The daily business briefing: November 9, 2022

Facebook-parent Meta Platforms is laying off thousands of employees starting early Wednesday, The Wall Street Journal reported. The newspaper said CEO Mark Zuckerberg confirmed the cuts in a meeting with hundreds of executives. Meta said it would be laying off about 13 percent of its employees, with more than 11,000 employees being cut across numerous departments. "I want to take accountability for these decisions and for how we got here," Zuckerberg wrote in a letter to employees, The New York Times reported. "I know this is tough for everyone, and I'm especially sorry to those impacted." The Meta layoffs are the biggest yet in a series of announcements of cutbacks at big technology companies.

Disney shares fell as much as 10 percent in after-hours trading on Tuesday after the entertainment giant reported disappointing quarterly revenue and profits. Disney said a global advertising slowdown and other factors contributed to the miss, as did higher-than-expected streaming losses. Quarterly revenue came in at $20.2 billion, compared to an average analyst estimate of $21.3 billion, according to Bloomberg. Adjusted earnings per share came in at just $0.30, compared to the $0.51 expected. Disney+ subscriber numbers offered a bright spot, with net additions of 12.1 million, up from the 9.4 million analysts expected, thanks to a strong slate of new content. The company warned core subscriber growth was likely to be lower in the next quarter.

Elon Musk has sold nearly $4 billion worth of Tesla stock since Oct. 27, when he completed his $44 billion deal to acquire Twitter, according to Tuesday news reports. Musk had already sold $15.4 billion in the electric car company's shares since his agreement to buy Twitter was announced earlier this year. It wasn't immediately clear whether Musk was raising money to cover the purchase of the social media company, or to shore up the company after the losses it has suffered on his watch. Many advertisers have halted spending on Twitter since Musk took over, with some expressing concerns about his plans to ease restrictions against misleading and offensive posts. Musk said last week that "activist groups" were scaring away ad buyers, resulting in a "massive drop in revenue."

U.S. stock futures fell slightly early Wednesday as control of Congress remained uncertain after Tuesday's midterm elections. Futures tied to the Dow Jones Industrial Average were down 0.2 percent at 6:45 a.m. ET. S&P 500 and Nasdaq futures were down 0.1 percent. Stocks have gained in three straight sessions. The Dow and the S&P 500 rose 1.0 percent and 0.6 percent, respectively, on Tuesday, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq gained 0.5 percent. Republicans appeared poised to take over control of the House, but with a smaller-than-expected majority. Democrats' chances of narrowly controlling the Senate got a boost when John Fetterman flipped Pennsylvania's Senate seat for the party, beating Mehmet Oz. Divided government means gridlock, which markets tend to like.

The prime minister of the small Pacific island nation of Tuvalu on Tuesday urged world leaders at the COP27 climate summit in Egypt to reach a non-proliferation treaty modeled after anti-nuclear-arms pacts to bar further fossil-fuel production. "We all know that the leading cause of climate crisis is fossil fuels," Tuvalu Prime Minister Kausea Natano said. "It's getting too hot and there is very (little) time to slow and reverse the increasing temperature. Therefore, it is essential to prioritize fast-acting strategies." He said his nation had joined Vanuatu and other nations to push the proposal, one of several calls for more aggressive action to fight climate change, especially by rich nations like the United States that are the leading sources of the greenhouse gases that are warming the planet.