First Horizon profits dip from 4th quarter

Tennessee’s biggest bank reported a slight drop in its first-quarter earnings from the previous quarter, but profits were still up from a year ago despite banking concerns raised last month by the failure of Silicon Valley and Signature banks.

First Horizon National Corp. said Tuesday it earned $243 million, or 43 cents per share, in net income available to shareholders in the first three months of 2023.

Net income for shareholders was down from the $258 million, or 45 cents per share, earned in the fourth quarter of 2022. But First Horizon earnings in the first three months of 2023 were still up from the first quarter a year ago, when the bank earned $187 million, or 34 cents per share.

The Memphis-based bank holding company, which will soon merge with TD Bank, posted revenue of $1.09 billion in the first quarter. Its revenue net of interest expense was $859 million, falling short of Wall Street forecasts.

“This quarter’s results, highlighted by our continued strong capital position, disciplined credit culture, expense discipline, and well-diversified and stable funding mix, reflect the strength and stability of our franchise,” First Horizon CEO Bryan Jordan said in Tuesday’s earnings release. “Despite ongoing macroeconomic uncertainty, we continue to grow deep client relationships across our 12-state footprint and in our specialty businesses.”

Netflix adds users but income down

Netflix began the year with another burst in subscriber growth that eclipsed analysts’ projections for the third consecutive quarter, providing further evidence the video streaming service has regained its momentum after a jarring downturn in customers prompted a shake-up.

The 1.75 million gain in Netflix subscribers reported Tuesday for the January-March period was nearly 550,000 more than the average estimate among analysts surveyed by FactSet.

Although the subscriber increase was smaller than Netflix has historically reported for the first quarter, it was a stark contrast to the loss of 200,000 subscribers that the Los Gatos, California, company sustained at the same time last year.

That unexpected erosion, marking Netflix’s first quarterly losses in more than a decade, prompted management to roll out a low-priced version of its service that includes commercials, and to begin a crackdown on password sharing that’s being imposed in phases. Management also stopped estimating how many subscribers it would pick up from one quarter to the next in an attempt to get Wall Street to focus more on its financial results rather than the size of its audience.

Netflix earned $1.3 billion, or $2.88 per share, in the first quarter, an 18% decline from the same time last year. Even so, the per share figure was slightly above analysts’ forecast, according to FactSet. Revenue edged up 4% from last year to $8.16 billion, a notch below analyst estimates.

Twitter lifts limits on misgendering

Twitter has quietly removed a policy against the “targeted misgendering or deadnaming of transgender individuals,” raising concerns that the Elon Musk-owned platform is becoming less safe for marginalized groups.

Twitter enacted the policy against deadnaming, or using a transgender person’s name before they transitioned, as well as purposefully using the wrong gender for someone as a form of harassment, in 2018.

On Monday, Twitter also said it will only put warning labels on some tweets that are “potentially” in violation of its rules against hateful conduct. Previously, the tweets were removed.

It was in that policy update that Twitter appears to have deleted the line against deadnaming from its rules.

“Twitter’s decision to covertly roll back its longtime policy is the latest example of just how unsafe the company is for users and advertisers alike,” said Sarah Kate Ellis, the president and CEO of the advocacy group Glaad. “This decision to roll back LGBTQ safety pulls Twitter even more out of step with TikTok, Pinterest, and Meta, which all maintain similar policies to protect their transgender users at a time when anti-transgender rhetoric online is leading to real world discrimination and violence.”

Southwest delays 2,200 flights Tuesday

Southwest Airlines’ planes were briefly grounded nationwide Tuesday for what the airline called an intermittent technology issue, leading to more than 2,200 delayed flights just four months after the carrier suffered a much bigger meltdown over the Christmas travel rush.

The hold on departures was lifted by mid-morning Eastern time, according to Southwest and the Federal Aviation Administration, but not before traffic at airports from Denver to New York City backed up.

“Southwest has resumed operations after temporarily pausing flight activity this morning to work through data connection issues resulting from a firewall failure,” the Dallas-based airline said in a prepared statement. “Early this morning, a vendor-supplied firewall went down and connection to some operational data was unexpectedly lost.”

— Compiled by Dave Flessner