Raphael Stevens

Shoppers walk through a nearly empty Palisades Center Mall retail center in West Nyack, New York, February 3, 2021.Mike Segar | ReutersIf you noticed more darkened windows and empty stores at the mall recently, you’re not alone.The vacancy rate for regional malls in the United States hit a record 11.4% in the first quarter of 2021 from 10.5% in the fourth quarter of 2020, according to Moody’s Analytics’ commercial real estate division. The 90 basis-points increase marked the highest the firm has ever seen, surpassing the record 80 basis-point spike in the first quarter of 2009, in the thick of the Great Recession.Zoom In IconArrows pointing outwards”Malls are absolutely still on the ropes,” said Victor Calanog, lead of the commercial real estate economics division within Moody’s. “They were on the ropes even before Covid. … It’s almost passe now to say that we have a record vacancy rate for malls because we’ve been breaking that record all year.”The U.S. has about 1,000 malls, according to the commercial real estate services firm Green Street. Moody’s tracks about 700 of them for its analysis.Shopper traffic to many enclosed malls, often situated in the suburbs, has dropped steadily over the years, with Americans spending more online. This pattern was only accelerated by the global health crisis. Many of the retailers within malls, including department stores, have increasingly struggled to stay relevant with their customers. Last year saw several mall-based businesses — including J.C. Penney, Neiman Marcus, Lord & Taylor, Brooks Brothers and J.Crew — file for bankruptcy protection.While other commercial real estate sectors like multifamily apartment buildings are showing better progress, retail remains the most pressured, Moody’s found in its latest quarterly report.Industrial real estate has been the most resilient property type, with demand for warehouses that store goods and fulfill e-commerce orders surging. Rents for warehouse and distribution properties across the country have not turned negative, so far, during the duration of the pandemic, Calanog said.Office space, like retail, continues to see heightened vacancy rates and declining rents. Many businesses are still grappling with what the future of work space is going to look like. Companies are considering culling their office footprints and allowing employees to embrace working at home, at least part of the time.Forty-eight of the 79 U.S. metro areas that Moody’s tracks suffered effective office rent declines in the first quarter. Among the hardest hit areas were Charleston, South Carolina, down 3.5% quarter over quarter; New York, down 1.8%; and San Francisco, down 1.6%.Within the retail sector, 40 of the 77 metros recorded a decline in effective rent during the first quarter, Moody’s found. Here, retail is only representative of neighborhood and community shopping centers, not indoor malls, the firm noted.The vacancy rate for these retail properties (again, not including malls) was 10.6% during the latest period, up slightly from 10.5% during the fourth quarter.”It’s an ongoing balance between store closures versus openings,” Calanog said about the retail industry. “We want to be fair, there are companies that are opening stores. … But right now we’re losing space, and that’s what the data reflects.”Store growth in retail today has largely been concentrated in the off-price and discount space, with businesses like Dollar General, Lidl, TJ Maxx, Burlington and Five Below plotting bigger expansions. Beauty businesses Ulta and Sephora are also still opening shops, anticipating a strong post-pandemic rebound in visits to brick-and-mortar stores.But that growth won’t always be enough to offset decay elsewhere.In a separate report released this week, UBS predicted in a base-case scenario that there will be roughly 80,000 retail store closures nationwide in the next five years, impacting about 9% of all retail stores. Apparel, sporting goods and office supplies shops are expected to drive a large share of closures, UBS said.It counted 115,000 shopping centers — a figure that includes strip centers, malls, outlet and other lifestyle centers — across the U.S. at the end of 2020, compared with 112,000 in 2010 and 90,000 in 2000.— CNBC’s Nate Rattner contributed to this data visualization. More

NOIDA, INDIA – APRIL 11: A woman holds a pot at a food distribution by Noida Authority at Morna Village in Sector 35, on day eighteen of the 21 day lockdown to limit the coronavirus, on April 11, 2020 in Noida, India. (Photo by Virendra Singh Gosain/Hindustan Times via Getty Images)Hindustan Times | Hindustan Times | Getty ImagesA second wave of Covid-19 infections is expected to slow India’s economic recovery in the three months between April to June, according to Goldman Sachs.The investment bank on Tuesday lowered India’s growth forecast for the quarter from 33.4% year-on-year previously, to 31.3%. It cited lower consumption and services activity likely due to increased social restrictions that are being put in place by India’s state and federal governments to tackle the new outbreak.Goldman said it expects gross domestic product (GDP) to contract sequentially by 12.2% quarter-on-quarter on an annualized basis for the three months ending June — which marks the first quarter of India’s fiscal year that began on April 1 and ends on March 31, 2022. Last year, India slipped into a technical recession after registering two consecutive quarters of contraction.”With virus cases surging to a new high of over 100K/day over the weekend, and a host of states including Maharashtra announcing stricter lockdown restrictions which are likely to broaden out in coming weeks, we expect Q2 GDP growth to be slower than we had initially anticipated,” Goldman analysts wrote.Record high casesCases in India have been climbing since mid-February, with the state of Maharashtra — home to India’s financial capital, Mumbai — getting hit particularly hard. On Monday, India reported more than 103,000 new cases over a 24-hour period, which surpassed levels seen in September when the first wave of infection reached its peak.On Tuesday, the South Asian nation reported 96,982 new cases, with a bulk of them in eight states including Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh and Karnataka.Authorities in Maharashtra stepped up restrictions, including introducing night curfews when only essential services will remain open, as worries mount over a potential shortage in hospital beds and doctors. Other states are also preemptively increasing restrictions to slow the virus’ spread.On the other hand, India has also stepped up its vaccination efforts. As of Tuesday, government data say the country has administered more than 84 million doses since rolling out its mass inoculation program in January.Some analysts and investors have said that the impact of the recent surge in cases will likely be limited if India can avoid a strict national lockdown like the one last year.Sharp rebound in subsequent quartersGoldman expects activity to rebound sharply from subsequent quarters — July-September and beyond — as India’s containment policy normalizes and the vaccination pace speeds up. Still, the hit from the April-June quarter is likely to affect India’s overall growth projection for the fiscal year, which Goldman now expects at 11.7%, down from an earlier forecast of 12.3%.That said, the investment bank cautioned that uncertainties around its estimates remain high, and the actual impact could be larger or smaller, depending on how stringent India’s containment policies turn out to be, and if they spill over into sectors like construction and manufacturing.Impact on GDP can potentially be cushioned by more targeted, localized restrictions in hot spots as opposed to a broad-based national lockdown, like the one India undertook last year, which had a significant socio-economic impact, according to Goldman.”Measures have also been more targeted, and skewed towards services sectors such as leisure, recreation and transport, with little or no impact for agriculture, manufacturing, construction, and utilities,” the analysts said, adding that the bank’s analysis suggested that people have become more used to a post-Covid environment, with a shift towards e-commerce and working from home. As such, their response to containment policies by states is likely to be less sensitive.Goldman also expects the Reserve Bank of India to keep its policy rate on hold at 4% as well as maintain its accommodative stance and an environment with abundant liquidity for longer than expected. More

Appetite for alternative meat is growing across the globe.As the nutritional and environmental impacts of meat consumption become better known, producers and consumers are looking to different sources to address the continued demand for protein.One among them is Dan Riegler, whose own evolving relationship with meat inspired him to co-found Karana.”I was very much a vegan skeptic, a meat-eater for a lot of my life, and I’ve taken a major turn,” Riegler told CNBC Make It.A meat alternative for AsiaKarana is the Singapore food start-up positioning itself as Asia’s first whole-plant-based meat brand. Its flagship product — a pulled pork substitute — is made entirely from jackfruit, oil and salt, without processed ingredients or preservatives.Started in 2018 as demand for meat alternatives was growing, Riegler said he saw a gap in the market for meat substitutes designed specifically for Asian cuisines.We saw a huge need to identify products that had more local applications for APAC.Dan Rieglerco-founder, Karana”We saw a huge need to identify products that had more local applications for APAC,” said Riegler, now 35, who built a career working in agricultural supply chains across Southeast Asia.”Pork is the number one meat that’s consumed in this region and that’s where we didn’t see a lot of products really addressing a need.”Asia is responsible for producing and consuming half of the world’s pork.CNBCIndeed, half of the world’s pork is produced and consumed in Asia, with most of that demand coming from China.So Riegler and his co-founder Blair Crichton, formerly of Impossible Foods which also produces plant-based meat alternatives, set to work finding an environmentally-friendly alternative.Creating pork from jack allIt wasn’t long before the pair identified Karana’s first product: a pork substitute made of jackfruit sourced from smallholder farmers in Sri Lanka.Jackfruit has a long history in South and Southeast Asian cuisines, especially in vegetarian and vegan dishes. Known for its densely packed, fibrous texture and meat-like qualities, the unripe young jackfruit is commonly used in savory foods, while the sweet ripe jackfruit is eaten raw.  Jackfruit is commonly used in many South and Southeast Asian dishes.CNBC”Jackfruit, as a crop, does not need irrigation, does not need pesticides, does not need herbicides. So it’s a very hardy tree, and when it yields fruit, it’s very, very prolific,” said Carsten Carstens, Karana’s chief scientific officer and first hire.In fact, jackfruit is so abundant in the region that tons of it go to waste every year. That is due in part to the complexity of preparing and cooking it.We knew that jackfruit was not living up to its potential.Dan Rieglerco-founder, Karana”The formats that it was available in … were just not exciting to us. They were very difficult to work with, they were not yielding interesting textures and end results, and we knew that jackfruit was not living up to its potential,” Riegler said.So, the founders set to work adapting the fruit for a mass-market — soon devising a chemical-free, mechanical process at their manufacturing hub in Singapore to transform the fruit into a shredded, meat-like product that’s simple for chefs and consumers to use.  “Our intention was really to create something that chefs can take and create amazing dishes with,” said Carstens. “For the modern kitchen in a modern (food and beverage) operation, it is just too labor-intense.”Tapping a growing marketKarana’s invention comes as an appetite for more ethical and sustainable food grows across Asia and beyond.Even before the pandemic, the alternative meat market was estimated to hit $140 billion — or 10% of the global meat industry — within a decade.The alternative meat industry is estimated to be worth $140 billion by 2029.Barclays Mirte Gosker, acting managing director at The Good Food Institute Asia Pacific, said that demand for meat substitutes is increasing in Asia as awareness of food safety and nutrition grows. “Here in Asia, we see a real demand for healthy products with high nutritious value,” said Gosker. “And specifically in China, one of the reasons for people to buy plant-based meat, actually the biggest reason, is the wish to lose weight.”Animal agriculture is the top two or three contributors to the most pressing environmental challenges on our planet right now.Mirte Goskeracting managing director, The Good Food Institute Asia PacificMoreover, she said, the environmental effects of traditional animal agriculture are becoming unsustainable.”Animal agriculture is the top two or three contributors to the most pressing environmental challenges on our planet right now. That includes air pollution, water pollution, water shortages, and loss of biodiversity,” said Gosker.”If we would not use those fields to grow feed for animals, we could actually use those fields to reforest, to create larger biodiversity, or use, for example, for renewable energy,” she added.Attracting investor appetiteThe investment community is seeing the benefits of alternative proteins too. According to The Good Food Institute Asia Pacific, global investments into alternative proteins rose 300% in 2020 alone.In July 2020, Karana raised $1.7 million in seed funding from investors including Big Idea Ventures, a fund dedicated to plant-based foods backed by Singapore’s state investment company Temasek, and U.S. meat company Tyson Foods.Karana’s flagship product is a pulled pork substitute made entirely from jackfruit, oil and salt.KaranaThe investment fueled the company’s 2021 debut in Singapore, where its whole-plant pork is now available at nine restaurants and counting — in dishes from dumplings to “ngoh hiang,” a local pork roll.Next up will be its rollout in Hong Kong, as well as the launch of a line of ready-to-cook retail products. Meantime, investment in a new innovation lab will enable Karana to experiment further with jackfruit and other whole-plant meat substitutes. The more good products that are out there, the more consumers will increasingly switch to plant-based.Dan Rieglerco-founder, Karana More

Gone are the days when booking a private jet required a long conversation on the phone. Now, mobile apps let flyers book charter flights in a matter of minutes.Major players in private aviation, as well as emerging competitors, now have apps. Many follow a similar process: Customers choose where they’re coming from and their destination, select dates and their preferred plane size.Private aviation company Sentient Jet, which is mainly focused on trips in the U.S., saw $50 million in bookings through its app in 2020 alone, with more than $125 million in mobile bookings since the app launched in late 2017, CEO Andrew Collins told CNBC on a video call. He said he expects up to half of Sentient Jet’s bookings to come via its app in the next three to four years.Collins said the coronavirus pandemic had “unlocked a larger addressable market,” as more people looked to avoid crowded flights or travel to areas where commercial operators wouldn’t typically fly.He said that private aviation had “felt a little less like premium service and more like a utility for a lot of people” over the past year, and suggested that apps would become essential to the industry in the future, instead of simply a “nice-to-have” feature.Booking through the Sentient Jet app takes two to three minutes, according to Collins.The app is lowering the average age of Sentient Jet customers too, from those in their mid-60s, to a “much wider band” which is “getting younger,” he said.’Natural extension’Sentient Jet’s app is available only to holders of its jet card, something the operator claims to have invented more than 20 years ago and which is now common in the industry.Jet card programs vary depending on the company, but the basic concept relies on paying a deposit for fixed hourly rates.In the case of Sentient Jet, clients can pay about $150,000 for 25 hours on a light aircraft, and the hours are debited from the card holder’s account every time they travel. Journeys can range from around $5,800 an hour for a light aircraft to just under $11,000 for a one-way trip on a large-cabin aircraft, Collins explained.Mobile apps, which are being used by younger customers, make booking private jets easier and faster.Getty ImagesBefore jet cards came onto the market, Collins said people could only really book a private jet through chartering, or renting the plane, as well as buying an entire aircraft (or a fraction of one).Collins said the growth of apps in private aviation is really a “natural extension” of the jet card.Thomas Flohr, the founder of private aviation company Vista Global similarly told CNBC via email that traditionally, customers booking private jets needed to “call or email their broker with a trip request, wait hours to get a response with quotes, be provided opaque prices and then sign a physical contract.”Vista Global launched an app in November as an extension of its online booking platform XO. It is free to use for any client. Flohr claimed both the online platform and app allow customers to book in “seconds.”Users of XO have the option to “crowdfund” a flight, essentially letting them buy just one seat on the plane instead of the whole flight.’Uberization’ of private jetsPrivate aviation firm Wheels Up has a similar feature that lets customers use a “shared flights board” feature on its app to view flights on offer for sharing with other users.Kenny Dichter, CEO of Wheels Up, said that the advent of apps represents the “Uberization” of jet booking.The Wheels Up app is free for both members and non-members. However, pricing and availability are different for members, who have access to their own benefits portal via the app.Read moreEverything you need to know to charter your first flightJetASAP is perhaps most different from these more established names, as it claims to be the first free jet charter marketplace. CEO Lisa Kiefer Sayer, who founded the business in 2018, explained that the app shows bookings available with different charter operators.She said that the coronavirus pandemic has had a “huge impact” in terms of the demographics of its users.Typically, people chartering private jets had a net worth of $10-$20 million, but she said the pandemic had opened up the market to people with a net worth of $2-$3 million.Sayer said that half of the users on the JetASAP app are seasoned private fliers, while the other half are new to private aviation.   More

SINGAPORE — Singapore needs a “suite of measures” beyond Covid vaccinations in order to open up its economy and allow international travel, said S Iswaran, the country’s minister for communications and information.Some of those measures may include testing for Covid-19, he told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Asia” on Tuesday, as part of World Economic Forum Global Technology Governance Summit.  “The way we see it, this has to be a suite of measures. Vaccinations are essential but they are not silver bullets,” he said. “We need that to be complemented by a strong, robust testing regime, as well as effective safe management measures.”He said such solutions will be important going forward, “whether it is opening up the economy further” or enabling cross-border activity or travels, said Iswaran.People wearing protective masks prepare entering a mall at Singapore’s shopping district Orchard Road.Suhaimi Abdullah | Getty Images News | Getty ImagesThe minister said vaccines are a “national priority” and will help Singapore get back to pre-Covid levels of economic activity, but that process would involve small steps over time, rather than a big and sudden change.”It is going to be more an evolutionary process rather than a revolutionary one,” he said.That’s likely to be the case around the world, he added. “The way we will go forward … is going to be measured, calibrated steps in terms of facilitating cross border flows of people.”Digital travel passIswaran weighed in on Singapore’s decision to accept the International Air Transport Association’s (IATA) mobile travel pass from May.Visitors to Singapore will be allowed to leave and enter the country by presenting a smartphone application containing digital certificates for Covid tests and possibly including vaccination certificates in future, according to the country’s aviation authority.The IATA’s travel pass is one of many “vaccine passport” options being floated.From China and Japan, to the European Union and the United Kingdom — many countries have proposed similar ideas about issuing digital health certificates to those who have been inoculated against Covid-19, in order to facilitate overseas travels.However, there have been growing concerns about privacy and criticism of discrimination.The way we look at it is that, at the end of the day, you need an effective vaccination program, and then we need to develop mutual recognition of those vaccination programs.S IswaranSingapore Minister for Communications and InformationIswaran said vaccine passports are open to interpretation and “perhaps even misinterpretation.””The way we look at it is that, at the end of the day, you need an effective vaccination program, and then we need to develop mutual recognition of those vaccination programs,” he told CNBC.That has to happen bilaterally and multilaterally to enable countries to think of opening their borders, he added.The overall situation in a country or region will also be a factor because it shapes risk perceptions, the Singapore minister said.Singapore’s community transmission has been low, and stabilized to about two cases per week in the past two weeks, according to the health ministry.The Southeast Asian nation has reported 60,495 confirmed cases and 30 deaths, as of April 5.As of March 29, more than 1.3 million doses of the vaccine have been administered in the country. Around 375,605 people are fully vaccinated. More

CNBC’s Jim Cramer on Tuesday applauded GameStop and AMC Entertainment for issuing new shares, moves he said upset many in the Reddit investing crowd.The “Mad Money” host took aim at the “hold the line” cohort of investors that get stock tips from the Wall Street Bets forum, saying their plans to offer new shares and raise cash to improve their operations should not be frowned upon.”If you care about the future of either company or the long-term trajectory of their stocks, issuing shares up here is the right move,” Cramer said. “But the ‘hold the line’ crowd they hate these offerings … and they despise anyone who defends them.””It can only go so far,” he added.AMC expects shareholders to vote in May on a measure authorizing the sale of another 500 million shares on the secondary market. GameStop submitted a prospectus to sell up to 3.5 million shares of common stock in its own equity offering program.AMC hopes to use the funds to improve its balance sheet, while executives at the beleaguered GameStop seek to engineer a turnaround story.”AMC and GameStop need money,” Cramer said. “Raising capital is good for both companies and over the long haul, what’s good for the company should be good for the stock.”As for the “hold the line” strategy, Cramer worries too many investors have unrealistic expectations that they can pile into a stock and force its share price to go up. “I find this whole narrative insane,” he said. “When the Wall Street Bets cohort takes over the flow of certain stocks, they want to call the shots and they expect management and all the shareholders to obey. Well, frankly, that is a recipe for disappointment.”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