Business

Incorporated in 2016, Sphere started out as a real-time question and answer app that involved micropayments before it pivoted to become more of a group chat app.
It raised around $30 million over three funding rounds from investors including Index Ventures, Airbnb co-founder Brian Chesky, Tinder co-founder Sean Rad and Sequoia venture capitalist Mike Moritz.
“The Sphere team’s expertise and leadership’s passion for finding ways to help people connect will help accelerate our Communities, DM, and Creators roadmaps,” said Twitter’s vice president of engineering, Nick Caldwell.

Jack Dorsey creator, co-founder, and Chairman of Twitter and co-founder & CEO of Square arrives on stage at the Bitcoin 2021 Convention, a crypto-currency conference held at the Mana Convention Center in Wynwood on June 04, 2021 in Miami, Florida.
Joe Raedle | Getty Images

LONDON — Twitter announced that it’s acquired a chat app called Sphere, which was co-founded by British serial entrepreneur Nick D’Aloisio.
Incorporated in 2016, Sphere started out as a real-time question and answer app that involved micropayments before it pivoted to become more of a group chat app.

Between 2017 and 2019, it raised around $30 million from investors including Index Ventures, Airbnb co-founder Brian Chesky, Tinder co-founder Sean Rad and Sequoia venture capitalist Mike Moritz.
“It’s really important and necessary in order to achieve impact to partner with the right companies at the right time that have similar visions and ideas,” D’Aloisio told CNBC on a call.
Roughly 500,000 people used the first version of the app, D’Aloisio said, but he declined to comment on the latest user numbers.

The terms of the deal, which was announced Wednesday and will see approximately 20 Sphere employees join Twitter, have not been disclosed. But D’Aloisio claimed “everyone is happy.”
Sphere said in a blogpost that it will be “winding down” its standalone product in November as a result of the acquisition. “Obviously Sphere was our own thing and that’s no longer relevant to what Twitter is trying to achieve,” D’Aloisio said.

The entrepreneur added that he and his team will work alongside Twitter employees to try to take the “vision” they had at Sphere and “integrate that into various parts” of Twitter.  

Nick Caldwell, vice president of engineering at Twitter, announced the acquisition of Sphere via his company’s social network.
“The Sphere team’s expertise and leadership’s passion for finding ways to help people connect will help accelerate our Communities, DM, and Creators roadmaps,” he said.
D’Aloisio sold his first start-up, a mobile news app called Summly, to Yahoo for $30 million in 2013 when he was 17 years old. He spent two and a half years as a product manager at Yahoo before becoming an “entrepreneur in residence” at Airbnb, where he worked with Chesky.
He started Sphere while studying computer science and philosophy at the University of Oxford, which is where he met his co-founder, Tomas Halgas.
Over the years, Twitter has acquired several other U.K. start-ups with the best-known one being TweetDeck. It has also bought artificial intelligence firms Magic Pony Technology, Fabula.ai and Aiden.ai.

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5 Things to Know

Here are the most important news, trends and analysis that investors need to start their trading day:

1. Dow set to drop after hitting an intraday record

Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York City, U.S., October 20, 2021.
Brendan McDermid | Reuters

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The S&P 500’s rose for the sixth straight session, ending fractionally shy of its Sept. 2 record close. The Nasdaq fell modestly Wednesday. The tech-heavy index was more than 1.6% away from its Sept. 7 record close. Bitcoin took a breather Wednesday, one day after hitting an all-time high near $67,000. The 10-year Treasury yield rose above 1.66% after Thursday’s look at weekly initial jobless claims showed a drop to 290,000. That’s fewer than expected and another Covid-era low.

2. Southwest, American report adjusted losses but better revenues

A Southwest Airlines Co. Boeing 737 passenger jet arrives at Midway International Airport (MDW) in Chicago, Illinois, U.S., on Monday, Oct. 11, 2021.
Luke Sharrett | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Southwest Airlines on Thursday reported a third-quarter profit thanks to a boost from federal payroll aid. However, excluding one-time items, the carrier posted a per-share loss of 23 cents. Revenue was also better than analysts had expected. Southwest earlier this month canceled more than 2,000 flights, blaming the issues on bad weather in Florida and air traffic control issues compounded by staffing shortages. The airline said the cancellations and customer refunds cost $75 million. Shares of Southwest — up just 6% this year — rose slightly in the premarket.

Pilots talk as they look at the tail of an American Airlines aircraft at Dallas-Ft Worth International Airport.
Mike Stone | Reuters

American Airlines on Thursday reported a profit for the third quarter thanks to federal payroll support. Excluding one-time items, American posted a loss of 99 cents per share. Revenue for the quarter was also better than expectations. Shares of American — up nearly 24% in 2021 — gained 1% in the premarket.

3. Tesla beat on earnings, revenue; delivered lots more cars

A Tesla car charges at a Tesla Supercharger station on April 26, 2021 in Corte Madera, California.
Justin Sullivan | Getty Images

Shares of Tesla — up more than 20% in 2021 and up 100% over the past 12 months — slipped 1% in Thursday’s premarket, the morning after the electric automaker reported third-quarter earnings and revenue that best estimates. Tesla delivered about 73% more vehicles than it had in the same quarter a year ago. Despite citing a variety of challenges, including semiconductor shortages and rolling blackouts, Tesla reiterated prior guidance that it expects to “achieve 50% average annual growth in vehicle deliveries” over a multiyear horizon.

4. WeWork to go public in a SPAC deal at much lower valuation

General view of WeWork Weihai Road flagship is seen on April 12, 2018 in Shanghai, China. World’s leading co-working space company WeWork will acquire China-based rival naked Hub for 400 million U.S. dollars. (Photo by Jackal Pan/Visual China Group via Getty Images)
VCG | Getty Images

WeWork is set to start trading as a public company Thursday, two years after its much-anticipated planned IPO imploded due to investor concerns over its business model and founder Adam Neumann’s management style. After Neumann was ousted, Japan’s SoftBank, already a major investor, bailed out the teetering WeWork. In March, the office-sharing company agreed to merge and go public in a deal with special purpose acquisition company BowX Acquisition. It values WeWork at $9 billion, a far cry from its steep valuation in 2019 of $47 billion.

5. Trump announces social media platform launch plan, SPAC deal

Homepage and app announcement of “Truth Social”. Former US President Donald Trump wants to start an alternative social network. Apart from the announcement, however, there is not much to see yet.
Christoph Dernbach | picture alliance | Getty Images

Former President Donald Trump announced Wednesday he will be launching his own media network, including a social media platform. The app appears to be the first project of the Trump Media and Technology Group, which will go public through a SPAC merger with Digital World Acquisition. That’s according to an announcement tweeted out by spokeswoman Liz Harrington. Trump, while president, was notoriously banned by major social media giants earlier this year, following his posts related to the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol.
— Reuters contributed to this report. Follow all the market action like a pro on CNBC Pro. Get the latest on the pandemic with CNBC’s coronavirus coverage. More

“WE ARE BUILDING the energy company of the future…like Tesla did,” declares Seifi Ghasemi, chairman of Air Products. Comparing yourself to the electric-car darling may seem Napoleonic for a purveyor of industrial gases. But Mr Ghasemi, who has thought about one gas in particular, hydrogen, for 30 years, insists the comparison is apt.He is not alone. Hydrogen is expected to play a big role in greening hard-to-decarbonise sectors such as cement and steel, as well as in long-term energy storage. Today’s smallish and, because almost all the stuff is made from fossil fuels in a carbon-intensive way, dirtyish hydrogen business is forecast to grow into a much cleaner trillion-dollar industry in a few decades. Governments are spending tens of billions of dollars a year to kickstart a clean-hydrogen revolution. A posse of hydrogen-curious firms are keen for a piece of the action.Maheep Mandloi of Credit Suisse, a bank, sees the natural-gas industry as a template for the development of hydrogen, which is already used in refining. The rise of liquefied natural gas took the sort of capital and expertise that only the integrated global energy giants had. Small wonder big oil is taking an interest. In September Chevron, an American oil titan, unveiled a $10bn strategy for “new energy” that bets big on low-carbon hydrogen.The other supermajors—BP, ExxonMobil, Royal Dutch Shell and TotalEnergies—have also announced investments in hydrogen clusters and technologies. Ahmad al-Khowaiter, chief technology officer of Saudi Aramco, says that the state-controlled oil colossus intends to be the world leader in fossil-derived low-carbon hydrogen in the 2030s. The kingdom’s hope is also to maintain its energy superpowerdom as oil’s prospects fade by exporting hydrogen made using its world-class solar and wind resources.Aaron Denman of Bain, a consultancy, calls such bets a quest for “growth engine number two” in case the firms’ core fossil-fuel business falters. The same rationale may underlie the hydrogen efforts of other sectors with a spotty environmental record. On October 11th Andrew Forrest, a mining tycoon and Australia’s richest man, who controls Fortescue Metals Group, unveiled plans to build the world’s biggest factory for electrolyser machines, needed to produce green hydrogen from water.Not all H2 prospectors come from grubby industries trying to burnish their image in an ever more climate-conscious world. Given the much wider range of potential applications for hydrogen, various other sectors could strike gaseous gold. Mr Ghasemi, for one, is confident that his company will beat the commodities giants, which he sees as complacent. “They think hydrocarbons are here for ever and don’t think anybody can disrupt them.”Air Products is trying to prove them wrong. It is developing several hydrogen megaprojects around the world, including a $5bn initiative to produce renewable hydrogen in Saudi Arabia for export. James West of Evercore, an investment bank, reckons industrial-gas firms could become the first supermajors of the hydrogen era. Big oil won’t take that lying down. ■For more expert analysis of the biggest stories in economics, business and markets, sign up to Money Talks, our weekly newsletter.This article appeared in the Business section of the print edition under the headline “The hydrogen rush” More

LIU ZHONGTIAN has been called Asia’s “aluminium king”. His firm, Zhongwang Group, is one of the world’s largest makers of aluminium products. At one point he was the richest man in China’s north-eastern rust belt, where the company is based. In America, Mr Liu has a different reputation. Firms controlled by the 57-year-old were convicted in late August of orchestrating one of the most brazen tariff-avoidance schemes in history. Now his empire appears to be coming undone, not at the hands of American prosecutors but owing to domestic economic woes.Zhongwang’s long, hollow metal rods are a key component in everything from cars to homes and bridges. They have undergirded China’s building and manufacturing boom. Literally at times: Zhongwang grabbed big contracts with the construction groups behind the 2008 Beijing Olympics and the World Expo in Shanghai in 2010. An initial public offering in Hong Kong in 2009 made Mr Liu one of China’s richest industrialists.Mr Liu’s fortunes turned in 2019. He was indicted by America’s Department of Justice (DoJ) for running a scheme whereby shell companies shipped in products subject to import duties disguised as crudely welded aluminium pallets. Prosecutors say that Mr Liu arranged for these pallets, 2.2m of which his firm had stockpiled in its American warehouses, to be turned into other things at melting facilities in America. The conviction in August found American firms he controls guilty of trying to evade $1.8bn in tariffs. The sentence, expected in December, may allow the DoJ to go after Zhongwang’s American assets. Days after the ruling Zhongwang froze the trading of its shares in Hong Kong, ostensibly pending the delayed release of results for the first half of 2021.All debilitating, to be sure. But probably not fatal. The firm remains the world’s second-biggest aluminium-extruder with a vast home market. Disclosure delays are common in Hong Kong and may be unrelated to the DoJ case. And China’s government, itself in a tussle with America over trade and geopolitics, might even help shield Zhongwang from the DoJ’s lawmen.Then, on October 15th, the firm divulged that two important subsidiaries in China were facing severe difficulties “due to major losses”. Analysts reckon that without a bailout Mr Liu’s group could collapse. The company has offered little explanation. But like many Chinese firms it has been paralysed by power cuts, which could cause the country’s industry to run at 5-10% below its usual capacity until the end of the year. In order to prevent blackouts, local governments are permitting some energy-intensive manufacturers to operate only ten days a month, says Johnson Wan of Jefferies, an investment bank.Aluminium extrusion requires lots of energy, so power cuts and surging electricity costs have hit Zhongwang hard. Having sold its smelter business in 2020 the firm faces rocketing prices for aluminium, as other smelters raise prices to help offset their own rising bills amid shortages of the metal. As Zhongwang’s home province of Liaoning braces for a bitter-cold winter, manufacturers are in for more disruptions as coal is burned to heat homes rather than produce industrial electricity. For Mr Liu, escaping the clutches of American law must feel like cold comfort. ■For more expert analysis of the biggest stories in economics, business and markets, sign up to Money Talks, our weekly newsletter.This article appeared in the Business section of the print edition under the headline “Awaiting electrocution” More

“WE ARE A community company committed to maximum global impact. Our mission is to elevate the world’s consciousness.” The opening lines of WeWork’s prospectus for its planned initial public offering in 2019 seem to confirm the worst about mission statements. People sit in a room earnestly discussing the differences between their purpose, their vision and their mission. There are whiteboards and bottles of kombucha. Nonsense ensues.But even guff has meaning. For investors in young companies in particular, the mission statement sends useful signals. It articulates what a firm does and gives clues to where its priorities lie. Such information matters all the more when founders exercise outsized voting power. The WeWork prospectus helped elevate the consciousness of investors that the property company had lost its marbles. WeWork ended up scrapping both its listing and its boss.To see why mission statements deserve more than an eye-roll, look first at entities that lack them. Of the 58 prospectuses filed with America’s Securities and Exchange Commission in the first two weeks of this month, more than a third were for special purpose acquisition companies. SPACs are a type of shell company whose goal is to raise money for an unspecified future deal. They are purposelessness incarnate.“We have not identified any potential business combination target, and we have not, nor has anyone on our behalf, initiated any substantive discussions, directly or indirectly, with any potential business combination target,” runs a typical SPAC filing blurb. Investors have been warned: their money could end up pretty much anywhere.Mission statements contain multitudes in comparison. They can tell you which stakeholders matter most to a firm. A tiny handful of the non-SPACs to have filed this month say their objective is shareholder returns (call it a Milton statement). Most couch their goals in terms of meeting customer needs.Lulu’s Fashion Lounge says that its vision is to be the most beloved women’s brand for affordable luxury fashion. AirSculpt Technologies, a “body-contouring” firm, aims to produce the best results for its patients. This may be the age of purpose, but giving people what they want, whether they are looking for clothes or a “Brazilian butt-lift procedure”, is mission enough for many entrepreneurs.The mission statement can also tell investors something about how technologically sophisticated a company is. Among this month’s filers there is a marked lack of flannel from GlobalFoundaries, a big semiconductor firm. But for simpler products and services, it is not enough to describe what an enterprise does. “We aim to help the customers in our communities live a good life by inspiring moments that create lasting memories,” burbles Solo Brands, whose biggest seller is a stainless-steel fire pit.Similarly, you may have been under the impression that Krispy Kreme, which returned to public markets earlier in the summer, sells doughnuts. Wrong. “As an affordable indulgence enjoyed across cultures, races, and income levels, we believe that Krispy Kreme has the potential to deliver joyful experiences across the world.” That’s not icing on your face, it’s euphoria.A mission statement also illuminates crispness of thinking. Of the firms to have filed this month, NerdWallet, a firm that provides reviews and comparisons of financial products, deserves most plaudits. “Our mission is to provide clarity for all of life’s financial decisions,” runs the prospectus. That is ambitious without being absurd, informative without being constraining.Others are woollier. The prospectus for Rivian, an electric-vehicle manufacturer, says that it wants “to keep the world adventurous forever”. Prospective investors are told that “the part of us that seeks to explore the world is also the secret to making sure it remains a world worth exploring.” Yet the company’s near-term revenues depend on a big order from Amazon for its electric delivery van. The part of us that plans never to leave the house again may be the secret to Rivian thriving.As for WeWork, it is back and chastened. Its public debut, via a merger with a SPAC called BowX, was due on October 21st. In a proxy statement issued by BowX in September, WeWork says it was founded in 2010 with a vision “to create environments where people and companies come together and do their best work”. No mission creep this time.For more expert analysis of the biggest stories in economics, business and markets, sign up to Money Talks, our weekly newsletter.This article appeared in the Business section of the print edition under the headline “Why mission statements matter” More

HUAWEI, A CHINESE firm emblematic of the breakdown in Sino-American relations, makes for a perfect business-school case study. Less than two years ago the company, based in the southern boom town of Shenzhen, had not only surpassed Nokia and Ericsson, its Nordic rivals, to become the world’s leading supplier of telecoms infrastructure. It had also overtaken Samsung to become the biggest seller of mobile phones. Like all good case studies, it has vivid characters, from its founder, Ren Zhengfei, a former army officer and engineer, to his daughter, Meng Wanzhou, just freed from a starring role in the first prisoner-exchange drama of the tech cold war. It is a groundbreaking firm. Like Japan’s Sony in the 1980s, it helped change the perception of its home country from one of cheap knock-offs to eye-catching innovation. And its very future may be in peril. With the long arm of American law enforcement around its neck, it is being throttled by a lack access to cutting-edge technology, such as 5G smartphone chips.The question is what Huawei ought to do next. Should it tough out American sanctions and hope, as Victor Zhang, its global vice-president, puts it, that its research and development (R&D) budget, a whopping $21.8bn last year, can “fertilise” a new array of business activities that will redefine its future? Or should it instead quietly break itself up, dispersing a 105,000-strong army of engineers to seed a flurry of new ventures? In short, should it remain a tall poppy or let a hundred smaller flowers bloom?It is a fairly safe bet that Huawei will take the first option. After all, it is an employee-owned company with a fierce self-belief. It has a never-say-die business culture; its salespeople are renowned for drinking anyone under the table in pursuit of a deal. It could become a national champion for President Xi Jinping’s mission to make the country more self-reliant in technology. And the government in Beijing would hate the idea of it wilting under pressure from Uncle Sam.The tough-it-out approach is strewn with difficulties, though. Since America’s government branded Huawei’s 5G gear a national-security threat in 2019, and a year later curtailed the firm’s access to chips made with American equipment, its smartphone business, which in 2020 generated more than half of revenues, has cratered. Sales have tumbled from more than 60m units in the last three months of 2019 to about 15m units in the third quarter of 2021, according to Dan Wang of Gavekal Dragenomics, a research firm. In China its latest phones lack 5G connectivity.Although Huawei remains the world’s number-one supplier of telecoms gear, its sales and market share are shrinking as America’s allies bar it from their 5G networks and other customers fret about its long-term viability. Huawei is putting on a brave face, nonetheless. It is in its “second startup phase”, in Mr Zhang’s words. Each year it pours at least a tenth of its revenues into R&D (in 2020 the share reached almost 16%). This, Mr Zhang adds, will help build up new core ventures. It is expanding in areas from making cars smarter and helping coal mines become semi-autonomous to infrastructure for cloud-computing and regulating power supply in energy markets. None of these opportunities depends on cutting-edge semiconductors.Promoting that startup culture in-house may work. But the new endeavours do not generate anything like the revenues of Huawei’s smartphone and networks businesses. One analyst describes the coal venture as “a dying company meets a dying industry”. A better, bolder way forward would be to embrace the Schumpetarian creed of “creative destruction”: let the old firm die so that new ones could emerge, dispersing capital, ideas and talent.Silicon Valley provides a striking precedent. In 1957 the so-called “traitorous eight” walked out of Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory to found Fairchild Semiconductor. The “Fairchildren” became the backbone of the area’s high-tech, risk-taking culture, establishing Intel, a chip giant, and scores of other firms, including venture-capital veterans like Kleiner Perkins. Huawei’s engineers at HiSilicon, its chip-design unit, could do something similar. That could advance China’s growing ambitions in the chip industry, illustrated by the unveiling on October 19th by Alibaba, a tech giant, of a new, custom-built, state-of-the-art server chip.Huawei has no plans for a HiSilicon spin-off, Mr Zhang says. The firm’s tactical retreat in the smartphone business illustrates what it may and may not be able to do. Last year it sold Honor, a niche smartphone brand, to give it the freedom to evade American export controls. Honor’s new phones now have access to American chips and the software and services of Google, an American tech giant, that Huawei still does not. Despite the backing of Shenzhen’s government, which invites questions about just how entrepreneurial Honor will be, the industry’s reaction to the divestiture has been “really positive” both inside and outside China, reports Ben Stanton of Canalys, a telecoms-research firm. Moreover, he reckons, Huawei’s best smartphone engineers have moved to Honor, keeping alive the older firm’s engineering and sales culture.Tall-poppy syndromeUnsurprisingly, Honor has also attracted the attention of America’s foreign-policy hawks, including Marco Rubio, a Republican senator who on October 14th called it an “arm of the Chinese Communist Party” and a foreign-policy threat, and urged President Joe Biden’s administration to blacklist it. This is a reminder of how hard it will be for any firm in Huawei’s shadow to shake off such accusations, whether true or not. Better for its engineers to roam free instead. They are likely to be more creative within small groups than inside a corporation—all the more so if what Mr Wang calls “China’s Sputnik moment” engenders a burst of domestic innovation. Huawei’s liberated brain-boxes may then also teach America a lesson in how counterproductive knee-jerk technonationalism can be. ■For more expert analysis of the biggest stories in economics, business and markets, sign up to Money Talks, our weekly newsletter.This article appeared in the Business section of the print edition under the headline “Let a hundred flowers bloom” More

Former Tesla president Jon McNeill told CNBC on Thursday he wouldn’t bet against the company.
Currently not a Tesla investor, McNeill said the stock is “priced to perfection” right now,
McNeill, now a venture capitalist, predicts the EV industry is at the beginning of what will be a “multi-decade growth story.”

The former president of electric vehicle giant Tesla said Thursday he would not bet against the company, noting that it’s emerging as a “formidable competitor” to automakers around the world after the company beat third-quarter earnings expectations.
Currently not a Tesla investor, Jon McNeill told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” the stock is “priced to perfection” right now, but he said he still drives Teslas. McNeill, also a former Lyft COO, highlighted strong gross margins at the company.

“The gross margins are approaching 30%, just to put that in perspective, that is three times the gross margin level at GM, and about six times the gross margin level of Ford,” McNeill said.
Despite supply chain issues, Tesla saw sales rise to record breaking numbers at the company, even as other automakers struggle to keep up with their own demand.
“We’re up more than 70% year-over-year versus GM and Ford, which are seeing declines of around 30% year-over-year,” McNeill said, listing the multiple reasons he would not bet against Tesla. “They’re sitting now on $16 billion cash.”
Drivers who order vehicles from Tesla often have to wait months before receiving the product, speaking to the demand for the electric vehicles but also raising production concerns among investors.
With a new factory in Shanghai and two more expected to open in Texas and Berlin, the company has “proven they can open more than one factory now and produce at volume,” McNeill said, noting that Tesla’s Shanghai factory is producing so much that they’re exporting back to North America. “So I think the thing to keep an eye on here is their ability to increase production capacity to meet demand,” he added.

Other automakers introducing hybrid or electric vehicles of their own just “opens more eyes to EVs,” according to McNeill. “Tesla’s got a dominant share in the U.S., they’re at 65% market share in the U.S., 21% worldwide, but I think that’s in the context of Tesla only having 1% market share in the global car market and EVs only have 4%.”
McNeill, currently CEO of DVx Ventures, predicts the EV industry is at the beginning of what will be a “multi-decade growth story” for electric vehicles around the world.
Shares of Tesla — up more than 20% in 2021 and up 100% over the past 12 months — slipped nearly 1.5% in Thursday’s premarket.

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Crocs’ fiscal third-quarter earnings and sales trounced analysts’ expectations.
The shoe retailer also raised it outlook for the full year, saying it has worked to minimize any impact from the global supply chain disruption.
Crocs now sees fiscal 2021 revenue growing between 62% and 65% from 2020 levels, compared with a prior range of 60% to 65%.

Footwear is offered for sale at a Crocs retail store on July 22, 2021 in Chicago, Illinois.
Scott Olson | Getty Images

Shares of Crocs soared in extended trading Thursday after the retailer reported fiscal third-quarter earnings and revenue that exceeded analysts’ expectations, as demand for its shoes remained strong.
Crocs also raised it outlook for the full year, saying it has worked to minimize any impact from the global supply chain disruption. Despite manufacturing facilities in Vietnam being temporarily shut down in recent months, the retailer said it’s shifted production and leveraged air freight to transport goods.

Its stock was recently up more than 11%, having rallied more than 115% year to date. Shares had closed Wednesday down nearly 5%.
Here’s how Crocs did in the three-month period ended Sept. 30 compared with what analysts were anticipating, using a survey of analysts by Refinitiv:

Earnings per share: $2.47 adjusted vs. $1.88 expected
Revenue: $626 million vs. $610 million expected

Third-quarter net income jumped to $153.5 million, or $2.42 per share, from $61.9 million, or 91 cents per share, a year earlier. Excluding one-time items, the company earned $2.47 per share, well ahead of the $1.88 that analysts had predicted.
Revenue soared 73% to $626 million from $362 million a year earlier. That topped expectations for $610 million.
Crocs said its direct-to-consumer sales were up 60.4% in the quarter, while wholesale revenue rose 88.2%. Digital sales climbed 68.9%, accounting for 36.8% of total sales, compared with 37.7% a year earlier.

For the full year, Crocs now sees revenue growing between 62% and 65% from 2020 levels, compared with a prior range of 60% to 65%.
In fiscal 2022, it said sales should be up more than 20% year over year.
“Globally, our teams are managing through the supply chain disruptions to mitigate the impact on our business,” CEO Andrew Rees said in prepared remarks. “Despite the temporary disruptions, we expect 2022 revenues to grow … fueled by the strength of our brand and consumer demand globally.”
Find the full earnings press release from Crocs here.

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