Raphael Stevens

In this articleDGNR^Scott Cutler, CEO, StockXScott Mlyn | CNBCStockX, after a record year of revenue, completed a new funding round that values the high-end sneaker reseller at $3.8 billion.The company on Thursday announced the conclusion of a $195 million secondary tender offering as well as an additional $60 million in Series E-1 primary shares.”This news signals the broad recognition and excitement for the long-term value of StockX’s business,” CEO Scott Cutler said in a statement. “Fundamental shifts in both consumer buying and investing behavior provide an immense growth opportunity for StockX.”Altimeter Capital led the all-cash offer that included previous investors and new investor Dragoneer Investment Group. The company has also confirmed that some employees will sell shares. This announcement raises StockX valuation by 35% from the $2.8 billion in December.”The company has rapidly established itself as one of the most important online marketplaces for Gen Z and millennial consumers,” said Jared Middleman, partner at Dragoneer. “This position has unlocked a number of promising new growth opportunities, and we are excited to support the StockX team as they work to realize this potential.” StockX is expected to go public in the second half of 2021, Dow Jones reported Wednesday, citing sources.In response to that report, a StockX spokesperson told CNBC: “Our focus right now is on global expansion and category diversification, while continuing to grow our core business. There are massive opportunities ahead, and our mission right now is to execute.”Zoom In IconArrows pointing outwardsSource: StockX Source: StockX The company that once billed itself as the “Stock Market of Sneakers” has extended its offerings to collectibles, handbags, electronics and more. But the core business remains the same, users can buy or sell goods on an open market, with StockX providing the platform, authentication and niche content related to what it calls “current culture.”The Covid pandemic lead to a surge in so-called athleisure sales, and StockX benefitted from the abrupt shift in consumer spending, generating over $400 million in revenue in 2020, according to the company. StockX executives said it also closed more than 7.5 million trades and reached $1.8 billion in gross merchandise value last year. StockX previously reported $2.5 billion in GMV from the launch of the company in February 2016 to June 2020.The resale market is becoming increasingly popular with shoppers of all ages, with sites like The Real Real going public in 2019 and Poshmark debuting earlier this year. StockX competes with similar sites such as Stadium Goods and Goat, but is widely considered the leader.”We are just scratching the surface of what StockX can deliver for the millions of global buyers and sellers who count on the platform for a wide range of authentic current culture products,” said Cutler. More

Avelo plane.Source: AveloWith demand for air travel growing quickly as the U.S. reopens from the Covid-19 pandemic, Andrew Levy thinks it’s the perfect time to launch a new airline.Levy is CEO of Avelo, a low-cost carrier that will start flying in late April to 11 markets in the Western U.S. — where there is little, if any, direct competition.”We see light at the end of the tunnel, and it is coming soon,” Levy told CNBC as he sat in Avelo’s offices in in Burbank, California. “We stand in a great place to get started here and especially being up and running for the summer peak season, which should be good.”Levy wanted to launch Avelo a year ago, but the pandemic quickly put an end to those plans. So Levy and his team spent the last year making sure Avelo would be ready when air travel showed signs of coming back. According to International Air Travel Association, the pandemic has cost the airline industry more than $380 billion.Avelo’s strategy is to offer low-fares to travelers in markets or near airports that have little airline service. That includes places like Grand Junction, Colorado; Eugene, Oregon; and Ogden, Utah. These are markets or regions where travelers typically have to route trips through hubs like Denver or Salt Lake City.Levy sees massive potential by exploiting the negatives that go with larger airports.”It takes a long time to get there, you have long lines and there are a lot of headaches and hassles,” he said. “Small airports, quite honestly, are just simply a better experience and I think all customers would agree with that.”Levy knows the small airport strategy can pay off for a start-up airline, if properly executed. In the late 1990s, he helped Allegiant Airlines launch service out of small airports like Rockford, Illinois, which is roughly an hour northwest of Chicago’s O’Hare Airport. After several years helping Allegiant grow its operations, Levy moved on to United Airlines. There, he ultimately became CFO before leaving in 2018. Susan Donofrio, aviation consultant FTI Consulting, thinks Avelo can replicate Allegiant’s success.”While the legacy airlines are focused on leisure growth out of their hubs, this has left a lot of opportunity on the table for airlines like Avelo to grow unchallenged in underserved markets,” Donofrio said. For now, Levy’s focus is on a clean launch with no hiccups that often hinder start-up companies. Avelo takes off with a fleet of three Boeing 737s and plans to add three more this summer.Fitting of a CEO focused on low costs, Levy is enjoying the fact that he bought two of the airplanes at a discount from others in the industry looking to unload aircraft to save millions of dollars.”The two we purchased were probably about a third lower (in price) than they would have been ahead of Covid, so that represented, between the two planes, in the range of a $15 million discount,” said Levy. More

A United Airlines Holdings Inc. pilot walks past the check-in counter at San Francisco International Airport (SFO) in San Francisco, California, U.S., on Thursday, Oct. 1, 2020.David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty ImagesA rare sighting in the aviation industry over the past year is becoming more common: help wanted signs.Several U.S. airlines have recently resumed hiring pilots or plan to this year, the latest sign the industry expects travel demand to continue rising.Before the pandemic hit, airlines were preparing for a wave of pilot retirements, which are federally mandated when pilots reach age 65. At American Airlines, for example, more than 7,200 pilots of the airline’s more than 15,000 pilots are set to turn 65 over the next decade. But last year’s plunge in travel forced them to cut labor costs, which included offering early retirement packages to pilots.Now as travel demand returns, they are shifting their focus back toward hiring again. Pilot training can be time consuming and costly. So airlines plan years in advance, generally so they can have enough pilots to handle peak summer travel seasons ahead.United last week told staff it plans to resume pilot hiring, starting with some 300 pilots that had a new-hire date or conditional job offer when Covid-19 derailed those plans last year.It also said it plans to start training the first class in its flight school this year, with the aim of training 5,000 pilots of the 10,000 it expects to need over the next decade.JetBlue Airways, meanwhile, said in a message addressed to 200 pilot candidates who were interviewing with the New York airline in 2019 and 2020 that the carrier is taking steps to begin hiring new pilots later this year.Budget carrier Spirit Airlines resumed training 24 new pilots last month and plans to train a similar number in April, a spokesman said. Another ultra-low cost airline, Allegiant Air, on Tuesday said it will open a new base in Austin, Texas, said it will “immediately begin hiring pilots, flight attendants, mechanics and ground personnel to support the operations.”American Airlines-owned regional carrier PSA Airlines has opened up its hiring to external candidates.”Hiring needs are due to natural attrition and greater utilization of our fleet of CRJ 700 and CRJ 900 aircraft this year,” a spokeswoman said.And Avelo Airlines, a new U.S. carrier that debuted on Thursday, said it will start operating with 37 pilots but it could add more as it expands.Air travel demand has improved since the depths of the pandemic a year ago. United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby last week said domestic leisure demand has almost completely recovered, while American Airlines said net bookings the week ended March 26 were off just 10% compared with the same period of 2019.Airlines are generally reluctant to furlough pilots because their training takes so long, and they instead turned to voluntary separation, temporary leave or early retirement programs. But carriers also received three rounds of government aid totally $54 billion that prohibited involuntary job cuts, the first round of which came at the start of the pandemic.Airline pilot ranks are based on seniority and cuts would start with the most junior members. Airline executives argued that the aid allows them to be better prepared to capitalize on a recovery.Helane Becker, an airline analyst at Cowen & Co. said travel demand bounced back faster and more vigorously than expected.If they hadn’t kept those employees, airlines “would have been very ill prepared and the recovery would have taken longer.”Without the aid early on, airlines would have likely furloughed a lot of junior pilots before the coming wave of retirements of their most experienced ones.For some carriers, the recent recovery in air travel demand has meant a change in plans. Delta Air Lines said it had about 100 cancellations on Easter Sunday due to staffing shortages, a problem it faced over Thanksgiving.Delta said it briefly removed capacity limits on some flights to accommodate travelers, a step it didn’t plan on taking until next month. Some pilots were asked if they could pick up last-minute shifts over the weekend.Delta earlier this year said it plans to call all its pilots back to active status. Earlier this month, Delta said it would allow pilots to bid on new positions, some moving up to captain or changing aircraft.Delta expects to close the bidding “with approximately 350 unbid positions, creating opportunities for future hiring,” Bob Schmelzer, Delta’s director of crew resources planning, analytics and reporting, wrote in an April 1 staff memo.Southwest Airlines, meanwhile, on April 1 called back 209 pilots from extended leaves to meet the rise in demand. They will return to active status on June 1 after completing requalification training. More

In this articleIB0Y-DEGMEPedestrians pass a GameStop store on 14th Street at Union Square, Thursday, Jan. 28, 2021, in the Manhattan borough of New York.John Minchillo | APGameStop announced Thursday that the Chewy co-founder Ryan Cohen will become its chairman following the company’s annual shareholder meeting, which is scheduled for June 9.The retailer’s shares jumped more than 3% in premarket trading, putting the stock on track to snap a three-day losing streak. Shares have given up some of their sky-high gains since a surge in late January, but are still up more than 870% this year, giving the company a market value of $12.8 billion.Cohen invested in GameStop last year, to push the video game retailer to focus on online sales and shutter unprofitable stores in malls. His involvement with the company helped spark the stock’s wild ride earlier this year.Cohen is also the manager of activist investor RC Ventures.Kathy Vrabeck is currently GameStop’s board chair.The transition is part of a broader management shakeup taking place at GameStop as it tries to turn its business around.It has recently brought on several executives from Amazon, Walmart, QVC and Chewy for top positions. Chief Merchandising Officer Chris Homeister submitted his resignation from the business in late March. And in February, Chief Financial Officer Jim Bell announced his resignation, as the company searches for a successor with more of an e-commerce background.GameStop said Thursday in a securities filing that other new board nominees include Larry Cheng, the first investor in Chewy, and Yang Xu, an executive at Kraft Heinz.It’s also nominating current board members Alan Attal and CEO George Sherman. More

In this articleCVACCoronavirus vaccine maker CureVac has said it hopes its Covid shot will receive European approval in the second quarter.CureVac’s CEO Franz-Werner Haas told CNBC Thursday that the vaccine maker was close to finalizing the recruitment for the vaccine’s Phase 3 clinical trial. Approval could come not long after, he said, given the urgent need for additional effective coronavirus vaccines and the expedited regulatory approval process.”We are expecting, according to our calculations, that towards the end of April or beginning of May that we will have the data,” Haas told CNBC’s Squawk Box Europe.”So we expect to be given approval, depending on the data certainly, in the beginning of June.”Once the trial is underway, the German biotech CureVac will wait for safety data and then conduct an interim analysis of results from the late-stage study. Crucially, it will also have to wait until a certain number of trial participants develop Covid-19 in order to see how effective the vaccine is at preventing the virus.The data is then submitted to regulatory authorities, such as the European Medicines Agency, for what’s called a “rolling review;” this is where the data is analyzed by regulators as it emerges, speeding up the assessment of new, potentially life-saving vaccines or medicines during public health emergencies.The U.K. and EU have pre-ordered up to 455 million doses of CureVac’s mRNA vaccine, subject to regulatory approval. The company is already producing its vaccine, despite the fact it has not yet been authorized, in anticipation of the shot’s approval.CureVac CEO Haas said the company was trying to avoid manufacturing pitfalls hit by other vaccine makers. This issue has perhaps been most notable at AstraZeneca and has put the vulnerability of global supply chains into sharp relief.”Manufacturing is certainly a struggle at the moment,” he said.”It’s not only that we are producing by ourselves, but we have an entire network in Europe, with other companies supporting us with manufacturing there as well, but it’s very hard sometimes to get the equipment, to get the facilities built-up but also the material to produce the mRNA.””But we’re doing everything to get as many doses produced as we can,” Haas added. More