WSJ : Elon Musk’s Starlink Satellite-Internet Service Battles Dish Over Airwaves

Elon Musk’s Starlink Satellite-Internet Service Battles Dish Over Airwaves
SpaceX works to convince the Federal Communications Commission that 5G network operators would crowd its airborne turf

Elon Musk’s rocket company recently won regulatory approval to provide satellite-internet service to planes, boats and recreational vehicles. But the company’s battles in Washington and with rival users of the airwaves are just beginning.

Space Exploration Technologies Corp., better known as SpaceX, is urging the Federal Communications Commission to avoid making new rules that it says would hobble its Starlink internet service, which depends on a swarm of low-flying satellites. That has put the company and satellite operators like OneWeb and Kepler Communications Inc. at odds with Dish Network Corp. DISH 1.55% and others that want the FCC to open more room on the spectrum for fifth-generation wireless service.

Both sides have stepped up their lobbying at the FCC and on Capitol Hill. SpaceX last month urged Starlink customers to sound alarms about any rule changes by writing to the regulator, an appeal that has generated more than 95,000 comments to the commission.

Dish, a satellite operator co-founded by telecom mogul Charlie Ergen, has said it is betting its future on 5G wireless service closer to the ground. Mr. Ergen’s allies in the dispute include the wealth-management firm of technology entrepreneur Michael Dell.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy is among the congressional leaders who have stepped into the fray. He urged the FCC not to disrupt the “innovation and investment made by satellite operators” in the spectrum to help them keep a technological edge over Chinese rivals, according to a June 17 letter viewed by The Wall Street Journal. The California Republican also said the length of time the FCC has spent on its review had created uncertainty for satellite companies.

The commission has for years been mulling proposals to safely expand the usage of wireless frequencies that sit above 12 gigahertz. Those frequencies have long carried TV transmissions for Dish and DirecTV. Newer satellite-internet companies joined the band in recent years under strictures requiring that each satellite avoid drowning out its neighbors’ spaceborne signals.

The rule-making process has no time limit and the commission could opt to make no changes at all.

At stake is a swath of wireless frequencies worth tens of billions of dollars if past auctions for other licenses are any guide. SpaceX and Dish both say their technologies can link the millions of Americans who still lack a high-speed internet connection—provided that the companies have enough wireless spectrum available.

Dish said that cellular-technology advances prompted it to lobby the FCC to further loosen its spectrum rules to support future 5G service.

Executives at Starlink, which transmits data from satellites in much lower orbits than Dish, objected to that plan alongside other satellite operators. The company, citing its own analysis, said in a recent FCC filing that Dish’s plan would allow companies to create loud signals that would drown out more sensitive satellite transmissions.

David Goldman, senior director for satellite policy at SpaceX, said Dish and Mr. Dell’s investment firm are seeking to profit from the potential changes to the airwaves in question without meeting FCC requirements.

Dish public-policy chief Jeffrey Blum disputed SpaceX’s arguments and said that 5G advocates have met the commission’s requirements by backing up their assertions with engineering research.

“We’re confident the FCC will soon determine the best means to bring this spectrum into the FCC’s frequency pipeline,” said V. Noah Campbell, the chief of a company held by Mr. Dell’s investment firm.

Both sides are digging in for a potentially long fight. Dish and its allies have said it will take several years for the frequencies in question to work their way into smartphones and other machines that can take advantage of them. SpaceX has urged the commission to end its review.

Mr. Musk’s company has already used its rockets to blast around 2,600 of one version of its Starlink satellites into orbit and reported more than 400,000 subscribers for the internet service globally, according to a June presentation the company filed with the FCC. Starlink is available in large parts of the U.S., according to a map available on the service’s website. The company has also sought FCC permission to dramatically expand the Starlink fleet over time.

The closely held company doesn’t release financial information but was recently valued at around $125 billion. In addition to developing Starlink, SpaceX handles human and cargo space missions for NASA and launches U.S. spy satellites.

Starlink’s reach is primed to grow after the FCC on June 30 approved its request to serve moving vehicles like boats, recreational vehicles and airplanes. The decision helped Mr. Musk’s company expand its prospective customer base but didn’t settle the broader fight over spectrum.

The argument over a typically obscure federal license offered both sides a chance to trade more accusations. A Dish lawyer’s June 7 letter to regulators seized on Mr. Musk’s tweets about Starlink, calling them proof that the company was jumping the gun through “rule violations that are not kept secret but rather proclaimed from the mountaintops of social media.”

Mr. Goldman, the SpaceX satellite-policy director, replied in a June 8 letter that Dish’s “fanciful use of Twitter and low opinion of American consumers” took Mr. Musk’s tweets out of context, including one that committed to helping Ukraine’s government use its service.

SpaceX has tangled with other satellite operators in proceedings at the FCC but also has found ways to work with competitors. Last month, SpaceX and OneWeb told the commission that their satellite systems would be able to coexist. The companies said they conducted extensive, good-faith discussions to reach that conclusion.

WSJ : A $100,000 Dress, Perhaps, For the End of the World?

A $100,000 Dress, Perhaps, For the End of the World?
The economy is teetering. Currency is cratering. But the fanbase of extravagant haute couture? Ball gown big—and growing

“It’s really important for couture to be reflective of the times that we are in,” mused actor Julia Fox, vaping in a barely-there Mugler ensemble while in Paris during the haute couture shows this past week. She said that the collections she’d seen, including Schiaparelli and Iris van Herpen, felt relevant. And, to her, worth it—even if just to borrow: “People think couture is super overpriced, but the feeling that it gives you when you put it on is priceless. And in today’s day and age, you need to go where it feels good.”

Is Julia Fox—performative and charming—a modern-day Wallis Simpson, one of the most famous clotheshorses of all time? Ms. Simpson, the Duke of Windsor’s consort known for frequenting 1930s and ’40s couture houses such as Mainbocher and Balenciaga, was an invisible star of the new exhibition at Paris’ Musée des Arts Decoratifs, “Shocking! The Surreal World of Elsa Schiaparelli.” The show displays her most celebrated gown, a collaboration between Ms. Schiaparelli and Salvador Dalí featuring an erotic lobster.

Opened the same day as buzzy designer Daniel Roseberry’s latest runway show for Maison Schiaparelli, the exhibition draws a line between Ms. Schiparelli’s avant-garde designs and Mr. Roseberry’s current pieces such as Lady Gaga’s inauguration gown. Mr. Roseberry is one of a new generation of designers pulling the couture arm of his business into the now, stocking his front row with a curated mix of personalities including playwright Jeremy O. Harris, filmmaker Janicza Bravo and actors Hunter Schafer and Natasha Lyonne.

Haute couture, with prices that begin around $6,000 for a blouse and hover in the $50,000 to $60,000 range for a dress, can go as high as $1 million for major pieces, remaining out of reach for most fashion fans. But its demographic and influence have broadened markedly. To qualify as haute couture, a designation registered with the French authorities in 1945 (with roots that go back to the 18th-century aristocracy), designers still follow strict rules. They must show at least 25 looks in Paris twice a year, hand-finishing looks on site in separate ateliers for suiting and flowy pieces. But within those parameters, the extravaganza is inching toward inclusivity.

Traditionally, couture clients were very wealthy, very thin, very white socialites like Lynn Wyatt, now 85, and the late Nan Kempner, who could afford the craft-intensive, made-to-measure fashion. These “social X-Rays,” as Tom Wolfe called them in his 1987 book “Bonfire of the Vanities,” would debark to Paris for the runway shows twice a year, Vuitton trunks in tow, to sit on small gilded chairs and choose scores of outfits from Dior or Chanel. These garments would then be molded perfectly to their bodies in a series of painstaking fittings by les petits mains, or “little hands”—the women in white coats who make designers’ visions come to life.

Today, the front row is just as likely to include a Chinese investor such as Wendy Yu, an Indian businesswoman like Natasha Poonawalla, or a philanthropist and street-style star such as Swede Fredrik Robertsson, who runs a charity supporting LGBTQ causes and the hair-care company Björn Axén. Celebrities, always sprinkled in, are now firm fixtures, in both the audience and on the runway. At this past week’s couture shows in Paris, guests included much of the Kardashian clan including Kim Kardashian’s oldest child North West, “Selling Sunset” reality-show star Christine Quinn, Sigourney Weaver, K-Pop artist CL and more.

Many of the collections this week bore concepts and clothing that will ricochet well beyond carpeted mansions in Dallas and Dubai. Most notably at Balenciaga, creative director Demna (who goes by a mononym) showed a tour de force of a collection that combined the signature streamlined shapes of the house’s founder Cristóbal Balenciaga with a true sense of un-gimmicky innovation: aerodynamic face shields engineered by Mercedes-AMG F1 Applied Science; satin-lined Japanese denim; lifelike faux fur designed using high-definition photo mapping; and speaker bags in collaboration with Bang & Olufsen. Twenty of those bags, at €8,500 a pop, were immediately available to buy in the brand’s new open-to-the-public couture store on Avenue George V, a departure from the hushed private salons that typically define the couture experience.

Demna is invested in the new faces of couture, sending handwritten welcome notes to clients such as Mr. Robertsson. First attending couture shows nine years ago, he’s since become one of their most visible consumers, buying six to eight looks a year (never over €100,000, he said) and wearing them to events such as the Met Gala. To this season’s Jean Paul Gaultier show, designed by Balmain’s Olivier Rousteing, he wore a red velvet gown with a train held aloft by two nearly naked tattooed men. (Friends, he clarified, from the porn industry). Mr. Robertsson’s own numerous tattoos include one of Xanax on his hand, to remind him to keep calm.

When Mr. Robertsson first started buying couture, he was rejected by some of the more established houses because he was a man. He heard similar stories of women being turned away if they didn’t fit the look—or the size—of a house. Today, he’s one of a small but growing group of men that buy and wear couture. He has close relationships with both the advisors who take care of top clients as well as progressive designers such as Pierpaolo Piccioli of Valentino (who staged his own couture show in Rome yesterday), Iris van Herpen and Demna.

Mr. Robertsson said he collaborates closely with designers on these looks, customizing both the fit and certain design elements. They typically involve three fittings, one in Paris on a toile (muslin), then one in Stockholm and a final one in Paris. Payment structure varies by customer, but Mr. Robertsson tends to put half down up front and half at the end.

When he spots something he wants on the runway, he immediately texts his client-relations contact to secure it. “You have to be fast,” he said, as typically either only one is made, or only sold to a single customer per continent. Oftentimes, because he favors out-there looks, he’s in competition with celebrities’ stylists, who will borrow the garment for a huge event, making it less unique for the client. He almost bought the voluminous black Balenciaga gown worn by Rihanna at the 2021 Met Gala. “If I would have bought that and press had sent it to Rihanna, I would have been so pissed,” he said.

After spending a week pestering everyone I met with the question, “Is couture keeping up with the times?” the theater producer and artist Jordan Roth threw it back at me: “Are the times keeping up with couture?” As someone who is steeped in the art and theater worlds, who has been collecting couture since Clare Waight Keller was the designer at Givenchy, he considers couture to be another art form. He explained, “They are pieces of work that you may want to collect or perform.”

Barrons : How Tequila Might Make Diageo Recession-Proof

How Tequila Might Make Diageo Recession-Proof

Investors considering drinks maker Diageo have to ask themselves one question. Do Americans feel the same way about tequila that Winston Churchill felt about Champagne?

Britain’s World War II hero clarified his affection for the French bubbly in both good times and bad thus: “In victory I deserve it. In defeat I need it.”

Diageo (ticker: DGE.UK), the world’s largest spirits maker and the owner of more than 200 brands including Smirnoff vodka, Johnnie Walker whisky, and Tanqueray gin, has made a big marketing bet on tequila and the U.S. market.

It paid off handsomely. The Mexican spirit, through its brands Don Julio and Casamigos, has generated a third of organic group sales growth over the past five years.

In the half year that ended in December, Diageo sales rose nearly 16%. They were boosted by people indulging in spirits at home during the pandemic, when lockdowns prevented them from enjoying drinks in bars and restaurants. Premium products made up more than half of net sales.

Now it’s betting that the strategy of premiumization—or getting people to pay more for products perceived to be superior—will help it excel amid the highest inflation rates in 40 years. The risk of recession is undermining consumers’ willingness to spend.

London-based Diageo employs 27,783 people and has a market value of $103 billion. Most of its sales are in spirits, with a substantial portion also coming from beers through brands such as Guinness.

Diageo fetches 22 times this year’s expected earnings and trades in line with the valuations of its peers. Shares have declined about 10.5% so far this year.

Of the 14 ratings collected by FactSet , eight analysts give it a Buy and four have it as a hold. The average price target is 41.62 pounds sterling ($50.30), with shares currently trading at a recent £34.93.

With the company due to report half-year earnings on July 28, two analysts have the stock as a Sell. They wonder if the guidance given last November is too good to be true. The company forecast that organic sales will increase 5% to 7% through 2025. That compares to 4% to 6% growth between 2017 and 2019.

While the pandemic caused a deep recession in 2020, government stimulus measures meant that people tended to have money to spend. Liquor was one of the few things they could splurge on as many social activities were shut down.

The downturn that might come next could be very different. Consumers are having to cut back on other things as they fill up on gasoline that costs $5 a gallon.

“We see Diageo being at risk of cyclical headwinds as consumer spending comes under pressure,” Deutsche Bank analyst Mitch Collett wrote in a note. The current “valuation is stretched.”

RBC Capital Markets analyst James Edwardes Jones, who has a price target of £28, says hitting the company’s guidance will be tough.

“Diageo is a really impressive, well-managed company,” Jones says. “But I don’t see how they can defy gravity. The U.S. economy feels like it’s heading into a relatively dark place.”

Investors might also remember that Diageo set ambitious growth targets back in 2011 that it was unable to achieve. And after years of rapid growth in tequila sales, the market may be maturing.

But it’s also possible that Americans will keep buying Diageo’s premium spirits while reining in spending elsewhere.

If a recession leads people to drown their sorrows in margaritas, the company should hold up well.

Barrons : Tim Cook Keeps Pushing Apple in New Directions

Tim Cook Keeps Pushing Apple in New Directions

Apple shares haven’t escaped the 2022 bear market: The stock is down about 20% year to date. Nonetheless, Apple remains the largest U.S. company by market cap, at $2.3 trillion, with most of that generated during CEO Tim Cook’s 11 years at the helm. And Cook sees many opportunities ahead.

More than half of Apple’s revenue comes from the iPhone, with an updated lineup due this fall. But Cook, 61, has been pushing in new directions, including an aggressive expansion into new services. Apple now offers streaming video, music, and games, along with credit cards, digital payments, and other financial services. He has also re-energized the Mac business, shifting the iconic computers away from Intel processors to powerful new in-house chip designs.

Cook’s challenge is to move the growth needle for a company with nearly $400 billion in annual sales. Apple is rumored to be working on cars, although for now the focus is on automotive software. At Apple’s recent developers’ conference, the company unveiled an aggressive expansion of its CarPlay platform, which connects iPhones to cars, to include every display in the cockpit.

Meanwhile, attention turns to augmented and virtual reality. While Apple hasn’t officially announced plans, Cook recently hinted that AR/VR glasses are on the way. “I could not be more excited about the opportunities in this space,” Cook said in a recent video interview with China Daily. “Stay tuned and you will see what we have to offer.”

FT : Nobody does the beach better than the French

Nobody does the beach better than the French
The secret? It’s all deeply, reassuringly predictable

Each summer, I play my favourite beach game: guess the nationality. While I always hope to be surprised, it is ludicrously easy. The little Breton cove next to my parents-in-law’s house, and where my family and I have been lucky enough to holiday for the past 15 years, is very, very French. At the beginning of my annual two-week break, I take a stroll down the beach, past bronzed infants in frilly bikini bottoms, slim mamans in flattering one-pieces with sensible bobbed hair, a gaggle of papas standing around in well-cut, surprisingly short red or blue trunks and chatting to one another about boating conditions and the sad demise of the boulangerie at the port. French, French, French, I say to myself with amusement, until inevitably, I nearly come a-cropper on a pair of pinkish legs sticking out from a wind-breaker. Playing in the sand next to the legs are a couple of children in head-to-toe UV protection gear, and a dad trying to blow up a supermarket inflatable. English.

I feel instantly torn. I am also English, and drawn towards excessive beach paraphernalia with the best of them, yet for these two weeks a year, I am French, or at least I pretend to be. Why do I bother with this charade? Because the French do summer holidays better — more effortlessly, more stylishly — and I want in on it.

I have spent over a decade musing over why this is so, and I have come to the conclusion that it’s largely down to fact that it is all deeply, reassuringly predictable and formulaic — entrenched routines and habits that remain unchanged for a lifetime. There is no need to think out of the box because what is inside the box is very nice indeed.

This glorious predictability even extends to occupying the same bit of the same beach each year. I know that whenever I go down at low tide, the tall Tunisian writer will be leaning languidly against the sunny rampart wall, while his sons play football on the sand. We will say bonjour, and comment on the weather to one another, but no more. As the tide rises enough for a dip, the beach will begin to fill up with the same families I have seen year after year. There will be a brief period in which cousins and uncles and aunts reunite, greeting each other with la bise before spreading out their tassled hammam towels, laying claim to the exact same few square metres of sandy real estate they occupy every summer. If it were a spot the difference game, the only thing you might notice is a few more babies each year.

Beach comportment is regulated. No music, no barbecues, but plenty of smoking. There is an unspoken yet strict no-snacking rule, an enduring sniffiness about eating between meals still prevalent among les grandes familles. A packet of Prince biscuits — the ones with chocolate in the middle in the corrugated cardboard packets — will come out at 1600hrs pour le gouter, aka teatime, dispensed among the under-16s, but there isn’t a flask or sandwich in sight. The only picnickers are the Brits and the Dutch. Everyone else lunches at home — the beach empties out at 1245 on the dot.

Some might find it all rather rigid, but I find these expert vacanciers fascinating. In the middle of the beach, there is a group of five or six glamorous grand-mères, who in my view, are worthy of their own Canal+ drama. Toned and elegant, they arrive one by one at the beach for morning and evening swims, wearing dark glasses and their husbands’ worn striped shirts over Eres-style swimsuits, carrying nothing but a towel and a hairbrush. No need for anything else — they only have to walk two minutes up the path to their blue-shuttered homes. This is stealth wealth par excellence.

The predictability is also practical. The queues at the big supermarket are unbearable in August. The best times to go, according to those in the know, are 9am, when most people are jogging (yes, really), or 2pm, when everybody is having a coffee and a square of chocolate after lunch. Traffic is predictable too. So much so that there is even a traffic prediction website — “Bison Futé” — which highlights “les weekends rouges”, those key long weekends (around July 14 and August 15) when there is literally no point in getting in your car. And yet somehow, everyone does anyway. Because you are either a juilletiste (who holidays in July) or an aoûtien (who holidays in August), and that is just how it is.

On my first few holidays to Brittany, all those years ago, with my new French boyfriend and potential French in-laws, I tried even harder to blend in, for fear that my English beach inflatable side would inadvertently reveal itself, and the game would be up. I wore striped Breton tops and headscarves, carried a basket to the market, and asked in timid French for “une poignée de crevettes” at the fish stall, acutely aware of the queue accumulating behind me. It was all rather exhausting.

These days, I am grateful and privileged to be able to let both sides hang out, thanks to my half-English, half-French children. They run around in a funny mix of UV protection and frilly French swimwear, speaking a mangle of both languages — drawn to both the French and the English children on the beach. We occupy roughly the same spot of sand each year, and I now chat to a few of the mamans, although I haven’t worked up the courage to talk to the grand-mères just yet. We break the snacking rules frequently, but we always go home for lunch.

>>> US Research Calls

Research Calls

  • Upgrades:
    • Eversource Energy (ES) upgraded to Buy from Neutral at Guggenheim; tgt raised to $97
    • Howmet Aerospace (HWM) upgraded to Buy from Hold at The Benchmark Company; tgt $40
    • Interpublic (IPG) upgraded to Overweight from Equal Weight at Wells Fargo; tgt lowered to $33
    • Lennox Int'l (LII) upgraded to Outperform from Market Perform at Cowen; tgt $26
    • Omnicom (OMC) upgraded to Overweight from Equal Weight at Wells Fargo; tgt lowered to $73
    • The Vita Coco Company (COCO) upgraded to Buy from Neutral at BofA Securities; tgt raised to $12
    • Trane (TT) upgraded to Outperform from Market Perform at Cowen; tgt $18
    • XPO Logistics (XPO) upgraded to Overweight from Equal-Weight at Morgan Stanley; tgt $75
  • Downgrades:
    • Agilent (A) downgraded to Neutral from Buy at Citigroup; tgt lowered to $140
    • Audacy (AUD) downgraded to Underweight from Equal Weight at Wells Fargo
    • Clear Channel Outdoor (CCO) downgraded to Equal Weight from Overweight at Wells Fargo; tgt lowered to $1.50
    • Huntington Banc (HBAN) downgraded to Neutral from Overweight at Piper Sandler; tgt lowered to $13.50
    • iHeartMedia (IHRT) downgraded to Equal Weight from Overweight at Wells Fargo; tgt lowered to $9
    • Illinois Tool (ITW) downgraded to Neutral from Buy at UBS; tgt lowered to $185
    • Kennametal (KMT) downgraded to Sell from Neutral at UBS; tgt lowered to $19
    • Madrigal Pharmaceuticals (MDGL) downgraded to Neutral from Buy at B. Riley Securities; tgt lowered to $75
    • PayPal (PYPL) downgraded to Neutral from Buy at Redburn
    • Peoples Bancorp (PEBO) downgraded to Neutral from Overweight at Piper Sandler; tgt lowered to $30
    • Six Flags (SIX) downgraded to Neutral from Buy at Citigroup; tgt lowered to $26
    • Upstart (UPST) downgraded to Mkt Perform from Mkt Outperform at JMP Securities
    • Wipro (WIT) downgraded to Underperform from Hold at Jefferies; tgt lowered to $4.70
  • Others:
    • Blueprint Medicines (BPMC) initiated with an Outperform at Oppenheimer; tgt $80
    • DPCM Capital (XPOA) initiated with a Buy at The Benchmark Company; tgt $14
    • ImaRx Therapeutics (IMRX) initiated with a Buy at Chardan Capital Markets; tgt $18
    • Now (DNOW) initiated with a Buy at The Benchmark Company; tgt $13
    • Rocket Pharmaceuticals (RCKT) initiated with an Outperform at Raymond James; tgt $22
    • Vertex Energy (VTNR) initiated with an Outperform at Oppenheimer; tgt $18

>>> US Gapping down

Gapping down
In reaction to earnings/guidance:

  • UPST -17.6% (Q2 guidance), WDFC -9%, NUS -4% (guides Q2 revs below consensus), TSM -0.5% (June revs)

Other news:

  • GME -5.4% (CFO to step down names new CFO; also co has laid off employees company-wide according to Reuters)
  • TWTR -4.2% (Elon Musk's bid to buy co in jeopardy according to WaPo; also laying off 30% of its talent acquisition team according to WSJ)
  • MARA -3.7% (publishes June bitcoin production and miner data)
  • DQ -2% (provides H1 financial update for Subsidiary Xinjiang Daqo)
  • EBS -1.3% (enters into collaboration with Ridgeback to expand availability of Ebanga treatment for Ebola)
  • MTTR -0.7% (acquires VHT)
  • SMR -0.6% (announces effectiveness of Form S-1 registration statement from SEC )

Analyst comments:

  • KMT -3.6% (downgraded to Sell from Neutral at UBS)
  • SIX -2.9% (downgraded to Neutral from Buy at Citigroup)
  • IHRT -2.3% (downgraded to Equal Weight from Overweight at Wells Fargo)
  • A -2.2% (downgraded to Neutral from Buy at Citigroup)
  • MDGL -1.8% (downgraded to Neutral from Buy at B. Riley Securities)
  • ITW -1.3% (downgraded to Neutral from Buy at UBS)
  • HBAN -1.1% (downgraded to Neutral from Overweight at Piper Sandler)
  • WIT -1.1% (downgraded to Underperform from Hold at Jefferies)
  • PYPL -0.8% (downgraded to Neutral from Buy at Redburn)