Dish Network enters dangerous financial orbit - Reuters

NEW YORK, July 31 (Reuters Breakingviews) - When money is cheap, it’s easy to be optimistic about assets with dwindling or no cash flow. Near-zero interest rates inspired some to buy art or bitcoin. Billionaire Charlie Ergen staked Dish Network’s (DISH.O) future on wireless spectrum, a decision looking worse by the day.

The satellite operator has spent some $25 billion since 2008 acquiring the finite resource used to carry data. Its balance sheet now bulges with about $21 billion of debt; $5 billion of it comes due in 2024 and 2025, according to Refinitiv. Refinancing costs will add up quickly with interest rates higher. In January, Dish issued $1.5 billion of senior notes, secured by spectrum, with an 11.75% coupon.

The $4 billion company’s cash is flowing in the wrong direction, too. It’s projected to burn around $1.6 billion of it this year, based on estimates gathered by Refinitiv, and revenue has been declining nearly 10% annually as TV customers flee. Selling equity might be a possibility, but the shares have lost nearly half their value since January.

Although Dish may be in worse shape than many, it is hardly alone. U.S. companies hold $2.6 trillion of debt that matures between 2023 and 2025, per Morgan Stanley analysts. Moreover, if earnings growth remains flat, interest coverage ratios could fall to 4.5 times by year-end after having slipped 20% since 2021 to below historical averages.

Recombining Dish with EchoStar(SATS.O), which it spun off in 2019, is one option, Semafor reported earlier this month. Ergen controls both companies and could borrow more against EchoStar assets. With just $600 million in EBITDA, however, the amount that could be raised would only be a stopgap measure.

Alternatively, Dish could seek users for its bandwidth. It has built a network covering 70% of the U.S. population. It must expand further by 2025, or face $2 billion in government fines and possible spectrum forfeiture. The capital expenditure involved might run to $3 billion, based on New Street Research analysis. Hawking cheap cellular plans on Amazon.com(AMZN.O) may be a first step. Competing with larger AT&T (T.N), which has delivered shareholders a 3% loss including reinvested dividends over the past decade, would be foolish, however.

Selling airwaves is a better option. The problem is that prices are variable with few buyers and infrequent deals. Moreover, roughly 40% of Dish’s stockpile cannot be sold until 2027. Offloading the rest for what it paid would yield $19 billion, according to MoffettNathanson. That would buy some time, but little else.

Follow @rob_cyran on X

(The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own. Refiles to add link.)

CONTEXT NEWS

Dish Network said on July 25 it had partnered with Amazon.com to sell wireless service to the e-commerce giant’s Prime subscribers for $25 a month for unlimited talk, text and data for life.

The satellite operator said on July 17 that its 5G network covered nearly three-quarters of the U.S. population. The U.S. Federal Communications Commission required the company to reach 70% by June. Dish must meet additional thresholds in 2025 or it could face up to $2.2 billion in fines and might be forced to forfeit wireless spectrum.

Editing by Jeffrey Goldfarb and Sharon Lam

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Opinions expressed are those of the author. They do not reflect the views of Reuters News, which, under the Trust Principles, is committed to integrity, independence, and freedom from bias.

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Giada De Laurentiis Launches a Line of Pasta, Says She's in a 'Rebirth' Since Leaving Food Network - PEOPLE

Pasta is in Giada De Laurentiis' blood.

The food star launched a private-label pasta line, Giadzy Pasta, on Sunday. The eight, harder-to-find shapes are sold exclusively on her lifestyle website Giadzy for $10.50 for 1.1 lb. boxes.

"It's super exciting to finally have it out in the world," she tells PEOPLE.

De Laurentiis comes from "a pasta family" — her great grandparents had a pasta factory outside of Naples, Italy. Of course, she also made a name for herself cooking it, among other Italian staples, on the Food Network for 21 years before leaving for Amazon Studios in February.

Giada De Laurentiis launches Giadzy Pasta.

Courtesy of Giadzy and Giada De Laurentiis

"From all my years cooking it and working with different brands, I realized that there are certain things that I'm looking for in a pasta that I still haven't quite found all in one package," she says.

So she made her own. The Giadzy Pasta shapes — nodi marini, bucatini, taccole, pappardelle, paccheri, bucatini lunghi, manfredi lunghi and spaghetti chitarra — are made in the Abruzzo, Italy region and are cut on 100-year-old bronze dies.

Giada De Laurentiis's Giadzy Pasta comes in eight unique shapes.

Courtesy of Giadzy and Giada De Laurentiis

"It was really important to not just to do the average shapes that everybody can find, but things that are more unique," De Laurentiis tells PEOPLE. "I think that's why at the end of the day, kids and adults alike will fall in love with the pasta, because the shapes are fun and cool and different."

Giadzy, De Laurentiis' lifestyle e-commerce platform that sells Italian products curated by the chef herself, is what she calls "a dream come true." It's an all-women run business and something De Laurentiis has really focused on the past few years, but has been "envisioning for 20 years."

"I've had a rebirth in my career and in what I really want to do," she says. "Partnerships have been amazing over the years and I've been super lucky, but I haven't been able to really tell the full story. At the heart of it, I'm a teacher and a storyteller, and when you're in a partnership with somebody else, you have to make compromises in that storytelling."

Giada De Laurentiis launches Giadzy Pasta.

Courtesy of Giadzy and Giada De Laurentiis

In February, after 21 years as a host and chef personality at the Food Network, De Laurentiis revealed that she will no longer collaborate on new projects there, and instead signed a multi-year deal for unscripted series production with Amazon Studios. Shows that she will both star in and executive produce are still in the works.

One change she's had to adjust to since is a smaller budget for glam.

"I don't have a big conglomerate behind me anymore that facilitates those things, so a lot of the stuff, I do myself, and hair and makeup is one of them," she says with a laugh. "I'm not great with the hair so I do get a blow dry. I try to do it only once a week because that's what the budget allows, and then I try to tweak it myself."

She enjoys doing her own makeup and her daughter Jade, 15, is "really good at hair" and often acts as her "mentor" in that department.

"She'll say, 'Mom, you've got to brush it fully through in the morning,' because I get lazy when it comes to my hair and so I don't brush all the way through. I just kind of put curls in the front of my face, whatever frames my face," De Laurentiis recalls. "And she's like, 'No, mom. You have to brush all of the hair. You have to take the extra time, then you've got to go through and start curling from underneath.'"

Since running Giadzy full time, De Laurentiis says she's in "this awesome growing period of my life."

"I feel like I'm learning so much in a world that I didn't really know much about in the past and owning it as we go through it," she says. "The mistakes are mine and the wins are mine."

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Dish Network enters dangerous financial orbit - Reuters

NEW YORK, July 31 (Reuters Breakingviews) - When money is cheap, it’s easy to be optimistic about assets with dwindling or no cash flow. Near-zero interest rates inspired some to buy art or bitcoin. Billionaire Charlie Ergen staked Dish Network’s (DISH.O) future on wireless spectrum, a decision looking worse by the day.

The satellite operator has spent some $25 billion since 2008 acquiring the finite resource used to carry data. Its balance sheet now bulges with about $21 billion of debt; $5 billion of it comes due in 2024 and 2025, according to Refinitiv. Refinancing costs will add up quickly with interest rates higher. In January, Dish issued $1.5 billion of senior notes, secured by spectrum, with an 11.75% coupon.

The $4 billion company’s cash is flowing in the wrong direction, too. It’s projected to burn around $1.6 billion of it this year, based on estimates gathered by Refinitiv, and revenue has been declining nearly 10% annually as TV customers flee. Selling equity might be a possibility, but the shares have lost nearly half their value since January.

Although Dish may be in worse shape than many, it is hardly alone. U.S. companies hold $2.6 trillion of debt that matures between 2023 and 2025, per Morgan Stanley analysts. Moreover, if earnings growth remains flat, interest coverage ratios could fall to 4.5 times by year-end after having slipped 20% since 2021 to below historical averages.

Recombining Dish with EchoStar(SATS.O), which it spun off in 2019, is one option, Semafor reported earlier this month. Ergen controls both companies and could borrow more against EchoStar assets. With just $600 million in EBITDA, however, the amount that could be raised would only be a stopgap measure.

Alternatively, Dish could seek users for its bandwidth. It has built a network covering 70% of the U.S. population. It must expand further by 2025, or face $2 billion in government fines and possible spectrum forfeiture. The capital expenditure involved might run to $3 billion, based on New Street Research analysis. Hawking cheap cellular plans on Amazon.com(AMZN.O) may be a first step. Competing with larger AT&T (T.N), which has delivered shareholders a 3% loss including reinvested dividends over the past decade, would be foolish, however.

Selling airwaves is a better option. The problem is that prices are variable with few buyers and infrequent deals. Moreover, roughly 40% of Dish’s stockpile cannot be sold until 2027. Offloading the rest for what it paid would yield $19 billion, according to MoffettNathanson. That would buy some time, but little else.

Follow @rob_cyran on X

(The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.)

CONTEXT NEWS

Dish Network said on July 25 it had partnered with Amazon.com to sell wireless service to the e-commerce giant’s Prime subscribers for $25 a month for unlimited talk, text and data for life.

The satellite operator said on July 17 that its 5G network covered nearly three-quarters of the U.S. population. The U.S. Federal Communications Commission required the company to reach 70% by June. Dish must meet additional thresholds in 2025 or it could face up to $2.2 billion in fines and might be forced to forfeit wireless spectrum.

Editing by Jeffrey Goldfarb and Sharon Lam

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Opinions expressed are those of the author. They do not reflect the views of Reuters News, which, under the Trust Principles, is committed to integrity, independence, and freedom from bias.

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Amazon says it’s delivering more packages in one day or less after overhauling delivery network - CNBC

In this article

• AMZN

An Amazon driver loads packages into a delivery van at an Amazon delivery station on November 28, 2022 in Alpharetta, Georgia.

Justin Sullivan | Getty Images

Amazon has for years been marching toward making same-day and next-day delivery the standard for members of its Prime loyalty club.

On Monday, the company said it reached a major milestone in those efforts. Amazon said so far this year it's delivered 1.8 billion units to U.S. Prime members the same or next day, roughly four times what it delivered at those speeds by this point in 2019.

For the past four years, Amazon has poured money and resources into revamping its warehouse and delivery network to shorten shipping times from two days to one day or less. Those efforts hit a snag during the Covid pandemic due to supply chain and labor-market challenges, but normal delivery speeds have largely returned as a result of new warehouses coming online and other improvements to the company's operations.

Amazon says it achieved its "fastest Prime speeds ever" last quarter.

One of the company's biggest changes in the past year is a shift away from a national "hub and spoke" fulfillment network, where packages might travel through several facilities across the country, said Udit Madan, Amazon's vice president of transportation, in an interview. The company moved to a model in which the country is divided into eight smaller regions, with local facilities that stock commonly ordered items.

Fast delivery is notoriously expensive and logistically challenging, and companies typically lose money on deliveries. But Amazon's change cut costs and boosted delivery speeds, Madan said.

"Our fastest speeds tend to be our most economical," he said.

Driving fewer miles and requiring fewer handoffs has reduced Amazon's "cost to serve," Madan added. Amazon says it's cut the distance items are traveling from warehouses to customers by 15%, and lowered the number of "touchpoints," or how many times a package is handled, by 12%.

The company has also seen improvements in its machine-learning technology that allows it to better plan where and how much inventory is placed in warehouses, hastening delivery times. Across the top 60 U.S. metro areas, Amazon says more than half of Prime orders arrived the same or next day.

Speedier delivery has pushed shoppers to purchase more items from Amazon than they might normally buy from their local corner store, or big-box retailers like Best Buy.

"We've consistently seen that as we're offering faster speeds, we're actually expanding the consideration set that customers think of us for when they're thinking about their purchases," Madan said. "What we're seeing is greater engagement and more purchases from customers."

Amazon is rolling out more so-called "same-day sites," or smaller buildings located closer to large metro areas where the company fulfills, sorts and delivers products from a single location. It has traditionally operated distinct facilities for these purposes, meaning separate fulfillment centers, sort centers and delivery stations.

Same-day sites are stocked with a rotating selection of millions of items tailored to what customers are purchasing in the area, whereas a typical warehouse is much larger and may have a more random assortment of products.

Amazon plans to double the number of same-day sites in its network over the next two years, Madan said.

The company declined to share how many same-day sites it maintains. The Wall Street Journal reported Amazon has opened approximately 45 facilities since 2019, citing data from MWPVL International, a supply chain and logistics consulting firm that closely tracks Amazon's distribution network.

WATCH: Amazon's global head of sports says, 'We're playing the long game'

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Can we trust automakers to build an EV charging network that rivals Tesla’s Supercharger? - TechCrunch

Automakers appear to have had an awakening last week: Electric vehicles are the future, and if they want to continue selling cars, they have to think beyond the car. I’m not talking about subscriptions, though; I’m talking about charging.

For years, major auto manufacturers were happy to leave the infrastructure to someone else. Tesla was the lone exception, building a globe-spanning network of speedy and reliable chargers that have placated range-anxious car shoppers who have bought the company’s EVs in droves. Other automakers, though, failed to connect the EV charging experience with EV sales. Perhaps it’s because infrastructure is unfamiliar territory. Or maybe they actually weren’t that interested in selling EVs.

Whatever the case, automakers’ recent come-to-Jesus moment culminated in an announcement last week that seven of the largest would be forming a joint venture to build a massive charging network across North America.

Consisting of no fewer than 30,000 charge points offering both Combined Charging System (CCS) and the North American Charging Standard (NACS) connectors, the as-yet-unnamed network promises to be a true rival to Tesla’s Supercharger and the Volkswagen diesel settlement-funded Electrify America.

Sounds like a step in the right direction.

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Trying to Build a Great Network? Stop Trying So Hard to Make Connections, and Start 'Doing' More - Inc.

I found a note tucked in my bag when I got to the airport after a speaking gig. "I really need Mark Cuban's advice on an idea I have," it said. "I will be forever grateful if you ask him to get in touch with me."

One, I didn't know him. Two, it was kinda creepy that he made his way backstage, found my backpack, opened it, and slid the note into my closed laptop. Three, I have no more ability to get in touch with Mark Cuban than the next person. (Okay, I probably could if I asked someone at Inc. to help me, but I wouldn't.) 

But it did remind me of something I used to do. When I started writing for Inc. I wanted to interview famous entrepreneurs. So I did a lot of cold-emailing. A lot of pitching. A lot of networking.

No matter how cleverly targeted or crafted, though, none of that worked. (Which comes as no surprise; a study published in Fast Company found that while 45 percent of executives opened a cold email they received -- a surprisingly high email open rate -- only 2 percent actually responded.)

Instead of interviewing people like Richard Branson or Ray Dalio, I had to talk to the entrepreneurs I could get. Like the person who launched a thriving business by making cat litter out of coconuts. Or the person who created software to free up PC hard-drive space.

Notable people? Absolutely. Famous people? No.

But that was okay, because I was no longer focused on networking. I was focused on doing, and the doing led to building a bigger network.

In time, instead of pitching, I got pitched: Richard Branson's folks contacted me. Ray Dalio's folks contacted me. Aside from a few exceptions (howdy, Kirk Hammett!), the network came to me.

As Adam Grant, who also initiated our connection -- and who later agreed to blurb my book -- writes: 

If you establish a track record of achievement, advantages tend to accumulate. Who you'll know tomorrow depends on what you contributed yesterday.

Whatever network I've managed to build is based on doing, not networking. Some people I know as the result of having done what they at least perceive as good work. (Imposter syndrome, while not my best, is certainly a constant friend.) Others are the result of my sending a note of praise or congratulations for something they did that I admired.

Others are because I passed on something -- a resource, a tip, a connection, etc. -- that I thought might be valuable, with no expectation of return.

As Adam writes:

Building a powerful network doesn't require you to be an expert at networking. It just requires you to be an expert at something.

If you do great work, those connections will be easier to make. Let your insights and your outputs -- not your business cards -- do the talking.

Start networking less. Start doing more. Stop asking. Start giving. Stop trying to find a way to connect, and start trying to be the person with whom other people want to connect.

In time, the network you want -- the people you want to help, and who want to help you -- will come to you.

The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.

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