Raphael Stevens

Flying cars could be commercially available in 2024, but rules for managing this form of air traffic are still a concern, said Hugh Martin, chief executive officer of Lacuna Technologies.
Some people will be able to afford flying cars, but most people will likely still travel on the road in electric vehicles or self-driving cars, he said.
“Where I think they do have … an application though, is carrying the freight and packages,” Martin said. “I think that’s going to be a very big deal.”

Flying cars could be commercially available in 2024, but regulations for managing the new form of air traffic will be a concern, according to the chief executive officer of a tech company.
Hugh Martin of Lacuna Technologies, which helps cities create transportation policies, said there’s a difference between when cars can fly and when they will be safe and reliable for navigating the skies.

“Depending on who you talk to, I think [2024] could be a time period,” he told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Asia” on Tuesday.
A number of auto companies have been developing aerial vehicles. They include Chinese electric car maker Xpeng and Fiat Chrysler.
Some people will be able to afford flying cars, but most will likely still travel on the road in electric vehicles or self-driving cars, he pointed out.
Vehicles that don’t have to lift off the ground can be safer and are able to carry more people, he said.

“Where I think they do have … an application though, is carrying the freight and packages,” Martin said. “I think that’s going to be a very big deal.”

Regulations

Cities are getting “increasingly concerned” about how to manage traffic for flying cars in future, Martin added.
Rules could include where the vehicles will be allowed to take off, land or travel, whether they can fly at any time or only during allocated hours, and how far apart the cars must be from each other.
“That’s going to take a long time to get figured out,” he said.
In the U.S., he said the Federal Aviation Administration and NASA are working with drone and air taxi providers to consider what air traffic will look like in future.
“Instead of having one airport per major city, you’ve … now got thousands of airports scattered around the city,” he added.
— CNBC’s Arjun Kharpal and Michael Wayland contributed to this report.

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The U.K. last week announced that fully vaccinated individuals from a list of 17 countries and territories will not have to quarantine upon arrival in England.
Missing from the list was India, where the predominant Covid vaccine used in the country is identical to the one developed by Oxford University and British-Swedish pharma giant AstraZeneca.
India’s Foreign Secretary Harsh V Shringla called the U.K.’s decision not to recognize the Indian version of the vaccine “discriminatory” and warned of reciprocal measures, though he did not elaborate.

Travelers at Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi, India, on Tuesday, Aug. 24, 2021.
T. Narayan | Bloomberg | Getty Images

India slammed the U.K.’s decision to exclude vaccinated Indian travelers from its new travel guidelines, calling it “discriminatory” and warning of reciprocal measures.
The British government will next month allow fully vaccinated travelers from a list of countries to skip quarantine upon arrival — but Indians who are fully vaccinated will still need to be quarantined.

The U.K. last week eased travel restrictions for fully vaccinated individuals from 17 countries and territories, including Japan and Singapore, saying they would not have to stay in quarantine for 10 days after arriving in England.
From Oct. 4, travelers from those destinations would have to show that they received a full course of one of the Covid vaccines currently approved in the U.K., at least two weeks prior to their arrival. The approved vaccines are: Oxford/AstraZeneca, Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna or Janssen.
India’s main vaccine is the one from Oxford University and British-Swedish pharma giant AstraZeneca — but it is manufactured locally by the Serum Institute of India under the name Covishield. It has been approved for emergency use by the World Health Organization.

If we don’t get satisfaction, we would be within our rights to impose reciprocal measures.

Harsh V Shringla
India’s foreign secretary

“The basic issue is that here is a vaccine, Covishield, which is a licensed product of a U.K. company, manufactured in India,” India’s Foreign Secretary Harsh V Shringla said Tuesday at a press briefing. “We have supplied 5 million doses to the U.K., at the request of the government of the U.K. We understand that this has been used in their national health system.”
“Therefore, non-recognition of Covishield is a discriminatory policy and does impact on those of our citizens traveling to the U.K.,” he added.

Under the new rules, Indian travelers will be required to quarantine after arriving in England and must undergo three rounds of testing, regardless of their vaccination status. Many Indian nationals typically travel to the U.K. for work, study, leisure travel or to visit family.
India’s External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, who is in New York for the United Nations General Assembly, raised the issue “strongly” with U.K. Foreign Secretary Elizabeth Truss, according to Shringla.
“I am told that certain assurances have been given that this issue would be resolved,” he said.
Jaishankar tweeted that during his meeting with Truss in New York, he “urged early resolution of quarantine issue in mutual interest.”
Indian opposition lawmaker Shashi Tharoor said he pulled out of a debate engagement at the University of Cambridge due to the quarantine order.
“It is offensive to ask fully vaccinated Indians to quarantine, he said.
Another lawmaker, Jairam Ramesh, said the decision “smacks of racism.”
“We will have to see how it goes, but if we don’t get satisfaction, we would be within our rights to impose reciprocal measures,” Shringla added, without elaborating what some of those measures could be.
Government data showed India has so far administered more than 825 million vaccine doses in one of the world’s largest inoculation drives — roughly 15% of the country’s eligible population has received the two doses required to be considered fully vaccinated, according to online publication Our World In Data.
The country’s home-made vaccine from Bharat Biotech, called Covaxin, has yet to be approved by the World Health Organization. It will likely to further complicate international travel plans for many Indian nationals.

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Gottlieb, a Pfizer board member, elaborated on the FDA and CDC’s booster approval process during an interview Tuesday on “The News with Shepard Smith.”
The FDA could make a formal decision on Pfizer’s boosters before the CDC begins a two-day series of meetings on third doses on Wednesday and Thursday.
An FDA advisory committee voted unanimously on Friday to approve boosters for the medically vulnerable and anyone 65 and over.

Former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb told CNBC he anticipates the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may soon offer greater clarity on who will be eligible for Covid booster doses.
Gottlieb, a Pfizer board member, elaborated on the FDA and CDC’s booster approval process during an interview Tuesday on “The News with Shepard Smith.” The FDA could make a formal decision on Pfizer’s boosters before the CDC begins a two-day series of meetings on third doses Wednesday and Thursday, where Gottlieb said health officials may expand upon the FDA’s direction.

“They provide granular guidance to physicians and patients, and they interpret the recommendations that come out of the Food and Drug Administration,” Gottlieb said of the CDC. “So for example, they might say that they might enumerate the kinds of severe conditions that would qualify someone for a booster.”
An FDA advisory committee rejected a plan Friday that would have permitted third doses for all Americans 16 and older, voicing reservations over insufficient data and the risk of myocarditis. But the committee subsequently voted unanimously to approve boosters for the medically vulnerable and anyone 65 and over.
Gottlieb said the process gave off conflicting messages about who would be eligible for boosters, but added that he always thought the FDA would hold two votes to narrow down the potential recipients of a third Pfizer dose.
“I think the meeting created a perception that there could be conflicting messages. I don’t think that that’s the case,” Gottlieb said. “The FDA at first voted on boosters for the entire age range 16 and up, ultimately settled on a recommendation that boosters should be made available to people 65 and older, and those who are at risk of a severe outcome from Covid, those who are at more risk from the disease itself. That seemed to be always where the FDA was heading administratively.”

Dr. Scott Gottlieb, former Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, speaks during the Skybridge Capital SALT New York 2021 conference in New York City, U.S., September 15, 2021.
Brendan McDermid | Reuters

Gottlieb added: “I think it created a perception that the agency voted down boosters before they voted for it – that wasn’t the case. It was more an administrative action, and I think that that’s where it created some public confusion.”

As Pfizer awaits final approval for its boosters, vaccine makers Moderna and Johnson & Johnson have both released data they say justifies the approval of their own supplemental doses. J&J said Tuesday that its Covid boosters are 94% effective when injected two months after the first dose, while Moderna reported reduced instances of breakthrough cases among more recently vaccinated participants in a study published Sept. 15.
More than 2.2 million people in the U.S. have received a booster since Aug. 13, according to the CDC.
Disclosure: Scott Gottlieb is a CNBC contributor and is a member of the boards of Pfizer, genetic testing start-up Tempus, health-care tech company Aetion and biotech company Illumina. He also serves as co-chair of Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings′ and Royal Caribbean’s “Healthy Sail Panel.”

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Asian consumers are set to double their spending on food to more than $8 trillion by 2030, according to a new joint report by PwC, Rabobank and Temasek.
Much of that demand will be led by the region’s changing consumer habits and rapidly growing population, Temasek’s Anuj Maheshwari told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Asia” Tuesday.
More than $1.5 trillion of investment will be required to keep up with that swelling demand, the study said.

Asian consumers are set to double their spending on food by 2030, leaving a gaping hole for investors to bring healthier and more sustainable options to the table, according to a new joint report by PwC, Rabobank and Temasek.
Food spending in the region will hit more than $8 trillion by the start of the next decade — up from $4 trillion in 2019 — becoming the world’s largest food and beverage market, the group’s “Asia Food Challenge Report 2021” said Tuesday.

Much of that demand will come from changing consumer habits in an increasingly health-conscious, digital savvy region, but also from its rapidly growing population. By 2030, Asia is expected to be home to 4.5 billion people and 65% of the world’s middle class.

Folks want healthier food, they want safer food, they want to buy online.

Anuj Maheshwari
managing director, agribusiness, Temasek

“Folks want healthier food, they want safer food, they want to buy online, they want food that is sustainable,” Anuj Maheshwari, Temasek’s managing director of agribusiness, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Asia.”
India and Southeast Asia are set to account for the greatest increase in spending, growing at a compound annual rate of 5.3% and 4.7%, respectively. China, however, will remain the largest market overall.
The report’s finding are based on a survey of 3,600 consumers across 12 Asia-Pacific countries, as well as conversations with senior executives in the food sector and analysis of over 3,000 publicly traded food and beverage companies.

A $1.5 trillion investment opportunity

The rapid uptick puts pressure on an already fragile food ecosystem, which has been under immense pressure since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic.

According to the report, it will take $1.55 trillion of investment by 2030 across the entire value chain to meet the region’s swelling food demand. That marks an increase of $750 billion from the $800 billion upstream (or preliminary) investment originally estimated in the group’s inaugural 2019 report.

Customers purchase vegetables at a supermarket on September 9, 2021 in Handan, Hebei Province of China.
VCG | Visual China Group | Getty Images

That presents significant commercial opportunities for investors, said Maheshwari, calling it a “big, big area in Asia.”
Specifically, the report highlighted six “critical trends,” including healthy diets, fresh produce, safe and traceable sources, sustainable consumption, alternative proteins and online purchasing.
“These trends (are) what agribusinesses need to focus on and make sure consumers can get this kind of food in addition to the volume that we need in places like Asia,” said Maheshwari.
Agriculture technology investments have grown substantially since 2014, rising 377% to $30.5 billion, according to AgFunder.

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Stitch Fix shares jumped after the online shopping and styling service posted a surprise profit for its fiscal fourth quarter.
The company reported nearly 4.2 million active clients, up 18% from a year earlier.

The Stitch Fix application for download in the Apple App Store on a smartphone arranged in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York, U.S., on Saturday, June 5, 2021. Stitch Fix Inc. is scheduled to release earning on June 7.
Tiffany Hagler-Geard | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Stitch Fix shares jumped 14% in extended trading Tuesday after the online shopping and styling service reported a surprise profit for its fiscal fourth quarter.
Sales for the three-month period ended July 31 also came in higher than analysts were expecting, thanks to outsized growth in Stitch Fix’s women’s and kids’ categories. Menswear has been growing more slowly, the company said.

Consumers have been splurging on new outfits in recent months, as many head back to school and return to social gatherings. Some have also citied the need for new clothes after either gaining or losing weight during the Covid pandemic.
Here’s how Stitch Fix did compared with what Wall Street was expecting, based on a survey of analysts by Refinitiv:

Earnings per share: 19 cents vs. a loss of 13 cents expected
Revenue: $571.2 million vs. $548 million expected

Net income attributable to shareholders was $28 million, or 19 cents per share, in the latest period. A year ago, it posted a net loss of $44.5 million, or 44 cents a share. Analysts had been looking for the company to book a loss of 13 cents per share.
Revenue grew to $571.2 million from $443.4 million a year earlier. That was better than analysts’ expectations for $548 million.
Stitch Fix reported nearly 4.2 million active clients, up 18% from a year earlier. The company said net revenue per active client was $505, surpassing the $500 threshold for the first time ever. Customers have been purchasing more items to keep at home, Stitch Fix said, as they have more brands and price points to choose from.

Stitch Fix defines active clients as people who either ordered a “Fix” subscription or bought an item directly from its website in the preceding 52 weeks from the final day of the quarter.
The company also said it had its lowest ever churn rate at the end of the period, meaning its customers are sticking around.
Last month, Stitch Fix finally opened up its direct-buy option, which is now known as “Freestyle,” to the public. This allows people to shop Stitch Fix for individual items of clothing, without needing to sign up for a subscription.
CEO Elizabeth Spaulding said this should help Stitch Fix grow its addressable market in the year ahead. The company’s next initiative will be to market and raise broader awareness around the offering, she said. Stitch Fix is preparing to roll out a national advertising campaign on the debut.
Early indications are that “Freestyle” is meaningfully accretive to the company’s revenue per active client metric, Spaulding told analysts on a conference call.
“Clients have agency, flexibility and choice while also experiencing a highly personalized shopping experience,” Spaulding said.
For its fiscal first quarter, Stitch Fix said it sees sales in a range of $560 million to $575 million. That’s below analysts’ expectations for $588 million.
For the upcoming fiscal year, Stitch Fix anticipates sales rising 15% or more from the prior year. Analysts polled by Refinitiv had been looking for an 18% increase.
While the entire retail industry is working through supply chain complications, Stitch Fix said it is seeing a small impact, but nothing that will hurt the business in the fall and winter months. The company said it is less reliant on Vietnam, where manufacturing has largely come to a standstill due to ongoing pandemic lockdowns in the region.
As of Tuesday’s market close, Stitch Fix shares have fallen nearly 39% this year. The company has a market cap of $3.8 billion.
Find the full press release from Stitch Fix here.

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The WHO strongly opposes the widespread rollout of booster shots, asking that wealthier nations instead give extra doses to countries with minimal vaccination rates.
The U.S. has already administered over 2 million boosters nationwide, according to the CDC.
An advisory panel to the FDA unanimously recommended boosters on Friday for anyone 65 and older.

World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus attends a news conference in Geneva Switzerland July 3, 2020.
Fabrice Coffrini | Reuters

World Health Organization officials repeated their protests Tuesday against Covid-19 booster shots for the general public, even as the U.S. readies this week to authorize their distribution across a wide swath of America.
The WHO strongly opposes the widespread rollout of booster shots, asking that wealthier nations instead give extra doses to countries with minimal vaccination rates. The U.S. has already administered over 2 million third doses nationwide, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and an advisory panel to the Food and Drug Administration unanimously recommended boosters on Friday for anyone 65 and older.

“What WHO is arguing is that booster doses in the general population, who had wide access to vaccines, who have already been vaccinated, is not the best bet right now,” Dr. Mike Ryan, director of the WHO’s health emergencies program, said during a live Q&A aired Tuesday on the organization’s social media channels.
Ryan reiterated the WHO’s support for third doses administered to the elderly, medically vulnerable people and anyone needing an immune system boost after a full Covid vaccine regimen. He reiterated the organization’s calls for a moratorium on booster shots through the end of the year to give nations enough time to immunize at least 40% of their populations against Covid.

CNBC Health & Science

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Sept. 14 that most countries with under 2% vaccination coverage are in Africa, where less than 3.5% of the continent’s eligible population is fully inoculated against Covid. Africa will likely miss the WHO’s target of a 10% vaccination rate by the end of the year, Tedros added.
But in the U.S., where almost 55% of the population is fully vaccinated, according to the CDC, the FDA is expected to issue formal guidance on Pfizer’s boosters before the CDC holds its two-day meeting on the shots on Wednesday and Thursday.
An FDA advisory committee rejected a proposal Friday to recommend boosters for all Americans over 16, citing concerns about insufficient data and the potential for myocarditis. The group, instead, narrowed that plan, endorsing third doses for people 65 and over and other medically vulnerable people.

World leaders further discussed the global vaccination effort at a meeting Tuesday of the United Nations General Assembly. President Joe Biden will hold a Covid summit Wednesday to encourage international dignitaries to help improve global vaccine distribution, noting in a speech to the General Assembly that the U.S. had donated more than 160 million Covid vaccine doses to the cause.
“It’s a real moment of truth,” Ryan said. “We, as a world, are getting another chance, chances we haven’t taken before, to focus on vaccine equity.”

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