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Good morning.
In Los Angeles, more than in any other major American city, the car is king. But one small, semi-suburban enclave is considering banning the area’s most storied shrines to car culture: drive-through restaurants. Officials in Culver City voted this week to extend a 45-day moratorium on new drive-throughs, first enacted in June, by 10 months.
Municipal staff say they’re already drafting plans to make the ban permanent, which will require approval from the local planning commission and city council. The issue was first raised earlier this year after residents at community meetings complained a proposed In-N-Out Burger drive-through could negatively affect traffic, air quality, odors and car idling, among other factors. The In-N-Out would be the first new drive-through since 1997 in the 5-square-mile community, which sits 10 miles west of downtown LA and is entirely surrounded by the neighboring metropolis. Under a permanent ban, eight existing drive-throughs would not be impacted. Their owners may even relish the cap on competition — bun, er, pun intended.
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*Presented by Sprott. Stock data as of market close on July 15, 2026.
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*Please see important PHYS disclosures below.
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In the years after it was acquired by eBay in 2002, PayPal became famous for an exodus of founders and early employees who went on to launch many of the world’s most transformative companies. Including Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, David Sacks, Reid Hoffman and Chad Hurley, the group was eventually nicknamed the PayPal Mafia.
More than two decades later, a now-struggling PayPal that has stood on its own since a 2015 spinoff must decide whether it has received an offer it can’t refuse. Reuters reported late Tuesday that rival Stripe and private equity firm Advent made a $53 billion takeover bid earlier this month, after initially reaching out in April. A flood of reports confirming the news on Wednesday sent PayPal shares up 17% to $55.50. A deal, however, is not in sight.
‘Premium,’ Says Who?
PayPal peaked in 2021 with a more than $280 billion market capitalization and shares in the company trading at more than $305. At the time, pandemic lockdowns were forcing people to shop online, drawing tens of millions of new users. But since then, PayPal shares have been on a downward slope worthy of Telluride: Even with Wednesday’s big gains, they have slumped 80% from their 2021 peak.
Diagnosing the problem is easy. First, PayPal’s branded checkout growth has slowed, registering 2% in the first quarter and 1% in the fourth quarter of 2025. In addition, rivals like Apple Pay, Google Pay, Klarna and Shopify’s Shop Pay have steadily conquered market share in the online checkout business. PayPal, which is slated to report second-quarter earnings later this month, made $1.1 billion in profit in the first quarter, down 14% from a year earlier. Solving these problems is not so easy, but former HP chief executive Enrique Lores was appointed in March to lead a turnaround. First, he’s cutting costs by $1.5 billion within the next three years, including 4,700 layoffs affecting 20% of staff. Second, he’s simplifying operations into three business units: Checkout Solutions & PayPal, Consumer Financial Services & Venmo and Payment Services & Crypto. With turnaround efforts underway, some analysts are skeptical that PayPal would sell itself at a nadir:
- PayPal traded at roughly $73 just one year ago, which could be used to argue Stripe and Advent’s current offer of $60.50 per share is a non-starter.
- “We do not think PayPal’s new CEO will likely embrace what could be viewed as a low-ball offer,” wrote William Blair analysts, adding they could see Stripe and Advent raising their offer to $70 per share.
  What’s in it for Them? While some say PayPal should wait for a better deal, privately held Stripe, valued at $159 billion earlier this year, has every reason to go now. Despite its recent struggles, PayPal still has a massive base of 439 million accounts, and Stripe’s customers are mostly merchants, meaning the acquisition would open up a whole new world of payments.
Written by Sean Craig
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Photo via Plaid
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The last truly new data source for fighting fraud landed nearly a decade ago. Fraud never slowed down.
Now, generative AI has made it cheap to fabricate identities, forge documents, and clone real people at scale. And the signals you trust are the very ones fraudsters count on:
- Those static IDs you check are already sitting in a breach file, ready to be bought.
- The security questions you ask rely on personal history that’s now easily obtainable.
- The document and biometric checks you run are no match for AI deepfakes.
The obvious fix is to add more checks, but that just punishes real customers. What fraudsters can’t fake is behavior: how your users actually move money across the financial ecosystem.
Plaid’s new report shows how to read that behavior — and spot fraudsters before they make it through onboarding.
Download the report.
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Netflix may have been declared the victor of Hollywood’s so-called Streaming Wars, but it hasn’t been able to enjoy many spoils at the end of the long campaign.
Now, with the company’s share price down some 20% so far this year and off more than 40% from a peak last summer, Netflix executives are hoping that some sure-to-be impressive numbers in today’s quarterly earnings report will begin to reshape an increasingly negative narrative.
Last Season On …
The big problem for Netflix? People are watching less Netflix. Executives have grown obsessive over a plague of second-season viewership drop-offs this year, according to a recent Bloomberg report. Hit Netflix originals such as Beef, One Piece and The Night Agent have each lost between 30% and 70% of their first-season audiences, according to Netflix’s own figures. One likely culprit is the lengthy gap between seasons; the first season of One Piece was Netflix’s biggest hit of the year … way back in 2023. Subsequent debuts have struggled to fill the void. In April, Netflix accounted for just 7.8% of total US viewership, trailing archrival YouTube’s 13.4%, its worst showing in about a year. That comes after the company said total viewing hours barely increased in the second half of its fiscal year 2025.
It’s igniting fears that Netflix’s old-school binge model doesn’t quite match Wall Street’s new favorite media industry buzzword: engagement. In response, Netflix leadership is workshopping all sorts of new ideas:
- Netflix announced partnerships this month to host video content from digital publishers such as BuzzFeed, Condé Nast and Penske Media. The company is also considering offering bundles for rival streaming services, such as Peacock, within its platform, sources recently told The Wall Street Journal.
- Executives have also considered adding a suite of always-on “live channels” to the service, per the WSJ, and the company has thrown its hat in the ring for 2030 and 2034 World Cup broadcast rights, according to a CNBC report. (Yes, this all amounts to the cable bundle you previously abandoned.)
Happy Ending? The good news for Netflix? Despite the array of challenges, profits have trended upward while subscriber churn remains among the lowest in the industry. Meanwhile, its industry peers have enough troubles of their own. Comcast is jettisoning its NBCUniversal division, while Paramount faces a legal fight with state regulators to complete its Warner Bros. acquisition, and a Wells Fargo Securities note earlier this week suggested Disney would be better off ditching its streaming service entirely. Which goes to show it can always be worse.
Written by Brian Boyle
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At Mizuho’s 2026 Technology Conference, leaders from across the technology ecosystem — including Lumentum, Salesforce, IBM and others — described a market shifting from building AI capability to deploying it at scale across enterprises, data centers and the infrastructure that connects them. Read more.
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Van Cleef’s signature four-leaf clovers are clearly bringing some luck to parent company Richemont. The Swiss group defied the wider luxury industry Wednesday when it reported a 20% surge in sales for the three months through June.
Richemont notched the seventh straight quarter of double-digit growth in its jewelry segment, where Van Cleef & Arpels necklaces and Cartier bracelets boosted sales 24%. Analysts had expected a less sturdy surge of nearly 14%. Meanwhile, watches (Richemont owns brands like Piaget and Cartier) jumped 8%, and fashion (see: Chloé and Alaïa) popped 9%.
The luxury sector overall, meanwhile, has struggled with depressed spending from big shoppers in China along with pickier spending habits around the globe.
Balancing Prestige and Price
Everyone from Love Island contestants to MLB players is decked out in Richemont-owned brands, and Taylor Swift is said to have given wedding guests Cartier watches. Richemont’s cultural cachet comes from a careful plan that has made the company’s brands simultaneously exclusive and accessible:
- Jewelry at all price points sold well for Richemont, which offers pieces that cost a (relatively) affordable few thousand dollars all the way up to one-of-a-kind creations that sell for more than $1 million. Richemont’s lowest tier of jewelry is still an aspirational buy for less affluent shoppers, and during tighter economic times, a Bernstein analyst told Reuters hardy jewelry may feel like a more lasting purchase than a new handbag or outfit. Rival luxury brands that are more focused on fashion, including Louis Vuitton-owner LVMH and Gucci-parent Kering, have seen sales falter.
- Richemont has also powered through global trends dragging down luxury sales. The Swiss group’s revenue rose by double digits in the greater China region, where a continued downturn in luxury spending has been setting back sector-wide sales since the pandemic. Sales in the Middle East also grew despite disruptions related to the Iran War. Sales in Japan and the Americas led the global pack, though, rising 36% and 27%, respectively.
Trend or Fad: Richemont’s shares jumped about 7% yesterday after it shared its expectation-beating results. Other luxury giants, including LVMH, Hermès and Kering, seemed to ride the rising tide.
Written by Jamie Wilde
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- AI Ex-Girlfriend: China implemented new rules cracking down on “AI-powered companion bots” in order to prevent people from developing an “emotional dependency” on AI tools that simulate relationships.
- Back to Earth: SpaceX shares traded below their $135 initial offering price for the first time on Wednesday, little more than a month after the company’s record-breaking debut.
- Last Day to Invest: You have until tonight to invest in EnergyX, a private $1B unicorn backed by General Motors and 50,000+ investors. Don’t miss your chance: Become a shareholder before midnight PT.**
**Partner
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Disclaimers
*Sprott Asset Management LP is the investment manager to the Sprott Physical Gold Trust (the “Trust”).
Important information about the Trust, including the investment objectives and strategies, applicable management fees, and expenses, is contained in the prospectus.
Please read the document carefully before investing. You will usually pay brokerage fees to your dealer if you purchase or sell units of the Trust on the TSX or the NYSE. If the units are purchased or sold on the TSX or the NYSE, investors may pay more than the current net asset value when buying units or shares of the Trust and may receive less than the current net asset value when selling them. Investment funds are not guaranteed, their values change frequently, and past performance is no guarantee of future results.
**Energy Exploration Technologies, Inc. (“EnergyX”) has engaged The Daily Upside to publish this communication in connection with EnergyX’s ongoing Regulation A offering. The Daily Upside has been paid in cash and may receive additional compensation. The Daily Upside and/or its affiliates do not currently hold securities of EnergyX.
This compensation and any current or future ownership interest could create a conflict of interest. Please consider this disclosure alongside EnergyX’s offering materials. EnergyX’s Regulation A offering has been qualified by the SEC. Offers and sales may be made only by means of the qualified offering circular. Before investing, carefully review the offering circular, including the risk factors. The offering circular is available at invest.energyx.com/.
Comparisons to other companies are for informational purposes only and should not imply similar results. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Market shortfall are forward‑looking estimates and are subject to substantial uncertainty. Investments in private placements, and start-up investments in particular, are long-term, illiquid, speculative and involve a high degree of risk and those investors who cannot afford to lose their entire investment should not invest in start-ups.
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