🌍 Expensive expiration dates

Good morning, Quartz readers!

Here’s what you need to know

Tech heavyweights impressed investors with their earnings yesterday. Microsoft, Google parent Alphabet, Intel, and Snap all beat Wall Street’s expectations, but the latter two still saw losses.

Microsoft-backed Rubrik soared 20% in its IPO. The data security company has seen revenue climb and subscriber growth surge 47% year-over-year, but it’s still losing money.

Bird flu appears to be spreading further across farms in the U.S. Tests done by the Food and Drug Administration found strains of H5N1 in store-bought milk.

Honda and Toyota are investing billions to build more electric cars in North America. The Japanese automakers aim to capitalize on interest in cleaner cars as 1 in 5 cars sold worldwide this year will be electric.

Coca-Cola signed a $1 billion AI deal with Microsoft. The five-year agreement comes as Coke’s competitors Red Bull and Pepsi already use AI to track customer engagement.

Pharmaceutical giants rely on drug patents — until they can’t

Drug companies had an impressive earnings week, beating Wall Street’s expectations left and right.

Many pharmaceutical giants rely on patented medications to fuel their revenue — but those patents don’t last forever. When patents expire, it allows other companies to produce biosimilars that inevitably bite into their sales (and of course, help lower drug costs for patients).

Some helpful numbers illustrate how lucrative these patents are:

3: Drug patents Bristol-Myers Squibb is set to lose this decade

62%: Share of Bristol-Myers Squibb’s first quarter sales represented by the three drugs

44%: Share of Merck’s total first quarter sales that were attributable to its cancer drug Keytruda

$15.8 billion: Merck’s total first quarter sales

2028: Year Keytruda’s patent expires

Quartz’s Bruce Gil explains why that’s got drug giants bracing for impact.

Southwest maybe doesn’t want you to sit anywhere after all

U.S. airline Southwest has come to be known for its open seat policy, meaning passengers don’t have assigned chairs before getting on their flights. (Instead, customers are assigned boarding groups; once onboard, they pick any open seat they see.)

But after reporting a loss in the first quarter of this year, not only is Southwest limiting hiring and pulling out of airports, it’s rethinking seating altogether. Could that improve its bottom line? Quartz’s Francisco Velasquez has the latest.

More from Quartz

💸 A little-known bill payment company scammed consumers out of millions, feds say

🍕 Businesses are betting on office amenities to boost their return-to-office push

👎 Boeing now has a ‘negative’ outlook from both Moody’s and S&P Global

🍗 Chipotle tells employees not to eat chicken on the job

📉 Bitcoin falls below $64,000 as Meta, Microsoft and Google continue to drop

🛥️ Jefferies’ CEO sold millions in stock to buy himself a yacht

Surprising discoveries

Earthquakes were the natural disaster that led to the most deaths last year. One important oversight in the data: accurate tolls involving heat waves.

Libraries pay a lot for audiobooks, and some are scaling back on the number of holds people can make. Just one digital audiobook of Britney Spears’ The Woman in Me cost $59.99, while a print copy was $17.81.

NASA is testing sunlight-powered space travel. It involves a sail powered by the Sun’s photons.

You can now buy a walking robot dog that shoots flames from its back. It’s called the Thermanator, and the jury’s still out on whether it’s a good boy.

That’s not the case for Messi, the TSA bomb-sniffing dog who was 100% a good boy. He just had his retirement party.

Did you know we have two premium weekend emails, too? One gives you analysis on the week’s news, and one provides the best reads from Quartz and elsewhere to get your week started right. Become a member or give membership as a gift!

Our best wishes for a productive day. Send any news, comments, fluffy flamethrowers, and retirement wishes for Messi to [email protected]. Today’s Daily Brief was brought to you by Morgan Haefner.