Zuckerberg warns Meta workers, average monthly car payment crosses $700, AMC announces $5 Tuesdays

Yahoo Finance Live anchors discuss Mark Zuckerberg's economic warning to Meta employees, the average monthly care payment crossing the $700 mark, and AMC announcing $5 Tuesdays through the end of October.

Video transcript

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BRAD SMITH: Welcome back to Yahoo Finance Live here on this Tuesday morning, everyone. Brad Smith here with Brian Sozzi, and it is time for Cut for Time, three stories, one minute each. Let's start with this, Soz. Mark Zuckerberg issuing an economic warning to Meta employees, saying the company faces one of the worst downturns that we've seen in recent history according to copies of his comments at an internal meeting that were shared with the New York Times here.

And particularly here, just looking through some of these comments, one of them saying I think that some of you might decide that this place isn't for you, and that self-selection is OK with me. Is there--

- Yeah, usually--

BRAD SMITH: Is there a more disingenuous type of way to indicate that to your employee base?

- Well, it's his team that hired all these folks. Clearly, they need to do a better job. But look, Brad, as a leader, I've seen this time and time again. When you drop a note like this before you report earnings, you're kind of setting expectations if you're a public company which probably didn't have that great of a quarter. Maybe Meta is continuing to deal with high levels of expenses. Maybe this might be Mark Zuckerberg just setting the setting the table that this quarter was challenging, maybe the rest of the year will be challenging.

And they're going to continue to slow the pace of their hirings and just trying to get their business going in the right direction.

BRAD SMITH: I guess Better.com would have been saying hold my beer to me saying that Mark Zuckerberg was disingenuous. So perhaps I should correct myself on that front. But even more so, yeah, as we're out of one minute, out of our time here. Their head count also, 6,000 to 7,000 engineers, they were looking to add that, and that's down from 10,000, it seems, as well.

- We're taking out 20 seconds out of your Cut for Time tomorrow because you've continued to go Brad. All right, switching gears, owning a car is causing more pain in consumer wallets. The average monthly car payment is on the rise, crossing the $700 mark. Wow, Brad, this comes compliments of Cox Automotive and Moody's Analytics. $700 for a car payment, that's a lot of cash, and that is coming at the time, of course, where households are battling high levels of food inflation, high levels of concern about the forward financials of their own household financials with the market.

The stock market is where it is. Does job loss accelerate later this year because of the recessionary conditions in the country? But wow, $700 is not what a normal car payment would be just a couple of years ago.

BRAD SMITH: Look, it's time for a couple of us to start signing up as Uber drivers, I guess, so that at least that way we'll get some type of tax write off on these car payments, as well. But even as we think about the purchasing practices for consumers and the type of an economic pullback and what that would mean for some of the car manufacturers that we're looking at on screen, it's going to come down to the financing options that a lot of car owners also have, and the leases as well, that these car manufacturers continue to sign in the near term.

I'll stop myself there so that I'm not going on margin on any more of my Cut for Time time.

- Real thumb to the eye here, you might be paying $700 a month, and you don't even have chips in your car for your heated seats, so again, not good.

BRAD SMITH: All right, double buzz there. Last one here, good news for movie lovers, AMC theaters announcing that beginning today, July 5th, through the end of October, movies are only $5, plus tax, for showtimes on Tuesdays at all AMC us locations. But you have to be an AMC stubs member. Now, this is, I think, one of the free tiers that they have, so perhaps good news for some of the moviegoers or some old MoviePass subscribers that were out there to who AMC is perhaps trying to woo over.

- Unclear, Brad, if I sign up to be a subscriber to this AMC service do I also get a stake in the gold mine that AMC recently bought about last year? Unclear to me, but I think the real deal is if you go to the AMC website, $5 plus tax, you get a Fanta and a popcorn. I'm not a Fanta fan, but for me, $5, that's pretty good, fountain soda.

BRAD SMITH: That just means that Tuesdays are going to be now the most packed days that AMC, as well, if you've got everybody showing up in droves.

- Instead of 50 people in the theater, maybe it'll be 55.

BRAD SMITH: Look, when I saw a Lightyear, it was me and about 10 other people, and I had plenty of space to myself. Also, you tend to have that when you go to IPIC. So anyway, IPIC, AMC, whoever you decide to go to, Cineworld, you should have some options any day of the week. And AMC is trying to woo you over $5 a pop, at least on Tuesdays for right now.

- I really don't like Fanta.

BRAD SMITH: Yeah, exactly. All right, the concessions still pricey, though.