Good morning, CFOs. What a difference a day makes. Or does it?

Some financial chiefs are wondering, Mark Maurer reports. Almost every four years—this year is one—there are 29 days in February instead of 28. The longer February presents companies with a series of issues to consider as they account for the extra day and report their financials for the period.

In recent weeks, finance executives at big companies have given investors and analysts a heads-up that leap day will be reflected, one way or another, in their financials this quarter. Publicly traded companies, from Delta Air Lines to Instacart and Chipotle Mexican Grill, have explained on recent earnings calls the expected effects of the extra day. In many cases, the effects of the quirk in the calendar aren’t sizable enough for companies to bother disclosing them.

📆 Earnings

Warner Bros. Discovery holds a conference call to discuss quarterly results.

Big tech companies are continuing to pour cash into artificial intelligence at a breakneck pace. And based on the earnings update Wednesday from Nvidia, much of it is going to that chip maker.

“This last year, we’ve seen generative AI really becoming a whole new application space, a whole new way of doing computing,” Jensen Huang, Nvidia’s co-founder and chief executive, said Wednesday. “A whole new industry is being formed, and that’s driving our growth.”

After a year of supercharged spending, in a tech industry renowned for short-lived frenzies, some chip executives and analysts see the AI boom as increasingly sustainable. While it is the talk of Silicon Valley and a priority for big tech companies, AI has yet to percolate through the corporate world and become ubiquitous in everyday life, suggesting further opportunities for the companies that can harness them.

• Nvidia Earnings Power S&P 500 to Another Record High
• The Meteoric Rise of Nvidia, in Five Charts
   

• An AT&T network failure left people around the country without cellphone service for hours, frustrating customers and renewing concerns about the reliability of vital network infrastructure.
• Google suspended the ability to generate images of people in its flagship chatbot following an online backlash around the tool’s treatment of race and ethnicity.
• Sales of previously owned homes rose in January from the prior month, rebounding modestly after sales last year dropped to their worst level in nearly three decades.

📰 Other headlines

• AI’s Unlikely Benefactor: Blackstone’s 77-Year-Old CEO Steve Schwarzman
• J.B. Hunt to Buy Walmart’s Intermodal Assets in a Shipping Agreement

March 5-6, 2024 | New York, New York
Request an invitation | Participants and program

The era of cheap money is behind us and CFOs must now grapple with how to operate in a high interest rate environment, how fast to invest in artificial intelligence, and how to manage geopolitical tensions and thorny labor relations. With U.S. elections on the horizon, the CFO Network will discuss–through both newsmaking interviews and peer-to-peer discussions–how finance executives are reading the markets, driving the push for greater corporate efficiency and managing the pushback on ESG and DEI. Join WSJ journalists and some of the biggest names in corporate finance to discuss, debate and make headlines.

Confirmed speakers include:

• Martin Small, Senior Managing Director, Global Head of Corporate Strategy and CFO, BlackRock
• Bori Cox, CFO, Consumer and Community Banking, JPMorgan Chase
• Paul Ryan, Vice Chairman, Teneo; 54th Speaker of the House

Planet Fitness, the Hampton, N.H-based gym chain, said Chief Financial Officer Tom Fitzgerald plans to retire later this year, following the resignation of former chief executive officer, Chris Rondeau, from the company’s board and after recent layoffs. Fitzgerald said he plans to retire at the end of August. The company will hire an executive-search firm to find its next CFO.

Helmerich & Payne, the Tulsa, Okla.-based petroleum contract drilling company, said that Mark W. Smith, its chief financial officer, plans to retire in August of 2024. The company has commenced a search process to identify CFO candidates. Smith will continue to serve in his current role until a successor is identified and remain as a senior advisor until December 2024 after his retirement date.

—Will Feuer contributed to this newsletter.

• Small businesses turned to alternative funding options like merchant cash advances in recent years. Such borrowing has now led to the deaths of some of these operations.
• After more than 20 years of debate, private-equity firms are about to be drafted into the fight against dirty money.
• With the potential for more business technology consolidation in 2024, CIOs say they’re worried about being sold bigger product suites at higher costs.
• 🎧 Listen to Ken Calwell, CEO of the organization behind the “He Gets Us” Jesus-focused ad campaign, discuss how he applied his corporate marketing experience to the nonprofit.

Every weekend we select articles that peel back the layers on a compelling business story or make us look at business in a different light.

• China’s hacker network: Here’s what to know, according to the New York Times.
• Don’t expect America’s interest rates to fall just yet, The Economist advises.
• Can OpenAI create superintelligence before it runs out of cash? A weekend query from The Financial Times.

The Wall Street Journal's CFO Journal offers corporate leaders and professionals CFO analysis, advice and commentary to make informed decisions. We cover topics including corporate tax accounting, regulation, capital markets, management and strategy.

Follow us on X @WSJCFO. The WSJ CFO Journal Team is reporters Kristin Broughton, Mark Maurer and Jennifer Williams, and Bureau Chief Walden Siew.

You can reach us by replying to any newsletter, or email Walden at walden.siew@wsj.com.