Raphael Stevens

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    Say goodbye to $30 plane tickets. The era of dirt-cheap flights is ending

    Revelers flock to the beach to celebrate spring break, amid the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak in Miami Beach, Florida, U.S., March 6, 2021.Marco Bello | ReutersThinking about finally taking that vacation? You’re not alone.Millions of Americans, many cooped up for a year, are hitting the road and taking to the skies, as more people get vaccinated against Covid-19. President Joe Biden last week said all American adults will be eligible for a vaccine by May. As more people grow confident that the threat of Covid-19 is fading, it’s becoming harder to find the rock-bottom fares, some in the double-digits, that airlines offered when they were more desperate to fill planes. Hotel rates are also ticking up.Travel-search site Kayak, said searches for summer travel have been up 27% each week since Biden’s announcement and said that airfares for top 100 most-searched U.S. destinations are up 7% month-over-month.Zoom In IconArrows pointing outwards”Domestic airfares are rising. While discounts can still be found, they’re no longer falling into consumers’ laps,” said Jamie Baker, JP Morgan airline analyst. “Discounted fares increasingly require a hunt, and for many consumers that have been locked up for a year, they’re probably not up to the effort.”The cheapest domestic leisure airfares, which include those promotional fares that airlines send to your inbox, were $59.48 as of March 15, still 26% lower than a similar week in 2019 but up more than 6% on the week, according to Harrell Associates, a firm that tracks airfares. Average leisure fares were nearly $187, up close to 5% on the week and close to 9% higher than a similar point in 2019.Airline executives on Monday said bookings were picking up in March and stretching to the summer. U.S. carriers are on track to lose on average of $150 million a day this quarter, according to Airlines for America, but CEOs of United Airlines and Delta Air Lines said the uptick will finally staunch their cash burn this spring. JetBlue is calling flight attendants back from unpaid a month early because of stronger-than-expected demand.”As long as there is not a setback we are on the road to recovery and we can put those days of talking about cash burn, layoffs and things like that largely in the rear view mirror,” CEO Scott Kirby told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Tuesday.Hotel occupancy in the U.S. this month through March 13 is averaging more than 51%, the highest in more than a year, according to hotel data analysis firm STR. In hot vacation spots like Miami, occupancy is nearly 70% with average rates of $228 a night, the highest prices since February 2020.Jamila Ross, owner and founder of The Cooper Door B&B in Miami said she had discounted her January and February rates by more than 40% to $100 a night but that that she’s since been able to increase them to $120.Covid was particularly devastating to her hotel because it was so reliant on the cruise industry due to its proximity to the port.She said the hotel is now about 70% full, up from 40% last month though she’s holding back some inventory due to Covid.”We want to be a responsible brand,” she said. “We can’t afford any type of slip ups.”Maura Gannon, general manager of The Mermaid & the Alligator, a nine-room hotel on Florida’s Key West said: “As soon as people have been getting the vaccines phones have been ringing off the hook.”She said that some travelers are asking about bookings in May and June, traditionally part of the lower demand season.Some travelers are eyeing high-end accommodations that allow them to continue to physically distance from other guests.”Villas are going first for the entire year,” said Viktoria Riley, director of marketing at the Ocean Club, a Four Seasons Resort in the Bahamas. Three-bedroom villas go for $16,500 a night in the low season that starts in mid-April and runs through late November.To be sure, fares and room rates have taken a deep plunge in the pandemic and there are still deals out there, particularly with business travelers still mostly sidelined. Demand is still nowhere near the levels of before the pandemic.In the third quarter of 2020, the latest available data, U.S. domestic flights averaged $244.79 the lowest in more than 25 years, not adjusting for inflation, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation.Airlines, however, have sharply reduced capacity to match weak demand, meaning there are fewer seats out there. They are expected to add more seats as the peak summer season approaches.And with much of international travel still off-limits, the domestic leisure destinations have become the place to go.Delta Air Lines, for example, on Friday unveiled nine new destinations or increased service to outdoor vacation destinations like Glacier Park, Mont., and Jackson Hole, Wyo.”U.S. travelers are being diverted in a way into the U.S. and the handful of countries we’re allowed to visit,” said Henry Harteveldt founder of Atmosphere Research Group, a travel-industry consulting firm. “That is shifting the demand patterns and therefore shifting airfare pricing.” More

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    NCAA weight room discrepancy shows 'they don't think these women are worth it,' says Jemele Hill

    The NCAA has a chronic problem with undervaluing women, writer and host Jemele Hill said Friday — and the latest controversy over weight room discrepancies puts a spotlight on that inequality.”This has been a long standing, consistent problem when it comes to the lack of equity between men’s and women’s sports,” said Hill. “This should let everybody know who’s watching this and hearing about this story, that this was about the fact they didn’t think they were worth it to begin with.”A Stanford University sports performance coach posted photos to Twitter Thursday revealing inequities between the women’s and men’s weight rooms.The photos, posted by Ali Kershner, a coach with the Stanford women’s basketball and golf teams, showed the women’s weight room facility at the NCAA bubble in San Antonio — a rack of dumbbells and some yoga mats. The men’s weight room facility, at their NCAA bubble in Indianapolis. was decked out with a gym’s worth of equipment. On a Zoom call Friday morning, NCAA Senior Vice President of Basketball Dan Gavitt vowed to do better.”I apologize to the women’s student-athletes, coaches and committee for dropping the ball on the weight room issue in San Antonio, we’ll get it fixed as soon as possible,” Gavitt said.The NCAA’s Vice President of Women’s Basketball Lynn Holzman said later Friday the organization is reviewing how to adjust square footage and provide more training opporunities.Hill explained to CNBC’s “The News with Shepard Smith” on Friday that the rapid response was telling.”When they got caught and this video went viral, suddenly within 24 hours they have a change of heart,” said Hill, who hosts the Spotify podcast “Jemele Hill is Unbothered.” “The money was always there. The money isn’t the issue. The issue is they don’t think these women are worth it.”ESPN has a $500 million, 14-year deal through the 2023-24 academic year with the NCAA for expanded rights to 24 collegiate championships, including continued coverage of the women’s Division I basketball tournament. Hill told host Shepard Smith that, moving forward, the NCAA must “do everything that they can to show that they take women’s sports seriously, because this looks even worse, given the fact that the backdrop of this is that it’s Women’s History Month.” Representatives for the NCAA were not immediately available Friday to respond to Hill’s comments. More

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    Utz Brands doubles down on digital ads to grow snack sales, retain customers

    Utz Brands CEO Dylan Lissette told CNBC Friday that the company is increasing its marketing spend on digital advertising to reach new customers and grow snack sales.”We’re putting a lot of money there. As we go forward into 2021 [it will be] about a 60% increase,” he said in a “Mad Money” interview with Jim Cramer. “But as we look beyond that, we’re going to be putting even more in.”The company, which sells a range of salty snacks including potato chips and pretzels, is looking to capitalize on pandemic-era lockdowns that have left consumers eating at home. The company’s portfolio includes brands like Zapp’s, Golden Flake and Boulder Canyon.”What we love about [digital ads] is the fact that you really are able to turn on a dime … and pursue what works,” he said. “If some sort of an angle of attack on reaching our customers for one brand or another brand works, they’re able to very quickly lean in behind it.”For its 2020 fiscal year, ended Jan. 3, Utz spent about $11.1 million on consumer marketing and advertising, according to its annual report. Lissette did not say how much would be committed to marketing and ad expenses in the current fiscal year. Lissette said there’s more opportunity in social media and digital ads “as opposed to sort of doing one commercial and running it for a year and realizing it didn’t really give you what you needed.”Utz shares rose 5% to $26.56 in Friday’s session. The 100-year-old brand went public last year via a special purpose acquisition corporation deal.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

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    America used to be behind on digital payments. Not any more

    A LITTLE OVER a decade ago Patrick and John Collison founded Stripe, a company in Silicon Valley that helped other tech startups accept online payments. It has since outgrown them all. On March 14th the firm said it had closed a fundraising round valuing it at $95bn—three times its valuation a mere 11 months ago, and enough to make it America’s biggest-ever unlisted firm. Stripe is not the only company cashing in on the check-out business, as the digital payments revolution finally takes off in America. It has been some time coming. Back in 2018 Ant Financial, China’s payments giant, raised private funds at a valuation of $150bn. It was common then to hear Chinese executives remark that America, land of the posted cheque and the hand-signed credit-card receipt, was years behind, held back by a cosy club of banks and credit-card firms that were too lazy to innovate. Now investors have decided the moment has come. Take PayPal, a digital-payments firm that counted Elon Musk and Peter Thiel as early bosses, and which was set up in 1999 to allow users of Palm Pilots, a forebear of smartphones, to “beam” each other money. It was later bought by eBay, an online marketplace, which spun it out in 2015 for $45bn. Today it is worth $280bn, more than Citigroup and Wells Fargo, and is America’s 19th-most-valuable company. It is also more valuable than Ant, the global industry’s original gorilla, which has fallen out of favour with regulators in China in recent months and been forced to cancel its initial public offering.Investors’ enthusiasm for Western digital-payments companies has been whetted by the pandemic (see chart). PayPal’s share price has jumped by 180% in the past 12 months. That of Square, an American rival, has more than quintupled; and that of Adyen, based in Amsterdam, has nearly tripled. The digital boom is luring credit-card colossuses and tech titans, such as Visa and Google, to online payments. Smaller startups, meanwhile, are carving out niches. Yet markets still love the four specialists: PayPal’s shares trade at 68 times earnings; Square’s, near 510. Why are investors so bullish? The digital-payments industry is rather like a transport system. “Acquirers” connect the shop’s app or website to the payments infrastructure and check key details, including a buyer’s identity, probity or available funds, to authorise travel. The money then moves along the customer’s chosen type of “rail”: credit-card, bank-to-bank or mobile-wallet systems, run by distinct firms. Then come the refreshment trolleys—service providers, like buy-now-pay-later firms, that purport to make the payments journey more pleasant. Everyone takes a cut of the transaction along the way. Part of the digital firms’ ascent reflects the fact that they have achieved scale. PayPal, the biggest of them, combines an online wallet used by 350m consumers with a gateway accepted by 30m merchants. That generates big network effects, which the firm has sought to encourage further by crafting tie-ups with other firms that have many users, like Mercado Libre, a Latin American marketplace; UnionPay, a Chinese credit-card scheme; and Google. The company expects its number of users to double by 2025. Square, which has carved out a niche by targeting independent merchants and consumers underserved by conventional banks, operates a similar model (the chairman of The Economist’s parent company is a director of Square). By contrast Adyen and Stripe, which are pure online acquirers, have no consumer brand. But their tech nous makes it fast and easy for businesses to set up online-payment platforms, which has caused companies to flock to them. (Stripe has long served smaller firms and Adyen big ones, but both are now converging.) They typically integrate a client’s website with payment networks within days. Because verifying a customer’s identity and probity is hard, especially when transactions are cross-border, about 10-15% of online transactions are usually declined. But the digital firms can reduce rejection rates by four to five percentage points. In return for all this they charge a decent fee: Stripe typically takes a cut of about 2.7-2.9% of the value of each transaction, or 1.9% in Europe. Now that they can spread their technology costs over hundreds of billions of dollars of transfers, the fee they earn on every additional payment is nearly all profit, which they can then reinvest.Three trends are helping propel the digital firms further. One is the rapid growth of e-commerce, which has been turbo-charged by the pandemic. Online-transactions volumes surged by 19% globally last year as locked-down consumers turned to the internet. And there is further to go: online payments accounted for just 45% of all retail payments tracked by Mastercard, a credit-card giant, in 2020. The second trend is the dash away from cash at bricks-and-mortar shops in favour of digital payments, which covid-19 has probably accelerated by about three to five years. A final factor comes from increasing market share within online payments. For all of the specialists’ might, over half of digital-transaction volumes worldwide are still acquired by the captive, sluggish arms of banks, says Lisa Ellis of MoffettNathanson, a research firm. Since most lack global aspirations and e-commerce expertise, market share is bound to migrate to the online giants. Such trends boost Visa and Mastercard, the dominant card networks, too. Yet they run only one type of rail, whereas the four payment champions are mostly agnostic about which channel the money travels on. A bigger threat to the quartet, perhaps, could come from giants in adjacent sectors. Big-tech firms are starting to beef up their own payment apps (Apple Cash, for instance, now lets users pay each other by text message). Large retailers like Walmart and Target are building their own acquirers and wallets, through which they could dole out rewards to loyal customers.In order to pre-empt the threat of competition, the digital-payments firms are expanding their offerings. PayPal has launched buy-now-pay-later, cryptocurrency-trading and credit-card services. On March 8th it said it would buy Curv, a digital-asset-security firm; it bought Honey, a coupon service, last year. It says it wants to become a “super-app” for financial services, and in February told investors it expected to more than double its revenue to $50bn by 2025. Square’s peer-to-peer payment business, Cash App, has evolved into a digital bank enabling users to buy bitcoin, trade stocks, receive paycheques and use a debit card. It now has 36m users, up from 7m in late 2017, and brings in 45% of Square’s gross profit. Stripe has started offering working capital and accounts to merchants, in partnership with banks. With digital payments set to continue to surge, the fantastic four have three or four years of clear runway before running head on into each other, predicts Darrin Peller of Wolfe Research, an equity-research firm. By then, however, they will probably have become entirely different firms, each with its own suite of banking or software products. That should give them even more room to roam, as well as access to far bigger revenue pools than that of payments alone. It may have taken a while for digital payments to hit the big time in America and the West. But better late than never. More

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    Cramer's week ahead: The bond market is dictating stock trading

    Tech stocks climbed Friday to end the week on a high note, but CNBC’s Jim Cramer expects more downside in the tech cohort as investors continue to rotate out of high-growth names.”Like it or not, stocks are joined at the hip with the bond market right now,” the “Mad Money” host said.As bond rates rise amid early signs of an economic recovery, investors are fleeing from riskier growth stocks to cyclical ones, particularly bank and industrial stocks that have underperformed, Cramer said.The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite has fallen in recent weeks and remains down 7% from its high about a month ago. The rotation from tech to value stocks, however, won’t last forever, Cramer said.”Either tech stocks get too low … or long-term interest rates get too high. Until that happens, the rotation will just continue to play out,” he said. “We aren’t there yet, but I’m confident that we’ll get there eventually because that’s what always ends these vicious kinds of rotations.”Cramer revealed what’s circled on his calendar in the week ahead. Corporate performance projections are based on FactSet estimates:Zoom In IconArrows pointing outwardsTuesday: GameStop, AdobeGameStopQ4 earnings release: after market; conference call: 5 p.m.Projected EPS: $1.35Projected revenue: $2.21 billion”The bulls hope to learn on this call more about [Ryan] Cohen’s plan when the company reports, and if there’s anything good at all about these results, well I expect to see a ton of buying the next day,” Cramer said.AdobeQ1 2021 earnings release: after market; conference call: 5 p.m.Projected EPS: $2.79Projected revenue: $3.76 billion”Unfortunately, the results are less important than the state of the Wall Street fashion show,” he said. “If Adobe reports a great quarter and rates are soaring that day, with the yield on the 10-year approaching 2%, then the earnings won’t matter at all.”Wednesday: RH, GrowGeneration, General MillsRHQ4 earnings release: after market; conference call: 5 p.m.Projected EPS: $4.73Projected revenue: $797 millionGrowGenerationQ4 earnings release: after market; conference call: Thursday, 9 a.m.Projected EPS: 7 centsProjected revenue: $61.5 million”You rarely hear those two mentioned in the same sentence, but right now they represent the most exciting parts of retail,” Cramer said about RH and GrowGeneration.”I suspect they’ll both report excellent quarters,” he said. “Home furnishings are the most popular part of retail purchasing right now, as we saw from the incredible quarter Williams-Sonoma just delivered, and the cannabis culture … [has] been an unstoppable force as state after state embraces legalization.”General MillsQ3 2021 earnings release: before market; conference call: 9 a.m.Projected EPS: 84 centsProjected revenue: $4.45 billion”I like this one as a way to take the temperature of the pantry stocks,” the host said. “I think the reaction will be tepid, but then again Smucker surprised to the upside and I like Hormel very much. So let’s take a listen.”Thursday: Darden RestaurantsDarden RestaurantsQ3 2021 earnings release: before market; conference call: 8:30 a.m.Projected EPS: 68 centsProjected revenue: $1.61 billion”Do you know we have 150,000 [restaurants] that have closed? It means that the survivors should be in an incredible position, which is why I expect them to crush numbers,” Cramer said of Darden. “The stock’s had a big run, but I think the scarcity value of the stock and the last-man-standing thesis make it compelling.”Disclosure: Cramer’s charitable trust owns shares of Facebook, Amazon, Goldman Sachs, JPM organ Chase and Wells Fargo.DisclaimertechQuestions 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

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    Visa says the DOJ plans to probe its debit card practices, shares fall 6%

    Visa shares dropped sharply Friday after a report said the Justice Department has opened an investigation into its debit card business and possible anticompetitive practices.The company said Friday afternoon that investigators have started to collect information on Visa debit practices.The Wall Street Journal, which first reported the probe, said the DOJ is seeking to determine whether the largest card network in the United States has curbed merchants’ capacity to route debit-card transactions over less-expensive networks.Sources told the Journal that investigators’ questions are centered on online debit-card transactions but have also included inquiries about in-store issues. The Justice Department declined to comment.Visa, which had seen its shares under pressure earlier on Friday, abruptly fell from around $218.50 per share to under $207 by Friday’s close. The losses put the stock down more than 6% on the session.The probe focuses on the role of network fees, charges that payments processors bill to merchants in exchange for access to the processor’s vast network, according to the Journal’s report. Investigators will reportedly seek to determine if Visa’s fee policies unlawfully give it unfair market dominance. More

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    Brokerage app Webull seeing ‘an uptick in deposits’ as stimulus checks roll out, says CEO

    Webull CEO Anthony Denier told CNBC on Friday that the brokerage app is seeing a rise in activity since the latest round of stimulus checks have been sent to Americans.”We have seen an uptick in deposits for sure,” Denier said in an interview on “Closing Bell.” “There’s definitely a pretty substantial increase in the amount of activity that we’ve been seeing during this whole stimulus download over the last week and a half,” he said. The Internal Revenue Service began processing the direct payments a week ago, and tens of millions of people have already received the funds.Some money from previous rounds of pandemic stimulus checks made their way into the stock market, data has shown. Many suggested a similar occurrence would take place with the latest batch, which were part of a $1.9 trillion relief package signed into law by President Joe Biden earlier this month.In this photo illustration, the Webull Financial logo seen displayed on a smartphone screen.Rafael Henrique | SOPA Images | LightRocket | Getty ImagesThe Covid relief bill, championed by Democrats, passed both chambers of Congress without Republican support. Many GOP lawmakers contended the legislation was too expensive and broad, saying any additional aid at this stage in the pandemic ought to be more targeted to the Americans and businesses most in need.Denier’s comments Friday offer insight into how some stimulus check recipients may be using the money. However, the executive cautioned, it’s too early to tell how the increase in deposits will impact the equity market.”It remains to be seen how that kind of plays, but it certainly has risen the tide for all ships in the brokerage industry. Absolutely,” he said. More

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    Charts show that Europe's third coronavirus wave has begun

    Traffic passes along the Champs Elysee avenue near the Arc de Triomph in Paris, France, on Friday, March 19, 2021. French President Emmanuel Macron is locking down several regions including the Paris area, slowing down the countrys economic recovery as it struggles to contain a third wave of the coronavirus epidemic. Photographer: Cyril Marcilhacy/Bloomberg via Getty ImagesBloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty ImagesLONDON — Warnings of an exponential rise in infections for Germany and a fresh monthlong lockdown in Paris have underlined the dire situation across Europe as the coronavirus surges once again.The variant first discovered in the U.K. is seen as the reason for the new spike. The strain is reported to be much more virulent than the original one.The French capital and northern parts of the country will enter a new lockdown Friday, although schools and essential shops will stay open. The country’s seven-day average of new coronavirus cases rose above 25,000 this week for the first time since November.In Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel had announced an easing of lockdowns in March. That was when the number of infections per 100,000 people over seven days was at 65. But that number is now at 96 and there are real fears that infections at Easter could mirror what they were at Christmas.”The rising case numbers may mean that we cannot take further opening steps in the weeks to come,” German Health Minister Jens Spahn told a news conference Friday, according to Reuters.”On the contrary, we may even have to take steps backwards.”Italy has already put Easter plans on hold with a new national lockdown announced by Prime Minister Mario Draghi. The country has the sixth-highest death toll in the world with at least 103,855 fatalities, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.Poland has also seen a huge surge in infections with approximately 52% of new cases linked to the variant from Britain, according to Reuters.Total cases for the country pushed passed 2 million on Friday with 25,998 in the last 24 hours.The surge comes as EU nations try to press ahead with their vaccination campaigns, which have so far underperformed compared with the likes of those in the U.S. and the U.K.Supply and procurement issues have been blamed and the rollout of the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine was halted this week while the EU’s health regulator, the European Medicines Agency, carried out an investigation into blood clots.On Friday, Germany’s Spahn also warned that there are not enough vaccines in Europe to prevent this third wave.— CNBC’s Bryn Bache contributed to this article. More