Good morning. In today’s edition:

• 📝 Target earnings: not quite a bullseye
• 🤔 Why boomerangs are important to streaming services
• 🚀 Students building rockets

… and more.

🚀⏰ Ready, Set, Go: Today’s news should be a ~4.71-minute read (1,255 words).

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“Words are the clothes thoughts wear.”

–Samuel Beckett (1906-1989)

…In fact, they were, as Bob Uecker would say, juuuuuuust a bit outside. Target yesterday reported Q3 results more disappointing than Red One’s box office numbers.

• Revenue rose 1.1% to $25.7 billion, short of the $25.9 billion analysts expected. It’s the company’s first revenue miss since August 2023.
• Earnings came in at $1.85 a share, well below analysts’ expectations of $2.30. It’s Target’s biggest earnings miss in two years.

The company also cut its forecast for the full year after raising it last quarter, a not-so-great sign ahead of the holiday shopping season. Shares fell 22% on the day.

Swing and a miss

The bullseye retailer’s discouraging results came despite a heavily touted campaign to discount thousands of items, as well as a pushed-up holiday sale.

These did bring more people to stores – the number of visits to Target increased 2.4% last quarter – but caused the average amount customers spent to drop 2%. On a call with reporters, Target CEO Brian Cornell blamed the dismal quarter on “lingering softness in discretionary categories.”

• The company also pushed up product shipments last quarter in preparation for the US port strike, which led to higher inventory levels and dented profit.

Not all bad: Though same-store sales fell 1.9% in the quarter, digital sales grew 10.8%.

🤔 Zoom out: Target’s results run counter to Walmart, which reported stronger-than-expected earnings and raised its full-year forecast on Tuesday. ~75% of Walmart’s share gains last quarter came from households making over $100,000/year, a demographic that has historically favored Target.

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🤳🌎 The Pikachu you caught in Pokémon Go is helping to improve AI systems. Niantic, the creator of Pokémon Go, recently announced a new “Large Geospatial Model” (LGM) that will be trained on millions of scans taken from the smartphones of Niantic product users. The LGM will draw from the company’s massive collection of location data – 10+ million scanned locations globally, and 1 million new scans/week – to help AI models understand and navigate the physical world. Niantic’s project has a wide range of potential applications for developers of AR wearables, as well as machines utilizing autonomous navigation (robotaxis, delivery bots, drones, etc.).

🎾 Farewell to a tennis legend. Rafael Nadal’s remarkable 23-year career officially came to an end late Tuesday night, when Spain lost to the Netherlands in the quarterfinals of the Davis Cup. Nadal, who’s widely regarded as the best clay player of all time (with a record 14 French Open titles), has competed infrequently due to injuries ever since winning two Grand Slams in 2022. Rafa ranks second all-time among men’s players in Grand Slams (22) and winning percentage (82.6%), while his 209 weeks spent atop the world rankings is the sixth most of all time.

⚖️ Gautam Adani, one of the world’s richest people, was charged in New York with fraud. Adani, the chair of India’s Adani Group conglomerate, and other defendants are accused of paying $250+ million in bribes to Indian government officials to obtain solar energy supply contracts, which were projected to generate $2+ billion in profits over 20 years. Adani and co. are also charged with lying to US and international investors about their compliance with anti-bribery and anti-corruption practices while the company was raising $3+ billion to fund the aforementioned energy contracts.

A growing number of people are strategically canceling their memberships to video streaming services, then re-upping at a later date, according to new data from subscription analytics provider Antenna. Boomerangs = important to both Australians and streamers.

• Over the year-long period ending August 2024, more than a third (34%) of all premium video streaming subscription signups came from customers rejoining a service they had canceled within the prior year, up from 29.8% in 2022.
• These subscription pausers also make up a similar percentage of overall cancellations. Streamers experienced a 5.2% cancellation rate in August – but that figure fell to 3.5% after factoring in re-subscribers.

Not all platforms are equal: Research shows certain streaming sites are more likely to attract resubscribers compared to others.

• The highest turnover rates can be found at newer, sports-heavy platforms like Paramount+ and Peacock, as well as services focused primarily on big-budget TV series, like MAX and Apple TV+, due to subscribers timing their subscriptions around major sporting events or show releases.
• On the other hand, platforms with household names and large libraries – such as Netflix and Disney+ – have a higher percentage of subscribers who have never paused their subscriptions.

👀 Looking ahead… Streaming services are increasingly turning to a combination of bundles, promotions, and lower-cost ad-supported plans to lure customers back faster, and help them stick around longer.

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• ☝️ The Solar Orbiter, a joint mission between NASA and the European Space Agency, recently captured the highest-resolution images of the Sun’s surface in history.

BUSINESS & MARKETS

in partnership with The Motley Fool

• 💰 US markets closed mixed (S&P: +0.002%; Dow: +0.3%; Nasdaq: -0.1%). | 📈 Nvidia posted strong quarterly results after the bell; revenue was up 94% year over year; revenue increased 122%, 262%, and 265% in the three previous quarters, respectively.
• 🚨 American Airlines' new gate lice-shaming technology has been rolled out to 100+ airports in the US as of yesterday. | 🚗 Jaguar is undergoing a rebrand.
• ⚖️ Bill Hwang, founder of the now-defunct Archegos Capital Management, was sentenced to 18 years in prison for fraud and market manipulation; prosecutors said his firm's collapse wiped $100 billion in market value.

*From our partners: ⌛ The run of the Mag 7 (Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Tesla) is winding down… But The Motley Fool predicts a new member, a company making big inroads in AI & cybersecurity. Read more at The Motley Fool.

SPORTS, MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT

• ⚾🏆 Tigers starter Tarik Skubal was unanimously named AL Cy Young, while Braves starter Chris Sale earned the NL Cy Young; both awards are their first. | 🏀 UConn women’s head coach Geno Auriemma became the winningest coach in NCAA D-1 basketball history, with his 1,217th career victory.
• 📽️ Rust, the Western movie starring Alec Baldwin, made its world premiere at a film festival in Poland; it featured a dedication to cinematographer Halyna Hutchins, who Baldwin fatally shot in an on-set accident in 2021.
• 🔄📲 Instagram will soon allow users to reset their recommendation algorithms.

SCIENCE, SPACE & EMERGING TECH

in partnership with Nuts.com

• 🥽 Microsoft is bringing Windows 11 to the Meta Quest 3 mixed-reality headset starting next month.
• ⛰️ A hiker in the Italian Alps accidentally discovered traces of a 280 million-year-old ecosystem, including footprints, plant fossils, and even the imprints of raindrops.
• 🎓 Ranga Dias, the physicist who claimed to have discovered a room-temperature superconductor with his colleagues but was later found by investigators to have committed data fabrication, has exited his role at the University of Rochester.

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MISCELLANEOUS

• 🪥🦠 Batches of Tom’s of Maine toothpaste were made using bacteria-contaminated water, per a recent FDA inspection; the agency also found a "mold-like substance" at the company’s toothpaste manufacturing firm.
• 🌀 A “bomb cyclone” storm has brought heavy rain and wind across the Northwest US since Tuesday, killing at least two people and causing widespread power outages; it’s expected to last through Friday. | 🇺🇸🇺🇦 The US temporarily closed its embassy in the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv yesterday, warning Russia might launch a "significant" missile attack.
• 🏛️ The bipartisan House panel investigating sexual-assault allegations against former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) was deadlocked along party lines over whether to release its report on Gaetz, President-elect Trump’s nominee for attorney general. (From the Left | From the Center | From the Right) | ⚖️ Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg sent a letter suggesting he postpone sentencing in President-elect Trump’s criminal hush money case until after his White House term, but opposing Trump’s push to dismiss the case entirely. (From the Left | From the Center | From the Right)

CLICKBAIT

• 🐬 A dolphin in the Baltic Sea has been talking to himself – and researchers think it's a sign he's lonely.

🚀🎓 Stat of the Day: A team of students at the University of Southern California are taking advice to “reach for the stars” literally. Last month, the USC Rocket Propulsion Laboratory club launched their self-built Aftershock II rocket in the Nevada desert, following months of collaboration between ~100 students from a variety of majors. Their mission shattered the record for highest altitude ever reached by an amateur-built rocket (89+ miles above Earth), and also set the record for fastest speed by an amateur rocket (~1 mile/second).

🤔 Did You Know? The Earth’s magnetic North Pole – aka the location to which all compasses point – is constantly shifting over time. This isn’t to be confused with the geographic North Pole, aka the northernmost point on Earth, which remains in the same place in the middle of the Arctic Ocean.

📰 Worth a Read: Why turkey gets cheaper around Thanksgiving → (The Hustle)

Yesterday, we finished a two-part series focused on how the Republican and Democratic Parties have changed in recent years – with Democrats, fresh off their 2024 victory, next up on the list.

❓ Our question to you: In general, do you prefer the Democratic Party of today, or the Democrats of previous decades?

• Democrats today: 28%
• Democrats in previous decades: 50%
• Unsure/other: 22%

Click here to read more of the most thoughtful longform responses.

+Note on sample size: We received 3,197 votes and 323 longform responses.

Barbie recently announced the newest members of its Inspiring Women Series. Among them is Maria Tallchief, a member of the Osage Nation and a trailblazer in the Native American community, as well as America's first prima ballerina.

• The doll was designed by Mattel with help from Maria's daughter, Elise.
• Maria was also featured on a US quarter released last year.

Some areas of the Atacama Desert (☝️) have gone 400 years without rainfall. Can you name the South American country where it's located?

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Chile