ever $100bn-plus startup in America after SpaceX, a rocketry giant led by Elon Musk (who co-founded OpenAI in 2015 and is now Mr Altman’s nemesis). More

A rare beast may soon lumber across the hills of Silicon Valley: not a $1bn unicorn, nor a $10bn decacorn, but a hectocorn—a startup valued at more than $100bn. OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, is understood to be in talks to raise $6.5bn from investors to fund the expansion dreams of its co-founder, Sam Altman. If it pulls off the deal, OpenAI’s valuation will be about $150bn, making it only the second ever $100bn-plus startup in America after SpaceX, a rocketry giant led by Elon Musk (who co-founded OpenAI in 2015 and is now Mr Altman’s nemesis). More

The WNBA is adding its 15th team in Portland.
It is the league’s third new franchise as part of its most recent expansion effort.
The team, which is yet to be named, will begin play in the 2026 season.

WNBA expansion team coming to Portland in 2026.
Source: WNBA

The WNBA is adding its 15th team in Portland, the third new franchise as part of its most recent expansion, the league announced Wednesday.
The Portland team, which was not named in a WNBA release, will begin play in 2026 and will be owned and run by RAJ Sports, an investment firm specifically focused on sports. Lisa Bhathal Merage will be the controlling owner and governor.

“As the WNBA builds on a season of unprecedented growth, bringing a team back to Portland is another important step forward,” said WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert in a release. “Portland has been an epicenter of the women’s sports movement and is home to a passionate community of basketball fans.”
The Portland team will play in the Moda Center, the same arena as the NBA’s Portland Trailblazers.
Team ownership will take feedback from the community to help in naming the franchise, Bhathal Merage said at the Wednesday evening press conference. They are also committed to building a practice facility for the Portland WNBA team and a training facility for the Portland Thorns, according to Alex Bhathal, who will be the WNBA team’s alternate governor.
RAJ Sports purchased the NWSL’s Portland Thorns in January, in addition to becoming co-owners of the NBA’s Sacramento Kings in 2013.
The WNBA is in growth mode as its popularity spikes. The Golden State Valkyries will begin play in 2025, followed by teams in Toronto and Portland in the 2026 season.

Portland has had a WNBA team before, but it shut down after a few years in 2002. The addition of the new Portland team underscores booming growth for both the WNBA and women’s sports in general. The National Women’s Soccer League is also in expansion mode and has added several teams since 2022.
The 2024 WNBA season has seen record numbers for both in-person attendance and viewership, according to data from the WNBA for the start of the season. The playoffs are set to start Sept. 22.
A combination of existing stars such as A’ja Wilson and an exciting rookie class headlined by Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese have helped to propel the WNBA, leading to a huge jump in the value of the most recent NBA media rights deal.
In May, the WNBA also announced that teams would have leaguewide chartered flights for the first time ever, primarily via Delta Air Lines.

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Intuitive Machines’ stock rose more than 40% on Wednesday.
NASA awarded the lunar-focused company a major contract to build moon data satellites.
The five-year contract has a maximum total value of $4.82 billion.

Intuitive Machines’ IM-1 mission lander shortly after launching on Feb. 15, 2024.
Intuitive Machines

Intuitive Machines’ stock jumped in early trading Wednesday after NASA awarded the lunar-focused company a major contract to build moon data satellites.
“This contract marks an inflection point in Intuitive Machines’ leadership in space communications and navigation,” Intuitive Machines CEO Steve Altemus said in a statement.

NASA said the company was the sole awardee to build “lunar relay systems” for the agency’s Near Space Network, a system that communicates with government and commercial missions that are up to one million miles from Earth. The contract will see Intuitive Machines build and deploy a constellation of lunar satellites to provide communications and navigation services, especially for NASA’s Artemis program.
The five-year contract, which has a maximum total value of $4.82 billion, will incrementally issue awards as work progresses. Intuitive Machines’ initial NSN award is worth $150 million.
Intuitive Machines shares surged more than 40% in afternoon trading from its previous close at $5.40 a share.

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Cantor Fitzgerald analyst Andres Sheppard, whose firm has a buy-equivalent rating and a $10 price target on the stock, called the NSN contract a boon for the company.
“We see the win today as a significant catalyst and validation towards LUNR’s outlook and the company’s ability to continue to win contracts,” Sheppard wrote in a note to clients.

The stock has more than doubled year to date as Intuitive Machines has steadily racked up NASA contracts.
Intuitive Machines made history in February as the first U.S. company to soft land a cargo mission on the moon’s surface. Since then, it became one of three companies awarded contracts under NASA’s $4.6 billion crew lunar rover contract and also added its fourth cargo delivery contract with a $117 million award last month.

Benchmark’s Josh Sullivan, who also has a buy rating and $10 price target, said he believes the latest award shows that NASA views Intuitive Machines’ experience “as elite.”
“LUNR’s path to becoming the preeminent lunar infrastructure player took a big step forward with NSN,” Sullivan wrote.
The company is preparing to launch its next cargo mission to the moon, IM-2, in the first quarter. Analysts expect the company’s first NSN lunar satellite will launch on the IM-3 mission that is scheduled for late 2025.

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