 Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger at Berkshire Hathaway shareholder meeting, April 30, 2022. | Image: CNBC Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway held its annual shareholders' meeting on Saturday. It reported a drop in Q1 2022 earnings. It was the company’s first in-person meeting since the beginning of the pandemic. Berkshire reported $5.4B in profits, a 53% drop from ~$12B reported last year. During the meeting, Buffet touched on bitcoin and revealed that the company has increased its investments in Chevron and Apple. More: - Some corporate execs in attendance included Apple CEO Tim Cook, JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, and hedge fund manager Bill Ackman.
- Berkshire bought about $600M worth of Apple shares in Q1, bringing its Apple holding to $159.1B as of March 31, about 40% of its equity portfolio.
- Berkshire receives, on average, about $775M in yearly dividends from Apple.
- Berkshire revealed it now owns a 9.5% stake in video game publisher Activision Blizzard, a merger arbitrage bet that Microsoft will successfully acquire the company.
- When asked about Bitcoin, Buffett said he would not buy it, noting that the cryptocurrency is not a productive asset and does not produce anything tangible.
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Spirit Airlines announced on Monday that it has rejected JetBlue’s $3.6B cash takeover bid. In a revised proposal, JetBlue promised to sell some assets to win regulatory approval for the deal and pay a $200M breakup fee if unable to complete the acquisition due to antitrust reasons. However, Spirit’s board said the revised proposal involved “an unacceptable level of closing risk.” More: - Spirit said it would proceed with its $2.9B cash and stock merger deal with rival budget airline Frontier.
- In February, Spirit and Frontier announced plans to merge, which would create the fifth largest airline in the U.S. when completed.
- Last month, JetBlue made an unsolicited takeover bid to buy Spirit for $33 a share, a 37% premium on the implied merger value with Frontier.
- Spirits shares were down over 3% in premarket trading on Monday.
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 Image Credit: Yuga Labs Yuga Labs, the creators behind the popular Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT project, raised $320M on Saturday selling virtual land deeds called Otherdeeds for its upcoming metaverse project, Otherside. Demand for the virtual plots was so great that it disrupted the Ethereum blockchain and caused "gas fees" or transaction costs to soar. More: - Yuga Labs sold 55,000 Otherdeeds at 305 ApeCoin each (about $5,800).
- An ApeCoin was worth $19 on Saturday.
- Some buyers reportedly paid as much as 2.6 ETH ($6,500) to 5 ETH ($14,000) in gas fees, more than the cost for an Otherdeed NFT.
- Some buyers reported that their transactions never went through.
- By the time the virtual land deeds sold out, buyers had paid about $123M in gas fees.
- Yuga Labs issued an apology on Twitter for the disruptions and high fees and added that ApeCoin would need to migrate to its own chain in order to scale properly.
- Yuga Labs added it would refund the gas fees for buyers who had failed transactions.
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Some big names in the Bitcoin community wrote a letter to the EPA refuting the claims made by some members of Congress regarding the environmental impact of mining Bitcoin. The group, which included miners, industry experts, and financial firms, said lawmakers got a lot wrong in their letter about Bitcoin and digital asset mining. More: - The group noted that statements made by lawmakers were based on misperceptions about Bitcoin that have been debunked or conflate Bitcoin mining with other industries.
- The group argues that data centers that contain “miners” are no different from data centers owned and operated by Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta, and Microsoft.
- The group added that all data centers use electricity, which is generated externally; therefore, the emissions are created at the power generation source, upstream, not from the data centers.
- The group noted that by embracing the Bitcoin Network and Bitcoin mining, the U.S. would be more innovative, economically resilient, and ultimately stronger in the future.
- Some members in the group include Block Head Jack Dorsey, MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor, Core Scientific co-founder Darin Feinstein, and Fidelity Investments senior vice president Tom Jessop.
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The EU’s antitrust body has accused Apple of breaking competition law by restricting rivals from accessing its payment technology. The commission said that Apple’s decision to limit access to its near-field communication (NFC), or contactless payments, technology restricted competition in the mobile wallets market, preventing rival mobile wallet solutions on Apple devices. More: - The commission argues Apple’s decision leads to less innovation and fewer choices for consumers for mobile wallets on iPhone, benefiting Apple’s own solution – Apple Pay.
- The commission said it has informed Apple of its preliminary view on the company’s suspected violations of Europe’s antitrust rules.
- Apple will have an opportunity to review the claims and respond to the commission’s findings.
- An Apple spokesperson said the company would continue to engage with the commission to ensure European consumers have access to the payment option of their choice in a safe and secure environment.
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Australian airline Qantas Airways has ordered a dozen A350-1000 aircraft from Airbus to offer customers what would be the world’s longest commercial flights. The airline plans to offer non-stop flights from Sydney to London and Sydney to New York by 2025. Qantas also ordered 40 narrowbody jets to upgrade its domestic fleet – 20 A321XLRs and 20 A220s. Deliveries are expected to start in late 2023. More: - The order, called Project Sunrise, is the largest in the airline’s history and is expected to cost between A$3B and A$3.5B ($2B to $2.5B).
- The agreement also includes options to buy an additional 94 aircraft to be delivered through 2034.
- Qantas CEO Alan Joyce said the new domestic fleet would reduce emissions by at least 15% if run on fossil fuels and would be significantly better when run on sustainable aviation fuel.
- In December, Qantas announced it had selected Airbus over Boeing as the preferred supplier for an order to upgrade its fleet.
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 |  | Vanessa Omeokachie is a Researcher at Inside. Her interests include finance, tech, and startups. In her free time, she enjoys reading, hiking, attending music festivals, and traveling. Connect with her on Twitter @VanessaOmeo or through email at vanessa@inside.com |  | | Editor | Aaron Crutchfield is based in the high desert of California. Over the last two decades, he has spent time writing and editing at various local newspapers and defense contractors in California. When he's not working, he can often be found looking at the latest memes with his kids or working on his 1962 Ford. | |
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Controlling Complexity: a video featuring Simone Biles. Presented by Axonius. Watch now. | |
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