Catching you up on today's top stories with Elon Musk raising his own commitment to purchasing Twitter with $33.5 billion, Apple plans to produce 220 million iPhones this year, and the company also is raising its hourly retail wage to $22 per hour amid ongoing unionization efforts at its stores.

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 Todays Top Stories: Musk's Money for Twitter, iPhone Production & Apple Retail Wage

All right. Well, some of the top stories we're following this morning, starting with an update on the Elon musk twitter saga, Elon musk is increasing his personal financial commitment towards his acquisition of twitter to $33.5 billion. The news comes on the same day as twitter's annual investor meeting, which saw executives shut down any questions regarding the deal musk updated offer, which would provide an additional 6.5 billion in equity financing is according to a new sec filing. Now, this sense, shares of twitter up over 5% after the bail and comes after a positive day of trading for the social media giant that must recently put the deal on hold as he investigates the amount of fake and spam accounts on the platform, which, and true, if that is true, would create a discrepancy in the platforms, number of users and right now they're alleging that it could be up to about 5% of fake accounts, which technically isn't that many. It's really hard to, you know, really manage how many people are making these body counts of fake accounts to try to drive numbers up. But you know, it's interesting to see that he is trying to uh, put, uh, I guess a stronger foot forward at this deal because a lot of people were like wondering, is he gonna go through with this, if it's gonna happen and I guess this is his push, There's still a lot of that on the table, even with this movement being honest, I mean, I think at one point, you know, I must throughout their, someone threw out there, they're like who knows, it could be 90% of the accounts are fake on there just given um, you know, some of the way that the numbers were run in terms of identifying, you know, those fake spam accounts. But the reality is this has been a choppy deal from the start. It's been one that that seemed like it was on thin ice from the beginning and even with this move while the market is taking this move as a positive indicator that Elon musk is truly here to close this deal. And that's why you're seeing it up almost 6% in the, in the pre market right now. The reality is that some of this restructuring to others in the market really seems like it makes it even more probable that this doesn't go through or increase the odds that something happens here because a lot of the funding is reliant on Elon musk coming up with that cash, so to speak. And we know that in terms of his overall, you know, value and what he is worth. He certainly has that money but liquidating some of his assets to get that and and put it in place, it's a whole nother thing. I think there still is this lingering idea that he's going to try and renegotiate this deal for better terms. And if that ends up happening here again, that's another layer, but this deal may not go through. So this is one of those things where it seems like on one side, there's better probability on the other side, there's reduced probability of this deal, right? I mean you bring up a good point. He wants to negotiate a better deal. It's like when you buy a house, you go and you're like, oh, this is wrong, this is wrong and the president. But I want to discount Yeah, exactly. It's one of those things that he's trying to pull here and like you said, he's worth the money. I mean he was recently worth 288 Billion dollars. Now that's down to 192 billion struggles. Right? What's 33 billion at that point it's still chump change for him. So hey, tomorrow if the stock of Tesla, I mean, it really just depends on that. It's one of those things will continue to watch and steal this latest kind of movement here after what has been an up and down roller coaster to try to get this deal to close. We'll see if it does. In the meantime, let's turn to this investors reacting this morning to the news that Apple will keep its iphone production flat this year. The deadline is calling for 220 million phones to be assembled. Sources familiar with the internal numbers tell Bloomberg that that's roughly the same as the number made in 2021 analysts had expected Apple to make 20 million more units then that Apple no longer release its iphone sales numbers, but smartphone sales as a whole has slowed down this year. Also. Covid lockdowns in china that has been hindering smart phone production. Meanwhile, Apple now says that it will raise wages for corporate and retail workers. This comes as companies try to remain competitive in this historically tight jobs market in the US Apple store workers will now be paid a starting wage of $22 per hour up from $20 an hour. The pay increase will go into effect by the end of this year and this follows calls from workers at some Apple retail locations to unionize, also Google Amazon Microsoft all have updated their payment structures in recent weeks as well. A lot of layers to the story from the unionization efforts, weighing on the reality that Apple is going to have to increase its wages here. So then those, those numbers in terms of sales of iphones, listen, we are already seeing this in the broader kind of macro picture, people are shifting away from buying things which is what they've been doing for the last two years because they couldn't go out and do anything to now, you know, in a recession and the recession in an inflationary environment um you know, being pressured for everything going up higher saying, hey, I'm gonna be more picky with my money. Certainly the american consumers still seems strong, but they're using that on services. They're using it on travel and not so much to buy something like an iphone right now. So Apple kind of dealing with that reality among the reality and listed a lot of production, especially key components of its production are in china and that has dealt with lockdowns that have hindered the ability to produce more. So you're dealing with production issues, even a demand possible pullback. So these numbers make sense. And it's why you see apple, like other companies right now kind of pulling back over the last couple of weeks and now even today, 1.3% lower in the premarket. Yeah, I'm happy they're doing this. I, I think it's a smart idea. You don't want to overextend yourself, especially if you can't get the supply for and I think it's more important that they focus on their employees right now. They just apparently released a statement saying that they were going to increase the pay for retail workers to $22 an hour was just up $2 from $20 an hour. But there are still, you know, those unions, you mentioned, you know, six different locations are trying to start unions actually in Atlanta Georgia on june 2nd, they're gonna be having one of their first election in their union there and once that happens it's just gonna have that, you know, snowball effect to make sure that other people get the rights that they want. For example, here in new york city at the Grand Central Terminal, they were like 22 is nice, but we want 30 that's a lot more expensive to live in new york 30 an hour. I think we might need to get a job there. I'm saying that's not, that's not the better, you know, if they can get it, they can get it more power to them. I think the reality is, and I'm not bearish on Apple by a long shot here. But the reality is, Apple has pressures from multiple revenue streams when you even look at the app store and the issue that they're dealing with the appstore and a lot of pressure to reduce the fees there or lose them all together. Then you have this where sales are gonna be coming in flat for something like the iphone, which is a dominant part of Apple's revenue while that bottom line number is getting higher because you're having to pay workers more, that means your margins essentially here are tighter. Um, and investors don't like seeing tighter margins. So I think it's going to be a bumpy road as Apple, it starts to figure out kind of rebalancing getting more revenue and increasing revenue streams while the pressure on that bottom line, especially when it comes to workers and wages, even supply chain issues and all the pressures that come around that transportation costs, you name, it costs are going up. Even for a lot of these companies.