Corporate America: October 26, 2026 — Microsoft Offers Buyouts to 60,000 as Verizon Wins Subscribers but Misses on Revenue

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Microsoft set the tone for corporate America on Monday, offering voluntary buyouts to about 60,000 employees, roughly a quarter of its workforce, two days before it reports earnings in the busiest week of the season. Verizon opened that week with its strongest third-quarter subscriber performance in five years and a raised outlook, yet its shares fell after revenue came in short of expectations, while Cadence Design Systems and Nucor both beat expectations after the close and Skydance began cutting costs under the debt taken on to buy Warner Bros Discovery. The broader market rose, with the S&P 500 closing up 0.70% at 7,676.77, the Nasdaq Composite up 0.82% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average up 0.28% at 52,361.58, according to the closing figures on our Corporate America desk. The through line was the cost of the artificial intelligence build-out.

Earnings

Verizon reported adjusted earnings of $1.31 a share for the third quarter, up 8.3% from a year earlier and ahead of the $1.27 consensus cited by Zacks, while revenue rose 1.5% to $34.31 billion and missed the roughly $34.74 billion to $34.81 billion consensus reported by LSEG and Zacks. The operating numbers were stronger than the headline miss. Verizon added 406,000 postpaid phone subscribers, nearly double the roughly 209,000 Visible Alpha estimate cited by Reuters and up from just 44,000 a year earlier. Adjusted EBITDA rose 8% to a record $13.80 billion and free cash flow rose 12.1% to $7.80 billion. Management raised full-year adjusted earnings guidance to $5.04 to $5.06 a share and lifted its forecast for postpaid phone additions to 1.1 million to 1.2 million. Investors focused on the revenue shortfall instead, and the shares closed down 3.49% at $43.10.

Cadence Design Systems, reporting after the close, delivered the cleaner beat. Revenue rose 22% from a year earlier to $1.633 billion, ahead of the $1.61 billion estimate cited by MarketBeat, and non-GAAP earnings reached $2.11 a share against a $2.05 consensus, while GAAP earnings were flat at $1.05 a share and margins narrowed. Recurring revenue rose 18% and the backlog reached a record $8.2 billion. Management raised its forecast for 2026 revenue growth to 21%, citing broad-based momentum in AI-driven designs. The shares had closed up 1.79% at $322.17 before the results were released.

Nucor also reported after the close, posting net earnings of $1.32 billion, or $5.80 a diluted share, on net sales of $11.25 billion, up from $2.63 a share a year earlier, with EBITDA of $2.28 billion, according to its earnings announcement. Nucor repurchased about 2.03 million shares at an average price of $247.04 during the quarter, returned about $629 million to stockholders in the quarter, and declared a $0.56 quarterly dividend described as its 214th consecutive quarterly cash dividend. That mix of buybacks and an unbroken dividend record is the combination our explainer on how dividends work sets out how to judge, by yield, payout and whether free cash flow covers the payment. Nucor shares closed down 0.29% at $257.35 before the release. Among the other Monday reporters, Welltower closed up 1.39% at $240.61 and Public Storage eased 0.94% to $306.97, while Whirlpool fell 5.91% to $26.45, the weakest close among the day’s large reporters.

Jobs, Deals and Capital

Microsoft’s voluntary exit offer was the day’s largest workforce move. Bloomberg and Business Insider reported that about 60,000 employees are eligible, about 27% of a workforce of roughly 223,000, with the offer open to employees at level 70 and below on participating teams in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and India, and with data center staff among those excluded. Chief People Officer Amy Coleman described it in the company’s memo as a time-limited program offering financial support and career planning resources, while CNBC reported that those who accept will leave on December 31. Microsoft did not frame the offer as an AI layoff program in its memo, and no departure count has been announced, because eligibility is not the same as exits.

Skydance offered a smaller version of the same post-deal discipline. Reuters reported on Monday, from a memo it had seen, that the company is offering some employees a one-time voluntary buyout as it cuts costs after completing its $110 billion takeover of Warner Bros Discovery earlier this month, with the combined company renamed Skydance, and is also moving to a five-day-a-week in-office policy. Reuters put the combined workforce at about 53,000 employees and the debt load at about $80 billion. Skydance shares have fallen by about a third this year, Reuters reported, and the company reports on November 9. Verizon’s fiber agreement belonged on the deal side as well, as the company said its agreement to supply fiber connections for Amazon Web Services data centers is worth more than $2 billion, following a deal worth more than $1 billion with Google earlier this year.

Leadership, Strategy and the One to Watch

Apple provided the day’s clearest strategy test outside earnings. Bloomberg reported that some owners of the $1,999 iPhone Duo, Apple’s first foldable phone, which went on sale on Friday, have seen the inner display crack after just hours or days of use, and that Bloomberg had verified the issue with more than half a dozen customers. Apple told Bloomberg and USA Today on Monday that it is aware of an issue impacting the inner display on a small number of iPhone Duo units and that affected users should contact AppleCare for a replacement. The company has not said how many units are affected or what is causing the failures. Apple shares were down about 1% to $343.13 in midday trading, according to TipRanks reporting of Bloomberg.

The one to watch is Tuesday, October 27, when the earnings calendar turns to the consumer and industrial core of the index. Boeing, Coca-Cola, United Parcel Service, PayPal, HCA Healthcare, Hilton, Corning and Freeport-McMoRan report before the open, and Visa, Seagate, Teradyne and NXP Semiconductors follow after the close, according to the week-ahead calendars published by Hedge Fund Telemetry and Saxo. Boeing will be read for production and delivery progress, UPS for parcel volumes as a proxy for goods demand, Coca-Cola for pricing power and Visa, after the close, for payment volumes as a direct read on consumer spending. Those prints land on the first day of the Federal Reserve’s two-day meeting, with its decision due Wednesday alongside earnings from Alphabet and Microsoft, so Tuesday’s consumer evidence will set the tone before the week’s largest technology results arrive.

This is not investment advice. Corporate America is AI-assisted research produced with automated data checks; figures are verified against the cited sources at publication time.

Sources: Reuters via SourceFirst and market reporting (Verizon subscribers and AWS fiber deal, October 26, 2026; Skydance buyouts, October 26, 2026); Zacks (Verizon Q3 2026); Bloomberg and Business Insider via Engadget, TechCrunch and CNBC reporting (Microsoft voluntary exit offer, October 26, 2026); Microsoft memo from Chief People Officer Amy Coleman, October 26, 2026; Cadence Design Systems Q3 2026 results via MarketBeat reporting, October 26, 2026; Nucor Q3 2026 earnings announcement via Kalkine, October 26, 2026; Bloomberg via TechCrunch, TipRanks and USA Today (Apple iPhone Duo display issue, October 26, 2026); Finnhub market data for October 26, 2026 closing prices; Hedge Fund Telemetry and Saxo week-ahead earnings calendars (October 27, 2026).