FILE PHOTO: E.W. Scripps Co. signage is displayed on a monitor on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., on Friday, June 3, 2016.
Michael Nagle | Bloomberg | Getty Images
E.W. Scripps is setting into motion what it calls a transformation plan for the broadcast station company — intended to generate growth for both earnings and its local TV stations.
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The company announced Wednesday that it’s targeting growth of between $125 million and $150 million in annual enterprise earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization by 2028. In order to get there, Scripps will go through a number of cost savings and revenue growth measures that lean on technology, namely artificial intelligence, CNBC can exclusively report.
“This will essentially be a reorienting of the entire company … with a much more agile and efficient cost structure,” CEO Adam Symson said in an interview with CNBC. “We have to act like a media startup. We’ve got to act like the company E.W. founded, because the marketplace cannot bear the legacy pace or legacy thinking.”
The company plans to outline more details about its efforts during its next earnings call with investors on Feb. 26, but Symson described making changes to the newsroom to alleviate journalists from administrative tasks and to focus more on gathering and reporting the news.
The company declined to comment on specific impacts to staffing as a result of the cost cutting, saying potential effects to jobs would be determined over the next several months.
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“Everything is on the table, but our goal is to always preserve the journalism and the sales, the two things that make up our customer relationship,” said Symson.
Scripps owns more than 60 local affiliate broadcast stations across 40 markets, including Ion, which has become a broadcaster of the WNBA and other pro sports games.
The company’s stock has dropped 70% in the last five years, a decline not unlike many of its media peers.
The revitalization for the almost 150-year-old Scripps comes as the company — as well as the broadcast industry at large — finds itself at a historically challenging moment.
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The broadcast station industry — which also includes publicly traded companies like Nexstar Media Group, Tegna, Sinclair and Gray Media — faces the same challenges as its cable and content studio peers, namely the defection of pay TV bundle subscribers for streaming alternatives.
As a result, the industry has been in pursuit of consolidation as it awaits key regulatory changes. Scripps itself has been an M&A target, with Sinclair recently making a hostile approach to merge with the company. Scripps has rejected such overtures.
Meanwhile, media outlets across print, digital and TV have been in the midst of massive layoffs in the last year. Paramount Skydance has cut thousands of jobs across the company, including at its CBS News, and most recently The Washington Post reportedly told staffers it would eliminate a third of its newsroom jobs.
The rise of AI has also fueled fears about mass layoffs, especially in newsrooms.
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In 2024 Scripps announced the creation of an AI team that would report to Laura Tomlin, Scripps’ chief transformation officer. Symson said her first order of business has been to “consolidate technology from across the company.”
Symson said Scripps’ move to implement new technology is not meant to replace journalism jobs with AI, but instead help newsrooms work more efficiently and ensure a long runway for local news.
“This cannot be a cost-cutting exercise in service to incrementally trying to improve margins from cutting product. That has proven to be the beginning of the end,” said Symson. “This really has to be about starting with our consumer understanding, what it is they need out of us, both from our news product as well as our sales product.”
Transformation efforts
This week, Symson gathered 200 leaders from across the company at Scripps’ headquarters in Cincinnati to outline the latest plan, which will be announced more broadly on Wednesday to Scripps employees and investors.
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The company will also reaffirm its most recent earnings guidance, noting it expects its 2026 financial performance to be lifted by midterm elections — local broadcast stations rely heavily on political advertising — as well as the airing of the Winter Olympics and upcoming World Cup on its affiliates this year.
Harini Logan, 14, from San Antonio, Texas, receives the trophy from Scripps CEO Adam Symson after winning the annual Scripps National Spelling Bee held at National Harbor in Oxon Hill, Maryland, U.S., June 2, 2022. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
Jonathan Ernst | Reuters
This transformation, with the vision tagline, “We Create Connection,” is the latest step in recent years for Scripps to find new avenues of revenue growth.
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“Scripps’ transformation effort is not unique, per se. Everyone in the space is cutting costs,” said analyst Dan Kurnos of Benchmark in a recent interview. “Last we checked, broadcast TV wasn’t the most rapidly growing segment of the media ecosystem. It’s just not as bad as cable.”
During a November earnings call with investors, Symson teased further initiatives the team has been working on, calling out its focus on “expense management.”
For the local media division, Scripps said its third-quarter expenses had decreased more than 4% year over year and the networks business saw expenses drop 7.5%, both due in part to “lower employee-related costs.”
Yet Kurnos said that Scripps has deviated from its peers with other moves, such as growing Scripps Sports with local media rights. Scripps’ networks now have the rights to air WNBA games, and the company has also been picking up the rights to NHL teams exiting their regional sports networks.
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“I think Scripps has been forced to reinvent themselves a few times,” Kurnos told CNBC.
President and CEO of E. W. Scripps Company, Adam Symson poses for a photo with WNBA Commissioner, Cathy Engelbert.
Courtesy: Scripps
While Scripps has rejected a merger with Sinclair, the company has been doing smaller deals on its own, such as offloading stations and a station swap with Gray Media, which is still pending approval. This week the company also agreed to sell its Court TV network for less than $125 million, according to a person familiar with the matter who declined to be identified speaking about internal matters.
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Symson acknowledged the need for consolidation as the industry forges ahead into a new era. But he fell short of saying it was a necessity, at least for Scripps, as some of his peers have said on recent public calls.
“Responsible consolidation is important for the industry, without question. But make no mistake about it, it is financial engineering,” said Symson. “It will create a tail wind for our business that investors should appreciate, and we will go after it, but it will not create the organic growth that we are talking about here.”
Symson’s history at Scripps runs deep and began in the newsroom. He started at the company as an executive producer of investigations and special projects at a Scripps-owned affiliate in Phoenix before joining the corporate parent in 2003 and taking over as CEO in 2017.
The latest transformation efforts follow similar shifts in 2023, when Scripps eliminated some anchor roles, added reporters in smaller markets and increased reporters’ wages, among other changes.
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“It is very personal to me. I think at this point, I’m the only CEO of a broadcast company that comes from a journalism background and from the newsroom,” said Symson. “What we do is too important for us to not go on the offense and aggressively transform the company in order to ensure that we’re a company that continues to thrive.”
Disclosure: CNBC parent Versant is carrying NBC Sports-produced Olympic coverage on its networks, including USA Network and CNBC.
A basketball finds nothing but net during practice before a 2024 NCAA Tournament game at PPG Paints Arena in Pittsburgh.
Charles LeClaire | Reuters
Prediction markets saw strong results from the Super Bowl, but it was just an appetizer for a banquet of sporting events in 2026 that are expected to drive surging volumes in event contracts.
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Kalshi saw record downloads during Super Bowl week, up 1,544% from the same time period last year, according to a report from market intelligence firm Sensor Tower. Daily active users jumped more than 1,100% to nearly 2 million on the day of the big game, the firm said.
That was almost three times the daily active users on sportsbook BetMGM, co-owned by MGM and Entain, which had 81% growth to 680,000 daily active users. Polymarket reported 59,000 daily active users and 264% growth over the previous year.
More than $1 billion was traded on Kalshi for the Super Bowl, up 2,700% according to the company. Founder and CEO Tarek Mansour told CNBC Tuesday that consumers are drawn by having lots of trading options for the game in one place.
“Our culture markets were huge this weekend. You know, ‘What [Bad] Bunny was going to perform’ was over $100 million in trading,” he said.
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Though prediction markets enable users to buy event contracts for a wide swath of financial, weather, pop culture and other events, sports have been driving the action and the profits.
Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev is pushing back against any investor concerns the Super Bowl was as good as it gets for trading on sports prediction markets.
“What we’re actually seeing is surprising us,” Tenev said on his company’s fourth-quarter earnings call on Tuesday. “In January, for instance, NBA contracts surpassed NFL in trading activity on our platform.”
Major sports events keep rolling, with the Winter Olympics offering a variety of betting options through Feb. 22. This weekend, fans will also get an eyeful during the NBA All-Star Weekend.
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March brings college basketball madness, with the NCAA Tournament taking off with Selection Sunday on March 15. The entire tournament typically brings in more gambling dollars than Super Bowl.
And then there’s the World Cup, kicking off 104 games in mid-June.
Kalshi has been aggressive in marketing, outspending Polymarket in the United States by about 19 times and outspending DraftKings by about 35%, according to Sensor Tower estimates.
Still, the American giants in sports betting remain dominant. DraftKings saw 5 million daily active users for the Super Bowl and FanDuel had 4.2 million, according to the Sensor Tower data.
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The CEOs of sportsbook market leaders FanDuel and DraftKings both told CNBC just before the game that they don’t see any cannibalization of their traditional sports betting business. They instead see real opportunity with sports and event contracts in states that haven’t legalized sports wagering.
Tenev said events contracts are the “fastest growing business in the company’s history.” Robinhood reported a 300% rise in “other revenue,” which is largely comprised of event contracts.
And the growth is accelerating. Robinhood reported 12 billion event contracts in 2025, and it’s already seen 4 billion contracts so far in 2026.
Disclosure: CNBC and Kalshi have a commercial relationship that includes a minority investment.
Payne Capital Management President Ryan Payne explains why tech earnings remain strong despite a recent dip and how AI hiring could help offset a wave of baby boomer retirements on ‘Mornings with Maria’.
Amazon is expanding its same-day prescription delivery service to nearly 4,500 U.S. cities and towns by the end of 2026, adding about 2,000 new communities, including statewide coverage in Idaho and Massachusetts.
The move deepens Amazon’s push into the prescription drug market, which it entered in 2018 through its acquisition of PillPack. The company is positioning faster delivery and subscription pricing as competitive advantages against traditional pharmacy chains.
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Amazon said the expansion comes as pharmacy closures, staffing shortages and transportation barriers make it harder for some patients – particularly in rural and remote areas – to access medications.
“Patients shouldn’t have to choose between speed, cost, and convenience when it comes to their medication, regardless of where they live,” said John Love, vice president of Amazon Pharmacy. “By combining our pharmacy expertise with our logistics network, we’re removing critical barriers and helping patients start treatment faster—setting a new standard for accessible, digital-forward pharmacy care.”
Boxes lie on a conveyor belt during Cyber Monday at Amazon’s fulfillment center in Robbinsville, New Jersey, U.S., Dec. 2, 2024. (Eduardo Munoz/Reuters)
The company said it improved delivery speeds across all 50 states and Washington, D.C., in 2025. Faster shipping is expanding into rural areas, including remote Alaska towns and parts of the Navajo Nation, where the nearest pharmacy can be nearly an hour away.
Close-up of an Amazon Pharmacy shipping label on a cardboard box, Reliez Valley, California, Feb. 9, 2025. (Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images)
Amazon is also integrating pharmacy services with One Medical, the primary care provider it acquired in 2023. Some One Medical patients can pick up prescriptions at in-clinic kiosks, and the company began filling select prescriptions at those electronic kiosks in December. One Medical operates on a $199 annual membership model.
In October, Amazon partnered with WeightWatchers to supply medications, including injectable GLP-1 obesity treatments, to its members. Amazon Pharmacy also offers the oral GLP-1 Wegovy pill.
Amazon packages seen on a conveyor belt at a warehouse facility. (Luke Sharrett/Bloomberg via Getty Images / Getty Images)
The company continues to promote cost-saving programs, including Prime Rx discounts of up to 80% on generics and 40% on brand-name drugs for uninsured members, as well as RxPass, a $5-per-month subscription available in 48 states for more than 50 common medications.
Novo Nordisk President and CEO Mike Doustdar joins ‘Mornings with Maria’ to discuss the launch of the first GLP-1 weight-loss pill in the U.S., the lawsuit against Hims & Hers and talks with the Trump administration on drug pricing.
GLP-1 weight-loss drugs are now the focus of a heated legal battle, with a leading drugmaker warning that copycat versions pose a risk to patient safety.
“When you go and try to source raw materials from China or unknown sources, put it in an injection, and sell knockoff medication, there is something wrong with this,” Mike Doustdar, president and CEO of Novo Nordisk, told FOX Business’ Maria Bartiromo.
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Novo, best known for its blockbuster diabetes drug Ozempic and weight-loss treatment Wegovy, has filed a lawsuit against Hims & Hers Health, accusing the telehealth company of selling compounded, unapproved versions of its semaglutide-based medications, including a copycat version of its newly launched daily pill.
Doustdar said the introduction of the oral option broadens access for patients who are reluctant to use injections, but he sharply criticized what he described as widespread “mass compounding” of GLP-1 drugs by telehealth firms.
A woman injects a GLP-1 injection into her stomach in this undated photo taken at an undisclosed location. (iStock / iStock)
“Compounding is supposed to be for a few individuals that have, let’s say, allergic reactions to the real medicine,” he said. “But this mass compounding — it’s quite unbelievable that it has gotten to this point.”
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He added that Novo has filed multiple lawsuits against compounders, arguing that the launch of a compounded pill version crossed a line.
“I think the nail in the coffin, as they say, was when they completely made a new drug — the pill — a compounded version of it and basically tried to introduce that to the market,” he said. “That’s where we felt enough is enough.”
A pharmacist displays a box of Wegovy pills at a pharmacy in Provo, Utah on Thursday, Jan. 15. (George Frey/Bloomberg via Getty Images / Getty Images)
Hims & Hers fired back against Novo Nordisk in a statement issued to multiple outlets this week, blasting the legal move as “a blatant attack by a Danish company on millions of Americans who rely on compounded medications for access to personalized care” and accusing “Big Pharma” of “weaponizing the U.S. judicial system to limit consumer choice.”
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“This lawsuit attacks more than just one medication or company – it directly assaults a well-established, vital component of U.S. pharmacy practice that has improved patient care for everything from obesity to infertility to cancer,” a representative for the company said, per the New Jersey business publication NJBIZ.
The company also cited its history of providing “safe access to personalized healthcare to millions of Americans,” adding that it will “continue to fight to provide choice, affordability and access.”
The New York Stock Exchange with a Hims & Hers Health, Inc. banner is pictured as a person runs past in the Manhattan borough of New York City, New York on Jan. 21, 2021 (Reuters/Carlo Allegri / Reuters)
For some time, patients seeking GLP-1 therapy for conditions such as obesity, type 2 diabetes, fatty liver disease and metabolic syndrome have sought compounded alternatives after facing insurance roadblocks that created cost challenges for brand-name medications.
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Doustdar said Novo’s recent cost reductions have eliminated the need for copycat drugs due to what he described as pricing similarities between branded and compounded versions.
Fox News senior medical analyst Dr. Marc Siegel joins ‘Mornings with Maria’ to break down the new FDA-approved weight loss pill, concerns over cost and safety and how GLP-1 drugs could transform obesity care.
However, when Hims & Hers briefly launched its compounded oral semaglutide, it was marketed at about $49 per month as an introductory price and around $99 per month thereafter, lower than Novo’s FDA-approved oral Wegovy, which launched at roughly $149 per month and can cost up to $299 at higher doses under self-pay pricing.
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Hims & Hers later pulled the oral compounded medication from its platform following legal threats from Novo and scrutiny from federal regulators.
Novo Nordisk CEO Mike Doustdar on Wednesday said the company is aiming to capture around 15 million new patients, at least initially, when Medicare starts covering obesity treatments for the first time later this year.
Around 67 million Americans are covered by Medicare, but “when you take a look at specifically our products and the target group, I think around 15 million people would be a good number to target,” he told CNBC in an interview.
Medicare is slated to start covering obesity medicines for the first time later this year under the landmark “most favored nation” drug pricing deals that Novo and its chief rival Eli Lilly struck with President Donald Trump in November.
Health experts say the long-awaited coverage could broaden the market for the medicines and spur more private insurers to cover them. Some experts estimate that 20 million to 30 million Medicare patients are suffering from obesity and related conditions.
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Doustdar said Medicare coverage, along with the launch of Novo’s new obesity pill and other factors, should help the company gradually boost prescription volumes and offset lower prices in the U.S. following that agreement with Trump.
But he said he doesn’t expect Medicare access to obesity treatments to open up overnight.
“Now, it would be great if we could find a way to get access very, very fast. But I think that would be a bit naive,” Doustdar said, pointing to the slow adoption seen among eligible patients with commercial insurance.
It’s a slightly more conservative tone on the initial impact of Medicare coverage compared to Lilly, which has cited that coverage as a key tailwind to its guidance this year. Last week, Lilly said it expects Medicare coverage to come online by July.
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Meanwhile, Doustdar said Novo is in the midst of negotiations with the government on “exactly which month, which week that is going to be opening.”
Closing the market share gap
Novo is under pressure to claw back market share in the booming GLP-1 space from Lilly and cheaper, compounded copycats. Last week, Lilly said its share of the U.S. obesity and diabetes drug market increased to 60.5% in the fourth quarter, while Novo’s was 39.1%.
Novo has also highlighted a gap in the “preference share” for its weight loss treatment Wegovy versus Lilly’s rival injections. In the U.S., Novo estimates that between 7 and 8 patients out of 10 go to Lilly.
When asked how Novo plans to close that gap, Doustdar said one way to do so is “to do better on the pill.” The company’s Wegovy obesity pill has a head start compared to Lilly’s upcoming oral drug, orforglipron, which is expected to win approval from the Food and Drug Administration during the second quarter.
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Mike Doustdar, left, CEO of Novo Nordisk, and David Ricks, CEO of Eli Lilly, listen as President Donald Trump speaks in the Oval Office during an event about weight-loss drugs on Nov. 6, 2025.
Andrew Caballero-Reynolds | Afp | Getty Images
Doustdar said Novo’s pill is slightly more effective than Lilly’s based on separate clinical trials, showing 16.6% weight loss compared to 12.4% with Lilly’s oral drug.
“If you use these two numbers, basically you have a 40% difference between the efficacy of these pills,” he said. “I think this is going to be a very main, main selling point of the pill.”
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But Doustdar also pointed to the upcoming approval and launch of a higher dose – 7.2 milligram – of Wegovy that could help win market share from Lilly’s obesity treatment Zepbound.
That higher dose helps patients lose around 21% of their weight, which is “very much on par” with the highest dose of Zepbound, he said. Zepbound’s higher efficacy has been a key factor in driving more patients and prescribers away from choosing Wegovy, which has shown around 15% weight loss on average in clinical trials.
“When that comes to the market, my thought, my wish, my hope is that people will realize, OK, now we have two products with similar efficacy,” he said.
GXO Logistics, Inc. (GXO) Q4 2025 Earnings Call February 11, 2026 8:30 AM EST
Company Participants
Patrick Kelleher – Chief Executive Officer Baris Oran Kristine Kubacki – Chief Strategy Officer
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Conference Call Participants
Stephanie Benjamin Moore – Jefferies LLC, Research Division Ryan Deveikis – Wells Fargo Securities, LLC, Research Division Madison Pasterchick – Morgan Stanley, Research Division Scott Schneeberger – Oppenheimer & Co. Inc., Research Division Richa Talwar – Deutsche Bank AG, Research Division Patrick Creuset – Goldman Sachs Group, Inc., Research Division Uday Khanapurkar – TD Cowen, Research Division Jeffrey Kauffman – Vertical Research Partners, LLC David Zazula – Barclays Bank PLC, Research Division Kevin Gainey – Thompson, Davis & Company, Inc., Research Division
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Presentation
Operator
Welcome to the GXO Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2025 Earnings Conference Call and Webcast. My name is Darryl, and I’ll be your operator for today’s call. [Operator Instructions]. Please note that this conference is being recorded.
Before the call begins, let me read a brief statement on behalf of the company regarding forward-looking statements, the use of non-GAAP financial measures and the company’s guidance. During this call, the company will be making certain forward-looking statements within the meaning of applicable securities laws, which, by their nature, involve a number of risks, uncertainties and other factors that can cause actual results to differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements. A discussion of factors that can cause actual results to differ materially is contained in the company’s SEC filings. The forward-looking statements in the company’s earnings release or made on this call are made only as of today, and the company has no obligation to update any of these forward-looking statements, except to the extent required by law.
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The company also may refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures as defined under applicable SEC rules during this call. Reconciliations of such non-GAAP financial
