The bottom line

HBO Max paid $600 million for the rights to all 279 episodes of The Big Bang Theory. It also paid $425 million to Netflix to reclaim the streaming rights to Friends. Meanwhile, Netflix spent $500 million for the Seinfeld archive but lost The Office to NBCUniversal for $100 million per year.

Variety

Microsoft said it plans to buy back $40 billion worth of its own stock, its third share buyback of that size since 2013. The move will raise the company’s stock dividend by 11 percent.

The Wall Street Journal

Bugatti sold out of a $33,000 car for kids. The company had produced 500 of the Bugatti Baby II, a 75 percent scale replica of the 1924 Type 35 Lyon Grand Prix car that generates 5.4 horsepower and speeds up to 28 mph.

PopularMechanics.com

Airlines pocketed more than $35 billion last year from fees related to frequent flier programs as well as baggage, extra legroom, snacks, and other amenities that used to be free. United Airlines gets $36 per passenger from ancillary revenue.

Los Angeles Times

U.S. solar power generation jumped from 28.9 million megawatt hours in 2014 to 96.1 in 2018. Meanwhile, the total acreage used for the generation of solar power rose from 53,390 to 257,910 from 2013 to 2018.

The Wall Street Journal

The earnings of men who graduated college with a liberal arts degree catch up to their STEM peers’. The average salary of history or social sciences majors between the ages of 23 and 25 was $45,032. But at age 40, their average salary rose to $131,154, while men in computer science or engineering earned $124,458.

The New York Times