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• $61.6 billion — Revenue from iPhone sales, up 13 percent from a year earlier.

• 77.3 million — The number of iPhones that Apple sold in the quarter, down 1 percent and below the 80.2 million analysts expected, according to Bloomberg.

• $796 -- The average sale price of an iPhone, according to Bloomberg.

• $60 billion to $62 billion — Apple's revenue guidance for the current quarter, well below analysts’ expectations of $65.9 billion.

• $285 billion — Apple’s big cash pile.

Critics Corner

Robert Cryan of Breakingviews:

“Apple has long followed Mies van der Rohe’s design precept that “less is more.” Now it’s doing the same financially. The company sold fewer iPhones for more money in the last quarter, it reported on Thursday. That raises fears that the company is losing its innovation edge. But that’s OK – persuading customers to pay more arguably requires as much genius as getting people to adopt the technology in the first place.”

Amazon

• $1.9 billion —the e-commerce giant’s fourth-quarter profit, more than double its profit from a year ago and the first time Amazon’s earnings have surpassed $1 billion in a quarter.

• $789 million —The boost to Amazon’s bottom line from a one-time tax benefit.

• $60.5 billion — Amazon’s revenue in the quarter, up 38 percent and above analysts’ estimates of $59.8 billion.

Critics corner

Robert Cryan of Breakingviews:

Amazon.com is going gangbusters. But some of the nearly $700 billion internet retailer’s fastest-expanding – and most profitable – businesses could be ones that irritate users. Over time, that could sully the company’s image.

Alphabet

• $3.02 billion — The loss Alphabet reported for the fourth quarter.

• $9.9 billion — The hit Alphabet took to its earnings related to the new tax law.

• $32.32 billion — The search giant’s revenue for the quarter, up 27 percent from same period a year ago.

Critics corner

Jennifer Saba of Breakingviews:

Alphabet is stuck at the letter G. The holding company of Google was created to safeguard against conventionality and let moonshot ideas, like self-driving cars, flourish. Almost three years in, it’s basically still just Google. Which means, in turn, that the A in Alphabet stands mainly for advertising.

It wouldn’t hurt Alphabet to put more energy into revenue sources that don’t start with a G.

CBS and Viacom are talking about getting back together.

More than a decade after Viacom and CBS split, the boards of the two companies have formed a special committee to evaluate a possible merger.

Why now

• Shari Redstone, who along with her father, Sumner Redstone, controls the two companies, is pushing for a deal.Her previous effort to combine the two companies in 2016 faltered over the concerns of CBS’ directors and CBS’s chief executive, Les Moonves. According to media reports, Mr. Moonves may be more open to a deal, though the WSJ reports that he remains wary.

• Walt Disney’s deal for much of 21st Century Fox late last year has sparked much strategic rethinking across the industry. Ms. Redstone believes that CBS and Viacom need greater scale to better compete with Disney, Netflix and Amazon.

Critics corner

Tara Lachapelle of Bloomberg Gadfly:

“CBS isn’t safe from the industry’s broad ratings pressure and subscriber declines, which is why scale is important. Viacom won’t provide enough of it, but it will offer substantial cost-saving opportunities. Those synergies may amount to some $500 million based on what past deals have yielded, according to Geetha Ranganathan, an analyst for Bloomberg Intelligence. That could create quite a lift for CBS’s earnings.”

A shake-up in Airbnb’s C-suite

Belinda Johnson is moving up. Laurence Tosi is moving out. And don’t expect the company to go public this year.

What’s happening: Ms. Johnson, who’s currently the home-rental company’s chief business affairs and legal officer, will become its chief operating officer. Meanwhile, Mr. Tosi, who had been Airbnb’s chief financial officer since coming over from Blackstone, will leave the company to focus on his investment fund.

Airbnb has hired a search firm to find a new C.F.O. Ellie Mertz, the company’s head of global financial planning, will fill in that role on an interim basis.

Between the lines

• Ms. Johnson had been a rising star at Airbnb, often compared to Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg as the company’s business-minded grown-up in the room.

• Mr. Tosi had been increasingly at odds with Airbnb’s C.E.O., Brian Chesky, over strategy. (The Information covered their disputes — which were over both strategy and tactics — in great detail.)

The context

Airbnb is heading ever so slowly toward an initial public offering. It hired Ken Chenault as its first outside director, for example, and promoting its most successful business mind to C.O.O. is another step in that direction. Still losing its C.F.O. — particularly one well versed in Wall Street — could set those plans back a bit.

The company line

Here’s Mr. Chesky on Ms. Johnson:

“She takes critical functions that might be seen as constraints in other companies, and clears a path so they can become competitive advantages and facilitate the growth of the business.”

And here’s a statement from Eric Holder, the former U.S. Attorney General who has been advising the company on anti-discrimination policies:

“Having worked with Belinda over the years and at Airbnb, I have been consistently impressed by her ability to anticipate issues and leverage strategic opportunities. She combines technical expertise with great care for her colleagues.”

And here’s Mr. Chesky on Mr. Tosi:

“He helped Airbnb establish a rigorous financial discipline, aided our expansion into new businesses including into luxury rentals, which is now one of our core businesses, and helped us develop new and innovative ways to grow Airbnb and our businesses.”

— Michael J. de la Merced

Why Europe matters for Facebook.

Some of the most consequential battles in the world of technology are playing out in Europe, where governments are cracking down on tech giants like Google and Facebook.

Facebook’s quarterly results, released Wednesday, provide crucial information for better understanding the balance of power between Silicon Valley titans and the democracies of Europe.

The results clearly showed the importance of the European market to Facebook’s future growth. The company’s average revenue per European user in the fourth quarter of 2017 was $8.86, well below the $26.76 that Facebook rakes in per user in the United States and Canada.

Facebook should be able to move that European number a lot higher in the coming years. Europe’s economy is only a bit smaller than the United States’, and the Continent contains prosperous nations whose citizens are just as addicted to social media as Americans. Indeed, Facebook has more daily active users in Europe than in the United States and Canada (277 million versus 184 million.) What is more, total European daily active users grew in the fourth quarter, while the United States and Canada number edged lower.

All this helps explain why the growth in European revenue per user, at nearly 50 percent in the fourth quarter versus the year-earlier period, is significantly higher than the 35 percent rate for the United States and Canada.

What does this mean for Facebook as European countries introduce measures aimed at protecting their citizens that may go beyond what the company is used to in the United States?

Given how lucrative Europe is and will be to Facebook, it may be willing to spend what it takes to comply with new regulations, and even tolerate any inefficiencies the rules impose on its advertising business. Indeed, Facebook itself says it wants to make its network safer for users and democracies. But if there is any slip in that stance, Europe’s leaders, seeing how important their countries are to Facebook’s bottom line, arguably have considerable leverage to respond.

— Peter Eavis

Bitcoin’s slump continues.

Its price on Thursday: $8,915

Its all-time high hit on Dec. 18: $19,511.

That’s more than a 50 percent slide, and it marks it lowest price since November. To put the Bitcoin’s recent slide in perspective, the cryptocurrency has lost $44 billion in market value last month, according to Bloomberg.

The tumble has continued so far in February. Bitcoin is down 11 percent Thursday.

New questions about Bitcoin’s price

Regulators are increasingly worried that Bitfinex, a widely used (and famously opaque) exchange, has been propping it up. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission has subpoenaed the company, whose Tether digital token is often used to buy other virtual currencies.

Google and Aramco discuss building tech hubs.

The Wall Street Journal, citing anonymous sources, is reporting that Saudi Arabia’s Aramco and Google’s parent, Alphabet, are in talks to build a tech hub within the kingdom.

Details, including when and if a deal will come to fruition, remain scant at this point.

The context

Saudi Arabia is seeking to diversify its economy away from oil, and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has made developing Saudi Arabia’s tech sector a key part of his “Vision 2030” plan. In late 2016, he traveled to Silicon Valley to promote those reforms, and the kingdom has taken bigger steps in recent years into the tech investing world.

That year Saudi Arabia poured $3.5 billion into Uber, and its Public Investment Fund put $45 billion into SoftBank’s $100 billion Vision Fund, which is making eye-popping investments in tech companies.

An interesting point, from the WSJ article:

While a potential joint venture between Alphabet and Aramco isn’t necessarily connected to the latter company’s IPO, if a deal is struck before the offering, advisers to the company could pitch the pact as a way for investors to bake in technology valuations.

It isn’t clear how setting up tech hubs could fundamentally transform an oil company into a tech company — and therefore command a higher multiple — but it’d be interesting to see bankers make that argument.

— Stephen Grocer

What Jeff Immelt will be doing at N.E.A.

The former G.E. chairman and C.E.O. will focus on tech and health care companies in his new role as a partner at N.E.A., one of the biggest V.C. firms in the world (that isn’t named SoftBank).

From the release:

“I am excited to join NEA because they understand how to work with visionary entrepreneurs to build successful technology and health care enterprises,” Immelt said. “I have a passion for these sectors and I am eager to work with NEA and its partners to develop great businesses, nurture talented leaders and grow diverse teams.”

and:

“Jeff is deeply knowledgeable about the complex global innovation landscape we’re operating in today and he understands how businesses must evolve to compete and win in that environment, particularly across industrial and medical technologies,” said Scott Sandell, Managing General Partner, NEA.

(Worth noting: Mr. Immelt’s successor at G.E. is struggling to turn that company around. See below.)

Mr. Immelt is only the latest corporate chieftain to find his next act in venture capital. Earlier this week, Ken Chenault announced that he would become chairman of General Catalyst Partners.

Mr. Immelt himself famously dallied with Silicon Valley last year, when he was in the running to become Uber’s next C.E.O.

— Michael J. de la Merced

Should investors worry about Facebook?

The good news: Its fourth-quarter earnings handily beat expectations. The average price per ad went up 43 percent.

The possibly bad news: Mark Zuckerberg said changes to the News Feed had cut 50 million hours a day from the time users spent on it (as Shira Ovide of Gadfly points out, that’s about 2 minutes less each).

Here’s where our colleague Peter Eavis says investors should focus:

Daily active users in the United States and Canada actually fell to 184 million in the fourth quarter of 2017 from 185 million in the third quarter of last year. But Facebook still managed to generate a huge amount of revenue from the United States and Canada. The region accounted for $6.4 billion of revenue in the fourth quarter of last year, a 40 percent jump from the same period in 2016.

Another figure that might cause concern is the growth in capital expenditures, the money a company spends as it invests in new initiatives. Capex hit $2.26 billion in the fourth quarter of last year, a staggering 78 percent jump from the same period in 2016.

Today’s a big day for tech earnings

• Apple: Everyone wants to know how well the iPhone X has sold — well enough to start a new “supercycle”?

• Alphabet: Will Google’s hardware sales make its nonadvertising business more than a tiny blip in earnings?

• Amazon: Will Wall Street have finally got the fourth-quarter results right? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The tech flyaround

• Is digital advertising what’s wrong with the internet? (NYT)

• More than a million followers have disappeared from the accounts of dozens of prominent Twitter users in recent days. Funny, that. (NYT)

• Microsoft’s cloud computing push continues to pay off. (NYT)

• Uber is offering bicycle sharing in San Francisco. (NYT)

• EBay will shift its payments business from PayPal. That pummeled PayPal’s share price in after-hours trading. (Bloomberg)

• The Twitter co-founder Biz Stone and the Craigslist co-founder Craig Newmark are investing in a fact-checking start-up. (Bloomberg)

When will Congress raise the debt limit?

Steven Mnuchin urged lawmakers to do it quickly, amid worries that the government could run out of borrowing capacity late this month. (The Congressional Budget Office has changed its estimate because of the tax cuts.)

The Treasury secretary argued that the cuts would eventually pay for themselves, but conceded that it wouldn’t happen this year.

In the meantime, the Treasury Department said that the size of Treasury auctions will increase. And Republicans are increasingly split over whether to keep supporting short-term bills to keep the government operating.

The policy flyaround

• Robert Mueller appears to be focusing on the White House’s initial statement about a June 2016 meeting between Trump campaign officials and Russian individuals over potential dirt on Hillary Clinton. (NYT)

• The F.B.I. made an unusual public statement opposing the release of a secret House Intelligence Committee memo about surveillance of a Trump campaign aide. (NYT)

• A federal appeals court ruled that the president could fire the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s director only for cause. (NYT)

• The E.U. is preparing measures to stop Britain undercutting it on tax or regulation after Brexit. (FT)

• The Treasury Department insisted that new sanctions are coming against Russian individuals close to Vladimir Putin. (Bloomberg)

• Prosecutors have dropped corruption charges against Senator Bob Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey. (NYT)

• The director of the C.D.C., Brenda Fitzgerald, resigned after she was reported to have bought stock in a tobacco company. (Politico)

What will the Fed do at its March meeting?

Yesterday’s meeting, Janet Yellen’s last as Fed chairwoman, left rates unchanged. But the accompanying statement hinted that higher inflation — and rate hikes — might be around the corner.

Analysts’ takes:

• Economists at Bank of America Merrill Lynch write, “This shows that the Fed is taking notice of the recent shift in market perception about inflation.”

• Ian Shepherdson of Pantheon Macroeconomics writes, “In short, the statement sets up the March hike, which will be followed by Jay Powell’s first press conference.”

• Diane Swonk of Grant Thornton said, “Everything from stronger growth at home and abroad to debt-financed tax cuts have raised expectations for inflation.”

The scene at the Fed yesterday, from Binyamin Appelbaum of the NYT:

On Wednesday, some Fed employees wore shirts or jackets with the collars turned up, or popped, in a tribute to Ms. Yellen, who favored that look in public appearances.

Could G.E. be dropped from the Dow?

Analysts over at Deutsche Bank think so. They wrote in a research note yesterday:

As the company’s absolute share price has continued to drop (and as the share prices of the other companies have been increasing), G.E. increasingly falls into the category of outlier and consequently a likely candidate for removal, in our opinion.

G.E. is the last survivor of the index’s 12 original components from when it started in 1896, and has been in it continuously for more than 110 years.

More on G.E.’s troubles in Bloomberg Businessweek’s cover story.

The deals flyaround

• SoftBank agreed to buy a majority stake in the cellphone service unit of Line, a Japanese messaging company. (CNBC)

• Brookfield Asset Management is in talks to buy Forest City Realty Trust, a fellow real estate owner with a market value of about $6.2 billion, according to unnamed sources. (Bloomberg)

• CVC Capital Partners has hired Morgan Stanley and UBS to lead an initial public offering of the antivirus company Avast Software, which could be the biggest ever in British tech, according to unnamed sources. (Reuters)

• Meet the three-month old boutique investment bank that helped put together the Blackstone Group’s $20 billion deal for Thomson Reuters’ financial information unit. (Bloomberg)

• General Assembly, the coding boot camp, may sell itself. (Reuters)

• Tell us your memories of Xerox as the onetime corporate icon strikes a deal with Fujifilm of Japan. (NYT)

What’s at stake for Wynn Resorts in Massachusetts’ inquiry

The state’s gaming commission is looking into the numerous, decade-spanning sexual assault and misconduct allegations against Steve Wynn. It has the power to revoke the operating license for Wynn Boston Harbor, the biggest single-phase development in Massachusetts history, which is expected to create thousands of jobs.

More from Susan Pulliam, Jon Kamp, Chris Kirkham and Kate O’Keeffe of the WSJ:

“We will be looking at how the company, from the board on down, handles the allegations,” said Karen Wells, who directs the investigations and enforcement bureau at the state gambling commission.

She said allegations in the settlement agreement weren’t disclosed before the commission granted Wynn a license in September 2014, or at any point before The Wall Street Journal report.

Shares in Wynn Resorts fell more than 3 percent yesterday.

Revolving door

• Stephen Cutler, who spent 11 years at JPMorgan, mostly as its general counsel, has joined Simpson Thacher & Bartlett as a litigation partner. (Simpson Thacher)

• The public relations firm Brunswick Group has hired Bob Zoellick, the former president of the World Bank, and Pascal Lamy, the former director general of the World Trade Organization, as part of a new consultancy focused on geopolitical advice. (Brunswick)

Is retirement for you or your kids?

Our colleagues want to know how you’re thinking about retirement. They’ll use the best responses in a forthcoming special section.

The Speed Read

• U.S. prosecutors have issued grand jury subpoenas in an investigation into potential corruption at international sports bodies, and exploring bringing charges of racketeering, money laundering and fraud. (NYT)

• BMW and Daimler said they had taken action against executives involved in an organization that sponsored emissions experiments on monkeys. (NYT)

• Equifax began offering a free service on Wednesday that promised to let consumers lock their credit files using their cellphones. It didn’t work. (NYT)

• Some of Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke’s rapid moves on environmental regulation look vulnerable to legal challenge, experts say. (NYT)

• SoFi is laying off dozens of employees in its mortgage division, according to people familiar with the matter. It used to highlight the area as a growth prospect. (WSJ)

• Hong Kong developers and distressed debt and private credit funds are lining up to offer financing to HNA, bankers and property investors say. (FT)

• David Einhorn’s Greenlight Capital lost roughly 6 percent in January, extending a multiyear period of weakness. (WSJ)

• Private equity heavyweights like K.K.R., Carlyle and Apollo have started issuing U.S. preferred shares, which pay higher interest than traditional bonds and can be a highly efficient way to raise capital. (FT)

• Hedge funds have earned spectacular payoffs from bearish bets against companies like Steinhoff International and Carillion, but can accounting sleuths expect more wins on that scale? (FT)

We’d love your feedback. Please email thoughts and suggestions to bizday@nytimes.com.