Closing Bell: Foot Locker Higher, Meta Delays AI Model, Coinbase Tumbles

Listen for comprehensive cross-platform coverage of the US market close as heard on Bloomberg Television, Bloomberg Radio, and YouTube with Romaine Bostick, Alix Steel, Scarlet Fu, Tim Stenovec and Emily Graffeo.

• Foot Locker (FL) shares closed higher as investors celebrate Dick's Sports Goods reaching a deal to acquire it. Dick’s will pay $24 a share for Foot Locker, reflecting a premium of 86.5% on the closing share price on Wednesday, before news of the deal emerged. Shareholders in Foot Locker can also elect to receive Dick’s shares instead of cash.
• Meta (META) shares declined on a report that the social networking company is delaying a flagship artificial intelligence model, sparking concerns about its AI push.Meta engineers are having trouble improving the capabilities of the software — a large language model known as “Behemoth” — the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday. Behemoth’s release, already delayed until June, has now been postponed until fall or later, the newspaper said.
• Coinbase (COIN) shares dropped on series of headlines that have investors concerned. The New York Times reported the SEC is probing whether the crypto exchange misstated user numbers. We also learned that hackers had near-constant access to some of Coinbase’s most valuable customer data since January, according to a person familiar with the incident who asked not to be named discussing company matters. The largest US crypto exchange disclosed earlier on Thursday that hackers bribed customer representatives to steal the data and then demanded a $20 million ransom to delete it. Coinbase began noticing unusual activity from some of these representatives in January, the company confirmed in an interview with Bloomberg News.

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