The daily business briefing: October 25, 2019

1. Twitter shares dive after disappointing earnings report

Twitter shares plunged by nearly 21 percent on Thursday after the microblogging site posted third quarter revenue and profit that fell short of expectations. Revenue climbed to $824 million, a 9 percent increase from a year earlier but below the $874 million analysts expected, according to Refinitiv. Profit plummeted by 95 percent to 5 cents a share, down from $1.02 a year earlier. Twitter chalked up the disappointing quarter to low summer ad demand, product glitches, and other advertising problems. "Unfortunately we had some missteps," Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said during a call with analysts. He said, however, that the advertising problems had been pinpointed and fixed, as have other issues that dogged the company in recent years. "We have a lot more agility," Dorsey said.

The New York Times The Wall Street Journal

2. Boris Johnson drops insistence on October Brexit, calls for early election

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Thursday dropped his vow to lead the U.K. out of the European Union at the end of October with or without an approved Brexit deal, two days after Parliament rejected his call to fast-track approval of his new Brexit deal. Johnson instead called for an early election in December, saying it was now the only way to break the impasse over Brexit. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said that as long as the EU signs off on the latest Brexit delay and Johnson agrees to rule out a potentially disastrous no-deal Brexit off the table, "we absolutely support a general election."

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The Associated Press BBC News

3. Amazon shares dive after disappointing quarterly earnings

Amazon shares dropped by 9 percent in after-hours trading on Thursday after the e-commerce giant reported third-quarter profit that missed Wall Street's expectations. Amazon reported earnings of $4.23 per share, compared to the $4.62 expected by analysts surveyed by Refinitiv. The company also gave bleak revenue guidance for the all-important holiday shopping season. The news set off alarms for investors already concerned about when Amazon will start showing benefits from massive investments it is making in numerous areas, including speeding up shipping, growing its cloud business, and producing films and TV shows.

CNBC

4. Top Trump administration student-loan official resigns, calls system 'broken'

A senior Trump administration student-loan official, A. Wayne Johnson, said Thursday that he was resigning and calling for canceling most outstanding student-loan debt, The Wall Street Journal reported. Johnson was hired by Education Secretary Betsy DeVos as chief operating officer at the Office of Federal Student Aid in 2017, and he later became the agency's chief strategy and transformation officer. After overseeing the $1.5 trillion student-loan portfolio, he said he came to see that the student-loan system was "fundamentally broken." He is proposing forgiving up to $50,000 in debt per borrower, and giving a tax credit to those who have already paid their debt. His proposal would cancel about $925 billion in debt. Johnson reportedly plans to run for a Georgia seat in the U.S. Senate.

The Wall Street Journal MarketWatch

5. Stocks flat ahead of more corporate earnings

U.S. stock index futures were mixed early Friday as investors braced for another flurry of corporate earnings reports. Futures for the Dow Jones Industrial Average were down, while those of the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq were up, but all by less than 0.1 percent. The Dow edged down by 0.1 percent on Thursday, while the S&P 500 gained 0.2 percent and the Nasdaq rose by 0.8 percent. On Friday, the market will continue to focus partly on corporate earnings, with AB InBev, Barclays, and Verizon among the major companies reporting before trading begins. Barclays reported a net loss for the quarter after being hit with $1.8 billion in insurance claims, but its investment banking unit had higher profits.

CNBC