Chime finds its Stride

0:00Welcome to Seeking Alpha's Wall Street Breakfast, where we cover the top news for investors every morning. It's good to be with you on this Wednesday, September 9. I'm Julie Morgan. Shine Financial has agreed to acquire stride for $590 million in cash. Stride has been Shine's bank partner for over seven years. The transaction value represents approximately one and a half times tangible book value for stride. The transaction is expected to be accretive to EPS immediately upon closing, with further upside expected over time. The purchase is said to be funded from cash on Shine's balance sheet. The transaction unanimously approved by both boards is expected to close in the first half of next year. CHYM is up more than 11% in pre-market action after falling 4.3% on Tuesday. After a 13-year wait, the release of the next installment of the Grand Theft Auto franchise

1:02is forecast to be a major catalyst for the video game industry. Forecast by Grand Theft Auto 6 unit sales ranges high as 40 million over the first year, while some analysts think the game will eventually pass Minecraft as the most popular title of all time. Recent data from sensor tower indicates that PlayStation has claimed 77% of the 5.3 million Grand Theft Auto 6 pre-sales, while Xbox currently makes up 23% of sales. The download market is higher than the estimated installed base market share for PlayStation of about 72%, indicating even more momentum for Sony. Fitness racing brand HiRox has attracted private equity interest. According to Bloomberg, sources indicated that Elle Caterton is close to buying a controlling stake in HiRox and a deal that may value the fitness competition brand at about $697 million. Co-investors may also be part of the deal.

2:05HiRox disclosed that more than 1.5 million people took part across 105 events in 35 countries in its latest season. Looking ahead, HiRox forecast more than 2 million participants across 107 race weekends on 6 continents in the 2627 season. Expansion into new markets in Asia is a major part of its plan. Stocks that have benefited from the rise of HiRox include Puma, Zepp Health, On Holdings, and Academy Sports and Outdoors. Now if we look at a few other articles that are trending, this first one is interesting. There's one sentence that really caught my eye. It says, The People Building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade. If you'd like to read the rest of that article, it's entitled, And Thropic Researcher Quits over AI Safety Fears echoing other expert warnings. US Intel warn Silicon Valley that major Chinese AI developers are harvesting US model data.

3:12The Qualcomm jumps as it teams up with Amazon on next-gen AI data center deal. On our catalyst to watch for the day, the CEO of Coca-Cola Company will present at the Barclays Global Consumer Conference. Just in case you didn't know, Apple will hold a high-profile iPhone launch event. We've got a preview of that event, so I'm leaving a link in the show notes section. The Corona Systems is scheduled to present at City's 2026 Global TNT Conference. Media reports on Tuesday indicated that Tom Abravos' proof point is in talks to buy the Corona's. And the NFL season begins tonight when the Seahawks take on the New England Patriots. Don't look at your calendar, yes, today is Wednesday. It's not Thursday when this typically happens. There is another game that's happening Thursday night, but it's actually being played on Friday morning in Australia, which is Thursday night here.

4:14But since it's not the Super Bowl champion Seahawks that's playing in that game, they had to move this game to Wednesday to make sure that the Seahawks open the season. Enough about football, but keep in mind that sports betting names, Flutter Entertainment owner of FanDuel, and draft kings are direct seasonal plays on the strong consumer interest in NFL football. On Wall Street Stock Index features are in the red. Crude Oil is up 2.3% at $95 a barrel. Brink Crude is up 2.6% at more than $100. Mission Produce is on our biggest movers list. AVO is up 5% after the avocado producer reported a 38% year over your increase in avocado volumes, driving a 26% increase in fiscal Q3 sales. And we have one item to tell you about on today's economic calendar at 10 a.m. quarterly services survey.

5:14That's it for today's Wall Street breakfast. Thanks for listening. For a full offering of news, analysis, ratings, and data on stocks and ETFs become a premium subscriber. Learn more at seekingalpha.com slash subscriptions. I'm your host Julie Morgan. Go out and make it a great day.