Zillow- 90% Work From Home TFN; Impossible Burgers Now at Walmart; PayPal Sees Big Profit Jump; Apple Leads China Smartphone Growth

Zillow has announced that around 90% of its employees will have the option of working from home indefinitely. According to geekwire.com, the company put work from home in place in April due to the pandemic, and now says while they historically discouraged employees from working from home, “Our old preferences have been debunked during the pandemic.” That coming in a blog post from Dan Spaulding, Zillow’s chief people officer. Zillow has onboarded around 500 new employees since March, all digitally, via a new virtual program.

If you have been meaning to try an Impossible Burger, but haven’t been somewhere that has them…or haven’t picked some up in a grocery like Kroger, Safeway, Albertsons, or Vons, now giant retailer Walmart has added the plant-based burgers to some 2,000 stores. Engadget.com reports that the discounter will be selling 12 ounce packages of Impossible Burger in stores in all 50 states. Adding in Walmart’s 2,000 centers, the meatless burger should be available in over 8,000 grocery stores by the end of the year. I have tried them a couple times. They really do taste like a real burger…but were saltier than I normally would eat actual meat.

A big surge in e-commerce, coupled with new accounts boosted quarterly profits at PayPal by a whopping 86%! Reuters says the stock was up over 6% in after hours trading yesterday after the announcement. PayPal stock had already seen a 44% rise since May. They are now projecting 22% revenue growth for the year. This is quite a boost after PayPal withdrew full year guidance due to uncertainty over the pandemic. As it turns out, it has been a boon for them, as well as other online titans like Amazon.

Following a decline in the market in the 1st quarter, Apple has bounced back in China..growing 32% on the year thanks to continued strength of its iPhone 11 lineup (not to mention substantial discounting during an annual shopping festival Cupertino has avoided in the past.) Apple had the fastest growing smartphone brand in China in the 2nd quarter, according to macrumors.com and stats from Counterpoint Research. The new iPhone SE was one of the top 3 selling phones in the quarter…duplicating the smaller, cheaper phone’s performance in the US.