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PayPal craters on earnings miss, weak 2026 outlook, and leadership change

PayPal fell over 16% in premarket trading Tuesday after the digital payments company posted weaker-than-expected Q4 results and 2026 profit guidance, alongside a surprise leadership change.

For the quarter ended December 31, revenues increased 4% year on year to $8.7 billion, missing the $8.8 billion estimate, while adjusted earnings per share rose 3% to $1.23, also below the expected $1.28, per LSEG. The company forecast full-year adjusted profit for 2026 to decline in the “low-single digits” or be “slightly positive,” well below Wall Street forecasts for roughly 8% growth.

Results were dragged down by softer US retail spending and a slowdown in its online branded checkout business, which PayPal said grew “below our expectations,” rising just 1% year over year in Q4, down from 6% a year earlier.

Separately, PayPal said its CEO, Alex Chriss, will be replaced by HP CEO Enrique Lores, effective March 1. “While some progress has been made in a number of areas over the last two years, the pace of change and execution was not in line with the Board’s expectations,” the company said in a statement.

In December, PayPal announced it applied to become a US bank with the FDIC and Utah regulators to support small-business lending, adding to its existing European banking license.

Results were dragged down by softer US retail spending and a slowdown in its online branded checkout business, which PayPal said grew “below our expectations,” rising just 1% year over year in Q4, down from 6% a year earlier.

Separately, PayPal said its CEO, Alex Chriss, will be replaced by HP CEO Enrique Lores, effective March 1. “While some progress has been made in a number of areas over the last two years, the pace of change and execution was not in line with the Board’s expectations,” the company said in a statement.

In December, PayPal announced it applied to become a US bank with the FDIC and Utah regulators to support small-business lending, adding to its existing European banking license.

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Claude Cowork’s plug-ins the newest reason for software stocks to crater

“Claude Cowork’s new plug-ins” have joined “Microsoft’s cloud business growth poised to decelerate by half a percentage point” and “the launch of Claude Cowork” as the latest reasons to send software stocks into the abyss.

Anthropic’s new tools for Cowork, a computer assistant on mental steroids, are doing outsized damage to stocks linked to the legal industry on Tuesday, but also likely weighing on the entire software complex. The iShares Expanded Tech Software ETF is down 3.4% as of 10 a.m. ET, with DocuSign, Atlassian, Salesforce, Workday, Adobe, and ServiceNow all slammed.

The chatbot maker said these plug-ins were “especially powerful for tailoring Claude to specific job functions,” and lawyers aren’t the only folks who will feel a little itchy under the collar upon seeing that.

As previously discussed, these plug-ins run the gamut in terms of applicable professional domains: in addition to legal, there’s productivity, enterprise search, sales, finance, data, marketing, customer support, product management, and biology research, as well as a meta plug-in to create and customize other plug-ins.

Anthropic’s legal plug-in for Claude Cowork prompts rush out of legal software and publishing stocks

Anthropic’s new tools for Cowork, a computer assistant on mental steroids, are doing outsized damage to stocks linked to the legal industry on Tuesday, but also likely weighing on the entire software complex. The iShares Expanded Tech Software ETF is down 3.4% as of 10 a.m. ET, with DocuSign, Atlassian, Salesforce, Workday, Adobe, and ServiceNow all slammed.

The chatbot maker said these plug-ins were “especially powerful for tailoring Claude to specific job functions,” and lawyers aren’t the only folks who will feel a little itchy under the collar upon seeing that.

As previously discussed, these plug-ins run the gamut in terms of applicable professional domains: in addition to legal, there’s productivity, enterprise search, sales, finance, data, marketing, customer support, product management, and biology research, as well as a meta plug-in to create and customize other plug-ins.

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Western Digital announces additional $4 billion in share buybacks, with management poised to unload its remaining stake in Sandisk

For Western Digital, patience is about to prove a virtue. Another 7.5 million shares of its old flash drive business — which became Wall Street’s hottest stock — will soon hit the market in a big boon for its balance sheet.

Management announced an additional $4 billion for its share buyback authorization this morning, and it’s not tough to tell why they’re feeling flush.

In the original spin-off of Sandisk on February 21, 2025, Western Digital distributed most of the shares of the flash drive business to its own shareholders, but kept just under 20% for itself, staying below that threshold for regulatory and accounting purposes.

“As you probably know, we still have 7.5 million Sandisk shares, and it’s our intention to monetize those shares before the one-year anniversary of the separation,” Chief Financial Officer Kris Sennesael said on the conference call following earnings last week. “Likely in a similar transaction that we have done before, meaning it’s a debt-for-equity swap, and so the proceeds will be used to further reduce the debt.”

That one-year anniversary is drawing near. And as if we needed another “tell” that this is imminent, JPMorgan moved Sandisk to “a not rated designation for policy reasons because of restriction” on Monday. JPMorgan was a co-lead bookrunner for the June 2025 offering that was used to culminate the first phase of this debt-for-equity swap.

WDC sold about 74% of the 28.8 million shares it retained in June of last year, generating about $880 million to retire debt in a tax-efficient manner. The company stands to be able to retire $5 billion in debt through the release of about one-third as many shares this time around!

(Would even more patience and a delay to this spin-off or the first debt-for-equity swap have been even better? Well, yes, but you can’t win ’em all.)

Sandisk has traded more than 18 million shares per day, on average, over the past month. Unless this offering provides an attractive excuse to sell (the same way President Donald Trump’s decision to nominate Kevin Warsh to lead the Fed kneecapped the precious metals rally), 7.5 million shares is something that the market would easily be able to absorb at anything close to the current level of enthusiasm.

They say if you love something, set it free. If it retires $5 billion in debt for you, it was meant to be.

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Max Knoblauch2h

Disney names parks chief Josh D’Amaro as next CEO, effective next month

Disney has selected its head of parks, Josh D’Amaro, as the successor to CEO Bob Iger. D’Amaro will take over the chief exec role on March 18, 2026. Disney shares climbed in premarket trading.

The decision follows another lengthy CEO search for the entertainment juggernaut. Prior to Iger’s 2022 return, the company’s previous CEO was Bob Chapek, who had served as the head of parks (and succeeded Iger after Iger’s first stint in charge of the House of Mouse).

D’Amaro has led the company’s highly profitable experiences unit, which includes parks and cruises, since 2020. That division booked about 60% of Disney’s profit in 2025.

The incoming exec is relatively unknown in Hollywood — an issue Chapek was unable to satisfactorily overcome — but has successfully managed the company’s relationships globally.

“[D’Amaro] has an instinctive appreciation of the Disney brand, and a deep understanding of what resonates with our audiences, paired with the rigor and attention to detail required to deliver some of our most ambitious projects. His ability to combine creativity with operational excellence is exemplary,” Iger said in a statement.

Josh D’Amaro Named Next Chief Executive Officer of Disney | The Walt Disney Company

Josh D’Amaro Named Next Chief Executive Officer of Disney | The Walt Disney Company

D’Amaro has led the company’s highly profitable experiences unit, which includes parks and cruises, since 2020. That division booked about 60% of Disney’s profit in 2025.

The incoming exec is relatively unknown in Hollywood — an issue Chapek was unable to satisfactorily overcome — but has successfully managed the company’s relationships globally.

“[D’Amaro] has an instinctive appreciation of the Disney brand, and a deep understanding of what resonates with our audiences, paired with the rigor and attention to detail required to deliver some of our most ambitious projects. His ability to combine creativity with operational excellence is exemplary,” Iger said in a statement.

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Anthropic’s legal plug-in for Claude Cowork prompts rush out of legal software and publishing stocks

The threat of AI disruption has wreaked havoc upon software stocks over the past few months, with more powerful tools launched by Anthropic a catalyst for the selling. True to form, thanks to some new plug-ins recently added to Claude Cowork, legal software and publishing companies are facing intense selling pressure.

Anthropic, the maker of Claude, rolled out a series of plug-ins on Friday that could be added to Cowork for paying subscribers. One of them specializes in legal tasks, to “review documents, flag risks, and track compliance.”

Shares of RELX (owner of Lexis Nexis), Thomson Reuters (owner of Westlaw), and Legalzoom.com are getting hammered in premarket trading on Tuesday. One distinction: the first two companies offer proprietary data, which may insulate them a little better from the analytical threat from Claude, while LegalZoom’s business of providing legal services may be more directly threatened by the relatively low barrier to entry of using Claude Cowork instead.

Perhaps these fresh capabilities from Claude explain why the iShares Expanded Tech Software ETF dropped more than 2% on Friday and continued to struggle on Monday. Other plug-ins help with productivity, enterprise search, sales, finance, data, marketing, customer support, product management, and biology research, as well as a meta plug-in to create and customize other plug-ins.

Even without plug-ins, there have been many tales of legal professionals and laypeople alike turning to chatbots for help in this domain. Per Business Insider, short seller Andrew Left has turned to Claude to analyze legal documents and draft letters after facing allegations of market manipulation.

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J. Edward Moreno4h

Pfizer beats Q4 estimates, releases mid-stage GLP-1 trial results, and maintains guidance for full-year 2026

Pfizer slipped in premarket trading, down more than 4.5% as of 8:15 a.m. ET, after it reported earnings that beat Wall Street estimates, reaffirmed its full-year guidance, and released mid-stage trial results for its upcoming weight loss drug.

For the last three months of 2025, Pfizer reported:

Adjusted earnings per share of $0.66, compared to $0.57 analysts polled by FactSet were expecting.
Revenue of $17.6 billion, compared to $16.8 billion the Street was penciling in.

For the full-year 2026, Pfizer expects:

Annual adjusted earnings per share to hit between $2.80 to $3.00, compared to $2.97 analysts are currently expecting.
Annual revenues to hit between $59.5 to $62.5 billion, compared to $60.9 billion analysts are penciling in.

The company also released mid-stage trial results for its monthly weight loss shot, which it recently acquired through its purchase of Metsera. The results showed patients lost over 12.3% of their body weight at 28 weeks.

While the amount lost is in line with products already on the market, it is the first sign that less frequent dosing could still produce results. Late last year, Pfizer won a bidding war against Novo Nordisk, purchasing obesity biotech Metsera for $10 billion.

The pharmaceutical giant is working to reignite growth after demand for its COVID-19 products has waned and as some of its biggest moneymakers get nearer to the end of their patents’ lives.

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