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Embracing technology helped MegaCorp Logistics thrive as other 3PLs struggled to survive
by BOSS Editorial | Published: November 1, 2022 | Updated: November 1, 2022 11:13 am
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Bold decisions and a touch of prescience advanced MegaCorp Logistics into an industry leadership role at a time when others in the space were struggling to respond to the sudden changes wrought by the pandemic.
Based in Wilmington, N.C., MegaCorp is one of the country’s most lauded logistics firms. Not only have they moved $11.6 billion of goods in their 13-year lifetime, but their commitment to exceptional service through technology and collaboration also keeps them atop a number of “best of” lists, and at top of mind for shippers large and small.
A passionate innovator with a mission to be America’s premier logistics provider, MegaCorp specializes in meeting the needs of customers seeking comprehensive full truckload and LTL services throughout North America. The company leverages a blend of technology, service, and collaboration that goes beyond meeting service level requirements, introducing their clients to new and innovative technology resources.

John Carter Gillespie
“We’ve found the key balance in providing exceptional service and finding areas where our technology can improve or enhance our clients’ or carriers’ experience with us,” said John Carter Gillespie, the company’s Chief Technology Officer. “We are heavily into anything that helps us differentiate and innovate in our offerings for our carriers and our customers.”
Gillespie credits company CEO Ryan Legg’s comfort with radical change as the driver for their sweeping technology modernization effort; that mindset launched MegaCorp into an enviable leadership position in the 3PL space. “He recognized where the industry is going, and where we needed to optimize so we could scale appropriately,” he said.
When Gillespie joined the company in March 2020, he set out to build out a proprietary transport management software (TMS) system inside the cloud. The TMS enhances day-to-day operational efficiencies, allowing users to access multiple system resources including CRM capabilities, carrier profile information, carrier document storage, and processing, as well as the ability to post loads to external platforms and research market capacity and truck pricing.
The modernization plan also included updating their major operational business processes, and a push to become more cloud scalable and mobile- and web browser-friendly.
Prior to the pandemic’s onset, the company had moved their telephone and email contact systems to the cloud to create an operating expense (OpEx) subscription model for hardware. “We knew that as we scaled and grew, we could just consume versus having to buy servers and build out data centers in colocation spaces,” he said.
Working with the industry’s biggest cloud providers opened a plethora of regional data center opportunities, making it easy for their third-party integrators to get on board. Moving systems let them avoid technology roadblocks, including the consequences of the supply chain chip shortage that made it difficult to acquire servers and networking equipment – issues that many similar firms had to face.

The creation of a hybrid, remote-friendly work model allowed their employees to work from home; by doing so, they retained 100% of their existing workforce and even hired an additional 50 workers at a time when other 3PLs were enduring layoffs. “We had about 325 employees when I came to the company. Today we have 670 employees,” Gillespie noted. At the same time, MegaCorp’s revenue grew from roughly $350 million to approximately $900 million in revenue.
The company’s technology resources also include real-time tracking updates that can easily be integrated with industry tracking platforms including MacroPoint and FourKites. Automated over-the-road reports provide tracking and load status updates, as well as access to the company’s free interactive client portal, HeroConnect.
The cloud-based client portal that allows customers to view their active and historical freight information in real-time is directly linked to their TMS. MegaCorp clients can view appointment information, and appointment confirmation numbers, as well as real-time location check calls, location maps, and satellite views through their tracking integration with the Trucker Tools Smart Capacity system.
Smart Capacity makes it fast and easy to locate specific types of capacity in certain lanes and on specific dates. In addition to making loads digitally available to owner-operators and carriers, the system enables them to transfer load documents for payment on MegaCorp’s carrier portal.

The system stores historic load data, giving clients continuous visibility even after their load is delivered. “HeroConnect provides consistent visibility so our clients can continue day-to-day operations without having to stop and find out additional information,” Gillespie explained. “We want to provide transparency to our clients — what we see, they see.”
Several key partners, including Presidio and AppSmart, helped to make the transformation a success. Virginia’s More Better Technology (MBT) provided architecture, cloud, DevOps, app modernization, and delivery advancement tech to modernize their TMS architecture to be adaptable to MegaCorp’s rapidly growing business.
“MBT has been a great partner, helping us reach our scalability needs by maturing our cloud architecture and management along with the necessary application changes to realize unlimited scale,” Gillespie said. MBT leveraged their expertise and proprietary tooling to rapidly adapt and correct legacy application code across MegaCorp’s multi-million line application platforms, which was hindering them from achieving their desired scale, stability, and implementation of new functionality.
“They partnered with our IT and business communities to build roadmaps and strategic plans to realize the right business value at the right time with the right architecture,” he added.
When it comes to fostering a highly productive and healthy workforce, the award-winning enterprise goes above and beyond, creating what Gillespie calls “life-changing” opportunities for their employees. In fact, Inc. named MegaCorp one of the top workplaces in America for 2022.

At the local level, the company partners with several organizations to create a robust talent pipeline, not just for themselves, but for their community. They are developing university-level talent intern partnerships and working with the Wilmington Chamber of Commerce to create technology career paths for high-schoolers.
They’re also collaborating with SparkNC, supporting an inventive outreach to elementary and high schools throughout North Carolina in which students learn about the tech industry, solving real problems for real businesses or organizations with the support of a certified coach. We’re certain that MegaCorp’s approach to introducing students to technology will highlight the need for what makes the company stand apart – customer service.
“We understand the workload that can inhibit our clients daily, and we do everything possible to make their experience with MegaCorp seamless and a breath of fresh air.”
MegaCorp is an award-winning logistics company with remarkable growth. MegaCorp is headquartered in Wilmington, NC with offices in Cincinnati, OH; Elkins, WV; Morgantown, WV and Jacksonville, FL. MegaCorp services the continental US and Canada.
MegaCorp is named as one of the top places to work by Inc Magazine and the turnover rate is less than 8% because when you work for the best, why would you leave? With our fun, vibrant, corporate culture and unlimited earning potential, we want to bring out the best in people, so we offer the Mega-best. Our pay is well above industry standard, and we have a lengthy list of Mega Perks because we have our employees’ best interest at heart and know you are not just a number. At MegaCorp, we want you to thrive in a positive work environment, so we give you the tools you need to succeed without being suffocated by micromanagement.
Want to join our team? View openings and apply at www.MegaCorpLogistics.com/careers or reach out to our recruiter, Carolyn Aubitz: [email protected] or 910.332.0820 x1410.
We recognize that MegaCorp is an extension of our clients’​ logistics operations, and we have strict policies in place to ensure that their goods are delivered safely and on time. At MegaCorp, we also understand that our clients are trusting us with the core of their business, and we do not take that job lightly. Our staff is highly trained and takes great pride in their work along with the relationship they have with their clients. We are people helping people, offering the best to our customers, transportation partners and employees — it’s the Mega way.
We specialize in full truckloads, are asset-based, have an owner-operator program and a national carrier database of trucks that have been thoroughly screened and vetted to meet our above-industry standards. MegaCorp can also handle your LTL and rail freight as well. For references or a lane quote email [email protected] or call us at 877.241.1649.
Corporate Office
1011 Ashes Dr.
Wilmington, NC 28405
Phone Number: 910.332.0820
Email: [email protected]
Homepage Link: http://www.megacorplogistics.com/
Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/MegaCorpLogistics/
Twitter:      https://twitter.com/megacorp3pl
LinkedIn:   https://www.linkedin.com/company/megacorp-logistics/
 
Category: Innovation, Supply Chain



Embracing technology helped MegaCorp Logistics thrive as other 3PLs struggled to survive
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Paperless document strategies are more of a culture than a strategy; you can put all of the technology in place, but if you still “have to have” paper, you may not wind up as paperless as you planned. So, what does it take to really do digital documents right?
If you are looking at a transaction without the supporting documentation or “paperwork,” how can you tell what’s going on? If you simply store documents in a file folder structure, even with smart naming conventions, you may not be as paperless as you think.
If you have different document storage systems, including file cabinets, a Document Management System (DMS), a portal, some off-site storage, and a backup in the cloud, you may not be as paperless as you think. If you recall the classic Bugs Bunny cartoons, I’m reminded of Bugs’ phrase, while munching a carrot: “Ehh, what’s up, Doc?”
What Needs Are You Trying to Satisfy?
First, there is no one right way to implement any technology. It’s preferable to align your business strategy and tactics with your technology strategy and tactics, which should lead to your paperless and accounting tactics. However, if someone says, “This is the one (or only) way,” don’t buy it.
There are many right ways to implement paperless, but the best digital documents strategy looks at your business or your client’s business holistically. What are the needs that you are trying to satisfy?
What Are Your Pain Points?
Normally, there are several pain points related to paperless digital document management. Let’s see if some of these ring true with you:
Note that we could have named more transactional items like bank statements, expenses, invoices, quotes, orders, and similar business documentation or documents that describe the processes of a business – or, in a word, documentation.
Recent Developments in Paperless Systems
While paperless systems have been around for 20-plus years in small business, developers have continued to evolve the capabilities and thinking behind the systems. Recent developments include the use of cell phone cameras to capture images, and performing optical character recognition (OCR) on the images and storing these images with the transaction, such as is frequently done in expense tracking products like: Concur, Expensify, Nexonia, Tallie, Zoho Expense, and a host of other examples.
Another development is the use of portals to retrieve and deliver documents. Links can be sent to clients or customers requesting or delivering information. This eliminates sending documents of any size via email. Examples of portals and information gathering tools include:
Accounting products have also definitely gotten into the paperless digital document act lately with Accounting Power, QuickBooks Online, Xero, and Zoho – as well as with mid-market products such as Financial Force, Intacct, and NetSuite that add a feature to attach documents at the transaction level. And, of course, QuickBooks Desktop was extended with a variety of products that wrapped this popular small business solution with some level of document control.
Examples here include popular choices such as:
From Simple to Sophisticated
The traditional model of storing documents is still commonly used, as it should be. If you consider simple to complex ways to store documents, you wind up with the “levels” of paperless systems. You can do-it-yourself (DIY) by creating folders and using smart naming at the operating system level on your Windows, MacOS, or Linux computer. You can step up your game with Document Management Systems, Document Storage Solutions (DSS), and Enterprise Content Management systems.
What’s the next step up from DIY? You can choose a little more sophistication with simple file cabinet systems. These applications usually assist with file and folder naming, integration to applications, and a few other productivity benefits.
Sometimes these file cabinet systems are called Document Storage Solutions. DSS typically have a more focused set of features and functions, which are often targeted to a specific niche such as direct integration with a particular tax prep package, integration with QuickBooks, or providing a secure file sharing solution. These applications are generally designed to index data in a single (or small number) of ways, and may have a fixed organizational hierarchy.
Although a few of these products have been named earlier in other contexts, the following products are examples of DSS:
The next level of sophistication in paperless systems is Document Management Systems (DMS). DMS are designed as comprehensive business solutions for automating the capture, storage and dissemination of all electronic documents and files in an organization.
DMS applications typically, but not always, have the ability to connect with products from multiple vendors and multiple index fields so that a single document can be simultaneously filed more than one way. The application of automatic naming, records retention, and other features are included and automated.
Examples of products in this category include:
Finally, the highest level of system is known as Enterprise Content Management (ECM). ECM is a formalized means of organizing and storing an organization’s documents, and other content, that relate to the organization’s processes. The term encompasses strategies, methods, and tools used throughout the lifecycle of the content.
ECM systems perform everything that a DSS or DMS can do, plus other features like scheduled publishing of content, much like a web-site content editor such as WordPress or Joomla can do, providing security control of documents, publishing and recall of documents or document control, and these systems almost universally have a workflow component available or included.
Additional technologies like recognition technologies, forms processing, COLD, aggregation, collaboration, records management, and library services are all common. While ECM are rarely used in the small and medium sized business market, if the conditions are right, some organizations may have to step up from a DMS to an ECM.
Examples include:
Although not a comprehensive list, http://www.totallypaperless.com/solutions contains a few more examples not named in this article of the 300 or so products sold into the United States market.
Challenge: Large Number – and Range – of Products
So far in this article I have been trying to expose you to the capabilities and levels of products that you can choose from. Hopefully what you are beginning to see is that there are dozens, if not hundreds, of solutions. And these come at all levels of sophistication, just as is true of accounting software products.
Unlike accounting, however, there are not really that many dominant players. For example, most of you could simply answer the question: What are three entry-level accounting products? (QuickBooks, Xero, Zoho, Sage 50, etc.). Likewise, even though you may never have seen them, you could probably answer the question: what are the top two ERP products? (SAP and Oracle). You can probably even name a few mid-market accounting software products (Sage 300, Dynamics GP, Open Systems TRAVERSE, Epicor, Infor, etc.).
But how many of you could do the same thing for paperless, DSS, DMS, and ECM before reading this article? The paperless market may be 10 to 20 years behind the accounting market, and the products continue to evolve rapidly as they try to meet a business need.
This is where your challenge comes in. What does your business, or your clients’ businesses, need for document automation? Consider the list of business needs at the start of this article:
Carefully considering these questions will get you started on picking the right level of product. However, just as with choosing accounting software, a more comprehensive system will do more for you. You can choose a point solution like Bill.com to solve a specific problem like cash management, including bill payments. This type of solution may still be required when you have a more sophisticated DSS, DMS, or ECM supported with workflow, a portal, OCR, and other technologies.
Final Thoughts
The selection and implementation of a paperless system is a learned skill set just like implementing accounting software. Do you need to hire a professional to implement your paperless system or do you want to learn enough to add document management to your skill set?
I chose to add paperless skills to my knowledge and it made all the difference in understanding the complete flow of a business system. Do you need to add another tool to your kit? Do you have a firm grasp of the documents that support your practice?
Note: Document Management Systems and Document Storage Systems change frequently. The capabilities you or your clients need can vary widely. Record retention policies are needed and should be followed, but smaller businesses rarely have these in place. You should consider how and what you want to keep as your paperless or digital documents.
Randy Johnston is a well-known technology expert, consultant, trainer and speaker. He will be speaking at the upcoming Accountex USA 2016 event, Nov. 15-18 in Las Vegas. The original post appeared on the Sleeter Group blog. AccountingWEB and Accountex have partnered to bring you this content as we share a belief in the furtherment of the profession through greater insights.
Randy Johnston is a nationally recognized educator, consultant, and writer with over 40 years experience in Strategic Technology Planning, Accounting Software Selection, Paperless, Systems and Network Integration, Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Planning, Business Development and Management, Process Engineering and outsourced managed…
Very important points made by Randy Johnston. Without a plan and some policies and procedures, it is destined to not reach its full potential. The plan and policies also need to be shared with everyone and enforced. Mr. Johnston is trying to save us from a bad or less than successful experience. I suspect he has witnessed a few of these that have not went so well.
Hi Randy,
Thanks for sharing great information. I think customise NetSuite have all the features which you describe above. If you any one looking for cost effective NetSuite customisation services then click here https://www.suitestation.com/services/netsuite-customization.html

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After a string of open-source flaws, federal agencies could soon require vendors to supply a “software bill of materials.” But there’s a lot to do before SBOMs will be capable of significantly reducing cyber risk.
Often compared to an ingredients list on a package of food, an SBOM is a text file that details the components used to build a piece of software.
A major U.S. initiative aimed at improving transparency into the security of software components has a long way to go before it will be able to reach its full potential.
According to industry analysts and the federal official leading the “software bill of materials” (SBOM) effort for the government, the next phase of the initiative is ready to begin, with more vendors expected to soon start offering a detailed peek at the components used inside their software to federal customers.
But while SBOM will need time to fully mature, the important thing is to get started with what’s ready now and build from here, said Allan Friedman, who heads the SBOM effort at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.
“To go from security [where software] is a black box to thinking about the broader supply chain — that takes a while, especially in the federal government,” said Friedman, a senior adviser and strategist at CISA, in an interview with Protocol. “But it is a priority.”

At a basic level, an SBOM is just a text file that lists the components used to build a piece of software. The usual analogy that gets drawn is with the ingredients list on a package of food; some security professionals have even suggested just referring to it as a “software ingredient list.”
The software bill of materials could have a range of applications for reducing cyber risk, proponents say, though the most commonly cited use is enabling a customer to quickly pinpoint where they’re running vulnerable components.
The effort has gained traction in part due to rising concerns, in the wake of vulnerabilities such as Log4Shell and attacks such as the SolarWinds breach, about the security of open-source software components and the software supply chain overall. At the same time, not everyone in the cybersecurity community believes SBOM deserves to be a top focus, given all of the initiatives an organization could undertake to improve its security.

SBOM is only a starting point and does not solve any problems on its own, Friedman acknowledged.
“The important thing to remember about SBOM is it’s a data layer. And that’s all it is,” he said. “The goal is to take that data and turn it into intelligence, which can then drive action.”
In truth, the software tools needed to analyze SBOMs in bulk and glean insights from the data largely do not exist yet.
Even the much-touted use case of checking the SBOM for a flaw like Log4Shell is not something even a skilled developer would want to do manually, and it’s beyond the reach of anyone non-technical, said Gareth Rushgrove, vice president of products at Snyk, which offers developer security tools including SBOM generation. Notably, in the initial stage, an SBOM won’t be automatically correlated with vulnerability information.
But many in the industry told Protocol they expect people and companies will be able to solve these problems as soon as more SBOMs are being produced. That will likely be spurred, at least in the beginning, by the federal government and its tens of billions of dollars in annual IT spending.

The U.S. government has been working on various elements of the software bill of materials equation for more than a year now, ever since President Biden’s executive order in May 2021 established SBOM as an important initiative for national cybersecurity. Many software companies have interpreted the efforts as the basis for the eventual inclusion of SBOMs as a requirement in federal contracts.
The White House’s Office of Management and Budget is expected to soon issue a memo to federal agencies detailing how to go about including SBOMs in the contracting process, cybersecurity policy watchers told Protocol. OMB declined to comment.
In the meantime, some federal agencies have already begun to ask for SBOMs.
“It’s going to be a big change.”
In July, the State Department issued a draft request for proposals on technology contracts worth $8 billion to $10 billion, which included a requirement for a software bill of materials. The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2023 mentions a requirement for procured products — with individual items listed in a “submitted bill of materials” — to either be free from software vulnerabilities or include a plan for remediating issues.
If the White House does ultimately direct federal agencies to require SBOMs from software suppliers, it would represent the most-specific technical requirement for cybersecurity ever placed on private-sector contractors by the U.S., said David Brumley, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon University and co-founder of cybersecurity startup ForAllSecure, which serves federal customers including the Department of Defense.
In short, in the event this happens, “it’s going to be a big change,” Brumley said.
But given the seriousness of the problem around the security of software — particularly open-source components — it may be exactly the type of ambitious change that the tech industry needs, a number of executives in the software and cybersecurity industries told Protocol.
“I think there is very significant inherent value in this, and we will see adoption across the industry,” said Yogesh Badwe, chief security officer at data protection vendor Druva. “It will take time, of course.”

Standard data fields in an SBOM include the names and versions of components, as well as the relationships between component “dependencies” — the pre-built, third-party software components that are heavily used in software development and are often distributed under open-source licenses.
The lack of visibility into software dependencies has been a major factor behind the push for SBOMs, particularly in the wake of Log4Shell, a critical vulnerability in the widely used Apache Log4j logging component that was discovered last December.
In the ensuing rush to patch affected systems, many software vendors struggled to figure out if their products were vulnerable to Log4Shell due to lack of visibility into their own code, a much more common problem than one might think, said MongoDB CISO Lena Smart. But the data platform company’s work with Snyk allowed it to “see every instance of Log4j so quickly,” Smart said. “That’s why we were able to tell our customers within two days, ‘This is where we are [with Log4j].'”
Notably, the U.S. government’s list of minimum elements needed for an SBOM includes that the documents are written in a machine-readable format to allow for automated usage. The two leading formats, SPDX and CycloneDX, will appeal to different customers based on which type of compliance or standards their industry is focused on, said Tim Mackey, principal security strategist with the Cybersecurity Research Center at Synopsys, which will generate SBOMs for customers.
“It should just be a natural part of the landscape, the way that the other parts of our vulnerability ecosystem are.”
At this point, the basics of SBOM are “reasonably well understood,” and numerous commercial and open-source tools now exist for generating the documents, Friedman said. “There’s no reason that an organization cannot start generating SBOMs and asking for SBOMs from their suppliers.”
Friedman, who has been the federal government’s most prominent SBOM champion for years, previously worked on the issue as director of cybersecurity initiatives at the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, before continuing the effort at CISA.
Going forward, he said, the focus will be on scaling up the production of SBOMs, achieving interoperability between the different vendors that generate them and “operationalizing” the concept — in other words, making SBOM into an everyday part of corporate life, like tax reporting.

“Most people should not be thinking about SBOM” within three to five years, according to Friedman. “It should just be a natural part of the landscape, the way that the other parts of our vulnerability ecosystem are,” he said.
Even in its limited initial phase, the SBOM approach is useful for helping to better inform purchase decisions on software, according to Dan Lorenc, a former Google software engineer who is now founder and CEO of Chainguard. The startup offers tools that aim to help software developers more accurately generate an SBOM and more efficiently remediate vulnerabilities in their own code with the help of the document.
However, because SBOMs aren’t automatically correlated with the National Vulnerability Database, making vulnerabilities transparent in an SBOM will be difficult “until a lot of work gets done on matching the vulnerability database to the software database,” Lorenc said.
“If I had to guess, the first year or two of this SBOM journey is going to be focused on just building up the muscle to ask for them, to provide them, to create them, to keep them up to date,” he said.
At Mend, which offers SBOM generation capabilities, vice president of product Jeff Martin said the federal efforts have also opened the door for private industry customers to begin requesting SBOMs from their software suppliers. Ultimately, “that’s what will actually move the needle,” he said.
Security teams across both the public and private sectors are tired of the mad scramble that occurs every time a new critical vulnerability is disclosed, said Dale Gardner, senior director and analyst at Gartner. Greater software transparency is a top priority for many organizations.
“I think there’s a lot of pressure and demand within the marketplace for these kinds of solutions,” Gardner said. “So I’m pretty confident [SBOM] is going to happen.”
Vendors looking to enable “dynamic SBOM” could be another key piece of the puzzle, according to Katie Norton, a senior research analyst at IDC. Such tools “can help prioritize what to deal with first, by telling you that these are the things that are internet-exposed and exploitable,” she said.

The need for tools that can make sense of SBOMs has always been recognized as a chicken-and-egg issue that would eventually have its time to be addressed, and that’s beginning to happen now, Friedman said.
“Our consumption of SBOM data has lagged — and that’s OK,” he said. “Until recently, we didn’t have a lot of SBOM data sitting around, so no one would have sought out an SBOM consumption tool. We’re now at a level where that’s starting to emerge.”
Without Biden’s executive order, it’s unclear whether the SBOM movement would have gained the attention and momentum needed to go mainstream.
“When the White House announced that part of the basic level of software security was including an SBOM, that did have a huge impact on how people saw this,” Friedman said. “It was an emerging idea. And now it was going to be expected as part of the basic software model.”
The SBOM initiative has prompted significant debate in the cybersecurity community in recent years, and continues to do so. While most say they support the push for greater software transparency, not all agree that focusing on SBOM is the best use of time for shorthanded security teams.
For the amount of effort that will be required to use SBOMs, the actual risk reduction is not likely to be worth it right now, said Wim Remes, managing director of the security services unit at Damovo.
“SBOM is a nice idea,” Remes said. “But I think it shouldn’t be a priority at this moment.”
Jonathan Reiber, vice president of cybersecurity strategy and policy at AttackIQ, and a former cyber policy official in the Obama administration, agreed.
SBOMs are “a great thing. They should happen. They’re not ‘the’ thing,” he said. “Start with what we know the adversary is going to do, and defend your high-value data [against that].”
Meanwhile, the federal effort around SBOM has also been questioned by some in the broader tech industry, including representatives of the Information Technology Industry Council, a trade group whose members include many of the largest companies.

“We’re not saying that SBOMs can’t be useful,” said Courtney Lang, senior director of policy at the group. “But I think there does remain a lot of work to be done in order to ensure that, if there is going to be some kind of future requirement, it actually yields useful information to the federal government.”
When asked about the readiness of federal agencies to use SBOMs, Friedman said that “there are definitely organizations in the U.S. government today that are ready to embark on that journey.”
Just like in the private sector, the government “has organizations that have spent a lot of time and money and staff thinking about the broader security landscape,” he said. “And there are also much smaller organizations that comply with federal rules, but don’t necessarily have abundant resources to take on new roles and responsibilities.”
“[SBOMs are] a great thing. They should happen. They’re not ‘the’ thing.”
Likewise, smaller software vendors that sell to the federal government could also be affected differently by any forthcoming SBOM requirements, said Rick Holland, CISO at ReliaQuest-owned cybersecurity vendor Digital Shadows.
Smaller vendors may have a steeper challenge with finding the resources needed to supply an SBOM, and may have to decide whether a federal contract is valuable enough to do so, Holland said.
Whatever the federal government ends up doing in terms of SBOM requirements for contractors, “I’d like to see a gentle approach to SBOM initially,” said Marc Rogers, executive director of cybersecurity at Okta.
For the first phase of SBOM, companies should just be asked to make their best effort, “and then they can improve on it,” Rogers said. “I’d like to see that go through some cycles before anyone starts sort of waving a stick.”
At data management software vendor AvePoint, cybersecurity chief Dana Simberkoff also wants to see answers for some of the other open questions about the practicalities of implementing SBOMs — from how to automate their usage to a mechanism for ensuring they don’t end up in the hands of attackers — before any SBOM requirements for contractors roll out.
Given that AvePoint’s software is used broadly across the U.S. government, she has good reason to pose such questions.

“Conceptually, this is absolutely the right direction for the government to take and for industry to take, as well,” said Simberkoff, who is chief risk, privacy and information security officer at the company. “But there are key things that need to be fleshed out.”
Still, the current lack of visibility into the security of software is just too serious of a problem to do nothing, she said, counting herself among the strong supporters of the SBOM initiative. “I’m a big believer in not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.”
Kyle Alspach ( @KyleAlspach) is a senior reporter at Protocol, focused on cybersecurity. He has covered the tech industry since 2010 for outlets including VentureBeat, CRN and the Boston Globe. He lives in Portland, Oregon, and can be reached at kalspach@protocol.com.
The bugs feature a “high” severity rating, down from the initial “critical” rating, and estimates suggest just 1.5% of OpenSSL instances are impacted.
A pre-announcement last week of a new vulnerability had generated significant attention in the cybersecurity community due to the ubiquity of OpenSSL and the massive impact of the Heartbleed vulnerability of 2014.
Kyle Alspach ( @KyleAlspach) is a senior reporter at Protocol, focused on cybersecurity. He has covered the tech industry since 2010 for outlets including VentureBeat, CRN and the Boston Globe. He lives in Portland, Oregon, and can be reached at kalspach@protocol.com.
The team that maintains OpenSSL, a key piece of widely used open-source software that’s used to provide encryption for internet communications, disclosed a pair of vulnerabilities on Tuesday that affect the most recent version of the software.
However, after initially rating the vulnerabilities as “critical” in a heads-up advisory last week, the new vulnerabilities have been downgraded to a severity rating of “high,” though administrators are still being urged to patch systems quickly.
The OpenSSL project team disclosed last week that a new vulnerability would be announced on Nov. 1 but did not provide specifics. The announcement had generated significant attention in the cybersecurity community due to the ubiquity of OpenSSL and the massive impact of a previously disclosed critical vulnerability in the software, the Heartbleed vulnerability of 2014.
OpenSSL enables secure internet communications by providing the underlying technology for the HTTPS protocol, now used on 82% of page loads worldwide, according to Firefox. The Heartbleed vulnerability had affected a significant number of major websites and led to attacks including the theft of hundreds of social insurance numbers in Canada, which prompted the shutdown of a tax filing website for the Canada Revenue Agency.

The vulnerability only impacts OpenSSL versions 3.0 and above. Data from cybersecurity vendor Wiz suggests that just 1.5% of OpenSSL instances are affected by the vulnerability.
That’s due at least in part to the relatively recent arrival of OpenSSL 3.0, which was released in September 2021.
“[Given] the fact the vulnerability is primarily client-side, requires the malicious certificate to be signed by a trusted CA (or the user to ignore the warning), and is complex to exploit, I estimate a low chance of seeing in-the-wild exploitation,” security researcher Marcus Hutchins wrote in a post.
The new version of OpenSSL featuring the patch for the vulnerability is OpenSSL 3.0.7.
The pre-announcement on the new version last week was presumably to give organizations time to determine if their applications would be impacted before disclosing the full details on the vulnerabilities, said Brian Fox, co-founder and CTO of software supply chain security vendor Sonatype.
Given the tendency for malicious actors to quickly utilize major vulnerabilities in cyberattacks, many expected that attackers would begin seeking to exploit the issue shortly after the disclosure.
The new vulnerabilities both involve buffer overflow issues, a common bug in software code that can enable an attacker to gain unauthorized access to parts of memory.
In the first vulnerability disclosed on Tuesday, which has been given the tracker CVE-2022-3602, “An attacker can craft a malicious email address to overflow four attacker-controlled bytes on the stack,” the OpenSSL team wrote in the advisory on the issue.
The resulting buffer overflow could lead to a crash or, potentially, remote execution of code, the advisory says.
The severity rating for the vulnerability was downgraded to “high” due to analysis that determined that certain mitigating factors should make it a less-severe issue, according to the OpenSSL advisory on the issue.
“Many platforms implement stack overflow protections which would mitigate against the risk of remote code execution,” the OpenSSL team wrote in the advisory.

One initial analysis suggests that exploiting the vulnerability is more difficult than it could be since the issue occurs after the validation of an encryption certificate.
For the second vulnerability, tracked at CVE-2022-3786, a malicious email address can be utilized to cause a buffer overflow and crash the system, but remote code execution is not mentioned as a potential concern.
Kyle Alspach ( @KyleAlspach) is a senior reporter at Protocol, focused on cybersecurity. He has covered the tech industry since 2010 for outlets including VentureBeat, CRN and the Boston Globe. He lives in Portland, Oregon, and can be reached at kalspach@protocol.com.
Jason Zins is a Partner at SkyBridge Capital where he leads the firm’s venture and growth equity investing with a focus on crypto and fintech companies. Prior to joining SkyBridge in 2014, Mr. Zins worked at Bloomberg L.P. Mr. Zins received his B.A. in Government from Dartmouth College.
The flow of capital and talent into Web3 startups continues, pulled through this crypto winter by conviction in the generational technology transition it represents. Capital is in place and looking for an early-stage home. Valuations and expectations have normalized, and that is facilitating rational, purposeful engagement with Web3 startups. We believe the Web3 investment environment is riper than ever.
At SkyBridge, we have invested over $400 million in leading crypto and fintech startups since 2020. We expect to accelerate our efforts following our partnership with FTX Ventures, which recently bought a 30% stake in SkyBridge. Our collective goal is to grow the ecosystem, and we’re here for the long term.
SkyBridge Capital’s Anthony Scaramucci and FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried at Crypto Bahamas
To founders and operators, now is the time to invest in Web3 builders who are focusing on real-world impact. Investors are looking for tangible use cases, including in the physical world. The recent SALT New York conference, for instance, featured two projects that are interesting to investors at the moment:

As an investor at SkyBridge, I have seen countless pitches, read my fair share of term sheets, and developed a good sense for what makes Web3 founders more likely to succeed — and more likely to fail.
If you are a Web3 entrepreneur, here is our advice for you:
1. Focus on the product.
Demonstrate economic value. The crypto winter is proving once again that token price is the last thing we should care about. The VC correction is proving once again that valuations are not an indicator of success. While money continues to flow, the crypto winter and VC slowdown have forced even the most committed Web3 venture capitalists (and their investors) to proceed with more caution.
Valuations have become less hype-driven and more realistic; the amount of time spent on due diligence has increased substantially; and every founder needs to directly, clearly, and concisely answer the question, “Does this project have any real-world utility, and does it create economic value?”
Just as you would with any other tech product, focus on the fundamentals: user growth, customer acquisition cost, burn rate, and all the rest of that really boring stuff that drives return on investment and really matters.
2. Embrace transparency.
Our LPs want to know that their money is safe with us — and we need to know it is safe with the companies we invest in. That means a couple things for you.
Be as transparent as you can be about custody and security, especially if tokens are part of the deal structure. Where are the assets held? What measures are in place to protect them? We have a long history of operational due diligence, and we place a premium on careful control over the assets.
Don’t underestimate the business impact of regulation. Incorporate its advent into your thinking. We believe, as many investors do, that regulation is coming — it’s just a matter of time — and that it will have a positive impact on the industry. Embrace it; don’t try to hide or operate in the gray area.

3. Play the long game.
Believe it or not, we’re still early in the age of Web3. That has several implications for founders.
Keep your nose clean. Good character is hard to find and selling at a premium in this space (see: 3AC). The majority of Web3 founders are unfamiliar to most investors. That means a clean track record, references, and being able to demonstrate trustworthiness are more important than ever.
Play nice. Whether it’s an investor who rejects you or a competitor you feel like you’re racing against, don’t sling mud or burn bridges. The landscape is constantly shifting, people move around in this industry all the time, and your paths will almost certainly cross again. The borderless economy isn’t a zero-sum game. Don’t treat it like one.
Protect your culture. Make sure your employees share the same values and standards of conduct. The talent pool is deep right now, but remember that, for startups, every single hire has an outsize impact on the culture (and chances of survival). If you make one bad hire in a company with 10,000 employees, you won’t feel it. But make one bad hire in a company with 10, and it’ll probably kill you.
*****
Projects built on financial engineering are a thing of the past. The excess and easy capital has left the system. This is a good thing. Focus on building great products or protocols, and the valuation will take care of itself over time. Obsess over valuation, and you may find yourself a zombie without access to capital.
We want you to succeed, whether that translates to capital investment or not. Because every win in this space, no matter where it comes from, pushes the tide a little higher.
Jason Zins is a Partner at SkyBridge Capital where he leads the firm’s venture and growth equity investing with a focus on crypto and fintech companies. Prior to joining SkyBridge in 2014, Mr. Zins worked at Bloomberg L.P. Mr. Zins received his B.A. in Government from Dartmouth College.
Even as climate change increases the risks of floods, fires, and droughts, there are steps that data centers large and small can take to minimize their future vulnerability.
Lisa Martine Jenkins is a senior reporter at Protocol covering climate. Lisa previously wrote for Morning Consult, Chemical Watch and the Associated Press. Lisa is currently based in Brooklyn, and is originally from the Bay Area. Find her on Twitter ( @l_m_j_) or reach out via email (ljenkins@protocol.com).
Increasingly extreme weather threatens data centers and one of the things cloud computing customers prioritize most: reliability.
Data center operators have long planned for some climate risks, but climate change is increasing the odds of extreme events and throwing new ones into the mix. That’s creating a reckoning for operators, who could have to reevaluate everything from where to site new data centers to physically hardening infrastructure and spreading workloads across multiple regions.
A 2019 survey by the Uptime Institute, which advises business infrastructure companies on reliability, shows that a significant share of the cloud computing sector is being reactive to the threats that climate change poses or, even worse, doing nothing at all. Nearly a third of the nearly 500 data center operators that responded said they had not recently reviewed their risks and had no plans to do so. Meanwhile, just 22% said they are “preparing for increased severe weather events.”

Jay Dietrich, the Uptime Institute’s sustainability research director, said that large data center companies generally have the resources to undertake more regular risk assessments and prepare for how climate change will impact operations, from storms that could increase the risk of outages to drought that could complicate access to water for cooling. Meanwhile, smaller companies tend to be more reactive, though they stand to lose the most.
“If I’m a smaller company that doesn’t have a big data center infrastructure, but it’s integral to my operation,” Dietrich said, “I’d better be proactive because if that goes down, it’s my business that goes down with it.”
Amazon Web Services, Google, and Microsoft — dubbed the Big Three in the data center world — have the world’s biggest cloud computing footprints, and all three have robust risk assessment processes that take into account potential disasters.
AWS says it selects center locations to minimize the risks posed by flooding and extreme weather and relies on technology like automatic sensors, responsive equipment, and both water- and fire-detecting devices to protect them once they’re built. Similarly, Microsoft uses a complex threat assessment process, and Google assures customers that it automatically moves workloads between data centers in different regions in the event of a fire or other disaster.
If I’m a smaller company that doesn’t have a big data center infrastructure, but it’s integral to my operation, I’d better be proactive because if that goes down, it’s my business that goes down with it.”
However, none of the Big Three explicitly call out climate change in their public-facing risk assessment processes, much less the mounting threat it poses. (None of the three responded to Protocol’s specific questions and instead provided links to previous statements and webpages.)
A 2020 Uptime report warns that data center operators may have become complacent in their climate risk assessments, even though all evidence points to the fact that “the past is no longer a predictor of the future.” For instance, sea-level rise could overwhelm cables and other data transmission infrastructure, while the rise in large wildfires could directly threaten dozens of centers located in the West.

Meanwhile, storms are expected to intensify as well. A recent assessment found that roughly 3.3 gigawatts of data center capacity is in the federally recognized risk zone for hurricanes, and 6 gigawatts of capacity that is either planned or already under construction falls in the zone as well. And even when a data center itself is out of harm’s way, climate impacts have made power outages more likely, requiring centers to rely more on backup systems.
Given that data centers are designed to operate for 20 years — but are generally in use for much longer — the need to plan for how climate change is shifting baseline conditions is vital to ensuring operators aren’t caught off guard. This isn’t necessarily a future problem either. In 2017, wildfires got within three blocks of Sonoma County’s data center, and also scattered the team responsible for operating it across Northern California. And just this year, Google and Oracle’s data centers experienced cooling system failures amid record heat in the U.K.
To account for these risks, Uptime encourages companies to spread workloads between data centers and regions; if a storm hits Florida, a provider should have infrastructure out-of-state so service can continue without pause, which happened during Hurricane Ian last month. While this redundancy is easier for a large company with widespread data centers, even smaller companies can benefit from using secondary and out-of-region sites for backup and recovery in case a climate-related disaster causes data loss at the original site.
Smaller fixes could have a big climate resiliency payoff as well. Uptime recommends investing in disaster prediction resources, such as those developed by insurance companies, to pinpoint the likelihood of disasters at any given site and use that information to take steps to prepare data centers for disaster, from moving generators and pumps to higher ground to installing flood barriers. These steps can improve a center’s reliability when disaster hits. At least some companies are already taking these steps, including Equinix, which has a global footprint of more than 240 data centers.
“We have undertaken a climate risk and resilience review of all our sites with our insurers,” Stephen Donohoe, the company’s vice president of global data center design, and Andrew Higgins, director of engineering development and master planning, told Protocol in a joint statement. “Climate risks are an integral part of our due diligence process during site selection, with flood risk, wind risk, water stress and extreme temperatures considered prior to acquiring the site mitigation measures are considered during the design process.”

[W]e’ve been really emphasizing that this is coming … You’re better off being in front of it than behind it.”
Major enterprise operations may have no choice but to take some of these steps, given policy changes underway in Europe and the U.S.
The EU’s corporate sustainability reporting directive, which will come into effect in 2023, requires large companies operating on the continent to disclose their exposure to various risks, including climate change. In the U.S., the Securities and Exchange Commission is considering a similar set of rules that would also require that companies disclose climate risk information, though a final rule is still months away.
If the rule, which is still in flux, comes into force, even the most reactive data center companies will have to change their ways.
“In our publications and discussions with clients and members, we’ve been really emphasizing that this is coming,” said Dietrich. “You’re better off being in front of it than behind it.”
Lisa Martine Jenkins is a senior reporter at Protocol covering climate. Lisa previously wrote for Morning Consult, Chemical Watch and the Associated Press. Lisa is currently based in Brooklyn, and is originally from the Bay Area. Find her on Twitter ( @l_m_j_) or reach out via email (ljenkins@protocol.com).
Twitter could turn into an even bigger medium for crypto messages — if it survives. Meanwhile, Binance is advising Twitter on how to embrace Web3.
The ongoing health of Twitter and its direction under Musk could have a significant impact on a service where crypto promoters tout tokens, developers coordinate software updates, and investors seek information.
Benjamin Pimentel ( @benpimentel) covers crypto and fintech from San Francisco. He has reported on many of the biggest tech stories over the past 20 years for the San Francisco Chronicle, Dow Jones MarketWatch and Business Insider, from the dot-com crash, the rise of cloud computing, social networking and AI to the impact of the Great Recession and the COVID crisis on Silicon Valley and beyond. He can be reached at bpimentel@protocol.com or via Google Voice at (925) 307-9342.
Twitter’s future looks fuzzy under Elon Musk. But could things be coming into focus for crypto Twitter?
Musk now owns a social network used by a large and dynamic online community of crypto supporters, in which he himself has been one of the loudest and quirkiest voices. The ongoing health of Twitter and its direction under Musk could have a significant impact on a service where crypto promoters tout tokens, developers coordinate software updates, and investors seek information.
The self-appointed “chief twit,” who has more than 112 million followers on Twitter, is known for triggering wild movements in the price of dogecoin by endorsing — or even just mentioning — the token. He triggered a sell-off by jokingly dismissing it as “a hustle” on “Saturday Night Live.”
At his direction, Tesla purchased $1.5 billion worth of bitcoin and announced that it would take the crypto token as payment before selling a huge chunk of that investment and saying bitcoin payments had been halted due to environmental worries.

Despite Musk’s idiosyncratic posturing, crypto fans on Twitter seem excited by the notion of someone they view as one of their own running the place. Dogecoin, for example, has been rallying again, its price boosted not by any tweets by Musk but simply by the idea that one of its leading cheerleaders is in charge.
There could be more concrete changes to Twitter’s business from the crypto world, though. The deal itself was made possible in part by backing from a crypto powerhouse, Binance, giving the world’s biggest crypto marketplace a say in reshaping a major social network.
CEO Changpeng Zhao said in a statement that Binance’s hope is to “play a role in bringing social media and Web3 together in order to broaden the use and adoption of crypto and blockchain technology.”
Patrick Hillman, the company’s chief strategy officer, called the investment “a great R&D opportunity.”
“We see this as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to use what is one of the most prestigious platforms from the Web 2.0 era as a laboratory or a sandbox to be able to test out whether Web3 solutions might be able to solve some of the problems that are plaguing Web 2.0 platforms today,” he told Protocol.
He said Binance hopes to play a role in solving problems plaguing crypto Twitter, led by the proliferation of AI-driven bots that have “completely debased the entire conversation,” he said. Musk himself has said spam bots — many of them pushing crypto scams — were a motivation to take over Twitter, and at one point vowed to “defeat the spam bots or die trying!”
Some ideas are already being considered, such as using a microtransaction system that “would result in unimaginable costs for these bot farms,” Hillman said. Another proposal is to attach an NFT to an account or a cluster of accounts to “ensure there was an actual user behind that account,” he said.
These potential fixes will take time, though Musk has shown he wants to move quickly on the product front, rapidly launching plans to charge verified users and explore a relaunch of Twitter’s defunct short-video service, Vine.

Musk is currently focused on reorganizing Twitter, “doing all that work right now that you would expect any new executive who’s just taken over a prestigious company that’s been in existence for over a decade,” Hillman said. “Once that starts to come around, then we’ll start to talk about, OK, how do we begin to launch some of these projects?” he said.
Rob Siegel, a management lecturer at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, said Twitter under Musk could mean that “Web3 technology finally gets a commercially interesting application at scale that is more than financial speculation.”
“I think that is the most interesting thing that I see right now” in the potential impact of a Musk-led Twitter on crypto, he told Protocol.
Then there are the downbeat scenarios, he said.
One is the “potential risk for more volatility [and] meme exploitation. Depending on what happens with Twitter, it could devolve into more chaos, which would encourage bad actors,” he said.
Another risk factor is Musk himself.
Marc Fagel, a former SEC regional director for San Francisco, said “Musk’s promises of a barely moderated free-for-all” could easily attract “racist and anti-Semitic” tweets as well as “unfounded crypto evangelism and pitches for NFT and crypto scams, particularly given Musk’s own predilection for doge-touting and the like.”
Melody Brue of Moor Insights & Strategy agreed. Twitter “will have to figure out how to balance Musk’s ‘free speech absolutist’ stance and human responsibility around hate and misinformation, or it will lose users and more advertisers,” she told Protocol.
Musk tried to reassure advertisers that the service would not become a “hellscape.” But he did not help his case when he shared a baseless conspiracy theory about the attack on Paul Pelosi, the husband of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.
Musk later deleted the tweet, which “probably means he thought it was a mistake,” said Binance’s Hillman.
“Everybody says stupid things on social media, things they regret, things they delete,” he added. “People should be allowed to do that. And it’s not going to go into the calculus of our business and what our objective is right now.”

And that objective is turning around Twitter’s stagnant product development, slow-growing user base, and weak financials. Though the members of crypto Twitter obviously want to know how the Musk regime will benefit them, their needs are likely on the back burner as Twitter reels from the turmoil caused by the takeover.
Siegel said Musk “has bigger problems,” including building “the right internal and online culture,” as well as “navigating political minefields and also paying back his financial supporters.
“Dealing with crypto Twitter might be a low priority,” he said.
Benjamin Pimentel ( @benpimentel) covers crypto and fintech from San Francisco. He has reported on many of the biggest tech stories over the past 20 years for the San Francisco Chronicle, Dow Jones MarketWatch and Business Insider, from the dot-com crash, the rise of cloud computing, social networking and AI to the impact of the Great Recession and the COVID crisis on Silicon Valley and beyond. He can be reached at bpimentel@protocol.com or via Google Voice at (925) 307-9342.
The largest game makers in the industry are pinning their growth dreams on the mobile market.
Mobile gaming accounts for roughly $100 billion — more than half of all spending on gaming globally.
Nick Statt is Protocol’s video game reporter. Prior to joining Protocol, he was news editor at The Verge covering the gaming industry, mobile apps and antitrust out of San Francisco, in addition to managing coverage of Silicon Valley tech giants and startups. He now resides in Rochester, New York, home of the garbage plate and, completely coincidentally, the World Video Game Hall of Fame. He can be reached at nstatt@protocol.com.
Speaking last week at The Wall Street Journal’s Tech Live conference, Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer made a proclamation that has over the last couple of years become a common belief among the biggest names in the game industry.
“There’s no way that you succeed as a gaming company without access to mobile players,” Spencer said in defending the company’s proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard. In its last fiscal quarter, Activision Blizzard made more revenue from its mobile games like Candy Crush and Call of Duty Mobile than it did on console and PC gaming combined.
Spencer said it was “imperative” Microsoft improve its position in the mobile gaming market to better compete with rivals and expand its audience. “This opportunity is really about mobile for us,” Spencer said of the Activision deal. “When you think about 3 billion people playing video games, there’s only about 200 million households on console.”

That notion — that the console gaming audience has hit a ceiling — is not a new development, though it is rarely so bluntly said aloud. The combined install bases of Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony amount to roughly 330 million. Yet, to Spencer’s point, many of those console owners own more than one device, while many new buyers of the PS5 and Xbox Series consoles are not fresh customers but returning ones replacing old hardware.
Mobile gaming, on the other hand, accounts for roughly $100 billion — more than half of all spending on gaming globally, according to market researcher Newzoo. This year, as other parts of the business have started to contract following the pandemic-era gaming boom, mobile is still expected to grow by more than 5%, Newzoo estimates.
Now, as the biggest names in gaming seek new revenue streams and consumers, they’re quickly realizing the biggest and most lucrative untapped market is the smartphone. Microsoft is far from alone here. FIFA publisher Electronic Arts, Grand Theft Auto maker Take-Two Interactive, and PlayStation owner Sony have all laid out ambitious plans on mobile over the past two years, often through strategic acquisitions and investments in the business models that work best on Apple and Google’s platforms.
“Mobile phones are becoming more powerful and mobile games are becoming more sophisticated,” said Dennis Yeh, the gaming insights lead at mobile analytics firm Sensor Tower. Yeh cited two other major developments that have made mobile now impossible to ignore. “Cross-platform or multiplatform play is becoming more viable and desirable, so mobile is important to reach the largest audience, especially in developing markets,” he said, while “free-to-play monetization and live [operations] are largely where the industry is moving, and mobile gaming was the original pioneer of those.”
Yeh pointed to the success of Genshin Impact, a live service game available on consoles, mobile, and PC where the experience is “largely the same” across platforms. “The game is also free to play and relies on optional in-game purchases and a ‘gacha’ system. While this itself isn’t necessarily new in Asian markets, Genshin demonstrated the viability and appetite for this in Western markets,” Yeh said.

In two years, Genshin Impact, developed by Chinese studio miHoYo, has earned more than $3.7 billion in lifetime revenue, making it one of the fastest-growing games of all time. It is so successful in both Asian and Western markets that Microsoft is using it as a template to court China-based mobile developers to build games for its Game Pass subscriptions platform, Reuters reported last week. Microsoft passed on the chance to publish Genshin Impact on Xbox, a decision Reuters says Xbox executives “regretted.”
“In developed markets like the U.S. and Western Europe, overall mobile spend is growing, and consumers are increasingly willing to spend on mobile games,” Yeh said. “In developing markets like Latin America and Southeast Asia, mobile represents access to a wide audience, especially consumers who don’t have the ability to buy a console or PC or don’t have access to stable bandwidth.”
Microsoft’s interest in finding the next Genshin Impact is part of a broader industry transition to live service gaming — a model that, as Yeh points out, is dominant and thriving on mobile. Electronic Arts spent close to $4 billion last year acquiring mobile studios to strengthen its position in the free-to-play and live service sectors. Take-Two spent close to $13 billion to buy FarmVille developer Zynga in the second-largest ever gaming acquisition behind only Microsoft’s proposed purchase of Activision Blizzard for $69 billion.
“We’re excited that there are 3.5 billion players in our addressable market. It brings accessibility to our brand,” said EA mobile chief Jeff Karp in an interview with Protocol earlier this year. “It’s really an opportunity to expand our overall ecosystem for the brand, and it creates practicable recurring revenues. It also brings the opportunity to bring our games across platforms.”
Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick echoed those comments in a recent interview with The Wrap. “We were already a leader in the console and PC space, and we believe we had already the best collection of intellectual property in the space,” Zelnick said. “However, mobile is the fastest-growing part of the interactive entertainment business.” Take-Two plans to use Zynga’s expertise and resources to help develop mobile versions of its biggest games, including Grand Theft Auto.

In August, Sony acquired its first ever mobile studio, Savage Game Studios, and created an all-new PlayStation Studios Mobile division separate from its console game development unit. PlayStation Studios chief Hermen Hulst described the move as “additive,” saying it will help Sony provide “more ways for more people to engage with our content.” The goal, Hulst added, will be to “reach new audiences unfamiliar with PlayStation and our games.”
PlayStation head Jim Ryan has also cited an expansion to mobile as central to its growth strategy, including a plan to release 20% of all titles by 2025 on smartphone platforms. “By expanding to PC and mobile, and it must be said … also to live services, we have the opportunity to move from a situation of being present in a very narrow segment of the overall gaming software market to being present pretty much everywhere,” Ryan said during an investor presentation in May.
“Whether it be League of Legends or Fortnite, mainstream gaming has already demonstrated the lucrativity, viability, and longevity of free-to-play, live service games,” Yeh said. “Meanwhile, mobile is just a different avenue to access gamers and gain more audience attention share in different settings, such as on commutes.”
Mobile also presents opportunities for all-new business models like cloud gaming and subscriptions, something Microsoft has invested considerable resources into exploring with its Game Pass service. While native mobile games have become more sophisticated, so, too, have streaming platforms that can let you beam console and PC titles from a remote server to your phone screen.
When combined, as Microsoft does with Game Pass and its Xbox Cloud Gaming add-on, mobile presents an opportunity to tap new customer bases. Those include people who have no intention of ever buying a console, but might be interested in streaming console games on their phone — as well as people who might not be able to afford everything required of console or PC gaming, like TVs, monitors, and accessories.

“You’re faced with two larger trends. One of them is macroeconomic — inflation, to put it simply. People are going to start cutting their entertainment budget, which is not essential compared to food and heat. That’s a big transition for the industry,” Joost van Dreunen, an assistant professor at New York University and former game analyst, told Protocol.
“The second piece is that gaming has gone through this moment of transitioning from the fringes. This is not the core gamer that wants to shell out $60 to $70 [per game],” van Dreunen said. “[Game companies] have to necessarily lower the price point to reach average consumers, in the same way Spotify and Netflix do that.”
“Even with the recent shutdown of Google Stadia, accessibility in developing markets will be a key aspect for potential viability [of cloud gaming],” Yeh said. He pointed to accessory makers like Backbone, which produces controllers for smartphones apt at playing both ported games and cloud games without needing to rely on the touchscreen, as evidence the mobile market is now accommodating a far wider breadth of players.
Netflix, a relatively new entrant in the gaming industry, has found success by focusing not on costly console or PC game development — as streaming rival Amazon did to mixed results — but instead exclusively targeting the mobile market. The streaming platform, which has 55 games in the pipeline and now offers 35 titles on smartphones, said this month it was now exploring cloud gaming as a way to reach even more customers.
“We’ll approach this the same way as we did with mobile — start small, be humble, be thoughtful — but it is a step we think we should take,” Netflix’s gaming chief Mike Verdu said onstage at TechCrunch Disrupt. “The extension into the cloud is really about reaching the other devices where people experience Netflix.”
Mobile isn’t just a money-printing machine. Companies need expertise and teams willing to move fast, update at breakneck speeds, and also maneuver the increasingly byzantine platform structures of Apple and Google, which make a bulk of their app store revenues by collecting fees from mobile games.

Cloud gaming, for instance, is not native to mobile, and instead must be accessed through browsers — a less-than-ideal compromise of working around app store restrictions. But the opportunities, and the existential necessity of diversifying how games make money and survive in an ever-changing industry, have made mobile key to survival.
“We have to break that duopoly of only two storefronts on the largest platforms. We’ve also invested a lot in our cloud streaming,” Spencer said at WSJ Live. “But if you take a long-term bet, which we’re doing, that we will be able to get access to players on the largest platforms that people play on … we want to be in a position with content and players and storefront capability to take advantage of it.”
“Gaming is the largest form of monetization on mobile,” Spencer added, “and we’re a gaming company.”
Nick Statt is Protocol’s video game reporter. Prior to joining Protocol, he was news editor at The Verge covering the gaming industry, mobile apps and antitrust out of San Francisco, in addition to managing coverage of Silicon Valley tech giants and startups. He now resides in Rochester, New York, home of the garbage plate and, completely coincidentally, the World Video Game Hall of Fame. He can be reached at nstatt@protocol.com.
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by Justin Guinn | Updated Aug. 5, 2022 – First published on May 18, 2022
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You’ve heard it before, and here it is again: Digital transformation is a must.
There are a ton of layers to that statement, and one layer that’s become relatively low-hanging fruit is implementing a paperless office. It’s been apparent for some time that paper-based document management and business dealings are expensive and inefficient.
Put simply, you must commit to going paperless in the office. It’s a move that positively impacts your budget, business efficiency, and brand positioning as well as the world at large.
It’s time to adopt digital document management best practices by implementing communication strategies and productivity apps that eliminate the need for paper.
Regardless of your business, it’s well past time for you to adopt a digital filing system and go paperless. But there are a few critical considerations to keep in mind before implementing your new paperless filing system.
You’ll need to address these key hurdles before working through the best practices highlighted below.

There’s just no need to continue operating so inefficiently. (via CloudPoint Technology) Image source: Author
Going paperless is the right move for all businesses, but you still need to work through how your new paperless operation will uniquely impact your business metrics.
Moving to a paperless, digitally driven organization should definitely save money in your business budget, even after paying for your document management system.
It should also increase efficiency across the board. Two efficiency boosters include reducing human error in lost papers and incorrect filings and decreasing the time between submitting bids to clients and closing deals with e-signing documents.
There are innate technology core competencies that employees and clients will need in order to successfully transition to a paperless operation. The day-to-day experience with your new document management systems will be similar to navigating your business website.
So as long as people are comfortable executing basic online browsing and using websites, they should be fine with the transition.
Still, it’s a good idea to mitigate any issues by building proper instruction documentation to walk clients through the process and provide struggling employees with a guide.
Keep your instructions as simple as possible by incorporating some screenshots and limiting each instructional section to a single task.
For example, you should be able to share instructions on how to upload a file to a particular folder without having to share all the instructions for e-signing and other tasks.
Once you’ve made the switch to digital, you’re going to have a bunch of dormant equipment laying around your office. While this isn’t hugely impactful for your business, you do need to determine what will happen with your retired printers, copiers, fax machines, etc.
You may be able to recoup some money by selling them. If that’s too much hassle, you can probably donante them and have someone come take them off your hands. Just get a plan in place so that you’re not suddenly wondering what to do with a bunch of bulky office equipment.
You’re ready to go paperless in your business. It’s rightfully exciting, as it provides tons of positive impact to your operation, your personal branding, and of course the environment.

Your transition to paperless will be easier than you think. (via Ezop) Image source: Author
Here are five best practices to ensure you have a smooth transition to becoming a paperless business and installing a sustainable operation to take on the future.
A document management system is the foundation on which you’ll operate your paperless business. It is your new digital filing cabinet and file retrieval system, as well as a solution for sharing and collaborating on files.
You’ll use your documentation retention solution as an essential tool to create, secure, and share critical documents, so be sure you take the time to get the system that’s best for your business needs.
And make sure you have the technical ability to operate and manage the system. If you take care of your own website management, you should be fine with managing your new document management system.
Here are a few tips for adopting and implementing a document management system.
A major benefit of a document management system is the ease with which you can find documents. But this search capability doesn’t just happen — it requires tons of organizational effort and detailed tagging inputs.
So before you can bring on your new document management system, you’ll need to account for all the digital and paper-based documents you already have. This means scanning, uploading, organizing, categorizing, tagging, formatting, and much, much more.
This will most definitely be the largest hurdle in transitioning to a paperless office, so start ASAP and work to get ahead of this project so that it costs you less time in the future.
Here are a few tips for organizing your existing documents to ensure a detailed and easily searchable document database.
You must lead by example to make a successful transition to going paperless. Regardless of the new document management software and organization apps you implement, your employees need to see that you’re committed to the paperless cause.
This type of top-down leadership is essential for managing any kind of change in your business.
Here are a few tips to help you lead by example as you go paperless with your business operation.
Employee engagement and buy-in is critical for making a seamless transition to your new paperless office and operating style. You need to focus on ways to engage employees and get them motivated and committed to making the change to paperless.
Leading by example through top-down change management is essential, but you should also consider additional tactics to rally your employees toward the cause, such as gamification and training exercises.
Here are a few tips to ensure your employees become equally as committed to going paperless as you.
Take advantage of employees who are excited about and committed to going paperless by assigning them as paperless champions.
These champions will become quasi-experts on the transition and new systems and provide a helpful and willing resource for any questions that employees have along the journey.
Here are two tips for establishing and choosing champions to support the transition to paperless and adoption of new document software.
If you’re serious about going paperless, these considerations and best practices will help you build the path to get there. The technology to do so has been around for a while, and it continues to get more affordable, easier to use, and feature-rich every year.
All the tools are there to take your entire business into the digital realm, but it’s up to you to lead your people through the archaic paper wasteland and show them the ease and efficiency that awaits them in their new paperless business.
Cash back, travel rewards, 0% intro APR financing: all of these can be great credit card perks for business owners. But how do you find the right business credit card for you? There are tons of offers on the market today, and sifting through them to find the right one can be a big hassle. So we've done the hard work for you.
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Justin Guinn is an SMB technology expert writing for The Ascent and The Motley Fool.
We’re firm believers in the Golden Rule, which is why editorial opinions are ours alone and have not been previously reviewed, approved, or endorsed by included advertisers. The Ascent does not cover all offers on the market. Editorial content from The Ascent is separate from The Motley Fool editorial content and is created by a different analyst team.
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Heidi Kenyon – Content Designer, Modern Work Customer Co-InnovationJan 27, 2022
When it comes to productivity, few sectors know better than the legal industry how time-consuming research can be. A daunting amount of information is needed for success and getting the details right is critical. Indeed, a top pain point for lawyers is coping with increased volume and complexity of information, according to a 2021 Future Ready Lawyer study from Wolters Kluwer, a thought leader in the legal space and a global provider of professional information, software solutions and services.
And it’s not just lawyers who face this challenge. Knowledge workers could save between four and six hours on average per week if they didn’t need to search for or recreate information, according to a 2021 Ziff Davis study on Knowledge Sharing sponsored by Microsoft. That represents 11%-14% of their work time, or over a month of lost productivity per employee per year.
That’s why Wolters Kluwer Legal & Regulatory and Microsoft’s Modern Work Customer Co-Innovation team (MWCCI) partnered in 2021 to explore potential solutions to legal productivity challenges.
“Wolters Kluwer Legal & Regulatory was the perfect partner because of its deep experience in the legal productivity space, and its desire and ability to do something truly innovative,” says Harald Becker, director of Customer Engagements, MWCCI.
MWCCI’s co-innovation model involves forming a virtual multidisciplinary product team spanning companies. In this case, it brought together engineers, designers, researchers and others from six countries and three continents. The team works together to thoroughly understand a given problem, define a potential solution, build a working prototype and test it with users—all in an aggressive timeline of about six months. The process is optimized to move quickly and generate mutual learning.
The Wolters Kluwer–MWCCI team began with a deep dive into each other’s research, products and platform capabilities. It identified the target user as an attorney in a law firm or corporate legal department and explored multiple possibilities for how to improve the user’s workflow.
“We thought that if we could leverage Wolters Kluwer’s deep domain knowledge to determine the legal context of the document a lawyer is working on, we could proactively surface useful information that would accelerate the lawyer’s workflow and help them produce higher-quality work,” says David Jones, MWCCI’s principal program manager for this engagement. “This could include analytics for legal arguments, risk analysis for contracts, subject matter experts within the firm—or even just the right legal research or template.”
In just a few weeks, the team articulated the concept it wanted to build: a tool that could bring legal professionals relevant, high-value content from a variety of data sources within their existing workflows, which, for many lawyers, means within Microsoft Word.
“We started to think of the vision for our concept as a kind of legal coach,” says Peter Backx, vice president of Product Management, Wolters Kluwer Legal & Regulatory. “We believed that it could become something that helps lawyers improve the outcome of their work.”
It was clear early on that the team would need to leverage machine learning, specifically document understanding AI—the ability for machines to read and understand the content of documents. This raised questions about users’ confidence in the information that the algorithms were bringing them.
“We knew users might wonder, ‘Why is the system showing me this?’ ’Is this the right information?’ ‘Has anything been overlooked?’ ‘What determines what’s important to display and what isn’t?’” Jones explains. The team agreed that intentionally building a foundation of trust for the system would be critical. Designers explored different ways of explaining within the interface why a given resource was suggested, which they believed would support users’ trust in the system.
Within a few months, the team began to build. It split into two parallel tracks, one focused on user experience and visual design, the other on technical architecture. The UX design track generated multiple potential user-interface designs. “It was fun to debate the merits of each and reach a consensus on the approach that would best address the customer’s needs,” says Magdalena Sowula, lead product manager, Wolters Kluwer Legal & Regulatory.
The technical track was more of a challenge. The team tried multiple ways of extracting legal context from documents but failed, at first, to get useful results. “For a period of time it looked like our project might fail,” Jones says candidly.
MWCCI’s co-innovation model involves forming a virtual multidisciplinary product team spanning companies. In this case, it brought together engineers, designers, researchers and others from six countries and three continents.
The breakthrough came when engineers fed the documents into annotation models that Wolters Kluwer had built to mark-up official court documents. Although the models weren’t originally designed to be used in this way and the information they returned wasn’t perfect, with more work the team successfully created something to build on.
“As we worked through these challenges together, we did more than find creative solutions to our technical problems,” says Jones. “We developed a shared vocabulary and understanding of the problem space. We learned about the unique skills and diverse backgrounds that each of us brought to the table. And we learned to trust one another and how to work together as a single team.”
By December 2021 a prototype was up and running in Word. Currently, it can analyze German litigation documents and retrieve related legal commentaries and court decisions from Wolters Kluwer’s services, as well as related Word documents from a given user’s internal SharePoint site. The team is running a small user study with legal professionals to get feedback before expanding resource retrieval to other data sources.
“We’re excited to see how our customers will react,” Backx says.
While the project team looks forward to seeing its concept come to life and getting customer feedback, the intense mutual learning that takes place in a co-innovation process of this kind is already yielding other benefits. On the Wolters Kluwer side, the project sparked an acceleration of integration activities with Microsoft that can significantly improve legal workflows and go well beyond existing plug-ins. On the Microsoft side, the SharePoint team is exploring how it could support such third-party content-annotation services in the Microsoft 365 platform.
“In a world that sometimes feels increasingly divided,” Sowula says, “we’re glad to be partnering together to improve the productivity of legal workflows and create new value across ecosystems.”
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by Mark Roy Long | Updated Aug. 5, 2022 – First published on May 18, 2022
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As a small business owner, there are plenty of unexpected situations you may suddenly find yourself in: undergoing an IRS audit, responding to an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) complaint filed by a past or current employee, dealing with a vendor who insists you didn’t make a payment, or resolving a workman’s comp claim.
In each of these cases, you’ll be required to provide business records to show exactly what you did or did not do. If you can’t, you could easily face hefty fines or other penalties. That’s why it’s critical to create and maintain a document retention policy.
Document retention is the process by which records required for ongoing business operations are identified and maintained. A document retention policy provides guidelines for the review, secure storage, and periodic destruction of unneeded records.
Your records will generally fall into the following categories:
The amount of paperwork and digital records generated will multiply over time as you add more customers, employees, products, and vendors.
An effective document management system will allow you to efficiently store and access records, reduce the cost of document production during legal cases, and follow all laws for the preservation of certain records.
Plus, if one or more of the situations in the records management checklist below sounds familiar, you definitely need to set up a document retention and management system as soon as possible.

Documentation retention guidelines will help you avoid all of these problematic situations. Image source: Author
While a document retention policy will aid your internal business operations, it can also help externally. For example, customers want to know their data is being securely stored, so you might highlight the security and maintenance of your records as part of your website marketing.
Creating and using your document retention policy is not a one-time endeavor — it’s an ongoing activity. It’s not part of the (perhaps more exciting) front-line activities you’re likely more focused on, such as sales and customer service, so it may help, as you work through the steps below, to use one of the best productivity apps available to help keep your record-keeping on track.
First, you need to comprehensively catalog all of your existing documents to see exactly what you have as well as the quantity of physical and digital records you’re dealing with.
The key strategy with your initial document inventory is to be methodical. And while you may know — or think you know! — where everything of relevance is, you need to talk to all of your employees to discover any other formal or informal physical and digital repositories you may not be aware of.
While a document may have been relevant at one point in time, that doesn’t mean it always will be. With a few exceptions — deeds, patents, auditor reports, and annual financial records — almost every document has a limited lifespan, usually no longer than 10 years.
Keeping records any longer than necessary has the potential to create legal liabilities for your business. For example, the discovery process during litigation could find additional damaging information in your records that should have been already deleted.
Plus, you don’t want to be responsible for any confidential customer information being accessed that also should have been destroyed. That’s why establishing a clearly defined document retention schedule is the backbone of your document management policy.
Effective storage of documents is critical to preserve records as well as ensuring access to them as necessary in a timely manner.
That includes everything from locking file cabinets and storage rooms at your business, to using a “secure drawer” as part of your website management, to other offsite options.
Digital documents require less storage space than their physical counterparts. On the other hand, you may have legacy paper or wet signature documents you want to maintain as hard copies.

Offsite storage of digital records in a data center can increase security and lessen the chances that documents are stolen, lost due to natural disasters, or accidentally destroyed. Image source: Author
Just as you need to keep necessary business documents, you also need to destroy them according to your retention schedule. That will keep storage costs down and reduce the chances of business and customer data being accessed illegally or inappropriately.
Minimize the chance of future legal issues by explicitly documenting chain-of-custody procedures when destroying paper documents and electronic files.
Even the best document retention policy won’t have a net positive effect if none of your employees know about it. That’s why using effective communication strategies will be key, especially as the policy is updated over time.
Your document retention policy also won’t be particularly effective if there’s only a printout of it in a three-ring binder that’s sitting on the top shelf in a seldom-used storage closet. Instead, make it available online for easy access by your employees.
Don’t wait until a critical event occurs — an IRS audit, natural disaster, or lawsuit — to realize you need a robust record retention schedule. Instead, begin the process outlined above to develop your document retention policy now.
Sure, you’ll have to build the cost into your business budget, but over the long haul, it will definitely pay for itself — and more! — by saving you both time and money.
Cash back, travel rewards, 0% intro APR financing: all of these can be great credit card perks for business owners. But how do you find the right business credit card for you? There are tons of offers on the market today, and sifting through them to find the right one can be a big hassle. So we've done the hard work for you.
Get started with one of our top business credit card picks of 2022 today.
Mark Roy Long is a technology journalist and workflow expert writing for The Ascent and The Motley Fool.
We’re firm believers in the Golden Rule, which is why editorial opinions are ours alone and have not been previously reviewed, approved, or endorsed by included advertisers. The Ascent does not cover all offers on the market. Editorial content from The Ascent is separate from The Motley Fool editorial content and is created by a different analyst team.
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WASHINGTON — U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Janet L. Yellen and White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Shalanda D. Young today released the final budget results for fiscal year (FY) 2022. During FY 2022, the deficit fell by $1.4 trillion—the largest one-year decrease in the Federal deficit in American history. The 2022 deficit of $1.375 trillion was half of the FY 2021 deficit, $40 billion less than forecasted in the President’s 2023 Budget and $1.8 trillion lower than the deficit the President inherited. As a percentage of GDP, the FY 2022 deficit was 6.8 percentage points lower than in the previous year.^[1]
From Day One, the Biden-Harris Administration has been working to build an economy that works for everyone. Under the President’s leadership—and thanks in part to the American Rescue Plan (ARP) and a historic vaccination effort—America has more than recovered all of the jobs lost during the pandemic. Our economy has added more than 10 million jobs since the President took office, and the unemployment rate has returned to its pre-pandemic, 50-year low of 3.5 percent. The President’s economic plan has helped usher in a new era of American manufacturing, with nearly 700,000 new manufacturing jobs added since January 2021. And, the historic Inflation Reduction Act will bring down energy, health care, and prescription drug costs, tackle the climate crisis, further reduce the deficit, and make our tax system fairer.
“Today’s joint budget statement provides further evidence of our historic economic recovery, driven by our vaccination effort and the American Rescue Plan. It also demonstrates President Biden’s commitment to strengthening our nation’s fiscal health,” Secretary of the Treasury Janet L. Yellen said. “President Biden’s recently enacted economic plan will build on the economic gains of the past two years. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, CHIPS and Science Act, and Inflation Reduction Act will help put the country on a path to sustained economic growth, create new and good-paying jobs across the country, and strengthen American economic resilience for years to come.”
“The President’s economic plan is focused on growing our economy from the bottom up and the middle out,” said Shalanda Young, Director of the Office of Management and Budget. “Under his leadership, more Americans are working today than at any point in our country’s history, our economy has added more than 10 million jobs, manufacturing is booming, and we cut last year’s deficit in half. With the historic Inflation Reduction Act, the Biden-Harris Administration is going to continue building on this progress and delivering for the American people—cutting everyday costs for families, tackling the climate crisis, and ensuring the biggest corporations pay their fair share.”
Year-end data from the September 2022 Monthly Treasury Statement of Receipts and Outlays of the United States Government show that the deficit for FY 2022 was $1.375 trillion—$1.400 trillion less than the prior year’s deficit. As a percentage of GDP, the deficit was 5.5 percent, a decrease of 6.8 percentage points (55 percent) from 12.3 percent in FY 2021.
The FY 2022 deficit was $40 billion less than the estimate of $1.415 trillion in the 2023 Budget published in May, and $344 billion higher than the estimate of $1.032 trillion in the Mid-Session Review (MSR), a supplemental update to the Budget published in August.
 
Receipts
Outlays
Deficit
FY 2021 Actual
4.046
6.822
2.776
    Percentage of GDP
17.9%
30.1%
12.3%
FY 2022 Estimates:
 
 
 
    2023 Budget
4.437
5.852
1.415
    2023 Mid-Session Review
4.941
5.972
1.032
FY 2022 Actual
4.896
6.272
1.375
    Percentage of GDP
19.6%
25.1%
5.5%
_{Note: Detail may not add to totals due to rounding.}
 
Governmental receipts totaled $4.896 trillion in FY 2022 and exceeded Budget projections but were less than MSR projections. As a share of GDP, receipts were 19.6 percent. Relative to FY 2021, receipts increased by $850 billion, an increase of 21 percent. The increase in receipts for FY 2022 is primarily attributable to higher individual and corporation income tax collections and social insurance and retirement receipts, along with increases in most other sources of receipts.
Outlays were $6.272 trillion in FY 2022, $420 billion higher than projected in the Budget and $299 billion higher than projected in the MSR. Compared with FY 2021, outlays decreased $550 billion, or 8.1 percent. This decrease in part reflects reductions in COVID-related spending, including unemployment insurance and Small Business Administration programs. Outlays for some other categories of spending increased, including student loans, Medicare, and net interest.
Total Federal borrowing from the public increased by $2.0 trillion during FY 2022 to $24.3 trillion. The increase in borrowing included $1.4 trillion in borrowing to finance the deficit as well as $0.6 trillion in net borrowing related to other transactions such as changes in cash balances and net disbursements for Federal credit programs. As a percentage of GDP, borrowing from the public fell from 98.4 percent of GDP at the end of FY 2021 to 97.0 percent of GDP at the end of FY 2022.
To coincide with the release of the Federal Government’s year-end financial data, Treasury’s Bureau of the Fiscal Service (Fiscal Service) is releasing a new version of Your Guide to America’s Finances (Your Guide). The Fiscal Service created Your Guide in 2019 to make Federal financial information transparent and accessible to all Americans. The latest version offers easy-to-understand explainer pages and makes content more accessible on mobile devices. The data in Your Guide are automatically updated throughout the year as new data become available, ensuring that the public has access to the latest financial information as quickly as possible.
Below are explanations of the differences between FY 2022 estimates and the year-end actual amounts for receipts by source and outlays by agency.
Total receipts for FY 2022 were $4,896.1 billion, $44.6 billion lower than the MSR estimate of $4,940.7 billion. This net decrease in receipts was the net effect of lower-than-estimated collections of individual income taxes, deposits of earnings by the Federal Reserve, other miscellaneous receipts, and customs duties, partially offset by higher-than-estimated collections of corporation income taxes, social insurance and retirement receipts, estate and gift taxes, and excise taxes. Table 2 displays actual receipts and estimates from the MSR by source.
Total outlays were $6,271.5 billion for FY 2022, $299.3 billion higher than the MSR estimate. Table 3 displays actual outlays by agency and major program as well as estimates from the Budget and the MSR. The largest changes in outlays from the MSR were in the following areas:
Department of Agriculture — Outlays for the Department of Agriculture were $245.2 billion, $14.0 billion lower than the MSR estimate.
Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) outlays in FY 2022 were approximately $16.9 billion below MSR estimates. This is due to a combination of unexpected delays in the issuance of Pandemic EBT benefits in some states; a faster-than-anticipated decline in the use of Emergency Allotment payments provided during the COVID-19 pandemic; and lower-than-anticipated program participation.
Outlays in the Child Nutrition Programs were about $5.3 billion higher than MSR estimates. About half of this difference was due to outlays from a transfer of funds for Local Food Procurement and Management and funding provided in the Keep Kids Fed Act. In addition, the cost of the waivers allowing for universal free school meals in school year 2022-2023 was greater than anticipated.
Actual outlays for the Office of the Secretary in FY 2022 were $3.1 billion higher than the estimate in MSR. This is primarily due to faster-than-anticipated implementation of the Emergency Relief Program (ERP), which provided indemnity payments to farmers impacted by natural disasters. The agency had only assumed in $1 billion in outlays in MSR for ERP.
Department of Defense — Outlays for the Department of Defense were $726.6 billion, $7.1 billion higher than the MSR estimate. This difference is mostly due to higher-than expected outlays for such as operational and training costs including fuel ($1.7 billion), Air Force and Defense-wide research, development, test, and evaluation activities ($2.8 billion), and Air Force and Army personnel ($2.5 billion).
Department of Education — Outlays for the Department of Education were $639.4 billion, $408.0 billion higher than the MSR estimate. Outlays in the Federal Direct Student Loan Program and the Family Federal Education Loan Program were $429.2 billion higher than the MSR estimate due primarily to upward modifications for extensions of the pause of student loan payments, interest, and collections first authorized by the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, waivers related to income-driven repayment forgiveness and Public Service Loan Forgiveness, and broad-based student loan forgiveness authorized by the Higher Education Relief Opportunities for Students (HEROES) Act of 2003. Outlays in the Elementary and Secondary Education account were $20.1 billion lower than the MSR estimate primarily due to challenges in the State and local administration of ARP and other COVID-19 supplemental appropriations, including ongoing staffing shortages in school districts and supply chain constraints that have pushed out dates for completing facility upgrades.
Department of Health and Human Services — Outlays for the Department of Health and Human Services were $1.643 trillion, $17.7 billion lower than the MSR estimate. Gross outlays for Medicare’s Hospital Insurance (HI) and Supplementary Medical Insurance (SMI) trust funds were $8.0 billion and $3.5 billion higher than projected due to the timing of payments to Medicare Advantage plans. There were more receipts than expected for the fiscal year, largely due to refunds, which totaled $50.0 billion for HI and $26.9 billion for SMI in 2022. The increase in refunds is partially from the repayment of Medicare accelerated and advance payments to providers and suppliers.
The actual outlays for other health programs were $14.3 billion lower than projected in MSR, primarily due to the absence of an appropriation for Cost-Sharing Reductions. Outlays for the Indian Health Services were $3.8 billion lower than MSR due to a slowdown in outlays in the fourth quarter. Outlays for Medicaid were $5.8 billion above the MSR estimate, primarily driven by higher-than-anticipated enrollment.
Department of Homeland Security — Outlays for the Department of Homeland Security were $80.9 billion, $10.2 billion lower than the MSR estimate. Approximately $7 billion of the difference is driven by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), of which over $5 billion is due to FEMA’s Disaster Relief Fund. This is due to slower-than-anticipated grant draw-downs from states, including for COVID-19 response spending. In general, states have slowed down reimbursement requests and are likely spending down other Federal resources.
Department of Labor — Outlays for the Department of Labor were $51.7 billion, $51.6 billion lower than the MSR estimate. The difference is predominately due to lower-than-expected outlays from the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation’s (PBGC) Special Financial Assistance Program (SFA). PBGC outlays were $47.3 billion lower than expected as a result of a number of multi-employer pension plans withdrawing or delaying their application for SFA until after the release of the SFA final rule released on July 6, 2022, which is used to calculate the amount of Special Financial Assistance that would be awarded to pension plans. In addition, outlays for the Employment and Training Administration were $4.6 billion lower than expected as a result of recoveries of overpayments of pandemic Unemployment Insurance (UI) benefits, particularly from the Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation (FPUC) and Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) programs. Recoveries in these programs were higher than initially projected.
Department of State — Outlays for the Department of State were $33.2 billion, $3.4 billion lower than the MSR estimate. Outlays were lower than expected for Department of State programs associated with the administration of foreign affairs, mostly due to lower-than-anticipated spending for diplomatic and consular operations, as well as lower outlays than estimated for humanitarian assistance and international narcotics control and law enforcement assistance programs.
Department of Transportation — Outlays for the Department of Transportation were $113.7 billion, $9.2 billion lower than the MSR estimate. More than half of this difference was due to slower-than-expected spending of Federal Transit Administration (FTA) COVID supplemental funding for a variety of reasons, including supply chain disruptions and labor force shortages that impacted local transit agencies’ ability to spend Federal funds.  The other major reason for the difference was that the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) and Amtrak agreed to a new payment method for Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act supplemental funds, under which FRA will outlay quarterly based on Amtrak’s estimated funding needs for the upcoming period.
Department of the Treasury — Outlays for the Department of the Treasury were $1.162 trillion, $24.9 billion higher than the MSR estimate.
Interest on the public debt, which is paid to the public and to trust funds and other Government accounts, was $36.6 billion higher than the MSR estimate. The difference was due primarily to higher-than-projected interest paid on inflation-protected securities held both by the public and by Government accounts.
Net outlays for intragovernmental interest transactions with non-budgetary credit financing accounts were $8.2 billion higher than projected, including $6.1 billion in lower-than-projected receipts of interest from credit financing accounts and $2.0 billion higher-than-anticipated interest paid to credit financing accounts. (Interest received from credit financing accounts is reported in Treasury’s aggregate offsetting receipts.)
Non-IRS pandemic response programs enacted in the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021 and the ARP accounted for $6.4 billion in lower-than-projected outlays. This difference was mostly attributable to $3.7 billion less-than-forecasted outlays by the Emergency Rental Assistance program, because of slower-than-expected spending by recipients, which delayed subsequent disbursements. This difference also reflected $1.6 billion in lower-than-estimated outlays by the State Small Business Credit Initiative (SSBCI), $0.7 billion lower outlays by the ARP state and local programs, and $0.4 billion lower outlays by the Homeowner Assistance Fund due to slower-than-expected recipient submissions and ongoing award and compliance reviews.
Outlays for individual and corporate refundable credits created in the CARES Act, the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021, and the ARP, along with coronavirus payments (e.g., Economic Impact Payments), were $15.8 billion lower than estimated at MSR due to lower-than-expected take-up and other factors. Other refundable credits were $1.3 billion lower than estimated. This was partly offset by outlays for Refundable Premium Tax Credits, which were $7.3 billion higher than estimated at MSR due to increased enrollment in the individual health insurance market.
Net outlays for other Treasury activities were $4.3 billion lower than MSR estimates, reflecting (among other factors) lower-than-projected net outlays for IRS administrative expenses, Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) housing programs and Treasury Forfeiture Fund activities.
Department of Veterans Affairs — Outlays for the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) were $273.9 billion, $7.6 billion lower than the MSR estimate.
The difference was driven mostly by differences in Benefits programs, which were $4.6 billion lower than the MSR estimate, and Departmental Administration programs, which were $4.0 billion lower than the MSR estimate. Benefits programs were lower than expected in part due to fewer beneficiaries accessing benefits than estimated. Departmental Administration programs were lower than expected in part due to delays in Electronic Health Record Modernization deployment. These differences were partially offset by outlays in the Veterans Health Administration that were higher than estimated at MSR.
Undistributed Offsetting Receipts — Undistributed Offsetting Receipts were -$418.4 billion, $10.3 billion higher net collections than the MSR estimate.
Interest received by trust funds was $9.9 billion lower than the MSR estimate (higher interest collections). The difference was due largely to Military Retirement Fund interest earnings on inflation-protected securities. Total Military Retirement Fund interest earnings were $9.4 billion higher than the MSR estimate. This intragovernmental interest is paid out of the Department of the Treasury account for interest on the public debt and has no net impact on total Federal Government outlays.
Table 2- Receipts by Source
Table 3- Outlays by Agency
^[1] _{The estimates of GDP used in the calculations of the deficit and borrowing relative to GDP reflect the revisions to historical data released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) in September 2022. GDP for FY 2022 is based on the economic forecast for the 2023 Mid-Session Review, adjusted for the BEA revisions.}

source

Today will bring the S&P Case-Shiller U.S. home price index, the FHFA U.S. home price index, and the consumer confidence index. 
Looking ahead to tomorrow, trade in goods data and new home sales are on tap.
The following public companies are slated to release corporate earnings today, October 25:
3M Co. (NYSE:MMM — $118.38) operates as a diversified technology company worldwide. 3M will report its Q3 earnings of 2022 before the bell today.
 
Archer-Daniels-Midland Co. (NYSE:ADM — $89.28) procures, transports, stores, processes, and merchandises agricultural commodities, products, and ingredients in the United States, Switzerland, Cayman Islands, Brazil, Mexico, the United Kingdom, and internationally. Archer-Daniels-Midland will report its Q3 earnings of 2022 before the bell today.
 
Ares Capital Corp. (NASDAQ:ARCC — $18.18) is a business development company specializing in acquisition, recapitalization, mezzanine debt, restructurings, rescue financing, and leveraged buyout transactions of middle market companies. Ares Capital will report its Q3 earnings of 2022 before the bell today.
 
Armstrong World Industries Inc. (NYSE:AWI — $79.67) designs, manufactures, and sells ceiling systems primarily for use in the construction and renovation of residential and commercial buildings in the United States, Canada, and Latin America. Armstrong World Industries will report its Q3 earnings of 2022 before the bell today.
 
Biogen Inc. (NASDAQ:BIIB — $274.62) discovers, develops, manufactures, and delivers therapies for treating neurological and neurodegenerative diseases. Biogen will report its Q3 earnings of 2022 before the bell today.
 
Centene Corp. (NYSE:CNC — $75.81) operates as a multi-national healthcare enterprise that provides programs and services to under-insured and uninsured individuals in the United States. Centene will report its Q3 earnings of 2022 before the bell today.
 
Cleveland-Cliffs Inc. (NYSE:CLF — $15.53) operates as a flat-rolled steel producer in North America. Cleveland-Cliffs will report its Q3 earnings of 2022 before the bell today.
 
The Coca-Cola Co. (NYSE:KO — $57.57) manufactures, markets, and sells various nonalcoholic beverages worldwide. Coca-Cola will report its Q3 earnings of 2022 before the bell today.
 
Corning Inc. (NYSE:GLW — $32.33) engages in display technologies, optical communications, environmental technologies, specialty materials, and life sciences businesses worldwide. Corning will report its Q3 earnings of 2022 before the bell today.
 
First Bancorp Inc. (NYSE:FBP — $15.95) operates as a bank holding company for FirstBank Puerto Rico that provides various financial services for retail, commercial, and institutional clients. First Bancorp will report its Q3 earnings of 2022 before the bell today.
 
Franklin Electric Co. Inc. (NASDAQ:FELE — $86.94) designs, manufactures, and distributes water and fuel pumping systems worldwide. Franklin Electric will report its Q3 earnings of 2022 before the bell today.
 
GATX Corp. (NYSE:GATX — $95.53) operates as railcar leasing company in the United States and internationally. GATX will report its Q3 earnings of 2022 before the bell today.
 
General Electric Co. (NYSE:GE — $73.36) operates as a high-tech industrial company in Europe, China, Asia, the Americas, the Middle East, and Africa. General Electric will report its Q3 earnings of 2022 before the bell today.
 
General Motors Co. (NYSE:GM — $35.72) designs, builds, and sells trucks, crossovers, cars, and automobile parts and accessories in North America, the Asia Pacific, the Middle East, Africa, South America, the United States, and China. General Motors will report its Q3 earnings of 2022 before the bell today.
 
Graphic Packaging Holding Co. (NYSE:GPK — $21.51) provides fiber-based packaging solutions to food, beverage, foodservice, and other consumer products companies. Graphic Packaging will report its Q3 earnings of 2022 before the bell today.
 
Halliburton Co. (NYSE:HAL — $34.58) provides products and services to the energy industry worldwide. Halliburton will report its Q3 earnings of 2022 before the bell today.
 
Illinois Tool Works Inc. (NYSE:ITW — $200.78) manufactures and sells industrial products and equipment worldwide. Illinois Tool will report its Q3 earnings of 2022 before the bell today.
 
Invesco Ltd. (NYSE:ITW — $15.05) is a publicly owned investment manager. Invesco will report its Q3 earnings of 2022 before the bell today.
 
JetBlue Airways Corp. (NASDAQ:JBLU — $7.54) provides air passenger transportation services. JetBlue Airways will report its Q3 earnings of 2022 before the bell today.
 
Kimberly-Clark Corp. (NYSE:KMB — $115.86) manufactures and markets personal care and consumer tissue products worldwide. Kimberly-Clark will report its Q3 earnings of 2022 before the bell today.
 
Lakeland Financial Corp. (NASDAQ:LKFN — $76.61) operates as the bank holding company for Lake City Bank that provides various banking products and services. Lakeland Financial will report its Q3 earnings of 2022 before the bell today.
 
Moody’s Corp. (NASDAQ:MCO — $244.98) operates as an integrated risk assessment firm worldwide. Moody’s will report its Q3 earnings of 2022 before the bell today.
 
MSCI Inc. (NASDAQ:MSCI — $412.15) provides investment decision support tools for the clients to manage their investment processes worldwide. MSCI will report its Q3 earnings of 2022 before the bell today.
 
Novartis AG (NYSE:NVS — $77.71) researches, develops, manufactures, and markets healthcare products worldwide. Novartis AG will report its Q3 earnings of 2022 before the bell today.
 
NVR Inc. (NYSE:NVR — $4,047.04) operates as a homebuilder in the United States. NVR will report its Q3 earnings of 2022 before the bell today.
 
Old National Bancorp. (NASDAQ:ONB — $18.34) operates as the bank holding company for Old National Bank that provides various financial services to individual and commercial customers in the United States. Old National Bancorp will report its Q3 earnings of 2022 before the bell today.
 
PACCAR Inc. (NASDAQ:PCAR — $92.02) designs, manufactures, and distributes light, medium, and heavy-duty commercial trucks in the United States, Europe, Mexico, South America, Australia, and internationally. PACCAR will report its Q3 earnings of 2022 before the bell today.
 
Pentair plc (NYSE:PNR — $40.78) provides various water solutions worldwide. Pentair will report its Q3 earnings of 2022 before the bell today.
 
Polaris Inc. (NYSE:PII — $94.47) designs, engineers, manufactures, and markets power sports vehicles worldwide. Polaris will report its Q3 earnings of 2022 before the bell today.
 
Portland General Electric Co. (NYSE:POR — $43.75) engages in the generation, wholesale purchase, transmission, distribution, and retail sale of electricity in the state of Oregon. Portland General Electric will report its Q3 earnings of 2022 before the bell today.
 
PulteGroup Inc. (NYSE:PHM — $37.96) engages in the homebuilding business in the United States. PulteGroup will report its Q3 earnings of 2022 before the bell today.
 
Raytheon Technologies Corp. (NYSE:RTX — $89.73) provides systems and services for the commercial, military, and government customers worldwide. Raytheon Technologies will report its Q3 earnings of 2022 before the bell today.
 
SAP SE (NYSE:SAP — $91.01) operates as an enterprise application software company worldwide. SAP will report its Q3 earnings of 2022 before the bell today.
 
Sensata Technologies Holding plc (NYSE:ST — $41.62) develops, manufactures, and sells sensors, sensor-based solutions, controls, and other products in the Americas, Europe, Asia, and internationally. Sensata Technologies will report its Q3 earnings of 2022 before the bell today.
 
The Sherwin-Williams Co. (NYSE:SHW — $212.53) develops, manufactures, distributes, and sells paints, coatings, and related products to professional, industrial, commercial, and retail customers. Sherwin-Williams will report its Q3 earnings of 2022 before the bell today.
 
Shutterstock Inc. (NYSE:SSTK — $45.82) provides quality content, and creative workflow solutions in North America, Europe, and internationally. Shutterstock will report its Q3 earnings of 2022 before the bell today.
 
Simmons First National Corp. (NASDAQ:SFNC — $24.20) operates as the holding company for Simmons Bank that provides banking and other financial products and services to individuals and businesses. Simmons First National will report its Q3 earnings of 2022 before the bell today.
 
SITE Centers Corp. (NYSE:SITC — $11.63) is an owner and manager of open-air shopping centers that provide a highly-compelling shopping experience and merchandise mix for retail partners and consumers. SITE Centers will report its Q3 earnings of 2022 before the bell today.
 
Southside Bancshares Inc. (NASDAQ:SBSI — $36.05) operates as the bank holding company for Southside Bank that provides a range of financial services to individuals, businesses, municipal entities, and nonprofit organizations. Southside Bancshares will report its Q3 earnings of 2022 before the bell today.
 
Synchrony Financial (NYSE:SYF — $33.07) operates as a consumer financial services company in the United States. Synchrony Financial will report its Q3 earnings of 2022 before the bell today.
 
TransUnion (NYSE:TRU — $56.70) provides risk and information solutions. TransUnion will report its Q3 earnings of 2022 before the bell today.
 
Trinity Industries Inc. (NYSE:TRN — $23.43) provides rail transportation products and services under the TrinityRail name in North America. Trinity Industries will report its Q3 earnings of 2022 before the bell today.
 
UBS Group AG (NYSE:UBS — $15.18) provides financial advice and solutions to private, institutional, and corporate clients worldwide. UBS Group will report its Q3 earnings of 2022 before the bell today.
 
United Parcel Service Inc. (NYSE:UBS — $167.55) provides letter and package delivery, transportation, logistics, and related services. United Parcel Service will report its Q3 earnings of 2022 before the bell today.
 
Valero Energy Corp. (NYSE:VLO — $129.22) manufactures, markets, and sells transportation fuels and petrochemical products in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, and internationally. Valero Energy will report its Q3 earnings of 2022 before the bell today.
 
Xerox Corp. (NASDAQ:XRX — $15.91) designs, develops, and sells document management systems and solutions in the United States, Europe, Canada, and internationally. Xerox will report its Q3 earnings of 2022 before the bell today.
 
Agilysys Inc. (NASDAQ:AGYS — $54.98) operates as a developer and marketer of hardware and software products and services to the hospitality industry in North America, Europe, the Asia-Pacific, and India. Agilysys will report its Q3 earnings of 2022 after the close today.
 
Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG — $103.97) engages in the business of acquisition and operation of different companies. Alphabet will report its Q3 earnings of 2022 after the close today.
 
Ameriprise Financial Inc. (NYSE:AMP — $271.65) provides various financial products and services to individual and institutional clients in the United States and internationally. Ameriprise Financial will report its Q3 earnings of 2022 after the close today.
 
AVANGRID Inc. (NYSE:AGR — $39.83) engages in the regulated energy transmission and distribution, and renewable energy generation businesses in the United States. AVANGRID will report its Q3 earnings of 2022 after the close today.
 
Axalta Coating Systems Ltd. (NYSE:AXTA — $23.54) manufactures, markets, and distributes high-performance coatings systems in North America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, the Asia Pacific, and Latin America. Axalta Coating Systems will report its Q3 earnings of 2022 after the close today.
 
Boston Properties Inc. (NYSE:BXP — $72.82) is the largest publicly-held developer and owner of Class A office properties in the United States. Boston Properties will report its Q3 earnings of 2022 after the close today.
 
Boyd Gaming Corp. (NYSE:BYD — $53.78) operates as a multi-jurisdictional gaming company. Boyd Gaming will report its Q3 earnings of 2022 after the close today.
 
Canadian National Rail Co. (NYSE:CNI — $113.43) engages in the rail and related transportation business. Canadian National Rail will report its Q3 earnings of 2022 after the close today.
 
ChampionX Corp. (NASDAQ:CHX — $24.19) provides chemistry solutions, and engineered equipment and technologies to oil and gas companies worldwide. ChampionX will report its Q3 earnings of 2022 after the close today.
 
The Chemours Co. (NYSE:CC — $28.93) provides performance chemicals in North America, the Asia Pacific, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America. Chemours will report its Q3 earnings of 2022 after the close today.
 
Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc. (NYSE:CMG — $1,545.84) owns and operates Chipotle Mexican Grill restaurants. Chipotle Mexican Grill will report its Q3 earnings of 2022 after the close today.
 
Chubb Ltd. (NYSE:CB — $203.38) provides insurance and reinsurance products worldwide. Chubb will report its Q3 earnings of 2022 after the close today.
 
CoStar Group Inc. (NASDAQ:CSGP — $71.39) provides information, analytics, and online marketplace services to the commercial real estate, hospitality, residential, and related professionals industries in the United States, Canada, Europe, the Asia Pacific, and Latin America. CoStar Group will report its Q3 earnings of 2022 after the close today.
 
EastGroup Properties Inc. (NYSE:EGP — $144.24) is a self-administered equity real estate investment trust. EastGroup will report its Q3 earnings of 2022 after the close today.
 
Encore Wire Corp. (NASDAQ:WIRE — $135.23) manufactures and sells electrical building wires and cables for interior electrical wiring in the United States. Encore Wire will report its Q3 earnings of 2022 after the close today.
 
Enphase Energy Inc. (NASDAQ:ENPH — $253.30) designs, develops, manufactures, and sells home energy solutions for the solar photovoltaic industry in the United States and internationally. Enphase Energy will report its Q3 earnings of 2022 after the close today.
 
Equity Commonwealth (NYSE:EQC — $25.65) is a Chicago based, internally managed and self-advised real estate investment trust. Equity Commonwealth will report its Q3 earnings of 2022 after the close today.
 
Equity Residential (NYSE:EQR — $64.15) is committed to creating communities where people thrive. Equity Residential will report its Q3 earnings of 2022 after the close today.
 
F5 Networks Inc. (NASDAQ:FFIV — $148.58) provides multi-cloud application security and delivery solutions for the security, performance, and availability of network applications, servers, and storage systems. F5 will report its Q3 earnings of 2022 after the close today.
 
First Commonwealth Financial Corp. (NASDAQ:FCF — $13.94) provides various consumer and commercial banking services in the United States. First Commonwealth will report its Q3 earnings of 2022 after the close today.
 
First Interstate BancSystem Inc. (NASDAQ:FIBK — $42.28) operates as the bank holding company for First Interstate Bank that provides range of banking products and services in the United States. First Interstate BancSystem will report its Q3 earnings of 2022 after the close today.
 
FirstEnergy Corp. (NASDAQ:FE — $36.88) generates, transmits, and distributes electricity in the United States. FirstEnergy will report its Q3 earnings of 2022 after the close today.
 
Hawaiian Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ:HA — $15.30) engages in the scheduled air transportation of passengers and cargo. Hawaiian Holdings will report its Q3 earnings of 2022 after the close today.
 
Highwoods Properties Inc. (NYSE:HIW — $26.14) is a publicly-traded real estate investment trust. Highwoods Properties will report its Q3 earnings of 2022 after the close today.
 
Ideanomics Inc. (NASDAQ:IDEX — $0.27) develops zero emission mobility solutions for the off-highway and on-highway commercial vehicle markets in Asia and the United States. Ideanomics will report its Q3 earnings of 2022 after the close today.
 
Juniper Networks Inc. (NYSE:JNPR — $28.49) designs, develops, and sells network products and services worldwide. Juniper Networks will report its Q3 earnings of 2022 after the close today.
 
Kilroy Realty Corp. (NYSE:KRC — $40.92) is a leading West Coast landlord and developer, with a major presence in San Diego, Greater Los Angeles, the San Francisco Bay Area, and the Pacific Northwest. Kilroy Realty will report its Q3 earnings of 2022 after the close today.
 
Luxfer Holdings plc (NYSE:LXFR — $15.94) designs, manufactures, and supplies high-performance materials, components, and high-pressure gas containment devices for defense and emergency response, healthcare, transportation, and general industrial end-market applications. Luxfer will report its Q3 earnings of 2022 after the close today.
 
Manhattan Associates Inc. (NASDAQ:MANH — $128.50) develops, sells, deploys, services, and maintains software solutions to manage supply chains, inventory, and omni-channel operations. Manhattan Associates will report its Q3 earnings of 2022 after the close today.
 
Matador Resources Co. (NYSE:MTDR — $66.71) engages in the exploration, development, production, and acquisition of oil and natural gas resources in the United States. Matador Resources will report its Q3 earnings of 2022 after the close today.
 
Mattel Inc. (NASDAQ:MAT — $19.68) designs and produces toys and consumer products worldwide. Mattel will report its Q3 earnings of 2022 after the close today.
 
MaxLinear Inc. (NASDAQ:MXL — $31.82) provides radiofrequency (RF), high-performance analog, and mixed-signal communications systems-on-chip solutions (SoCs) for the connected home, wired and wireless infrastructure, and industrial and multi-market applications worldwide. MaxLinear will report its Q3 earnings of 2022 after the close today.
 
Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ:MSFT — $247.25) develops, licenses, and supports software, services, devices, and solutions worldwide. Microsoft will report its Q3 earnings of 2022 after the close today.
 
Navient Corp. (NASDAQ:NAVI — $15.50) provides education loan management and business processing solutions for education, healthcare, and government clients at the federal, state, and local levels in the United States. Navient will report its Q3 earnings of 2022 after the close today.
 
NCR Corp. (NYSE:NCR — $19.38) provides various software and services worldwide. NCR will report its Q3 earnings of 2022 after the close today.
 
NextGen Healthcare Inc. (NASDAQ:NXGN — $18.53) provides healthcare technology solutions in the United States. NextGen Healthcare will report its Q3 earnings of 2022 after the close today.
 
NexTier Oilfield Solutions Inc. (NYSE:NEX — $11.23) provides well completion and production services in various active and demanding basins. NexTier Oilfield will report its Q3 earnings of 2022 after the close today.
 
Renasant Corp. (NASDAQ:RNST — $34.99) operates as a bank holding company for Renasant Bank that provides a range of financial, wealth management, fiduciary, and insurance services to retail and commercial customers. Renasant will report its Q3 earnings of 2022 after the close today.
 
Retail Opportunity Investments Corp. (NASDAQ:ROIC — $14.10) is a fully-integrated, self-managed real estate investment trust. Retail Opportunity Investments will report its Q3 earnings of 2022 after the close today.
 
Skechers USA Inc. (NYSE:SKC — $34.68) designs, develops, markets, and distributes footwear for men, women, and children; and performance footwear for men and women worldwide. Skechers USA will report its Q3 earnings of 2022 after the close today.
 
Spotify Technology S.A. (NYSE:SPOT — $94.66) provides audio streaming services worldwide. Spotify will report its Q3 earnings of 2022 after the close today.
 
Stride Inc. (NYSE:LRN — $46.33) provides proprietary and third-party online curriculum, software systems, and educational services to facilitate individualized learning for students primarily in kindergarten through 12th grade (K-12) in the United States and internationally. Stride will report its Q3 earnings of 2022 after the close today.
 
Tenable Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ:TENB — $32.63) provides cyber exposure solutions for in the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, the Asia Pacific, and Japan. Tenable will report its Q3 earnings of 2022 after the close today.
 
Teradyne Inc. (NASDAQ:TER — $77.46) designs, develops, manufactures, sells, and supports automatic test equipment worldwide. Teradyne will report its Q3 earnings of 2022 after the close today.
 
Texas Instruments Inc. (NASDAQ:TXN — $161.65) designs, manufactures, and sells semiconductors to electronics designers and manufacturers worldwide. Texas Instruments will report its Q3 earnings of 2022 after the close today.
 
TriNet Group Inc. (NASDAQ:TNET — $74.31) provides human resources (HR) solutions, payroll services, employee benefits, and employment risk mitigation services for small and midsize businesses in the United States. TriNet Group will report its Q3 earnings of 2022 after the close today.
 
Trustmark Corp. (NASDAQ:TRMK — $34.30) operates as the bank holding company for Trustmark National Bank that provides banking and other financial solutions to individuals and corporate institutions in the United States. Trustmark will report its Q3 earnings of 2022 after the close today.
 
UMB Financial Corp. (NASDAQ:UMBF — $88.68) operates as the bank holding company for the UMB Bank that provides various banking and other financial services. UMB Financial will report its Q3 earnings of 2022 after the close today.
 
Universal Health Services Inc. (NYSE:UHS — $93.05) owns and operates acute care hospitals, and outpatient and behavioral health care facilities. Universal Health will report its Q3 earnings of 2022 after the close today.
 
Veritex Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ:VBTX — $27.64) operates as the bank holding company for Veritex Community Bank that provides various commercial banking products and services to small and medium-sized businesses, and professionals. Veritex Holdings will report its Q3 earnings of 2022 after the close today.
 
Vicor Corp. (NASDAQ:VICR — $45.91) designs, develops, manufactures, and markets modular power components and power systems for converting electrical power in the United States, Europe, the Asia Pacific, and internationally. Vicor will report its Q3 earnings of 2022 after the close today.
 
Visa Inc. (NYSE:V — $190.71) operates as a payments technology company worldwide. Visa will report its Q3 earnings of 2022 after the close today.
 
WesBanco Inc. (NASDAQ:WSBC — $38.15) operates as the bank holding company for WesBanco Bank, Inc. that provides retail banking, corporate banking, personal and corporate trust, brokerage, and mortgage banking and insurance services. WesBanco will report its Q3 earnings of 2022 after the close today.
 
Wyndham Hotels & Resorts Inc. (NASDAQ:WH — $70.60) operates as a hotel franchisor worldwide. Wyndham Hotels & Resorts will report its Q3 earnings of 2022 after the close today.
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