Advancing its climate pledge commitment to be net-zero carbon by 2040, Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) announced 26 new utility-scale wind and solar energy projects totaling 3.4 gigawatts (GW) of electricity production capacity, bringing its total investment in renewable energy in 2020 to 35 projects and more than 4 GW of capacity — the largest corporate investment in renewable energy in a single year.
Amazon has now invested in 6.5 GW of wind and solar projects that will enable the company to supply its operations with more than 18M megawatt hours (MWh) of renewable energy annually.
“Amazon is helping fight climate change by moving quickly to power our businesses with renewable energy,” said Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder and CEO. “With a total of 127 solar and wind projects, Amazon is now the biggest corporate buyer of renewable energy ever. We are on a path to running 100% of our business on renewable energy by 2025 — five years ahead of our original target of 2030.”
The 26 new wind and solar projects announced are located in Australia, France, Germany, Italy, South Africa, Sweden, the U.K., and the U.S. Amazon has now enabled wind and solar projects in California, Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Nebraska, North Carolina, Ohio, Texas, and Virginia.
French data privacy watchdog CNIL has fined Alphabet’s (NASDAQ:GOOG) Google €100M ($121M) for the way it manages cookies on its search engine – Bloomberg.
CNIL also slapped Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN) with a €35M fine for placing cookies, which are tracking devices, on people’s computers without consent, according to a statement on Thursday.
The companies were given a three-month ultimatum to make changes to the information they provide to users, or face additional daily fines of €100,000.
Google has also faced intense scrutiny from the European Commission, having been fined more than €8.2B in three antitrust cases.
EU data protection regulators’ powers have increased significantly since General Data Protection Regulation took effect in May 2018.
The law allows watchdogs for the first time to levy fines of as much as 4% of a company’s annual global sales.
Yesterday, the FTC and a coalition of states announced filing lawsuits against Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) charging the company with an illegal monopoly.
Wedbush (Outperform, $320 price target) analyst Michael Pachter says there is “certainly merit to the FTC’s allegations that Facebook has strengthened its competitive position” through the Instagram and WhatsApp acquisitions.
But Pachter is “skeptical that the FTC will prevail” as it would be hard to prove that Facebook “precluded competition.” He also doubts “a federal court will compel a divestiture” or that “a divided Congress will pass a law that forces such a result.”
KeyBanc (Overweight, $340) says “consumers do not appear to be harmed” by Facebook’s acquisitions, and the firm fails to see why a multiyear breakup process should take place. The firm says the suits “will likely be resolved with another fine and additional scrutiny on future M&A.”
Facebook shares are down 1.3% pre-market to $274.44.
Adobe (NASDAQ:ADBE): Q4 Non-GAAP EPS of $2.81 beats by $0.15; GAAP EPS of $4.64 beats by $0.53.
Revenue of $3.42B (+14.4% Y/Y) beats by $60M.
Total Digital Media ARR of $10.18B in-line with consensus; and Cash from operations of $1.8B vs. consensus of $1.60B.
Q1 Outlook: Revenue of $3.75B vs. $3.36B, GAAP EPS of $2.19 and Non-GAAP EPS of $2.78 vs. $2.59.
FY21 Outlook: Revenue of $15.15B vs. $12.81B, GAAP EPS of $8.57 and Non-GAAP EPS of $11.20 vs. $9.95.
Shares -1% PM.
Oracle (NYSE:ORCL): FQ2 Non-GAAP EPS of $1.06 beats by $0.06; GAAP EPS of $0.80 beats by $0.04.
Revenue of $9.8B (+2.0% Y/Y) beats by $20M.
Non-GAAP operating margin of 47% vs. 44.9% consensus and Short-term deferred revenue of $8.1B vs. $8.48B consensus.
Cloud services and license support of $7.11B vs. $7.04B.
Shares +1.8%.
