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Disney and Zillow shares slide, Amazon aims to hire 150K seasonal workers

Yahoo Finance’s Ines Ferre reports on the day's trending tickers.

Video transcript

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: All right, we have got Ines Ferre with us now for a look at some of the trending tickers on the Yahoo Finance site. And Ines, I want to start with Disney coming under some pressure here after a downgrade at Barclays. What can you tell us?

INES FERRE: That's right. We have Disney being the poorest performer right now on the Dow, down about 3%. And this is because of that downgrade at Barclays to equal weight with the analysts slashing its earnings estimates and also lowering the price target to 175 from 210. Basically, what the analysts saying that the company is facing a tough task to meet its long-term subscriber target for its streaming services. Remember, Disney Plus, Hulu, ESPN Plus saying that the targets that the company has are overly optimistic.

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Now, Disney is expecting total subscribers to be around 250 million by 2024, but the analyst is saying this is really going to be hard to meet that goal if it's producing less new content than its rival, Netflix. And in order to get to that goal, Disney needs to double its current pace of growth to at least the same level as Netflix.

And speaking of Netflix, of course, Netflix will be reporting its quarterly results tomorrow after the bell. The stock is up almost 1% because analysts are expecting Netflix to show some strong subscriber growth after a sort of a slowish start in 2020. A lot of optimism, a lot of momentum fueled by the hit series "Squid Game" as well. Alexis, Karina.

KARINA MITCHELL: I'll take the next question to you, Ines. And Zillow also taking a big hit today on some surprising news.

INES FERRE: Yeah, that's right. Zillow is actually one of our trending tickers. It's down about 8% on our YFi Interactive Board. It's hitting a 52-week low. And this is because Zillow Offers is going to be stopped by the company for now. Now, Zillow Offers is a service where the company buys and flips homes. So the company-- so Zillow is now going to, for now, stop buying homes. And it will work through the existing inventory that it has on hand.

Now, Zillow Offers was started more than three years ago. And it's part of the company's strategy to basically buy homes from people and then upgrade them or flip them and then sell them. But the company has been facing a lot of backlog issues with renovating these homes because they are facing constraint for workers, for supplies, like many other industries are. And this is a significant part of the company because, last year, Zillow Offers accounted for more than half of the company's revenue. So, by stopping this or pausing this for now, investors certainly punishing the stock, down more than 8% today.

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: Yeah, for sure. All right, taking a look at Amazon, they're announcing their seasonal workers. How many people do they plan to hire here during the holidays, especially given all the labor shortages that we've got and the supply chain issues they continue to deal with?

INES FERRE: Yeah, Amazon is hoping to hire 150,000 seasonal workers. The stock is up 8/10 of a percent today. What's interesting about this is that Amazon and so many other companies, Walmart, Target, they all have to hire seasonal workers ahead of the holiday season, which is their busiest season. Hourly pay for Amazon this year for these workers is going to start at $18 an hour.

The company is also going to be offering up to $3,000 of sign-in bonuses. Amazon, this e-commerce giant, like many other companies, are really struggling to find workers. It's a very tight labor market out there, as people are not working or they're going to-- into different areas or careers, or they can't find the proper childcare.

Nordstrom, we know last week had announced it was aiming to hire 28,000 workers. And those that worked in supply chain or fulfillment centers would give even better incentives. So these companies are really throwing out all these incentives, bonuses, extra pay, in order to attract workers amid this supply chain crunch and this labor shortage. And just to give you a tidbit on what Amazon used to pay its workers back in 2019, seasonal workers were starting out at $15 an hour. Now it's $18. Alexis, Karina.

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: Got to keep it competitive, I guess. All right, thanks a lot, Ines Ferre.