Raphael Stevens

“Top Gun: Maverick” soared past the $900 million mark globally Monday and has set its sights on crossing the coveted $1 billion box office threshold.
Since its debut in late May, “Maverick” has kept its pace at the domestic box office, generating strong ticket sales through its fourth week in theaters.
“‘Maverick’ has tapped into the cultural zeitgeist in a way only a rare breed of movies ever achieve,” one box office analyst said.

Tom Cruise in “Top Gun: Maverick”
Source: Paramount

“Top Gun: Maverick” continues to break barriers at the box office.
The Paramount and Skydance sequel to the 1986 hit “Top Gun” soared past $900 million in ticket sales globally Monday and has set its sights on crossing the coveted $1 billion box office threshold.

Without much standing in its way, box office analysts expect “Maverick” to achieve that milestone within a week. The blockbuster feature won’t have much competition until July 8, when Disney’s Marvel Studios releases “Thor: Love and Thunder.”
So far, sales for “Maverick” have been split between about $475 million in the U.S. and Canada and about $430 million from international markets.
“Reflecting the film’s universal appeal, a near 50/50 split of domestic versus international revenues is a rare feat for most modern blockbusters,” said Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst at Comscore.
Since its debut in late May, “Maverick” has kept its torrid pace at the domestic box office, generating strong ticket sales through its fourth week in theaters. The film opened with $126.7 million in sales, the highest opening weekend box office haul for any Tom Cruise film and the actor’s first film to garner more than $100 million during its debut.
In its second weekend, ticket sales declined 29% to $90 million, demonstrating more staying power than most blockbuster features, according to data from Comscore. Typically, big budget films see sales fall between 50% and 70% from launch week to the second week.

That strong performance continued: It brought in $52 million in its third weekend, a 42% drop from the second weekend, and $44 million during its fourth weekend, a 14% drop from the third.
“‘Maverick’ has tapped into the cultural zeitgeist in a way only a rare breed of movies ever achieve,” said Shawn Robbins, chief analyst at BoxOffice.com.
Robbins noted that “Maverick” was well reviewed and is packed with action, and that it also generated considerable word of mouth, which brought back the original film’s audience as well as younger moviegoers.
“It’s the epitome of a great summer movie,” he said.
The film has consistently drawn in audiences over the age of 35, a demographic that has been reluctant to return to movie theaters since the height of the pandemic. Younger moviegoers usually drive the bulk of blockbuster ticket sales, but having films that entice older customers to return will be a key part of the industry’s post-pandemic recovery.
“Kudos should be given to Paramount Pictures, who have been a perfect partner for Tom Cruise over the years, and waited for the perfect moment to open the film exclusively in theaters and not consider a streaming release as an option due to the challenges of the pandemic,” said Dergarabedian of Comscore. “‘Top Gun: Maverick’ is a textbook example of how you build the perfect billion-dollar box office beast.” 

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Fanatics is in discussions to acquire sports betting company Tipico, sources said.
Michael Rubin, Fanatics’ executive chairman, announced Wednesday he’s selling his minority stake in the Philadelphia 76ers and New Jersey Devils.
A deal between Fanatics and Tipico hasn’t yet been reached, and the two sides are currently at an impasse on price, though talks are ongoing.

Michael Rubin arrives at the 2019 Fanatics Super Bowl Party on Saturday, Feb. 2, 2019, in Atlanta.
Paul R. Giunta | Invision | AP

Fanatics, the sports merchandising company, is in talks to acquire sports betting company Tipico, according to two people familiar with the matter.
A deal hasn’t yet been reached, and the two sides are currently at an impasse on price, though talks are ongoing, said the people, who asked not to be named because the discussions are private.

Tipico has a small U.S. sports gambling business, with licenses in New Jersey and Colorado, but is the leading sports betting provider in Germany, according to its website.
Michael Rubin, Fanatics’ billionaire executive chairman, announced Wednesday he’s selling his 10% share in Harris Blitzer Sports Entertainment, which owns the Philadelphia 76ers and New Jersey Devils, clearing the way for Fanatics to enter the gambling arena. National Basketball Association rules prohibit team owners from operating a gambling platform.
Fanatics has completed several acquisitions in recent years as a closely held company. In 2020, it acquired sports merchandise manufacturer WinCraft, and earlier this year it bought trading card company Topps for $500 million. Fanatics has a private valuation of $27 billion.
“As our Fanatics business has grown, so too have the obstacles I have to navigate to ensure our new businesses don’t conflict with my responsibilities as part-owner of the Sixers,” Rubin said in a statement posted on Twitter Wednesday announcing the sale of his 76ers stake. “With the launch of our trading cards and collectibles business earlier this year — which will have individual contracts with thousands of athletes globally — and a soon-to-launch sports betting operation, these new businesses will directly conflict with the ownership rules of sports leagues. Given these realities, I will sadly be selling my stake in the Sixers and shifting from part-owner back to life-long fan.”
Rubin hasn’t been shy about his desire to enter the sports gambling industry.

“We can be the No. 1 player in the world in that business in 10 years,” Rubin told Sports Business Journal earlier this year. “That does seem ambitious for someone who’s not in the business today, but our strategic advantages are that we are one of the best-known digital sports brands and we touch so many fans.”
Fanatics is a CNBC Disruptor 50 company, ranking No. 21 on this year’s list.
This story is developing. Please check back for updates.
WATCH: Watch CNBC’s full interview with Fanatics executive chairman Michael Rubin

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McDonald’s is making changes to how it awards franchises in the hopes of attracting more diverse candidates.
Starting in 2023, the fast-food giant will evaluate every potential new operator using the same approach, no longer giving preferential treatment to the children and spouses of current franchisees.
Black franchisees, both current and former, have sued the chain in recent years, alleging racial discrimination.

The logo for McDonald’s is seen on a restaurant in Arlington, Virginia, January 27, 2022.
Joshua Roberts | Reuters

McDonald’s is making changes to how it awards franchises in the hopes of attracting more diverse candidates, the latest shakeup in how the burger chain’s management oversees its franchisees.
Starting in 2023, the fast-food giant will evaluate every potential new operator equally. In the past, the spouses and children of current franchisees have been given preferential treatment.

“We’ve been doing a lot of thinking about how we continue to attract and retain the industry’s best owner/operators – individuals who represent the diverse communities we serve, bring a growth mindset and focus on executional excellence, while cultivating a positive work environment for restaurant teams,” McDonald’s U.S. President Joe Erlinger said in a message to franchisees that was viewed by CNBC.
McDonald’s will also separate the process through which it renews franchisees’ 20-year agreements from the assessment of whether the franchisee can operate additional restaurants. Additionally, Erlinger told U.S. franchisees that the company will incorporate its values more clearly into its standards for franchisees.
McDonald’s declined to comment on the changes to CNBC.
The company recently came under pressure for a plan to roll out a new grading system early next year that rankled some franchisees, who have concerns about potentially alienating workers.
McDonald’s has about 13,000 franchised locations in the United States. More than 1,750 locations were sold last year, in part because some operators chose to exit the franchise, according to Restaurant Business Online.

In December, McDonald’s pledged to recruit more franchisees from diverse backgrounds, committing $250 million over the next five years to help those candidates finance a franchise. It’s part of the company’s broader attempts to embrace diversity at all ranks of the company.
Black franchisees, both current and former, have sued the chain in recent years, alleging racial discrimination. One of the suits was dismissed, while another resulted in a $33.5 million settlement from McDonald’s.
The majority of the company’s shareholders voted in favor of an independent civil rights audit in late May. The proposal was nonbinding, but the company said it has hired a third party to conduct a diversity assessment.

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The Food and Drug Administration rejected Juul’s application to sell its e-cigarettes in the U.S.
Juul must stop selling and distributing its products in the country immediately.
The FDA said it didn’t see clinical information that suggests there is an immediate risk to using Juul products.

Juul Labs signage is seen in the window of a store in San Francisco, June 25, 2019.
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images

The Food and Drug Administration announced Thursday that it is banning the sale of Juul e-cigarettes in the U.S.
Juul intends to seek a stay on the decision and is exploring options, which include appealing the decision or engaging with the FDA, Chief Regulatory Officer Joe Murillo said in a statement.

The ban is part of the FDA’s broader review of the vaping industry following years of pressure from politicians and public health groups to regulate the segment as strictly as other tobacco products after vaping became more common among high schoolers.
Juul had sought approval from the agency for its vaping device and tobacco- and menthol-flavored pods, which are available at 5% and 3% nicotine strengths. The flavors were not subject to a 2020 agency ban on mint- and fruit-flavored vaping products that were popular with teens.
A ban on the sale of those remaining products by Juul would deal a hefty blow to the company. Juul’s international expansion efforts have been hamstrung by regulations and a lack of consumer interest. The U.S. remains its largest market.
The FDA said Juul’s applications gave insufficient or conflicting data about the potential risks of using the company’s products, including whether potentially harmful chemicals could leak out of the Juul pods.
“Without the data needed to determine relevant health risks, the FDA is issuing these marketing denial orders,” Michele Mital, acting director of the FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products, said in a statement.

The FDA said it didn’t see clinical information that suggests there is an immediate risk to using Juul products. Still, as a result of Thursday’s decision, Juul must stop selling and distributing its products in the U.S. effective immediately. The FDA cannot enforce individual consumer possession or use of the company’s e-cigarettes.
“We respectfully disagree with the FDA’s findings and decision and continue to believe we have provided sufficient information and data based on high-quality research to address all issues raised by the agency,” Juul’s Murillo said in his statement.
In FDA decisions over the last year, rival e-cigarette makers British American Tobacco and NJOY won approvals for their e-cigarettes, although the FDA rejected some of the flavored products submitted by the companies. The agency said it approved both companies’ tobacco-flavored products because they proved they could benefit adult smokers and outweighed the risk to underage users.
The FDA has been making strides to cut down nicotine use in traditional tobacco products, too. On Tuesday, the agency said it plans to require tobacco companies to slash the nicotine content in cigarettes to minimally addictive or nonaddictive levels.
In 2019, federal data found that more than one in four high school students had used an e-cigarette in the past 30 days, up from 11.7% just two years prior. An outbreak of vaping-related lung disease in 2020 heightened concerns about e-cigarettes.
Last year, usage among high school students fell to 11.3% amid greater regulatory scrutiny and the coronavirus pandemic.
Juul had been the market leader in e-cigarettes since 2018, according to Euromonitor International. As of 2020, the company held 54.7% share of the $9.38 billion U.S. e-vapor market.
E-cigarettes deliver nicotine to users by vaporizing liquid in cartridges or pods. Nicotine is the ingredient that makes tobacco addictive, and it may have other negative health effects. However, e-cigarette manufacturers have argued that their products can deliver nicotine to addicted adult smokers without the health risks that come with burning tobacco.
Marlboro owner Altria bought a 35% stake in Juul for $12.8 billion in late 2018. However, Altria has slashed the value of the investment as Juul and the broader e-cigarette industry became embroiled in controversy. As of March, Altria valued its stake at $1.6 billion, an eighth of its original investment, and Juul itself at under $5 billion.
The FDA decision will likely also hurt Juul’s defense in U.S. courts as it faces lawsuits from a dozen states and Washington over allegations that it marketed its products to minors and played a major role in the vaping epidemic. It has already settled with North Carolina for $40 million and Washington state for $22.5 million.
The FDA gained the power to regulate new tobacco products in 2009. Over the last decade, thousands of e-cigarettes appeared on store shelves without any approval from the agency, which allowed the sale of those products as it phased in standards for the burgeoning industry.
A court decision created a timeline for the FDA’s approval process of e-cigarette company’s premarket tobacco product applications. The agency is reviewing roughly 6.5 million applications from about 500 companies and has already denied about 1 million applications from smaller players like JD Nova Group and Great American Vapes for their flavored vape products.

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We’re selling 100 shares of Eli Lilly (LLY) at roughly $311.78 each. Following Thursday’s trade, the portfolio will own 350 shares of LLY — decreasing its weighting to 4% from 5.12%. Big picture: We do not want to take too much out of the market right now — hence the Lilly trim — because we see reasons to be constructive at these levels. The market is still in a heavily oversold territory based on the S & P Oscillator, which clocked in at minus 9.28% after Wednesday’s session. Any time the oscillator is that low, it indicates that the market is technically oversold and positioned for a bounce. That, coupled with the recent rollover in many commodities and the decline in bond market rates should help buoy stocks for as long as this trajectory holds. The 10-Year Treasury yield has been moving down toward 3% after soaring last week to 2011 highs of nearly 3.5%. At the same time, however, Eli Lilly has been a great winner in the market this year, a rarity in a sea of red. We do not want to be greedy like we were with our oil names. We made a mistake not trimming our energy stocks at higher prices. We do not want to make the same mistake twice. Shares of Eli Lilly have gained about 11% this year in a turbulent market, with the S & P 500 confirming earlier this month that a bear market began in early January. A bear market is defined by a drop of 20% or from a prior high, which for the S & P 500 was a record. LLY shares have also outperformed the market nicely dating back to our upgrade to a 1 rating in late April . Since the upgrade, LLY shares have gained a little more than 5% against a roughly 8% decline in the S & P 500. But now we are downgrading LLY back to a 2 rating , meaning we would wait for a pullback before buying it again. In booking profits and rightsizing our position in Eli Lilly, we’re taking a solid win here and locking in a gain of about 25% on stock purchased in October 2021. We have a long list of reasons to like Eli Lilly, evident in this year’s outperformance. But with those gains, the stock became our biggest position at slightly more than 5% of the portfolio before the Thursday’s trim. This is what we call a high-quality problem. But still, this is where portfolio management kicks in, and why it’s prudent to reduce Lilly’s relative weighting to the rest of our holdings. We don’t want to sell too large of a chunk because of how much we believe in Eli Lilly for the long term. However, cashing out on shares not far from its highs Thursday will not only allow us to reduce LLY’s weighting to a more normalized level, it will allow us to recycle that cash into other stocks of high-quality — profitable companies that have been beaten down this year. In addition, cash raised from this sale will come in handy for whatever twists and turns the market throws at us next. Despite our trim and our wait-and-see rating, we continue to believe Eli Lilly is right stock for this moment because it’s one of the, if not, the best growth stories in all large-cap pharma. By now, you know how bullish we are about Lilly’s pipeline and all the great work they’re doing to combat not just Type 2 diabetes and obesity but Alzheimer’s, too. We remain incredibly bullish on Mounjaro , FDA-approved for diabetes and in clinical trials for treating obesity. We still believe the consensus on Wall Street has failed to appreciate how enormous of an opportunity this will be. Eli Lilly is also the type of stock that investors love to circle the wagons around when they are worried about a Federal Reserve-mandated slowdown, which is underway to fight inflation. The recession-resistant traits of health care are why we have so many stocks from this sector in the portfolio and recently built up positions in Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) and Humana (HUM). (Jim Cramer’s Charitable Trust is long LLY, JNJ and HUM. See here for a full list of the stocks.) As a subscriber to the CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer, you will receive a trade alert before Jim makes a trade. Jim waits 45 minutes after sending a trade alert before buying or selling a stock in his charitable trust’s portfolio. If Jim has talked about a stock on CNBC TV, he waits 72 hours after issuing the trade alert before executing the trade. THE ABOVE INVESTING CLUB INFORMATION IS SUBJECT TO OUR TERMS AND CONDITIONS AND PRIVACY POLICY , TOGETHER WITH OUR DISCLAIMER . NO FIDUCIARY OBLIGATION OR DUTY EXISTS, OR IS CREATED, BY VIRTUE OF YOUR RECEIPT OF ANY INFORMATION PROVIDED IN CONNECTION WITH THE INVESTING CLUB. NO SPECIFIC OUTCOME OR PROFIT IS GUARANTEED.

David Ricks, CEO, Eli Lilly
Scott Mlyn | CNBC More

A Chipotle Mexican Grill location in Augusta, Maine, filed a petition for a union election on Wednesday.
The employees are seeking to unionize as Chipotle United, an independent union.

A customer carries a Chipotle bag in front of a restaurant in Santa Clara, California, U.S., on Tuesday, Oct. 19, 2021.
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images

A Chipotle Mexican Grill location in Augusta, Maine, filed a petition for a union election on Wednesday, becoming the first of the burrito chain’s restaurants to join the recent organizing push sweeping across the nation.
The Maine AFL-CIO said that workers at the restaurant are “demanding safe, adequate staffing at their store.” The employees are seeking to unionize as Chipotle United, an independent union, according to the organization.

“We received notice today that a petition was filed. We respect our employees’ rights under the National Labor Relations Act and are committed to ensuring a fair, just, and humane work environment that provides opportunities for all,” Chipotle Chief Corporate Affairs Officer Laurie Schalow said in a statement to CNBC on Thursday.
The Kennebec Journal, which first published the news of the workers’ petition, reported that workers at the location walked out last week in protest of staffing issues. Workers told the local newspaper that they were sometimes told to falsify logs of food temperatures because understaffing meant they didn’t have the time to check as many times a day as required by food safety rules.
Schalow said that the Augusta staff first raised their concerns last week and the company immediately began hiring and training additional staff, retraining existing workers and bringing new leadership to the location.
The company, based in Newport Beach, California, said it does not have any unionized locations and that the Maine store is the first to file a petition.
Workers at airlines, retailers and tech companies have been organizing, fueled by a desire for better working conditions during the pandemic and the newfound power gained in a tight labor market. Even the restaurant industry, where unions are rare, hasn’t been immune to the union push. Baristas at more than 150 Starbucks cafes have voted to unionize in the last nine months.

Chipotle employees have tried to unionize previously, but the chain successfully quashed those efforts. In 2019, the National Labor Relations Board accused the company of violating federal labor law by allegedly firing a worker in New York who was trying to organize a union.
Workers at a handful of New York City locations have allied themselves with the Service Employees International Union. They held a rally in late May for higher pay and better schedules but haven’t filed for a union election yet.
Chipotle’s workplace conditions have already come under fire from regulators and employee lawsuits. Earlier this year, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission sued the company, alleging that it cultivated a toxic work environment by allowing a male manager to sexually harass young female employees at a Washington location. New York City has sued Chipotle multiple times for violating its laws on giving workers enough notice on their schedules.

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