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Rocket Lab is pushing to get its launch business back on track by the end of the year, reporting on Wednesday third-quarter results that saw continued strength in its space systems division.
The company reported a net loss of $40.6 million, or 8 cents per share, just edging out a loss of 9 cents a share expected, according to analysts surveyed by LSEG (formerly Refinitiv).
Rocket Lab has “fully” booked up its schedule of Electron missions for next year, with 22 launches currently expected in 2024.

Peter Beck, chief executive officer of Rocket Lab, speaks during the US Chamber of Commerce’s Global Aerospace Summit in Washington, D.C., Sept 14, 2022.
Valerie Plesch | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Rocket Lab is pushing to get its launch business back on track by the end of the year, reporting on Wednesday third-quarter results that saw continued strength in its space systems division.
The company reported a net loss of $40.6 million, or 8 cents per share, just edging out a loss of 9 cents a share expected, according to analysts surveyed by LSEG (formerly Refinitiv). Year over year, Rocket Lab’s third quarter net loss widened by about 17%.

Revenue grew 7% year over year in the third quarter to $67.6 million, in line with Wall Street analysts’ expectations.
Rocket Lab’s launch business saw $21.3 million in revenue in the third quarter, with a mid-September mission failure halting the company’s momentum. Rocket Lab expects to resume Electron launches as soon as Nov. 28, with a mission for Japanese satellite imagery company iQPS.
Rocket Lab CEO Peter Beck said in a news release that the launch failure was due to “a highly complex set of conditions,” but that the company’s investigation identified an electrical issue in the rocket’s power supply system as the likely cause. The company is putting “corrective measures in place,” Beck said.
“We’ve been laser-focused this quarter on the return to service of Electron,” Beck said in a statement, adding that the company expects “to formally close our investigation in the coming weeks.”
The company has “fully” booked up its schedule of Electron missions for next year, with 22 launches currently expected in 2024.

As has become typical, Rocket Lab’s space systems unit brought in the majority of its revenue, with $46.3 million this quarter, up 17% year over year.

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Its contract backlog increased 9% from the previous quarter, rising by $48.1 million to $582 million.
Beck highlighted that Rocket Lab is making progress in developing its next-generation Neutron vehicle, achieving recent milestones in both the structure and engines of the rocket.
For the fourth quarter, Rocket Lab expects revenue between $65 million and $69 million, with just $16.5 million in revenue from its launch business. With its Electron launches expected to resume, Rocket Lab sees first quarter 2024 revenue climbing to between $95 million and $105 million. More

Warner Bros. Discovery reported third-quarter earnings before the bell Wednesday.
The company posted a decline in ad revenue.
CEO David Zaslav said the media industry is going through a “generational disruption.”

David Zaslav, President & CEO of Discovery Inc.
Anjali Sundaram | CNBC

Warner Bros. Discovery shares fell Wednesday after the company reported a decline in advertising revenue, a wider-than-expected loss and lackluster streaming subscriber numbers.
Here’s what the company reported for the quarter ended Sept. 30, versus analysts’ estimates, according to LSEG, formerly known as Refinitiv:

Loss per share: 17 cents vs. 6 cents expected
Revenue: $9.98 billion vs. $9.98 billion expected

Warner Bros. Discovery reported a net loss of $417 million for the third quarter, or 17 cents per share, an improvement from the $2.31 billion, or 95 cents per share, loss the company reported in the year-ago quarter. Revenue rose 2% to $9.98 billion.
The company’s stock closed down 19% Wednesday. The slide comes after a media rally late last week driven by Roku and Paramount earnings. Rival media giant Disney is set to report earnings after the closing bell Wednesday.
Warner Bros. Discovery’s results reflected dire trends in the legacy media industry. Ad revenue in Warner Bros. Discovery’s TV networks segment fell 12% compared with a year earlier, reflecting a decline in audiences for general entertainment and news programming, as well as soft ad trends in the U.S., the company said.
The company also warned of a number of obstacles heading into 2024, including sluggish ad revenue and ongoing impacts from the actors’ strike.
“This is a generational disruption we’re going through. Going through that with a streaming service that’s losing billions of dollars, it’s really difficult to go on offense,” CEO David Zaslav said during the earnings conference call.

The third quarter marked the first full quarter since Warner Bros. Discovery launched its flagship streaming service Max in May, which merged content from HBO Max and Discovery+.
The company reported 95.1 million global direct-to-consumer subscribers, a 700,000 decrease from the previous quarter, and less than the analyst projection of 95.4 million subscribers, according to StreetAccount.
The “modest sequential loss” was largely a result of an “extraordinarily light content slate,” CFO Gunnar Wiedenfels said during the earnings call.
The streaming business did swing to a profit in the quarter, however.
Warner Bros. Discovery also made headway on paying off its debt load, with $2.4 billion of repayments made during the quarter, the company said. It still has $45.3 billion in gross debt.
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Satellite imagery venture BlackSky delivered its first quarterly profit Wednesday.
BlackSky reported net income of $675,000 for the third quarter, improving from a net loss of $13.1 million reported for the same period a year ago.
Chief Financial Officer Henry Dubois said on the company’s earnings call the “primary driver for the positive net income” was the company’s accounting practices related to “warrant liability exposure.”

The company’s banner on the front of the New York Stock Exchange.

Satellite imagery venture BlackSky delivered its first quarterly profit Wednesday, as the company works to keep up momentum into the end of the year.
BlackSky reported net income of $675,000 for the third quarter, improving from a net loss of $13.1 million reported for the same period a year ago. The company brought in $21.3 million in third-quarter revenue, up 26% from a year prior.

Chief Financial Officer Henry Dubois said on the company’s earnings call the “primary driver for the positive net income” was the company’s accounting practices related to “warrant liability exposure.”
Excluding that impact, BlackSky would have reported a third-quarter net loss of about $16.3 million.
BlackSky tightened its 2023 revenue outlook to a range of between $84 million and $90 million, a reduction on the top end from its previously stated guidance of as much as $96 million. It had $51.5 million in cash and equivalents on hand at the end of the third quarter, with a contract order backlog of $252 million.

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Shares of BlackSky slipped 4.2% in trading to close at $1.15 a share. Like many space stocks that went public in the past few years, BlackSky’s market cap today is a fraction of its debut valuation.
Correction: This story has been updated to correct that BlackSky CFO Henry Dubois said the “primary driver for the positive net income” was the company’s accounting practices related to “warrant liability exposure” and that excluding that impact, the company would have reported a third-quarter net loss of about $16.3 million. More

Caesars Entertainment reached a deal with the Culinary Union to avoid a strike.
MGM Resorts and Wynn Resorts are still negotiating with the union.
Union members had voted in September to authorize a strike.

The exterior of Caesars Palace Hotel and Casino is viewed in Las Vegas on Dec. 4, 2015.
George Rose | Getty Images

A strike is off the table for nearly 10,000 Caesars Entertainment union workers on the Las Vegas strip.
The Culinary Union said it took 20 straight hours of negotiations to produce a tentative deal for a new five-year contract, two days before a deadline for a walkout.

The previous contract expired June 1. The Culinary Union and Bartenders Union members voted to authorize a strike in September against Caesars, MGM Resorts and Wynn Resorts.
Negotiations with MGM and Wynn are ongoing.
In a statement to CNBC, Caesars said its union employees will see meaningful wage increases that align with growth opportunities and past performance.
“We have done quite well as a company post-merger, post-pandemic,” Caesars CEO Tom Reeg said on an earnings call Oct. 31. “Our employees should and will participate in that.”
He said it would be the biggest wage increase for Caesars employees in the company’s four decades of dealing with the Culinary Union.

The company reported an all-time record for adjusted EBITDA, a crucial metric of profitability in the gaming industry, of more than $1 billion.
Reeg indicated that the company budgeted this summer for the wage increases and built new terms of the contract into the company’s business model.
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The organizers of a recent walkout of retail pharmacy staff helped launch a national push to organize those employees.
A new partnership between the organizers and IAM Healthcare aims to help pharmacy staff unionize to address what many employees call unsafe working conditions throughout the industry, including at major drugstore chains such as Walgreens and CVS. 
The majority of pharmacists and technicians from those chains have no union representation, while pharmacy staff from a handful of grocery retailers such as Kroger do.

A small number of employees and supporters picket outside the headquarters of drugstore chain Walgreens during a three-day walkout by pharmacists in Deerfield, Illinois, November 1, 2023.
Vincent Alban | Reuters

The organizers of a recent retail pharmacy staff walkout are helping to launch a national push to organize those employees on Wednesday, a potential step to wide-scale unionization of thousands of pharmacists and technicians across the U.S. for the first time.
A new partnership between the organizers and IAM Healthcare – a union representing thousands of health-care professionals – aims to help pharmacy staff unionize to address what many employees call unsafe staffing levels and increasing workloads throughout the industry, including at major drugstore chains such as Walgreens and CVS. 

The push to unionize, dubbed “The Pharmacy Guild,” also calls for legislative and regulatory change to establish higher standards of practice in pharmacies to protect patients. 
Notably, the vast majority of pharmacists and technicians from Walgreens and CVS have no union representation, while pharmacy staff from a handful of grocery retailers such as Kroger do, according to Shane Jerominski, a walkout organizer who is helping to launch the effort through his pharmacy advocacy platform on social media, The Accidental Pharmacist. 
The push to organize staff who aren’t currently represented by a union only adds to what has been one of the most active years for the U.S. labor movement in recent history.
A spokesperson for CVS said Wednesday that the company is engaging in a “continuous two-way dialogue” with pharmacists to directly address their concerns, and is making some changes in response to recent feedback.
CVS has productive relationships with unions who represent its employees and “respect our employees’ right to either unionize or refrain from doing so,” the spokesperson added.

A spokesperson for Walgreens previously told CNBC that the company has taken several steps in its pharmacies “to ensure that our teams can concentrate on providing optimal patient care.” Both Walgreens and CVS also said last week that the walkout of their pharmacy staff last week had a minimal impact on their pharmacy operations. 
Jerominski said the new partnership specifically allows pharmacy staff who are interested in unionizing to fill out a public form on a new website, which will ask for their name, employer, pharmacy location, contact information and message they want to pass along. IAM Healthcare and the walkout organizers will then launch unionization campaigns in certain districts or areas with high support for organizing.
The Pharmacy Guild hopes to get 100,000 pharmacists and technicians to fill out the form, Jerominski said. He also predicted that 90% of pharmacists working for Walgreens and CVS will be unionized in five years.

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Jerominksi called the push for unionization the “next logical step” after the walkout last week, and earlier work stoppages by some Walgreens pharmacy staff across the U.S. and CVS employees from the Kansas City area.
Organizers don’t have a clear estimate of how many people participated in the walkout last week, but a poll they launched on the social media page for the effort showed that at least 200 employees across Walgreens, CVS and Rite Aid participated.
“Everyone has been asking me, what’s next? I think that the time for walkouts is done,” Jerominski, who is also a former Walgreens employee, told CNBC. “I think that in order to effect change from this point, we have to organize. Unionization is not going to change everything, but it’s going to help us secure better working conditions for pharmacists.”
The Pharmacy Guild’s founding statement also describes the effort as a call to take “this powerful social movement of pharmacy professionals to the next level through developing organizational infrastructure and institutional influence necessary to make real change.” 

How is the new unionization effort different? 

The Pharmacy Guild does not follow the standard method of organizing workers — but Jerominski believes that’s why it will work. 
Typically, a pharmacy location that wants to unionize would reach out to a union, meet with a local union organizer and start asking employees or neighboring stores if they’re interested in the effort. Jerominski said one of the issues with that approach is that “those efforts can end up getting out to corporate management, which can come in and suppress the whole thing from an entire district standpoint.” 
“There’s a lot of things companies can do to combat unionization,” Jerominski said.
Meanwhile, Jerominski said The Pharmacy Guild could allow several unionization campaigns to launch at the same time, which could make it harder to intervene. 
He also called the new effort an easier approach to unionizing. 
“If you want to, all you have to do is fill it out,” Jerominski said. “We’ll do the rest. We’ll take it from there, with the backing from a national union.”
In addition to Jerominski’s account, two other social media platforms called RxComedy and #PizzaIsNotWorking are helping to launch the effort with IAM Healthcare. Both platforms have long advocated for safer working conditions for pharmacy staff, and the founder and other members of #PizzaIsNotWorking helped to organize the recent walkouts. 
The three platforms together have 300,000 followers, according to a release announcing The Pharmacy Guild. 
The accounts will use their reach to bring attention to The Pharmacy Guild and provide updates on the progress of the unionization effort, Jerominski said. 
“The power of a really centralized audience and being able to push this all the time – that’s a big part of what our roles are,” Jerominski said. More

Nelson Peltz is waiting to see what Disney reveals in its quarterly earnings Wednesday before making his next move, according to sources.
Shareholders can nominate new board members between Dec. 5 and Jan. 4.
If Trian moves forward with a proxy fight, it will likely call out Disney’s share underperformance and lack of accountability grooming a successor to CEO Bob Iger.

Nelson Peltz, founder and chief executive officer of Trian Fund Management, during the Future Investment Initiative (FII) Institute Priority Summit in Miami, Florida, on Thursday, March 30, 2023.
Marco Bello | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Company boards tend to want to stay out of the spotlight. Activist investor Nelson Peltz may be intent on making sure Disney directors don’t get that luxury.
Peltz’s Trian Fund Management has acquired about $2.5 billion of Disney shares and will be paying close attention to Disney’s fiscal fourth-quarter earnings report after the bell Wednesday, according to people familiar with the matter. The majority of the shares controlled by Trian belong to Ike Perlmutter, the former boss of Marvel Entertainment and a Peltz ally who has clashed with Disney Chief Executive Bob Iger in the past.

Trian hasn’t made a public statement since it ended its last activist campaign against Disney in January. The fund has purposefully waited until Disney reports earnings before deciding whether it will move forward with a proxy fight to nominate new board members, said the people, who asked not to be named because the discussions are private. Trian declined to comment.
It’s unclear if Disney can or will say anything during Wednesday’s earnings conference call that will push Peltz to back down. While Disney has cut 7,000 jobs this year, Trian may want to see evidence that the job reductions and other content spending cuts are improving earnings. Disney named longtime PepsiCo executive Hugh Johnston as its new chief financial officer earlier this week. Disney declined to comment.
Peltz would ideally like to be added to the board without going through a nomination process, which can be time-consuming and costly. He tried earlier this year to get himself on the Disney board, only to be rebuffed by Iger and eventually walk away in February. Shareholders must nominate directors, to be voted on at Disney’s annual meeting, between Dec. 5 and Jan. 4, according to a Disney filing.
If Peltz does move forward with a nomination slate, Trian will likely attack Disney’s sagging share price. Disney’s stock is hovering near 10-year lows. Every board member, aside from Iger, has presided during a time where shareholder return has been negative.
This is true for several other media companies. The legacy media industry – which includes companies such as Paramount Global, Comcast’s NBCUniversal, Warner Bros. Discovery, AMC Networks and Lions Gate Entertainment – has been rocked in recent years by tens of millions of cable TV cancellations and billions of dollars of streaming video losses in an attempt to reinvigorate growth.

Trian has decided to target Disney because the company’s shares don’t have a controlling owner, and due to a belief in Disney’s best-in-class brand, according to people familiar with Peltz’s thinking. Peltz successfully agitated to get a seat on Proctor & Gamble’s board in 2017, drawn to the company’s brand strength.
Disney’s board has also struggled to groom a successor to Iger, who has five times renewed his contract to stick around as CEO. While Iger did leave Disney in 2022 after stepping down as executive chairman, he returned 11 months later as CEO after the board fired his hand-picked successor, Bob Chapek.
Iger again renewed his contract in July to stay at Disney until 2026. Peltz could argue Trian can bring accountability to a board that has given Iger permission to stick around as long as he’d like. Several board members, including Nike Executive Chairman (and Disney Chairman) Mark Parker and General Motors CEO Mary Barra, are particularly close with Iger, CNBC reported in September.
Still, to sway Disney shareholders to vote for Peltz or other board members, Trian may need to push for specific ideas or financial engineering that Disney hasn’t already articulated. Iger has said he’ll explore options to sell ABC and other linear networks and is interested in taking on strategic investment partners for ESPN. Peltz may be eager to hear if there’s been any progress on either of these fronts from Disney management during its conference call.
If not, his next move could be a public fight to get himself and others on Disney’s board.
Tune in: CNBC’s Julia Boorstin will interview Disney CEO Bob Iger at 4:05 p.m. ET on “Closing Bell: Overtime.”
Disclosure: NBCUniversal is the parent company of CNBC.
WATCH: Nelson Peltz raises stake in Disney. Here’s what the pros say to do next More

The average contract interest rate for 30-year fixed-rate mortgages with conforming loan balances ($726,200 or less) decreased last week to 7.61% from 7.86%
Applications to refinance a home loan increased 2% for the week and were 7% lower than the same week one year ago.

House for sale in Millbrae, California.
Xinhua News Agency | Xinhua News Agency | Getty Images

Mortgage rates saw the biggest one-week drop in over a year last week, causing the first increase in mortgage demand in a month.
Total mortgage application volume rose 2.5% last week, compared with the previous week, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association’s seasonally adjusted index.

The average contract interest rate for 30-year fixed-rate mortgages with conforming loan balances ($726,200 or less) decreased to 7.61% from 7.86%, with points falling to 0.69 from 0.73 (including the origination fee) for loans with a 20% down payment.
“Last week’s decrease in rates was driven by the U.S. Treasury’s issuance update, the Fed striking a dovish tone in the November FOMC statement, and data indicating a slower job market,” said Joel Kan, vice president and deputy chief economist at the MBA.
Applications to refinance a home loan increased 2% for the week and were 7% lower than the same week one year ago. Mortgage rates are pretty close to where they were at this time last year, so there is not a lot of incentive to refinance. Most homeowners refinanced two years ago when rates were hovering near record lows. The vast majority of current homeowners carry mortgages with rates below 4%.
Applications for a mortgage to purchase a home rose 3% for the week but were 20% lower than the same week a year ago. The decline in interest rates is still not enough to offset sky-high home prices, which are still rising due to the very low supply of houses for sale.
Mortgage rates started the week slightly higher, but this week holds fewer economic events or reports that would influence rates. Last week’s combination of the Federal Reserve keeping interest rates unchanged and a lower-than-expected monthly employment report was the perfect storm for the dramatic move lower in rates.

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Since it was founded in 2010, WeWork has not once turned a profit. For years its cash-torching ways went unchallenged, thanks to the reality-distorting powers of its flamboyant founder, Adam Neumann, who succeeded in convincing investors, most notably SoftBank, that it was not an office-rental business but a zippy tech firm on a mission to “elevate the world’s consciousness”. At the height of the silliness in early 2019, in the lead-up to an initial public offering (IPO), the company was valued at $47bn.The unravelling began soon after, as outside investors balked at its frothy valuation and questioned an unorthodox governance arrangement that gave Mr Neumann an iron grip on the company. The IPO was shelved, and Mr Neumann was offered $1.7bn to leave. Sandeep Mathrani, a real-estate veteran brought in to run the company, did his best to right the ship by cutting costs and renegotiating leases. In 2021 he succeeded in listing the firm through a special-purpose acquisition company, at a valuation of $9bn. Yet his efforts were undone by the slump in the office market brought on by the pandemic and an enduring shift towards remote working. On November 6th WeWork, which leases office space in 777 locations across 39 countries, filed for bankruptcy.It is not the only property business in turmoil. Days earlier, on the other side of the Atlantic, René Benko, a once celebrated Austrian property magnate, was ousted from Signa, the €23bn ($25bn) property empire he built. Its portfolio includes the Chrysler Building in New York; the KaDeWe, a posh department store in West Berlin; and a stake in Selfridges, another ritzy temple of consumption in London; as well as luxury hotels, high-end developments and a grab-bag of other retail businesses.The two cases are not identical. Unlike WeWork, Signa has not declared bankruptcy, though it faces a liquidity crunch, and has brought in a prominent German insolvency expert, Arndt Geiwitz, to take the reins. And unlike Mr Neumann, Mr Benko, a self-made high-school dropout who started his career converting attics into penthouses in his hometown of Innsbruck, was involved with Signa right up until his weekend ousting. After a conviction for bribery in 2012, he stepped back from day-to-day operational duties, but continued to sit on the company’s advisory board. He gave his blessing to the appointment of Mr Geiwitz, who helped steer Lufthansa, Germany’s national airline, through an insolvency. (Mr Neumann, meanwhile, has been reduced to sniping at WeWork’s collapse from the sidelines, complaining that the company “failed to take advantage of a product that is more relevant today than ever before”.)Yet the rise and fall of the two empires share similarities. For one, both relied on risky bets that went sour in a world of higher interest rates and slumping property markets. As he built his empire, Mr Benko accumulated a mountain of debt in order to purchase new assets while maintaining juicy dividends. That model worked only as long as interest rates were low and the value of prime property continued to rise. In WeWork’s case, the risk stemmed from a model of taking out lengthy leases on properties, sometimes for as long as 20 years, splashing out on snazzy refurbishments, then renting the space for periods as brief as a month at a time. When the office market turned, the company was stuck paying for leases that cost far in excess of what it could charge tenants, given the cheaper alternatives on offer.Nonetheless, both empires could just come out the other side stronger. Leonhard Dobusch of Innsbruck University reckons Mr Geiwitz will break up the sprawling Signa portfolio, selling off assets to bring in cash and pay down debts. The privately held business, comprised of hundreds of holding companies, could do with some simplification. WeWork, for its part, has already gained backing from most of its creditors to convert its debt pile of $3bn into equity, giving its balance-sheet something close to a fresh start. It will also use its bankruptcy to break more than 60 leases in America and renegotiate others. Mr Neumann and Mr Benko may be gone, but the companies they built may well endure. ■ More