Raphael Stevens

Ford CEO Jim Farley speaks with reporters outside the company’s world headquarters on May 19 in Dearborn, Michigan, following the debut of the electric F-150 Lightning pickup truckMichael Wayland / CNBCFord Motor expects electric vehicles to make up almost half of its global sales by the end of this decade under the company’s latest turnaround plan that includes increasing its investment in EVs to more than $30 billion through 2025, the company said Wednesday.Ford announced the plans ahead of its first investor day under CEO Jim Farley, who took over the helm of the automaker on Oct. 1. The highly anticipated event is scheduled to begin at 9:30 a.m. EDT and is expected to include detailed presentations from Farley and his management team on the company’s new “Ford+” plan to turnaround its operations and expand into new emerging markets.”Presentations will detail where, why and how the company is headed with fully electric vehicles, commercial solutions and connected services – and how customers will benefit,” the company said in a release Wednesday.The increased investment in EVs is up from $22 billion that the company announced in February. Of which, about $7 billion had already been invested since 2016.With the new investment and plan, Ford said it expects 40% of its sales volume globally to be EVs by 2030. That compares earlier this year to General Motors announcing a goal, which it called an “aspiration,” to exclusively sell EVs by 2035.Ford+Under Farley’s Ford+ plan, the company said it plans to achieve an 8% adjusted profit margin before interest and taxes in 2023. Farley’s predecessor, Jim Hackett, and Mark Fields before him both promised the same, but it never materialized.Hackett and Fields were criticized by Wall Street for failing to detail their plans to Wall Street after former CEO Alan Mulally, a former Boeing executive, saved the company from bankruptcy during the Great Recession.Farley’s overarching plan sounds reminiscent of a highly touted restructuring plan and rallying call under Mulally called “One Ford.””I’m excited about what Ford+ means for our customers, who will get new and better experiences by pairing our iconic, world-class vehicles with connected technology that constantly gets better over time,” Farley said in a statement. “We will deliver lower costs, stronger loyalty and greater returns across all our customers.”This is our biggest opportunity for growth and value creation since Henry Ford started to scale the Model T, and we’re grabbing it with both hands.”Before the coronavirus pandemic, Ford’s adjusted profit margin was 4.1% in 2019, followed by 2.2% in 2020. Due to an imbalance of supply and demand in new vehicles due to an ongoing global semiconductor chip shortage, it was inflated to 13.3% during the first quarter of this year.Commercial businessFord on Wednesday also said it expects to increase revenue from its commercial business to $45 billion by 2025, up from $27 billion in 2019. That includes “hardware and adjacent and new services that’saddressable by Ford,” according to the company.The automaker will create “Ford Pro,” a new vehicle services and distribution business within the automaker “devoted to commercial and government customers.”Expanding Ford’s commercial business as well as its connected vehicle fleet have been priorities for the automaker under Farley.The company plans to exceed Tesla in vehicles capable of significant remote, or over-the-air, updates by July 2022, and scale to 33 million OTA-enabled Ford and Lincoln vehicles by 2028.Such a connected fleet could be competitive with its largest American rival, GM. The Detroit automaker has said it expects more than 7 million of its vehicles globally to be capable of such OTA updates by 2023.More to come?Following the successful debuts of the Ford Mustang Mach-E crossover and F-150 Lightning pickup, investors want to know what’s next for Ford’s electric vehicles.Farley has said the company plans to electrify its most iconic nameplates, leading some analysts to question whether the company will offer an electric version of its upcoming Bronco SUV.Ford on Wednesday said it has 70,000 reservations for the F-150 Lightning, up from 44,500 as of Friday morning.Wall Street analysts are also hoping for updates on Ford’s self-driving vehicle plans, including Argo AI, a jointly owned autonomous vehicle unit with Volkswagen.Argo is testing its self-driving technology in six U.S. cities using Ford vehicles. The company earlier this month unveiled its own lidar, which many believe is the key technology to commercializing autonomous vehicles. More

A hiring sign is displayed in a business window along a shopping street in lower Manhattan on July 05, 2019 in New York City.Spencer Platt | Getty ImagesThe labor shortage in the U.S. is lifting wages for workers and causing a “democratization” of the workforce and changing the face of “class warfare,” according to Cole Smead, president of investment advisory firm Smead Capital Management.While the U.S. labor force participation rate remains well below pre-pandemic levels, with April’s nonfarm payrolls growing by just 266,000 against forecasts of 1 million, workers’ wages have risen at their sharpest pace in years, and new unemployment filings continue to fall. McDonald’s, Chipotle, Bank of America and Under Armour are among the companies to have vowed increases to minimum and average wages within the past few weeks, as companies are forced to up their wage offerings in order to attract prospective employees.The labor shortage after the pandemic, attributed in part to a lack of qualified workers, Covid-related reluctance to return to work and the continuation of enhanced unemployment benefits due to government stimulus, has shifted the sands after decades of growing wealth disparity.”In effect, we’re short labor and that’s why the price of labor is climbing … We haven’t seen this in so long and that is why people are befuddled, and it is going straight to the mouths of people on the lower end of the income bracket, it is not helping the CEOs,” Smead told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” on Wednesday.Tilman Fertitta, CEO of hospitality and gambling empire Landry’s, told CNBC’s “Power Lunch” on Tuesday that while his businesses were busier than ever, the government’s weekly stimulus checks are “killing” companies when it comes to finding workers.”Everybody’s getting the extra $300, people aren’t working so they are going out and they are having dinner and they are going to the casinos, but at the moment I can’t find employees, they are spending all the money with me,” Fertitta said.”We are truly struggling and that is what is causing a lot of your inflation right now, you don’t have the workers. You have to slaughter 660,000 cows a week to keep up, and if you only slaughter 620 or 630, that is why beef is up. Everything is up, every product there is.”‘Class warfare’According to the Economic Policy Institute, CEOs made 320 times as much as the average worker in 2019, having grown their annual compensation by 1,167% since 1978, far outstripping S&P stock market growth (741%). Over the same period, compensation for the average worker grew just 13.7%.Smead noted that CEO pay is ultimately helped by stock prices going higher, but he argued that with equity markets still near all-time highs and much of the good news of the recovery priced in, the S&P 500 index will struggle to continue pushing to “higher highs” over the next 10 years.”That will not pay the CEOs well versus this pricing pressure that we’re seeing in labor. It’s fantastic. It’s going to be the democratization, or class warfare will look a little different in the next five or 10 years than we’ve been talking about in the last two or three.” More

In this articleDKSMannequins stand next to merchandise displayed for sale at a Dick’s Sporting Goods store in West Nyack, New York.Craig Warga | Bloomberg | Getty ImagesDick’s Sporting Goods reported Wednesday fiscal first-quarter earnings and revenue that topped analyst estimates, saying kids returning to team sports boosted sales.Dick’s also raised its full-year financial outlook, citing building momentum.Shares jumped more than 6% on the news in premarket trading.Here’s how Dick’s did for the period ended May 1, compared with what analysts were anticipating, using Refinitiv estimates:Earnings per share: $3.79 adjusted vs. $1.12 expectedRevenue: $2.92 billion vs. $2.18 billion expectedDick’s net income grew to $361.8 million, or $3.41 per share, from a loss of $143.4 million, or $1.71 per share, a year earlier. Excluding one-time adjustments, it earned $3.79 per share, well ahead of the $1.12 that analysts had expected, according to a Refinitiv survey.Revenue grew 119% to $2.92 billion from $1.33 billion a year earlier, when Dick’s was forced to shut its stores for a period of time due to the pandemic. That beat estimates for $2.18 billion. On a two-year basis, sales were up 52%.CEO Lauren Hobart said it saw a resurgence in its team sports business during the quarter, as kids returned to activities following a year when many youth sports were canceled. The company also saw heightened demand in the golf category.Same-store sales surged 115% year over year, the company said, which included e-commerce growth of 14%.Digital sales accounted for 20% of total sales, up from 13% in 2019.Dick’s now expects adjusted earnings in fiscal 2021 to be in a range of $8.00 to $8.70 per share, with sales of $10.5 billion to $10.8 billion. Analysts had been looking for the company to earn $5.32 per share, after adjustments, on sales of $9.8 billion.As of market close Tuesday, Dick’s shares are up about 50% year to date. The company has a market cap of $7.5 billion.Find the full earnings press release from Dick’s here. More

When Yin Ou’s family moved to the United States from Myanmar in 2009, her mother had to work minimum-wage jobs like jewelry packaging and babysitting to provide for the family.”My parents didn’t have the knowledge to start a business, or get an IRA or invest,” says Yin, who lives in New York’s Queens borough. At 22, Yin is the breadwinner for the family and is working three jobs while attending college.Yin’s story isn’t unique among Burmese Americans, but it’s not often talked about in the greater Asian American narrative. The Asian American Pacific Islander population is extremely diverse. It includes subgroups from more than 20 countries, and economic data often overshadows poverty experienced by many Asian Americans.According to Pew Research Center, the median household income for Asian American households was $85,800 in 2019, slightly higher than the total U.S. median household income. Burmese Americans, however, bring in a household income of $44,400, about half of the median income for Asians in the United States. It’s an example of the widening income inequality within the Asian American community.Watch the video above to learn more about the growing income gap among Asian Americans, how it began, and what’s next for the group. More

In this articlePSG-ESWCDGXPSG-DEPSG.F169-ILParis Saint-Germain Football Club store which Fanatics is opening in Los Angeles.Source: PSG StoreParis Saint-Germain, one of the world’s most prominent soccer clubs, now has a presence in Los Angeles courtesy of Fanatics.The sports merchandise company opened a store dedicated to Paris Saint-Germain in the Westfield Century City Mall last Saturday. The store sells PSG apparel featuring LA-inspired clothing from its partnership with Michael Jordan’s brand and Nike. Fanatics operated the opening and then transformed day-to-day operations to retail company Lids, which Fanatics partly owns.The store rollout is the first Fanatics is planning to grow PSG’s brand across North America. The parties renewed their partnership last June in Fanatics’ most significant merchandising deal with a pro sports club.Zohar Ravid, Fanatics general manager for international business, called PSG a “trailblazing” brand.Fabien Allegre, PSG brand diversification director, said interest in the club outside France has grown since its first e-commerce deal with Fanatics in 2017. The team now wants to focus on the U.S. market, where interest in soccer is growing.”The North American market has always been strategic to us, but it has become more and more important,” said Allegre. “Outside France, it is our second-biggest market. Our popularity is growing steadily, as the number of followers on social media develop at pace and the number of viewers for our games regularly beat previous records.”PSG is valued at $2.5 billion and ranked ninth on Forbes’ most expensive soccer list. The publication says the club’s revenue was $599 million in 2020.Paris Saint-Germain Football Club store which Fanatics is opening in Los Angeles.Source: PSG StorePSG is owned by state-run Qatar Sports Investments, which is led by PSG Chairman Nasser Al-Khelaifi.  PSG famously paid Barcelona a record $263 million transfer fee for soccer star Neymar in 2017. The club also paid nearly $200 million for the rights to French forward Kylian Mbappe. This season, the club finished second in the French professional league Ligue 1 and was knocked out of the Champions League semifinal by Manchester City.Fanatics is growing its e-commence operations and partnerships. The company struck an “omnichannel retail partnership” with the Phoenix Suns on May 11. The deal will see Fanatics operate e-commerce and the Suns’ retail store inside their arena.And in March, Fanatics raised $320 million in new funding, giving it a valuation of $12.8 billion, up from $6.2 billion last August. It also started Fanatics China, joining investment firm Hillhouse Capital. Fanatics expects its China operation will be worth over $1 billion. More

Zoom In IconArrows pointing outwardsSINGAPORE — Malaysia’s daily Covid-19 cases are climbing rapidly and have surpassed India’s on one critical measure, according to statistics site Our World in Data.India has been experiencing a devastating second wave since April and has the world’s second largest Covid caseload. The country’s daily case count, while trending downward, has remained elevated at hundreds of thousands of infections — far exceeding Malaysia’s few thousands a day.But Malaysia’s daily Covid infections per million people — on a seven-day rolling basis — have exceeded that of India since Sunday, data compiled by Our World in Data showed. Latest statistics showed that Malaysia reported on Tuesday 205.1 cases per million people on a seven-day rolling basis, compared with India’s 150.4 cases.Malaysia’s population of roughly 32 million is much smaller than India’s 1.4 billion.Zoom In IconArrows pointing outwardsGenerally, the actual number of Covid-19 cases are higher than reported cases around the world, mainly due to the lack of testing. In India, several studies found that cases were likely severely underreported.Still, that’s not the first time that Malaysia has overtaken India on the measure. Our World in Data showed that Malaysia’s daily cases per million people were also higher than that of India between Nov. 15 last year and March 27 this year.Malaysia, a country in Southeast Asia, has been battling a surge in coronavirus cases since the last few months of 2020. The government has since tightened restrictions multiple times, but has stopped short of a full lockdown.The country reported a record-high increase of 7,478 coronavirus cases on Wednesday, taking cumulative infections to more than 533,300, health ministry data showed. More than 2,300 people have died and 700 infected people are in intensive care units, the ministry said Tuesday.Dr. Noor Hisham Abdullah, Malaysia’s director-general of health, said in a Twitter post Tuesday that the country’s daily Covid-19 cases are “following an exponential trend” and could trigger a “vertical surge.”Noor Hisham, a leading figure in Malaysia’s fight against Covid, also warned that “we need to prepare for the worst” and urged people to stay at home to break the chain of transmission.The rapid increase has come as Malaysia — and many developing countries around the world — struggles to secure supplies of Covid vaccines.Malaysia has approved the use of Covid-19 vaccines developed by Pfizer-BioNTech, Oxford University-AstraZeneca and Chinese biotech firm Sinovac. The government said it aims to vaccinate 80% of the population by year-end, but only around 5% have received at least one dose so far, data compiled by Our World in Data showed. More

With two major cultural events held last weekend, the international arts scene signaled it has no intention of letting yet another year get canceled by Covid.  Art Basel Hong Kong, which took place from May 19-23, marked the return of one of the world’s most venerated art fairs. The show came on the heels of Frieze New York, held earlier this month, which was New York’s first major in-person art fair since the pandemic began. Europe’s wildly popular Eurovision Song Contest also returned after a one-year hiatus. Held between May 18-22, the competition was watched by nearly 200 million viewers, including a live audience of 3,500 people, according to the show’s organizers.After more than a year of large-scale gatherings being canceled around the globe, both events represent a meaningful step forward in the quest for post-pandemic normalcy, while highlighting the different methods being employed by Asia and Europe to reach that goal.Art Basel Hong Kong goes ‘hybrid’With its first show in more than a year, Art Basel returned to the world stage after having canceled its three annual shows last year — Hong Kong in March, its flagship fair in Basel, Switzerland in June, and Miami Beach, Florida in December.All three events are back this year with the first, Art Basel Hong Kong, debuting a “hybrid” format that let attendees appear virtually or in person.Art Basel Hong Kong 2021, which was moved from March to May, debuted a “hybrid” fair format.Mighuel Candela | SOPA Images | LightRocket | Getty ImagesPrivate collectors from more than 30 countries and territories attended “virtual walk-throughs” of the fair, which was held at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre. More than 100 galleries participated, with many joining via satellite booths that allowed gallerists to interact with attendees without traveling to Hong Kong.  “After we designed our booth plan for the fair, the gallery shipped all of the artwork to Hong Kong to be installed by the team at Art Basel, just as we have done in past years,” said Valerie Carberry, a partner at Gray, Chicago, New York. “Since we were not able to travel to Hong Kong to be present at the fair ourselves, Art Basel appointed us a booth assistant who tended to the booth in our stead.”  The gallery scheduled video meetings before the fair to prepare the assistant, who Carberry said was “incredibly professional … we felt well-represented.”Face masks emerged as new canvases at Art Basel Hong Kong 2021.Anthony Kwan | Getty Images Entertainment | Getty ImagesAttendees could also view collections through online viewing rooms, which Art Basel launched last year. Online rooms from Hong Kong’s 2020 canceled show featured work from more than 230 galleries and attracted some 250,000 visitors, according to Art Basel.”We all wanted to be there in person, of course, but being able to relay information to clients in real time, who are standing in your booth, was as close as we have had to an in-person art fair experience since the onset of the pandemic,” said Carberry.”While we didn’t travel, we all felt a bit ‘jet-lagged’ afterwards, but it was well worth it to express to our Hong Kong clients how much we value their business and support of our program.”Eurovision Song Contest returnsThe cancellation of last year’s Eurovision Song Contest, or Eurovision for short, is perhaps what led to this year’s competition garnering its largest audience since 2016.The singing competition, which began in 1956, pits musical acts from mostly European countries against one another, with 26 making it to the grand final. The country which produces the winning act hosts the next competition.This year, the Italian rock group Maneskin took home the top prize, ensuring the contest will be hosted in Italy in 2022.  The Italian rock group, Maneskin, won Eurovision 2021, which relied on social distancing and testing to keep attendees healthy before the show.Soeren Stache | picture alliance | picture alliance | Getty ImagesThe show was largely an in-person event, with most contestants appearing live from Rotterdam, Netherlands. Australia’s Montaigne performed via a taped recording due to her inability to travel to Europe, a first in the show’s 65-year history.    Attendees wore masks and followed social distancing mandates, and contestants underwent regular Covid testing and isolated in their hotel rooms, unless they were exercising, according to Eurovision.The show also restricted the number of live audience members in attendance. Still, the 3,500 people who watched in person were enough to make Eurovision 2021 one of Europe’s biggest live entertainment events since the pandemic began.The annual competition, which captivates Europe but is largely unfamiliar to American audiences, is scheduled to launch in the United States next year on NBC. Billed as the “American Song Contest,” performers from 50 states, five U.S. territories and Washington, D.C., will compete for the title of best original song, according to Eurovision’s website.What’s aheadExcept for Art Dubai, which began in late March 2021, most major international art shows that were originally scheduled to occur before May were canceled. These include Frieze Los Angeles and the Netherlands’ Tefaf Maastricht, both of which were postponed before being canceled.Art Basel’s fairs in Basel and Miami Beach are back on the books, though the Switzerland show has been moved from June to September to safely let “the broadest possible international audience to attend,” according to the fair’s website.Another top international art fair, Frieze London, is scheduled to return in October.  Those fairs are expected to have strong in-person attendance. Still, Art Basel’s digital components are here to stay, according to Marc Spiegler, the global director of Art Basel.”We developed a whole toolbox of techniques and tactics for people to access a gallery’s program digitally,” he told the New York Times. “The pandemic has equipped us to do a better job serving the collectors who can’t attend.”The next Eurovision competition is scheduled for May 2022. Though details haven’t been confirmed, online speculation about dates and locations has started.  Hong Kong, too, is pressing forward with high-profile plans that are adapted to fit the city’s conservative approach to Covid containment. In keeping with its moniker as “the art capital of Asia,” the city will host a number of art festivals and shows, including the contemporary art exhibition “Ink City” and the French May Arts Fest with some 80 events spread across the city through June.A new visual arts museum is scheduled to open this year in Hong Kong’s new “T”-shaped M+ building.PETER PARKS | AFP | Getty ImagesThe Hong Kong Ballet is set to perform “Romeo + Juliet” next month, after the show was canceled last summer.Hong Kong’s new M+ building will house one of the largest museums of contemporary visual culture in the world. The “T-shaped” museum has 65,000 square meters (700,000 square feet) of space, which includes 33 galleries, three cinemas, a research center, restaurants, tea and coffee bar, members’ lounge and roof garden overlooking Victoria Harbour. The museum is scheduled to open later this year.Disclosure: NBCUniversal is the parent company of CNBC. More

Investors should take advantage of market pullbacks in the near-term, CNBC’s Jim Cramer said Tuesday, suggesting there’s a range of positive catalysts that will propel stocks higher.”The stock market runs on cycles. When you have this many running at once, the averages tend to be pretty darn resilient,” the “Mad Money” host said, shortly after the S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average both closed lower by 0.2%. “That’s why I think you need to keep buying the dips. There’s just too much to like.”While he said the Federal Reserve will eventually adjust its highly accommodative monetary policy, Cramer contended there is a “stampede of smaller bull cases” to support the market until central bank action is a more imminent threat.Chief among them is the robust reopening of the economy this summer as Covid vaccinations allow for more activity, Cramer said. In addition to seeing more upside in cruise and casino stocks, Cramer expressed optimism around theme-park operators such as Disney and Cedar Fair.Mall operators like Simon Property Group and their tenants such as L Brands and Gap have also bounced back stronger than most expected, Cramer said.The booming economy also is lifting cyclical stocks from those in agriculture such as Deere to steel makers Nucor, Cleveland-Cliffs and United States Steel Corporation, according to Cramer. He added that the housing cycle still appears to be strong, benefiting stocks in the space such as Lennar.”Then there’s the health insurance bull market,” Cramer said, pointing to UnitedHealth, Centene, Cigna, Humana and Aetna-parent CVS. “They are simply saying welcome aboard. They can be bought on any rare dip.”Questions for Cramer? Call Cramer: 1-800-743-CNBCWant to take a deep dive into Cramer’s world? Hit him up! Mad Money Twitter – Jim Cramer Twitter – Facebook – InstagramQuestions, comments, suggestions for the “Mad Money” website? [email protected] More