Raphael Stevens

Electric vehicle maker Lucid Group on Tuesday said CEO Peter Rawlinson has stepped down.
The company expects to more than double vehicle production this year to 20,000 units.
For the period ended Dec. 31, the company reported a net loss attributable to common stockholders of $636.9 million, or a loss of 22 cents per share.

Brand new Lucid electric cars sit parked in front of a Lucid Studio showroom in San Francisco on May 24, 2024.
Justin Sullivan | Getty Images

Electric vehicle maker Lucid Group on Tuesday said CEO Peter Rawlinson has stepped down as the company expects to more than double vehicle production this year to 20,000 units.
Lucid said Marc Winterhoff, the company’s chief operating officer, has taken over as interim CEO. Rawlinson will serve as a “strategic technical advisor to the chairman of the board, stepping aside from his prior roles,” the company said.

Winterhoff told CNBC on Tuesday that it was Rawlinson’s decision to resign as of Friday, however he declined to elaborate on any additional details.
“It was Peter’s decision after 12 years of, let’s say, daily grind or daily activities and bringing the company where it is today … that it is time to step aside and pass the baton,” said Winterhoff, who joined Lucid from Roland Berger in December 2023.
In a statement posted Tuesday on LinkedIn, Rawlinson said he decided it was “finally the right time” to step down after “successfully” launching the company’s second product, a three-row SUV called the Gravity. He did not elaborate further on the decision in the lengthy post.
Rawlinson’s departure is unexpected. As one of the company’s largest shareholders, Rawlinson, who also served as chief technology officer, has routinely touted his passion and stake in the automaker. He took Lucid public through a reverse merger with a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, in July 2021.

CEO Peter Rawlinson poses at the Lucid Motors plant in Casa Grande, Arizona, U.S. September 28, 2021.
Caitlin O’Hara | Reuters

“My mission and my dedication is steadfast. I’ve not sold a single damn share of this stock, except what was necessary for tax purposes,” Rawlinson said during the company’s third-quarter call in November. “So, my promise is to continue to work tirelessly day and night to drive that long-term shareholder value.”

Lucid’s board has initiated a search to identify a new CEO, the company said.
The CEO change and production target were announced in conjunction with the automaker’s fourth-quarter financial results. For the period ended Dec. 31, the company reported a net loss attributable to common stockholders of $636.9 million, or a loss of 22 cents per share, on revenue of $234.5 million.
Analysts surveyed by LSEG expected a loss of 25 cents per share on revenue of $214 million.
During the same period last year, Lucid reported a net loss attributable to common stockholders of $653.8 million, or a loss of 29 cents per share, on revenue of $157.2 million.
The production target for 2025 announced Tuesday is compared with production of 9,029 vehicles and deliveries of 10,241 reported for 2024.

Lucid Gravity Grand Touring SUV (left) and Lucid Air sedan EVs

Winterhoff said production of the Gravity SUV will gradually build during the year. He declined to speculate on what percentage of the 20,000-unit production target the vehicle would represent.
Shares of Lucid were about 8% higher during afterhours trading Tuesday.
As of market close, shares of the company were down about 13% this year amid slower-than-expected adoption of all-electric vehicles and uncertainty about federal support for EVs under the Trump administration. The stock declined by roughly 28% last year.
Lucid is largely backed by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund. Its first product was the Air sedan, which it began delivering in late 2021. More

Rothy’s is growing again after it expanded into wholesalers like Amazon under the direction of retail veteran Jenny Ming.
The digitally native flats maker’s sales grew 17% in 2024, outperforming the overall footwear market, which was flat during the same period.
The company struggled to grow profitably when it primarily sold online, but it’s now improving profits by leveraging stores and wholesale relationships.

FILE PHOTO: A view of Rothy’s, a female shoe brand, on Thursday, July 28, 2016, in San Francisco, Calif. 
Liz Hafalia | San Francisco Chronicle | Hearst Newspapers | Getty Images

Direct-to-consumer footwear brand Rothy’s just recorded its best year on record after the company appointed retail veteran Jenny Ming, one of the co-founders of Old Navy, as its CEO. 
Ming took the helm of the flats maker from co-founder Stephen Hawthornthwaite in January 2024. Under her direction, the company grew sales 17% to $211 million last year, its best volume year since it launched nearly a decade ago. 

Comparable sales at its stores grew 20% and it posted positive EBITDA for the full year, with margins above 10%. 
Rothy’s outperformed the U.S. footwear market, which was flat in 2024 compared to 2023, according to Circana. 
Rothy’s growth, which came from an expansion into wholesale and a focus on brick-and-mortar stores, comes as direct-to-consumer darlings find it harder than ever to survive with the pure play models that once wowed investors at the turn of the decade. 
Once considered the future of the industry, these online-only businesses are now leaning into the retail fundamentals that have long been the building blocks of emerging brands. Wholesale partnerships are a critical customer acquisition tool, and stores still matter.
As these plucky startups contend with the challenges that come with an online-only business, the winners are adapting to a new reality where stores, wholesale partnerships and e-commerce all need to be part of the mix to ensure they can operate profitably. 

“A lot of people are like, why would you be on Amazon? Because people do a lot of searches on Amazon. If we weren’t there, and they type in Rothy’s, a competitor or somebody else would show up. So why wouldn’t we want to be there?” Ming told CNBC in an interview. “To me, it’s really thinking a little bit more holistically and broadly. What our customer would want from us is how we approach it … people shop very different today.” 
Channel diversification will never be a panacea for a business that’s inherently broken or doesn’t serve a market need. The footwear industry and specialty retail overall is more competitive than ever, and Rothy’s needs to continue its efforts to diversify, scale and expand into new categories to keep up its performance.
Soon after Rothy’s launched in 2016, it quickly made a name for itself with its ubiquitous Instagram and Facebook advertisements and an innovative approach on sustainable shoe making that included using recycled plastic to make machine washable products. By 2019, it was Meghan Markle’s flat of choice and it had developed a cult following. 
Buoyed by a record year for valuations and 0% interest rates, Brazilian footwear company Alpargatas took a 49.9% stake in Rothy’s in 2021 that resulted in a post-investment valuation of $1 billion. 
Rothy’s used the investment to build out a store fleet, but by that time, the company’s growth had stagnated and it was struggling to reach profitability. 
“Once we sort of emerged from the pandemic, you could see a lot of these digitally native brands now sort of saying, okay, now what, right? I need stores. It is so expensive to acquire customers online,” said Dayna Quanbeck, Rothy’s president. “[With] an e-commerce model… all of your costs are variable, right? Where you really find scale and you really find profitability is where you can leverage your fixed costs, which is stores, really, and wholesale.”
Ming, who served as Old Navy’s president between 1996 and 2006 and later became the CEO of Charlotte Russe, joined Rothy’s board in 2022 and was later asked to take over as CEO. She said no at first, but later agreed to take the helm after she spent a few months consulting and saw the early innings of a transformation beginning to take shape. She immediately started focusing on improving profitability and generating sales momentum by making sure Rothy’s was selling the types of products that its customers wanted – and in the places they shopped. 
“I literally went line by line … looking at what we should spend, what we shouldn’t, you know, and right size marketing spend. There was things that, you know, we don’t need,” said Ming, citing office plants as one of the first things she cut. “But the main thing is, driving profitability is really in revenue. You have to be growing your sales in order to really be profitable, right?” 
That’s where Rothy’s new selling strategy came in. In 2024, it began testing with a select number of wholesale partners – Anthopologie, Bloomingdale’s, Amazon and toward the end of the year, Nordstrom.
At the same time, it continued growing its store fleet. Now, a business that drew about 99% of its revenue from its website does about 70% of sales online, with the rest balanced between stores and wholesalers. Combining profitable stores with strong wholesale partnerships, Rothy’s has been able to grow sales and become more profitable at the same time.
“If we were just digitally native forever and ever, you really just can’t get there with the cost of acquisition, with the cost of, you know, just showing up these days,” said Quanbeck. “Honestly, it’s impossible.” 
Looking ahead, Rothy’s is planning to build on its wholesale partnerships and has made stores, along with international expansion, a central part of its strategy. Quanbeck said it’s hard to sell customers on everything that makes the brand appealing without them being able to see it in person.
“But when you can walk into the store and you can see it visually, you have a great customer experience where we can really tell the story,” said Quanbeck “It’s additive. And we know that the lifetime value of those customers that engage with us IRL is really high.” 
Quanbeck and Ming, who are alumni of now-bankrupt Charlotte Russe, know all too well the perils of overexpanding unprofitable store fleets, and said they’re taking a balanced approach to brick-and-mortar. The 26 stores Rothy’s has are small and all are profitable and the company plans to open another eight to ten doors this year, said Quanbeck.
Ming said Rothy’s won’t need hundreds of stores, but she’d like to see the fleet grow to 75, or perhaps even 100. 
“But we also want to make sure our wholesale partners is in the picture,” said Ming. “We’re going to be in [Nordstrom] in March … they have more stores than we will ever have, so they might be in markets that we might not decide to open a store but then we still have a partner for our customer to shop in.” 
When asked if Rothy’s will pursue an IPO or look to be acquired, Ming said the business isn’t there yet — and her team doesn’t need the distraction.
“We had a really great year but … I keep telling the team, one year doesn’t make it a trend,” said Ming. “So we’re really focused on this year. I think if we have another great year, you know, maybe a year or two, I think then we could really step back and say, ‘What next?'” More

Eli Lilly released higher doses of its weight loss drug Zepbound in single-dose vials at as much as half its usual monthly list price to reach more patients without insurance coverage for the blockbuster injection, such as those with Medicare.
The company is offering those vials through its direct-to-consumer website, LillyDirect, which started offering lower doses of the drug in vials in August.
The company is selling 7.5 milligram and 10 milligram vials of Zepbound for $499 per month when patients fill their first prescription, and any time they refill within 45 days of their previous delivery. Otherwise, those two doses will be priced at $599 and $699, respectively.

An injection pen of Zepbound, Eli Lilly’s weight loss drug, is displayed in New York City on Dec. 11, 2023.
Brendan McDermid | Reuters

Eli Lilly on Tuesday released higher doses of its weight loss drug Zepbound in single-dose vials at as much as half its usual monthly list price to reach more patients without insurance coverage for the blockbuster injection, such as those with Medicare.
It expands the company’s effort to boost the U.S. supply of Zepbound as demand soars, and to ensure eligible patients are safely accessing the real treatment instead of cheaper compounded versions. 

Eli Lilly is now offering higher doses of Zepbound in single-dose vials through a “self-pay pharmacy” section on its direct-to-consumer website, LillyDirect, which began offering lower doses of the drug in vials in August. Eligible patients diagnosed by a health-care provider with obesity alone or along with obstructive sleep apnea — Zepbound’s newly approved use — can pay for those vials themselves on the site. 
The company is selling 7.5 milligram and 10 milligram vials of Zepbound for $499 per month when patients fill their first prescription, and any time they refill within 45 days of their previous delivery. Otherwise, those two doses will cost $599 and $699, respectively. 
Also on Tuesday, Eli Lilly said it is lowering the price of both of the lower-dose vials of Zepbound by $50. The 2.5 milligram vial will now cost $349, and the 5 milligram vial will now be priced at $499, according to a release. 
Patients must use a syringe and needle to draw up the medicine from a single-dose vial and inject themselves. That differs from single-dose autoinjector pens, the currently available form of all Zepbound doses, which patients can directly inject under their skin with the click of a button.
Eli Lilly has said those vials will make more of the medication available because they are easier to manufacture than autoinjector pens, which cost roughly $1,000 per month before insurance. 

Patients typically start treatment with a 2.5 milligram dose for four weeks, then gradually increase the amount per week and later take so-called maintenance doses to keep the weight off. Eli Lilly does not currently offer the highest doses of Zepbound — 12.5 milligrams and 15 milligrams — in single-dose vials. 
The lower price points for each of the single-dose vials will benefit patients who are willing to pay for Zepbound themselves and are enrolled in Medicare or employer-sponsored health plans that do not cover obesity treatments. 
“We are, in the absence of full coverage for people suffering from obesity like other chronic diseases, we are just trying to fill that room and provide a more affordable solution, particularly for the Medicare population because none of our affordability solutions can be applied to them,” said Patrik Jonsson, president of Eli Lilly diabetes and obesity, in an interview.
Medicare beneficiaries are also not eligible for Eli Lilly’s savings card programs for Zepbound. Jonsson said “in an ideal world,” the Trump administration will enact a proposed rule from the Biden administration to have Medicare cover obesity medications. Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been skeptical of weight loss drugs.
Some people turned to compounding pharmacies that make even cheaper copies of Zepbound because the branded treatment has been too costly and was in shortage until recent months. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has since declared the Zepbound shortage over, however, which will soon bar many compounding pharmacies from making those versions of the drug. 
Jonsson said Eli Lilly is “not price competing with the compounders,” adding that the company does not believe “there is still a market for the mass compounding anymore.”
He said Tuesday’s announcement helps to ensure that patients “don’t rely on knockoffs that are not approved by the FDA for safety, efficacy and quality.” 

Progress of Zepbound vial launch

Eli Lilly declined to say how many patients are ordering vials from LillyDirect so far, but Jonsson said “the uptake has been really good.”
He said Zepbound prescriptions filled through LillyDirect’s self-pay pharmacy, which offers the single-dose vials, likely account for a low- to mid-single-digit percentage of the broader obesity market. 
Around 10% of new patients in the obesity market who start a treatment are using Zepbound through LillyDirect’s self-pay pharmacy, Jonsson added. He said launching vials of the 7.5 milligram and 10 milligram doses will add to that number. 
LillyDirect, which launched in January 2024, connects people with an independent telehealth company that can prescribe certain drugs if the patients are eligible. The site also offers a home-delivery option if the prescribed treatment is Eli Lilly’s, tapping a third-party online pharmacy to fill prescriptions and send them directly to patients. 
In December, direct-to-consumer health-care startup Ro said its platform will also offer single-dose vials of Zepbound through a new partnership with Eli Lilly.

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Home Depot narrowly beat Wall Street’s fourth-quarter earnings estimates on Tuesday.
The home improvement retailer posted positive comparable sales after eight straight quarters of declines.
High interest rates and home prices have challenged the businesses of Home Depot and its rival Lowe’s.

Home Depot on Tuesday topped Wall Street’s quarterly sales expectations, even as elevated interest rates and housing prices dampened consumer demand for large remodels and pricier projects.
For the full year ahead, the company said it expects total sales to grow by 2.8% and comparable sales, which takes out the impact of one-time factors like store openings and calendar differences, to grow by about 1%. Home Depot projected adjusted earnings per share will decline about 2% compared to the prior year.

In an interview with CNBC, Chief Financial Officer Richard McPhail said “housing is still frozen by mortgage rates.” Yet he said Home Depot saw broad-based growth, as sales increased in about half of its merchandise categories and 15 of its 19 U.S. geographic regions.
Home Depot anticipates consumers will stop putting off projects as they gradually get used to higher interest rates, rather than waiting for them to fall, McPhail said. 
“They tell us their lives are moving on,” he said. “Their families are growing. They’re moving for a new job. They’re upsizing their home. They want to upgrade their standard of living. Home improvement always persists, and so the question, I think, will be around the mindset of whether long-term rates have gotten to a new normal.”
Here’s what the company reported for the fiscal fourth quarter compared with Wall Street’s estimates, according to a survey of analysts by LSEG:

Earnings per share: $3.02 vs. $3.01 expected
Revenue: $39.70 billion vs. $39.16 billion expected

Home Depot shares slid about 2% in premarket trading. The company is expected to hold an earnings call at 9 a.m. ET.

In the three-month period that ended Feb. 2, Home Depot’s net income climbed to $3.0 billion, or $3.02 per share, from $2.80 billion, or $2.82 per share, in the year-ago period.  Revenue rose 14% from $34.79 billion in the year-ago period.
Comparable sales, a metric also known as same-store sales, increased 0.8% across the company. Those results ended eight consecutive quarters of falling comparable sales. They also exceeded analysts’ expectations of a decline of 1.7%, according to StreetAccount. Comparable sales in the U.S. increased 1.3% year over year.
Regions hit by Hurricanes Helene and Milton contributed about 0.6% to comparable sales, McPhail said.
Customers spent more and visited Home Depot’s stores and website more in the quarter compared with the year-ago period. Transactions rose to 400.4 million, up nearly 8% from the year-ago period. Average ticket was $89.11 in the quarter, up slightly from $88.87 in the prior-year quarter.
Home Depot has faced a more difficult backdrop for selling supplies for home improvement projects. Sales growth slowed in 2023, after consumers’ huge appetite for home renovations during the Covid pandemic returned to more typical patterns. Inflation and a shift back to spending on services like vacations and restaurants also dinged consumer demand for larger projects and pricier items.
Since roughly the middle of 2023, Home Depot’s leaders have pinned the company’s problems on a tougher housing market. McPhail told CNBC that the same challenge persisted in the fourth quarter, as consumers still showed reluctance to splurge on bigger projects, such as redoing a kitchen or installing new flooring.
Mortgage rates have remained high, despite interest rate cuts by the Federal Reserve. The median price of a home sold in January was $396,900, up 4.8% from the year before and the highest price ever for the month of January, according to the National Association of Realtors.
Tougher weather also hurt the company’s sales in January, and that’s carried into February in some parts of the country, McPhail said.
“Where weather is good, we continue to see engagement,” he said. “Where weather is tough, projects get put on the shelf.”
Even so, he said Home Depot has focused on ways it can move the needle, such as opening new stores and investing in its e-commerce business. 
Online sales rose 9% in the fourth quarter compared to the year-ago period, McPhail said, the strongest quarter of the year for Home Depot’s digital business. He chalked that up to the company’s investments in faster deliveries, particularly with getting appliances and power tools to customers.
McPhail said Home Depot opened 12 new stores in 2024, and it plans to open 13 new locations in the coming year. 
Home Depot has also looked to home professionals as one of its major sales drivers. It bought SRS Distribution, a Texas-based company that sells supplies to professionals in the roofing, pool and landscaping businesses, for $18.25 billion last year. It marked the largest acquisition in the company’s history.
Some pro-heavy categories, such as roofing, drywall and lumber, saw sales increases in the quarter because of Home Depot’s push to serve contractors and other home pros better, McPhail said.
Shares of Home Depot closed Monday at $382.42. As of Monday’s close, the company’s shares have fallen about 2% so far this year. That trails behind the S&P 500’s approximately 2% gains during the same period.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

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