🌀 NBCUniversal spinoff

Comcast shares rose over 4% on Monday on the news that the telecom behemoth is spinning off NBCUniversal and Sky from its cable portfolio.

• Comcast initially jumped as high as 25% in early trading, with the deal leaving management to focus on its core verticals of cable, wireless, and business services. 

• NBCUniversal and Sky will form a new publicly traded company, similar to Versant Media, the holding company of CNBC and MS NOW that Comcast officially spun off in January. 

• Bravo, one of Comcast’s most lucrative properties, will remain part of NBCUniversal in the deal. 

• The Universal theme parks and studios will also come with the new spinoff entity, along with Telemundo and Peacock.

• Mike Cavanagh, the co-CEO of Comcast, will become the CEO for NBCUniversal, according to CNBC. 

The spinoff will be completed in about a year, according to a Comcast company statement. Its shareholders will also own shares in NBCUniversal, according to the same statement.

The Takeaway

For decades, media companies pursued vertical scale, with entertainment companies finding advantages in not just being a television network or a production studio but finding a way to bundle their movie studio, their theme park business, a cable business, toy licensing operation, publisher, news network, sports portfolio, and now streamer into one big attractive package. 

However, the definitive advantages of these synergies and that scale aren’t free. Wall Street likes simple companies: if you’re a growth stock, they want to see that stock rise and that monopoly grow; if you’re a value stock, they want you to print earnings. But if you’re one of these media conglomerates, you’ve got some divisions that print money, some divisions that promise to own the future, and that confuses traders and complicates allocation strategies, which costs you money. Now, media conglomerates are trying to decouple that. 

Let’s look at whose prediction-market odds have shifted the most since the start of the tournament, conditional upon making the Round of 32. One big takeaway is that Argentina and France have dramatically outpaced their pre-World Cup expectations even after accounting for the boost from just surviving the group phase. Lionel Messi and Argentina's baseline conditional title odds jumped from 9% to 20%, while Kylian Mbappé and the absurdly stacked France squad went from 16% to 23%. Both were known to be dangerous, but they have emerged to look much more so now that we’ve seen them in action.

Others looking a lot better for deep tournament runs? The Netherlands, Colombia, Mexico, and the US, each of whom is up 2 percentage points in their odds to make the Final, while England is also up 4 points in its odds to make the semifinals — though the Three Lions’ conditional odds to make the Final are down because of Argentina’s increased threat on the same side of the bracket.

Who’s down? Subscribe to Scoreboard. 

The long-awaited housing bill aimed at boosting the housing supply and lowering housing costs arrived at President Trump’s desk yesterday. 

As far as millions of people in the US are concerned, the housing legislation can’t really come soon enough, with the nation’s youngest would-be homebuyers locked out of the market by home prices that have soared far above the rate of their pay in recent years.

See the gap between home prices and wages for adults under 40, charted

• 1 p.m. ET: 🇨🇮 Côte d'Ivoire vs. 🇳🇴 Norway: The Ivory Coast has been on a great run this tournament but will go up against a Norwegian team that has a 47% chance of winning this one before overtime. 

• 5 p.m. ET: 🇲🇽 Mexico vs. 🇪🇨 Ecuador: Mexico is the home team and is favored to win this one, with a 46% chance they do so within 90 minutes plus stoppage time. 

• 9 p.m. ET: 🇫🇷 France vs. 🇸🇪 Sweden: Tournament heavyweight France is the overwhelming favorite here, with a 79% chance of winning it in 90 minutes plus stoppage time. The loser? New York, as two countries with outstanding public transportation systems are about to find out that we keep our stadium in a swamp in New Jersey accessible only by a dark, dismal place called “Secaucus.” 

*Event contracts are offered through Robinhood Derivatives, LLC — probabilities referenced or sourced from KalshiEx LLC or ForecastEx LLC.

• May US Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) released at 10 a.m. ET

• Postmarket earnings expected from: Nike and Constellation Brands