Raphael Stevens

McDonald’s and Krispy Kreme are expanding their partnership to all of the burger chain’s U.S. locations by the end of 2026.
McDonald’s first started testing selling Krispy Kreme doughnuts in late 2022.
Krispy Kreme will more than double its distribution to reach McDonald’s restaurants nationwide.

In this photo, Krispy Kreme doughnuts are shown in Daly City, California, on May 12, 2022.
Justin Sullivan | Getty Images

McDonald’s is planning to sell Krispy Kreme doughnuts at its restaurants nationwide by the end of 2026, the chains announced Tuesday.
The rollout will start in the second half of this year, but it will take roughly two and a half years as Krispy Kreme more than doubles its distribution to satisfy the partnership. For the duration of the agreement, McDonald’s will be the exclusive fast-food partner for Krispy Kreme in the U.S.

Shares of Krispy Kreme jumped almost 20% in premarket trading Tuesday after the announcement.
The doughnut chain uses a “hub and spoke” model that lets it make and distribute its treats efficiently. Production hubs, which are either stores or doughnut factories, send off freshly made doughnuts every day to retail locations such as grocery stores and gas stations.
The partnership with McDonald’s is a major opportunity for Krispy Kreme to expand its reach. It delivers its doughnuts to 6,800 third-party stores, as of Dec. 31. McDonald’s has roughly 13,500 restaurants in the U.S. and plans to open 900 new locations nationwide by 2027.
“We think we can service about 6,000 restaurants with our existing infrastructure, mostly doughnut shops, which have excess capacity,” Krispy Kreme CEO Josh Charlesworth told CNBC.
Krispy Kreme has also been expanding its capacity so it can deliver fresh doughnuts to the roughly 7,500 McDonald’s restaurants that it can’t currently reach.

While McDonald’s is the primary reason the company is expanding its distribution so quickly, Charlesworth said Krispy Kreme will also be using the opportunity to land in grocery and convenience stores that prefer national suppliers.
“That means that the overall efficiency and productivity of our distribution network will significantly improve over time, not just because of all those local deliveries,” he said.
Additionally, Krispy Kreme’s doughnut shops typically make more of the sweet treat than the chain can sell. The extra demand from McDonald’s and other new customers means its production lines can churn out higher volume with few additional costs.
“Overall, therefore, it makes our system more profitable to grow the deliver fresh daily channel, and McDonald’s is an accelerator of that,” Charlesworth said.
The two chains’ relationship started about a year and a half ago, when McDonald’s began selling Krispy Kreme doughnuts at nine restaurants as a test. Months later, the pilot had expanded to roughly 160 restaurants across Louisville and Lexington, Kentucky. Those initial restaurants will keep selling the doughnuts during the national rollout.
Demand from McDonald’s customers during the tests exceeded both chains’ expectations, according to Charlesworth.
For McDonald’s, the addition of Krispy Kreme doughnuts helps bolster its bakery and breakfast offerings. The burger chain has been leaning into coffee, a common drink pairing for doughnuts, but trimming other bakery items such as cinnamon rolls from its menu.
McDonald’s customers will be able to order the original glazed, chocolate iced with sprinkles and chocolate iced cream-filled doughnuts, either individually or in packs of six. The restaurants will sell the doughnuts all day.
In the long term, Krispy Kreme now expects it can reach more than 100,000 points of access for its doughnuts globally, up from its prior outlook of 75,000 locations. The chain’s doughnuts can currently be found in more than 14,100 stores across 39 countries.
Shares of Krispy Kreme have fallen 20% over the past year, dragging its market value down to $2.11 billion. As hype over weight loss drugs such as Novo Nordisk’s Ozempic has soared, investors have worried about whether the treatments will cut into Krispy Kreme’s future sales.
Similar concerns have weighed on McDonald’s, although its stock has risen 2% in the past year as consumers trade down to its cheap food and drinks. The company has a market value of $201 billion.

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Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun said he plans to depart at the end of the year. The company will begin a search for his replacement.
Boeing’s airplane customers have grown increasingly frustrated with production defects and delivery delays.
The next CEO must handle the company’s safety crisis and quality problems as well as growing competition from Airbus and Chinese manufacturers.

An aerial photo shows Boeing 737 Max airplanes parked on the tarmac at the Boeing Factory in Renton, Washington, on March 21, 2019.
Lindsey Wasson | Reuters

Help wanted at Boeing.
CEO Dave Calhoun on Monday announced he is stepping down from the aerospace giant’s top post at year’s end as the company struggles with a safety and production quality crisis tied to its best-selling airplane, the 737 Max. Boeing said it will begin a search for Calhoun’s replacement.

Boeing also announced Monday it’s replacing board chair Larry Kellner and the chief executive of its all-important commercial airplanes unit, Stan Deal.
Calhoun told CNBC on Monday that the decision to retire was “100%” his own and that he would be involved in finding his successor. Four-year Boeing board member Steve Mollenkopf, ex-Qualcomm CEO who will take over as independent chairman of the board, will lead the search.
Calhoun’s departure isn’t much of a surprise given the struggles of the last few months.
Boeing’s customers had grown frustrated under Calhoun’s watch as they faced the fallout from recurring quality issues. He was appointed as CEO a little more than four years ago to get the manufacturing giant in order after two fatal Max crashes in 2018 and 2019.
One quality problem after another has surfaced spanning other programs like the 787 Dreamliner and the two 747s that will serve as Air Force One aircraft. With supply chain issues, quality lapses and more regulator scrutiny in the wake of a panel blowout from an Alaska Airlines 737 Max 9 in January, airplane deliveries are arriving late, and airline executives say the problems have forced them to change their growth and fleet plans.

Boeing’s stock is down more than 26% this year, and its CFO last week warned it’s burning more cash than it expected.
“We need someone to fix Boeing,” one major airline executive told CNBC after Boeing announced the management shake-up on Monday. “They unequivocally needed a change.”
Executives at Boeing’s customers told CNBC they want Boeing’s new leader to have manufacturing acumen, expertise in the highly regulated and technical world of aviation, and, perhaps most difficult of all, the ability to rally Boeing’s employees and ensure a culture of safety, consistency and innovation.
“This is going to be a challenging role to fill. You’re going to need someone with a huge amount of energy and commitment,” said John Plueger, CEO of Air Lease, a major buyer of Boeing planes that leases them to airlines. “You don’t want somebody for two years. You want someone at the head of the ship for as long as possible.”
The next boss at Boeing will have to contend not just with the company’s internal struggles but lost market share to rival Airbus. Meanwhile, China has been pushing ahead with building its own commercial aircraft.
“I want somebody who knows how to handle a big, long-cycled business like ours,” Calhoun told CNBC in an interview on Monday while announcing his departure. “It’s not just the production of the airplane. It’s the development of the next airplane. Our next lead is going to develop … the next airplane for the Boeing company.”
Financial analysts applauded the amount of time Boeing is giving itself to find Calhoun’s replacement.
“It provides leadership continuity, which a knee-jerk change would not, and CEO Dave Calhoun clearly is on board with the need to bolster safety,” said TD Cowen analyst Cai von Rumohr, in a note on Monday. Analysts said other board changes are possible, too, and Von Rumohr said the board could consider bringing Boeing’s headquarters back to Seattle, where most of its commercial aircraft production is.
While Boeing didn’t comment on its top candidates, here’s who some aviation experts say could potentially lead Boeing:

Larry Culp

Larry Culp, chairman and chief executive officer of General Electric Co., speaks during the Semafor World Economy Summit in Washington, DC, on Wednesday, April 12, 2023.
Al Drago | Bloomberg | Getty Images

General Electric CEO Larry Culp is “probably at the top of the list for a Boeing CEO,” said Richard Aboulafia, managing director at Aerodynamic Advisory, an aviation consulting firm.
Culp is set to head the aviation unit of GE that is about to spin off, a company that makes and overhauls engines that power both Boeing and rival Airbus planes. Culp has lead a turnaround for the conglomerate and oversaw the split of the company.
“The relationship with Boeing has never been stronger,” Culp told reporters earlier this month at an investor event. “Clearly, 2024 hasn’t played out the way they would have liked let alone the way we would have liked. We’re trying to support them in every possible way.”
But Culp is focusing on GE’s aerospace unit as a standalone company, a GE spokesperson said in response to questions about a potential future for him at Boeing.

Pat Shanahan

Pat Shanahan, then-senior vice president of Airplane Programs for Boeing Commercial Airplanes, speaks during the grand opening of the new Boeing 737 Delivery Center on October 19, 2015 in Seattle, Washington.
Stephen Brashear | Getty Images

Pat Shanahan, the interim CEO of Spirit AeroSystems, is another possibility, Aboulafia said.
A three-decade Boeing veteran, Shanahan was appointed last October to head the Boeing supplier, which makes fuselages for the company’s 737 Max and other parts, as Spirit dealt with its own quality problems that have spilled over to Boeing.
Boeing is in talks to buy Spirit, bringing the fuselage manufacturer back in house after spinning it off almost two decades ago. A reunion could naturally slot Shanahan in as chief executive of the merged company.
“Mr. Shanahan remains solely focused on driving a zero-defects culture across all aspects of Spirit AeroSystems,” Spirit spokesman Joe Buccino told CNBC Monday.

David Gitlin

David Gitlin, chief executive officer of Carrier Global Corp., during a Bloomberg Television interview on day three of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, on Wednesday, May 25, 2022. 
Jason Alden | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Aboulafia also mentioned Carrier CEO and chairman David Gitlin, who serves on Boeing’s board.
Gitlin has experience in aviation, previously working as president and chief operating officer at Collins Aerospace. Aviation experts have said said someone with a strong background in manufacturing and operations would be needed.

Stephanie Pope

Boeing’s Stephanie Pope gives a press conference at the Paris Le Bourget Airport, on June 20, 2023.
Geoffroy Van Der Hasselt | AFP | Getty Images

Stephanie Pope, who was recently promoted to chief operating officer after serving as head of Boeing’s Global Services unit, is the most obvious internal option to succeed Calhoun. (Former Boeing CFO Greg Smith retired from the company in 2021. He was also seen as a possible successor.)
But Pope will take over from Stan Deal, who is retiring from his post as head of Boeing’s commercial airplane division, the company said Monday. And one aviation executive questioned why Boeing wouldn’t have announced her appointment on Monday if she were the choice.
The “management changes are geared to institutionalize a priority on safety throughout the company by bringing in new blood,” TD Cowen’s von Rumohr wrote.
— CNBC’s Phil LeBeau contributed to this report. More

Viking Therapeutics shares jumped after the company said its experimental weight loss pill showed positive results in a small study and will enter the next stage of development later this year.
The study results add to the excitement around the drugmaker’s prospects in the budding weight loss drug market.
The once-a-day tablet is an oral version of its experimental weight loss injection, which showed encouraging results in a mid-stage trial last month. 

Alexey Krukovsky | Istock | Getty Images

Viking Therapeutics shares jumped more than 10% in premarket trading Tuesday after the company said its experimental weight loss pill showed positive results in a small study and will enter the next stage of development later this year.
The study results add to the excitement around the drugmaker’s prospects in the budding weight loss drug market.

Viking is one of several small biotech companies hoping to compete with Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly in the space, which analysts say could grow into a $100 billion market by the end of the decade. Some analysts view Viking as a particularly strong potential player, or takeover target for a larger company. 
Based on Tuesday’s results, Viking plans to start a phase two trial on its weight loss pill later this year. The once-a-day tablet is an oral version of the company’s experimental weight loss injection, which showed encouraging results in a mid-stage trial last month. 
The phase one trial for the pill followed more than 40 patients with obesity for around a month. Those people took different dose sizes of the drug or received a placebo.
Viking said patients who received the pill once a day lost up to 5.3% of their weight on average, or up to 3.3% more than those who took a placebo, at 28 days. 
Up to 57% of patients who received Viking’s pill lost at least 5% of their body weight. Meanwhile, no people who took the placebo shed that much weight, the company said. 

Notably, those who received higher doses of the experimental pill appeared to maintain or add to their weight loss at 34 days in the study, six days after their last dose of the drug. Weight loss for those patients ranged up to 3.6% higher than those who received a placebo. 
Viking CEO Brian Lian said during a conference call on Tuesday that it’s unclear “how durable” the weight loss is. Still, he noted that the sustained weight loss seen in the trial may be encouraging to patients who might miss a dose because they are traveling or don’t have access to their medication. 
“I think that’s an encouraging sign that you don’t necessarily have to take it every day,” he said.
In a release, Viking said it believes that treating patients beyond 28 days may provide “further reductions in body weight.” 
The company also said the trial suggested the pill is safe and tolerable to take. 
The majority of side effects that patients experienced after starting the oral drug were mild in severity. 
The majority of gastrointestinal events that patients experienced were mild. Gastrointestinal side effects, such as nausea and vomiting, are commonly seen across all weight loss and diabetes treatments.
But people who received Viking’s pill did not report vomiting. Patients who took the placebo also reported diarrhea more frequently than those treated with the oral drug, the company said.
Analysts have compared Viking’s weight loss injection to Eli Lilly’s injectable drug Zepbound because both drugs imitate two naturally produced gut hormones called GLP-1 and GIP.
GLP-1 helps reduce food intake and appetite. GIP, which also suppresses appetite, may also improve how the body breaks down sugar and fat.
Meanwhile, Novo Nordisk’s weight loss injection Wegovy only targets GLP-1. More

Luxury vacation home co-ownership platform Pacaso is attempting to appeal to the masses, as it grows its business during a pricey and competitive phase of the housing market.
The company, which launched in 2020 with multimillion-dollar homes listed for co-ownership, is now introducing thousands more listings with share prices starting as low as $200,000.
Pacaso lists shares of vacation homes, generally an eighth but sometimes larger shares, and then facilitates the purchase, including financing if necessary.

Luxury vacation home co-ownership platform Pacaso is attempting to appeal to the masses, as it grows its business during a pricey and competitive phase of the housing market.
The company, which launched in 2020 with multimillion-dollar homes listed for co-ownership, is now introducing thousands more listings with share prices starting as low as $200,000. Previously, shares had been closer to half a million dollars, or higher.

Pacaso lists shares of vacation homes, generally an eighth but sometimes larger shares, and then facilitates the purchase, including financing if necessary. It also furnishes and manages the home, divvying up the owners’ time in the home through an app. It takes fees for both the purchase and the management.
“You can afford a lot more home when you buy one eighth or one quarter of it when compared to purchasing the whole thing, and we’re living in an environment right now where housing affordability is a problem,” said Austin Allison, co-founder and CEO of Pacaso. “Home prices are high, interest rates are high, so it’s really difficult for people to afford the home of their dreams.”
Unlike timeshares in resorts, where consumers buy the time, not the property, Pacaso owners can benefit from the home’s value, which usually goes up over time.

An example of Pacaso’s new lower-priced vacation home listings.

“Our owners who have resold have benefited from about 10% appreciation above and beyond what they paid for the underlying home previously. So the Pacaso shares generally track with the underlying real estate,” said Allison.
Wealthier buyers have been scooping up ski homes in Colorado and beach homes in Hawaii, paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for their shares. Pacaso takes a hefty fee — between 10% and 15% of the value of the home on the front end — associated with aggregating the group of owners, facilitating the transaction, and setting up the co-ownership structure.

Pacaso reached more than $1 billion in revenue last year, the company said.
The company has, however, seen some backlash from communities that liken it to an Airbnb on steroids. There is even a website dedicated to fighting the company, called “Stop Pacaso Now.”
Residents of Sonoma, California, passed an ordinance prohibiting Pacaso from operating in that city. In St. Helena, California, which prohibits timeshares, Pacaso reached a settlement that protects its four homes already there, but the company is not allowed to expand to other properties.
“We operate in more than 40 markets nationwide and in only a handful are we misunderstood,” argued Allison. “Our approach is to work with policymakers and educate them on the facts and benefits. Our belief is that over time this will prevail. It hasn’t worked in Sonoma yet and a small handful of communities who have passed ordinances to resist the model.”
Pacaso is also adding a new suite of services to help primary homebuyers access the home-sharing model. Roughly one-fifth of primary homebuyers last year purchased with either a friend or relative, according to real estate site Zillow.
“People are now using co-ownership as a way to be able to afford houses that they otherwise wouldn’t be able to afford. So, it’s not just happening in the vacation home space,” said Allison.

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Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun will step down at the end of 2024 in part of a broad management shakeup for the embattled aerospace giant.
Chairman of the board Larry Kellner is also resigning and will leave the board at Boeing’s annual meeting in May.
Stan Deal, president and CEO of Boeing Commercial Airplanes, is leaving the company effective immediately.

Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun speaks to reporters as he departs from a meeting at the office of Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) on Capitol Hill January 24, 2024 in Washington, DC. 
Anna Moneymaker | Getty Images

Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun will step down at the end of 2024 in part of a broad management shakeup for the embattled aerospace giant.
Chairman of the board Larry Kellner is also resigning and will leave the board at Boeing’s annual meeting in May. He has been replaced as chair by Steve Mollenkopf, who has been a Boeing director since 2020.

And Stan Deal, president and CEO of Boeing Commercial Airplanes, is leaving the company effective immediately. Moving into his job is Stephanie Pope, who recently became Boeing’s Chief Operating Officer after previously running Boeing Global Services.
The departures come as airlines and regulators have been increasing calls for major changes at the company after a host of quality and manufacturing flaws on Boeing planes. Scrutiny intensified after a Jan. 5 accident, when a door plug blew out of a nearly new Boeing 737 Max 9, minutes into an Alaska Airlines flight.
“As you all know, the Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 accident was a watershed moment for Boeing,” Calhoun wrote to employees on Monday. “We must continue to respond to this accident with humility and complete transparency. We also must inculcate a total commitment to safety and quality at every level of our company.
“The eyes of the world are on us, and I know we will come through this moment a better company, building on all the learnings we accumulated as we worked together to rebuild Boeing over the last number of years,” he wrote.
Last week, airline CEOs started scheduling meetings with Boeing directors to voice their displeasure at the lack of manufacturing quality controls and lower than expected production of 737 Max planes. The meetings were to include Kellner and one or more other board members.

Calhoun for months has promised investors, airline customers and the general public that Boeing will get its myriad quality struggles under control.
Calhoun was appointed to the top job in late 2019 and took the helm at Boeing in early 2020 after the company ousted its previous chief executive, Dennis Muilenburg, for his handling of the aftermath of two deadly 737 Max crashes.
Boeing’s stock was up more than 3% in premarket trading on Monday after Calhoun’s announcement.
This is breaking news. Check back for updates. More

Nelson Peltz’s Trian Management withheld its votes from Walt Disney CEO Bob Iger when voting its shares in the bitter proxy battle the asset management firm is waging against the entertainment giant.
Withholding its votes from Iger is hardly a supportive move of his leadership, and it raises questions about how toxic of an environment the boardroom would be if Peltz is elected to the Disney board next month.
The Disney board meeting will be held on April 3, and Trian could change its vote between now and then.

Nelson Peltz, founder and chief executive officer of Trian Fund Management, during the Future Investment Initiative (FII) Institute Priority Summit in Miami, Florida, US, on Thursday, March 30, 2023.
Marco Bello | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Nelson Peltz’s Trian Management withheld its votes from Walt Disney CEO Bob Iger when voting its shares in the bitter proxy battle the asset management firm is waging against the entertainment giant, according to sources who monitor the situation.
The move is hardly shocking, given the acrimonious nature of the battle.

However, it is counter to Trian’s proxy recommendations, and it doesn’t mesh with the public statements Peltz has made about wanting to work together with management if he is elected to the Disney board.
In recent weeks, Disney has stepped up its attacks on Trian and Peltz. “Correcting Trian’s Fact With Fiction” was the headline of a recent investor presentation from Disney, over a picture of Pinocchio with a growing nose.
“Disney is stupid because I’m not trying to fire Bob Iger, I want to help him,” Peltz recently told The Financial Times. “We don’t fire CEOs.”
Withholding its votes from Iger, however, is hardly a supportive move of his leadership, and it raises questions about how toxic of an environment the boardroom would be if Peltz is elected to the Disney board next month.
Disney has nominated a slate of twelve directors, including Iger. Trian is officially recommending shareholders vote for Peltz and former Disney Chief Financial Officer Jay Rasulo and to withhold votes for Disney nominees Maria Elena Lagomasino and Michael Froman, who are current board members.

Trian owns a relatively small position in Disney, representing about 1.5% of the outstanding shares when combined with the ownership position of former Marvel Entertainment Chairman and CEO Ike Perlmutter, who has sided with Peltz in the proxy battle. Trian did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
The Disney board meeting will be held on April 3 and Trian could change its vote between now and then. More