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Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) and Twitter (NYSE:TWTR) took action against the account of the Trump campaign and @TeamTrump late Wednesday, removing a post for violating policies around “harmful COVID misinformation.” YouTube (GOOG, GOOGL) also followed suit.
The posts were a video clip from a Fox News interview with President Trump about reopening schools, in which he claims children are “almost immune” to COVID-19.
“Children handle it very well,” he told reporters. “If you look at the numbers, in terms of mortality, fatalities… for children under a certain age… their immune systems are very very strong and very powerful. They seem to be able to handle it very well and that’s according to every statistical claim.”
The tech giants have faced heat in recent months, with some saying their censorship reach is going too far, while others say they are not policing enough.
Interestingly, Twitter left up a March post from outspoken Tesla CEO Elon Musk stating that “kids are essentially immune” from the coronavirus.
Equinix (EQIX -0.9%) has become a Google Cloud Premier Partner (GOOG +0.5%, GOOGL +0.4%), allowing for partner enterprises to more easily connect to Google Cloud.
That means linking Equinix’s Cloud Exchange Fabric with Google Cloud Interconnect services for multicloud offerings, and integrating Equinix SmartKey and Google Cloud External Key Manager for secure key storage, encryption and tokenization.
Equinix notes it currently houses more than 35% of Google Cloud on-ramps, in over 35 metros, via dedicated enterprise-leveraged or partner GCI services.
Rocket Cos. (RKT) sold 100M shares at $18/share in its initial public offering, raising about $1.8B, the company says in a statement.
Previously the parent of Quicken Loans planned to sell 150M shares at $20-22.
Shares are expected to start trading Thursday on the NYSE.
Following the IPO, Quicken founder Dan Gilbert will control 79% of the voting power of the common shares. Gilbert also owns the Cleveland Cavaliers.
According to its company description, Rocket Cos. provides real estate, mortgage and financial services through entities including Rocket Homes, Rocket Auto and Rocket Mortgage, the largest U.S. mortgage lender.
The weak demand does raise questions as to whether the hot tech IPO market, which features DoorDash (DOORD) later this summer, might be cooling.
Cowen’s Karl Ackerman (Outperform) cuts Western Digital’s (NASDAQ:WDC) price target from $70 to $50, saying demand challenges “across memory and storage call into question the amount of pull forward the industry witnessed in the first half of the year.”
Ackerman remains “confident” in WDC’s product ramp and market share potential.
RBC analyst Mitch Steves (Outperform) lowers WDC from $70 to $57, citing the “muted” demand that shows the “recovery appears to be taking longer than expected.”
Steves says Western Digital “is now a ‘show me’ story where gross margins will need to improve.”
Western Digital shares are down 14.3% to $38.10.
Wall Street analysts and SA contributors are Bullish on WDC, while the Quant rating stays on the sidelines at Neutral.
The popularity of Animal Crossing during the pandemic lockdowns helped boost Nintendo’s (OTCPK:NTDOY,OTCPK:NTDOF) fiscal Q1 profits up 428% Y/Y to 144.7B yen ($1.4B).
Net sales rose 108% to 358.1B yen.
Sales of the Nintendo Switch and Switch Lite consoles were up about 167% to 5.7M units.
