Sales Consultant

Justices confront internet privacy with Blockbuster-era law. The Supreme Court is taking on digital marketing next week in a case asking how federal consumer privacy rights apply when companies sell data for targeted advertising. WASHINGTON (CN) - Despite his failed Supreme Court nomination, the legacy of Judge Robert Bork will take center stage next week as the justices confront how video privacy protections should apply in the modern internet era. In 1988, Congress enacted the Video Privacy Protection Act after a reporter published an exposé of the judge's video rental history. "The Bork Tapes" were intended as commentary on Bork's polarizing views about the right to privacy, but the ordeal revealed broad consensus in Congress about consumers' rights. Nearly 40 years later, privacy protections remain a top issue for Americans. And a new trend of lawsuits have emerged in kind, attempting to use the 1988 law to target companies that sell consumer information for targeted advertising. The question for the Supreme Court next week will be whether the Blockbuster-era law can be retrofitted for the modern internet age. Digital privacy advocates say it can, pushing for stricter enforcement of consumer protections. But companies warn against overextending the statute and wreaking havoc on the internet writ large. Facebook ad leads to SCOTUS showdown. Michael Salazar signed up for 247Sports' online newsletter, where he provided personal information such as his email address. Because he was logged into his Facebook account while viewing content from the site, Salazar says that 247Sports' owner, Paramount, disclosed his information to the social media giant to be used for targeted advertising. Salazar sued Paramount for sharing his browsing information with Facebook, arguing that he fits the Video Privacy Protection Act's definition of consumer: "any renter, purchaser or subscriber of goods or services from a video tape service provider." Salazar says Congress' language was intentional, choosing ordinary language that didn't carry a secondary or idiosyncratic meaning. To make his point, Salazar quotes a Paramount film, "Mean Girls," where one character attempts to make "fetch" happen. "Here, Paramount is a video tape service provider," Salazar wrote. "And Mr. Salazar is a subscriber of Paramount's online newsletter. Thus, the newsletter he subscribed to came 'from a video tape service provider.'" Salazar said the only question left is whether the newsletter fits into the statute's definition of "goods or services." He says it does. The limit does not exist. Paramount counters the statute wasn't intended to cover non-video transactions, such as the newsletter at issue in this case. The media giant argues Salazar's reading had taken the Video Privacy Protection Act from relative obscurity and repurposed it to target companies for routine business practices. "Armed with that unlikely theory, plaintiffs...brought a bevy of class-action lawsuits against entities, ranging from La-Z-Boy to Chick-fil-A, that market unrelated non-video goods or services and also put free promotional or instructional video clips online," Paramount wrote. "And they have initiated putative class actions like this at no cost, just by signing up for a free marketing email from a business with a website with video content." Paramount's concerns are shared by others in the industry. The Motion Picture Association submitted an amicus brief stating that an expansive reading of the Video Privacy Protection Act would turn virtually everyone into a "consumer" since video content is now ubiquitous on the internet. And companies that sell video content are often part of a larger enterprise with far-ranging lines of business. "For example, an individual might buy groceries from Whole Foods (owned and operated by Amazon.com, Inc.), then watch a free video about a yoga mat she is considering purchasing from Amazon.com (also owned and operated by Amazon.com, Inc.)," the Motion Picture Association wrote. "Under petitioner's construction, that grocery shopper would be a 'consumer' under the VPPA because she purchased 'goods or services' (groceries) from a company that also delivered free, unrelated video content (about a yoga mat)." News sites could also be hit particularly hard. Dramatic changes in the publishing industry have pushed news sites to complement articles with multimedia, including videos and audio. And many websites rely on advertising revenue to provide free public access to their work. "What modern consumers often perceive as 'free' is actually built on the business model of digital advertising," the News/Media Alliance wrote. The group said if Salazar, prevails news sites would be forced to either stop publishing videos altogether, place videos behind a paywall or abandon advertising technology that makes free journalism economically viable. The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments Oct. 14.

Earnings growth splits the deck: software accelerates, furniture stalls, Leslie's breaks. One quarter of prints argues that "resilient demand" holds for the cloud row but not for the most distressed names in home furnishings. The idea behind this earnings deck was simple: that earnings growth and resilient demand could carry eight names - the observability and data-cloud pair DDOG and SNOW, and the home-furnishings group RH, WSM, ETH, LZB, LESL and TPX - through the next year. One full earnings cycle later, the evidence has split into three very different stories. The software names are delivering on the thesis. The furniture names are mostly holding margins while waiting for a housing-market turn that has not arrived. And the most distressed retailer in the group has broken it outright. The cloud row is the part of the thesis that is working. The strongest case comes from the software names. Snowflake reported its fiscal Q2 on September 2 with product revenue of $1.49 billion, up 37% year over year, and total revenue of $1.55 billion, up 35%, with net revenue retention of 126% and 828 customers generating over $1 million in trailing-twelve-month product revenue, up 27%. The stock spiked about 22% as management pointed to momentum in its AI coding agent, CoCo. [[1]] Datadog's fiscal Q2, reported August 6, showed revenue up 36% to $1.12 billion, with roughly 4,720 customers at or above $100,000 in ARR versus about 3,850 a year earlier. Management framed FY2026 revenue growth around 30%, with an explicit note of conservatism tied to a usage reduction from its largest customer. [[2]] On the call, CEO Olivier Pomel described AI as a tailwind: more than 750 AI-native customers across the base, all 10 of the largest AI leaders as customers, and agentic MCP tool calls quadrupling quarter over quarter and growing more than 22x versus Q4 2025. [[3]] What would have to be true for this side of the thesis to keep working is a continuation of what the quarter already showed: demand broadening beyond a handful of mega-cap AI spenders. Datadog reported acceleration in non-AI customers too - the strongest sequential usage growth in twelve quarters - which is precisely the broadening that makes the growth look durable rather than concentrated. [[3]] As of midday Friday, DDOG traded at about $273 and SNOW near $341. [[4]] The furniture row: margins defended, demand not recovered. The home-furnishings side is a different, more fragile story. Williams-Sonoma is the standout: fiscal Q2 comparable revenue rose 6.2% with a 22.9% GAAP operating margin, and the company raised its full-year outlook - enough that its shares have risen even with housing activity weak. [[5]] [[6]] RH reported fiscal Q2 net revenue up 2.6% to $922.2 million, above the high end of its guidance, with an adjusted EBITDA margin of 19.4% that included $55.1 million, or 600 basis points, of tariff benefit - meaning the normalized margin sits meaningfully lower. Hitting growth, in other words, has partly been a function of tariff windfall, not underlying unit demand. [[7]] [[8]] The rest of the group reads as stabilization under pressure. La-Z-Boy's fiscal Q1 showed retail written sales up 16% and written same-store sales up 3%, but the stock drew scrutiny after sharply reduced guidance. [[7]] Ethan Allen - the scope's "ETH," listed on NYSE as ETD - reported fiscal Q4 net sales down 8.5% on lower contract and delivery demand, cushioned by strong margins and a special-plus-regular dividend. [[7]] The bedding name formerly known as TPX, now Somnigroup International (SGI) after its Tempur Sealy-Mattress Firm combination, saw Q2 net sales fall 3.0% to $1.82 billion even as EPS rose 11%, the margin gain coming against record operating cash flow and a softened industry backdrop. [[5]] [[6]] Across the broader furniture complex, the language is strikingly consistent. One peer called the home-furnishings industry "abysmal from an actual unit-sold perspective," with the housing market working through high levels of unsold homes and acute affordability pressure; others described demand as remaining below historical levels until housing turnover normalizes. [[9]] [[7]] That is the crux: for RH, WSM, LZB and the rest to grow earnings durably, what has to be true is a housing-and-affordability recovery - and the quarters so far do not provide that evidence. What they do show is operators defending margins through mix, pricing and cost discipline, which can support earnings even without a top-line boom. The one name that breaks the thesis. Leslie's, the pool-care retailer, has moved from merely weak to distressed. Its stock trades near $0.34, and on Friday - September 25 - reports emerged that the company is preparing to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection as soon as next week, with Nasdaq delisting pressure looming after a period of repeated declines. [[10]] [[4]] For the "resilient demand" hypothesis, this is the decisive negative case: a consumer-discretionary name where demand and the balance sheet broke together, and where no amount of industry-wide stabilization is likely to arrive in time. It is the counterexample that shows the thesis was never going to apply uniformly to every name in scope. What to watch next. * The next software prints (Nov-Dec): Datadog reports November 5 before the open and Snowflake December 2 after the close. The question is whether non-AI broadening and AI-native expansion hold up, and whether the largest-customer usage reduction Datadog flagged actually lands as guided. [[11]] * Housing-led names: Williams-Sonoma reports November 18, La-Z-Boy November 17, RH December 10, and Leslie's December 1. Watch whether comp trends can hold without tariff windfalls - RH's 600-basis-point tariff benefit is the signal to track most closely. [[11]] * The housing macro: Every furniture operator has tied its turn to affordability and housing turnover. Short of falling mortgage rates and rising existing-home sales, expect the "margins defended, units not recovered" pattern to persist. * Leslie's and the restructured bedding complex: Chapter 11, if filed, will reset the base case for LESL entirely. Separately, watch how Somnigroup's Mattress Firm integration economics evolve into 2027. The takeaway from this pass is not that the thesis is simply right or wrong - it is that it holds only selectively. It is compelling for the cloud-software names, partial for the furniture operators that can defend margins against a stalled housing market, and bankrupt for the one name that could not hold on long enough. Treating the group as a single trade would be the mistake; the evidence now argues these are three separate bets.

7% mortgages are back. The Iran-war cost shock is splitting home cyclicals from AI software. Seven months into the U.S.-Iran conflict, a doubled container-freight bill and energy-driven yields are re-pricing the consumer and the cloud - and the eight names in scope are landing on opposite sides of that line. Seven months into the U.S.-Iran war, the market tell is no longer the warhead - it is the 30-year mortgage. Freddie Mac's survey printed 7.03% for the week ending Sept. 24, the first trip back above the 7% threshold since January 2025, pushed there by surging Treasury yields and the energy shock tied to the conflict.[[1]] That single number is doing most of the work in splitting its eight-name research scope into two widening camps: an AI-driven software pair whose demand keeps accelerating, and a home-furnishings cluster that is absorbing the interest-rate, freight, and fuel bill on the chin. Call it roughly a 60/40 proposition that the software side of this split holds into next year and the housing-levered side gets pushed out another two quarters. The 40 is real, and both legs are expensive to get wrong, so let's put the evidence on the table. The freight and fuel shock is the quiet main character. The Strait of Hormuz - the chokepoint that carries roughly a fifth of the world's oil - has been a shooting zone since the war began, and the knock-on effects are showing up far from the Gulf. Analysts at Reuters flag that ocean container rates could test record highs as the Iran-war fuel spike works through the system,[[2]] and the cost of shipping a container from Asia to the United States has already doubled since the conflict started.[[2]] Williams-Sonoma said in its Q2 call that higher oil prices were pressing on transportation and supplier costs, with fuel near current levels embedded in its guidance - and it reiterated that the tariff impact, peaking in Q2, would moderate through the back half.[[3]] None of this is lost on the builder complex. Homebuilder confidence fell to a one-year low in September, and Fannie Mae's forecast pencils single-family starts down roughly 7% for 2026.[[1]] Freddie Mac's chief economist notes the housing market is still supported by a solid labor market - but the affordability math is the constraint, and 7% puts it back at the edge of the lock-in effect that froze existing-home turnover for two years. The home-furnishings camp is absorbing the cost. This is where the scope bifurcates. Ethan Allen reported fiscal 2026 profit down more than 20% on softer sales, cushioned by high margins and a debt-free balance sheet.[[4]] La-Z-Boy is pulling upholstery assembly out of Mexico - closing a San Luis Río Colorado plant and its Tijuana Joybird plant, moving output into existing U.S. plants with $17.6 million of one-time charges.[[4]] Leslie's, the pool retailer, is reportedly preparing for a Chapter 11 filing with a possible Nasdaq delisting looming.[[4]] That last one is the extreme tail, but it frames the distribution: the discretionary consumer is present but value- and price-sensitive, and the winners are taking share at the expense of margin rather than earning margin on a rising tide. RH is the sharpest expression of the trade-off. Demand at the luxury furniture maker is outpacing other home-furnishing companies - an analyst noted demand has "come at a pretty big cost to margin"[[5]] - and management is leaning into the RH Estates catalog relaunch, with galleries transitioning mid-November toward 75-85% of the business converted by December.[[6]] The international drag from European flagship openings, which pressured profitability, has no further European openings planned in 2027, which management says should help reduce that drag.[[6]] RH's math is a bet that the new-product launch can generate its own demand independent of the housing cycle - historically how the company has moved the business 15 to 20 points. The software pair is running the other direction. On the other side of the line, Snowflake's numbers are unambiguous in direction. Product revenue grew 37% year over year in its latest quarter - the third straight quarter of acceleration - with non-GAAP operating margin expanding 400 basis points to 15%, and management raised fiscal 2027 product revenue guidance by over 500 basis points to 36% growth.[[7]] The prior quarter showed the same profile: product revenue up 34%, net revenue retention at 126%.[[7]] The narrative is that AI consumption is a flywheel pulling platform demand through the model, not a discretionary line item customers can defer. Datadog is a more mixed read. The underlying quarter was strong - revenue up roughly 36% to about $1.1 billion, called a key AI beneficiary - but shares fell on reports that a major AI client reduced usage, which is the exact vulnerability buried in this basket.[[8]] One analyst's framing captures it: "Expansion Is Broadening, but the Multiple Is Still Priced for Perfection."[[8]] That is the honest descriptor of both software names - the demand is real, but the market has already paid for it, and a single concentrated customer trimming consumption is enough to move the stock double digits.[[8]] What to watch next. * The Hormuz diplomatic channel. A senior Iranian official told Reuters the most realistic path is allowing navigation through the Strait of Hormuz in exchange for the U.S. ending its naval blockade - and oil fell Friday on optimism over that potential solution.[[9]] If a reopening happens, freight-normalization is the ballast under every home-furnishing margin for 2027. * The software reports. Datadog is scheduled for Nov. 5 before the open and Snowflake Dec. 2 after the close (estimated dates).[[10]] The question on both: is any large AI customer slowing consumption, or is the flywheel still accelerating? * Home-cycle confirmation. Williams-Sonoma reports Nov. 18, La-Z-Boy Nov. 17, Leslie's Dec. 1, and RH Dec. 10 (estimated).[[10]] Watch for whether management is building any housing-recovery into guidance - Williams-Sonoma explicitly said it is not.[[3]] * The 7% line. If 30-year mortgages hold above 7% into year-end, the housing-levered names likely grind sideways into spring. A drop back below 6.9% on de-escalation would change the setup quickly. The honest read: this is a demand story that is really a rates-and-freight story wearing a demand costume. The software names are priced for continued acceleration with thin margin for error, and the home names are priced for a recovery that the 7% mortgage just pushed further out - unless the Hormuz channel delivers the de-escalation that reprices both. Sources. * Mortgage Rates Average 7.03%globenewswire.com * Ocean container shipping rates could test record highs as ...reuters.com * Williams-Sonoma, Inc. (WSM) Q1 FY2026 2026-05-21Earnings call transcript * Mattress demand is down: ISPA data reveals where consumers are still spending | Home Text...hometextilestoday.com * Rh (RH) Q4 FY2025 2026-03-31T00:00:00Earnings call transcript * Rh (RH) Q2 FY2026 2026-09-10Earnings call transcript * Snowflake Inc. (SNOW) Q2 FY2027 2026-09-02Earnings call transcript * Snowflake's AI-powered results send shares soaring, buoy ...reuters.com * Oil falls as potential diplomatic solution to Iran conflict arisescnbc.com * Get earnings scheduleFN2 market data