GM 

General Motors’ board of directors authorized a 9 cents per share dividend. The company hasn’t given shareholders a dividend since April 2020. Back then, the dividend was 38 cents per share. 

In 2020 the quarterly dividend was cut to preserve funds during the pandemic. While the dividend is significantly lower than before, it signals confidence from the executives. 

In addition, GM announced it would increase its share repurchasing program to 5 billion dollars, up 1.7 billion dollars compared to the original 3.3 billion. However, the company has not given a timeframe for the repurchases. 

Ford 

Ford faces a potential $1.7B punitive damage charge from a fatal rollover accident in 2014. The incident involved a blown tire on a Ford F-250 leading to a rollover accident and the death of a couple. 

The Georgia jury awarded the children of the deceased who died in the crash $24M. The jury allocated 70% of the fault in the case to Ford. 

The attorneys argued that the roofs on the 1999-2016 Super Duty trucks were dangerously weak. Ford allegedly knew of the dangers posed by the roofs based on internal testing. 

In addition, ford developed a more robust roof for its super duty pick-ups back in 2004 however, wasn’t used in the trucks sold until 2017

The state will receive three-quarters of the punitive damages under Georgia law for product liability cases.

Amazon 

Amazon paid $1 billion for the exclusive rights to be the provider of Thursday night football. The kickoff date will take place on August 25 for the preseason. The first regular season game will be on September 15, when the Chargers take on the Chiefs. 

Live games will start playing whenever people log into amazon.com and be displayed front and center of the home screen. In addition, Thursday night games will still be broadcasted in local cities. 

Also, Amazon has upgraded its X-ray technology to compute statistics in real-time. The data comes from Amazon’s AWS chips which have been sewn into player uniforms. 

Lowe’s

Lowes is awarding 55 million in bonuses for hourly work to help combat inflation. After the earnings call, CEO Marvin Ellison said following the earnings call that employees will start seeing bonuses on September 9. 

Vice president McFarland said, “We will continue to look for meaningful ways to improve our associates’ work-life balance while providing them with the tools to build a career at Lowe’s,” 

For example, during the earnings call, it announced it also offers the same workers limited-time discounts of up to 20% off household and cleaning products. 

Kraft Heinz

Kraft Heinz recalled about 5760 cases of Wild Cherry Capri Suns. Approximately 230,000 individual pouches have been affected. The cases affected by the recall are labeled with a “best when used by” date of June 25, 2023. 

Kraft Heinz discovered the issue when customers started complaining about the taste of the affected Wild Cherry pouches. The company said in a statement that a diluted cleaning solution was used on processing equipment and inadvertently introduced to the production lines at a factory.

Streaming Wars

Streaming overtakes cable viewership for the first time according to Nielsen’s Gauge rankings (“Nielsen is a global leader in audience measurement, data, and analytics, shaping the future of media”) 

Streaming viewership made up a total of 34.8% of TV consumption last month. Meanwhile, cable viewership represented 34.4% of TV consumption. Streaming consumption is up more than 1% from June’s report. In July alone, Netflix’s Stranger Things fans streamed 300,000,000 hours.