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Kohl’s shareholders voted on Wednesday to reelect the company’s current slate of 13 board directors, as the retailer faced mounting pressure from activist Macellum Advisors for an overhaul.
Ahead of Wednesday’s vote, the major proxy advisory firms were split in their recommendations.
Kohl’s is still in the process of considering bids for its business.
“We aren’t going away,” Macellum’s CEO said.

The Kohl’s logo is displayed on the exterior of a Kohl’s store on January 24, 2022 in San Rafael, California.
Justin Sullivan | Getty Images

Kohl’s shareholders voted to reelect the company’s current slate of 13 board directors, as the retailer faced mounting pressure from activists for an overhaul, Kohl’s announced Wednesday.
The annual meeting of Kohl’s shareholders took place as activist firm Macellum Advisors has been pushing for Kohl’s to revamp its slate of directors, arguing the company has underperformed in recent years compared with other retailers.

Macellum has contended that Kohl’s Chief Executive Officer Michelle Gass’ efforts, such as teaming up with beauty retailer Sephora or partnering with Amazon on a returns program, haven’t been enough.

In February, Macellum nominated 10 directors, including its chief executive officer, Jonathan Duskin. The activist has also been pushing for Kohl’s to sell itself and to offload some of its real estate and lease it back to tap into additional capital.
Kohl’s has been resistant to such sale-leaseback transactions, but the retailer did tap bankers at Goldman Sachs to evaluate bids. Kohl’s confirmed in March that it had received multiple preliminary buyout offers after rejecting a bid from Starboard-backed Acacia Research, at $64 per share, that was deemed to be too low. 
Kohl’s shares closed Tuesday at $49.39, compared with a 52-week high of $64.80. The stock was down more than 1% in early trading Wednesday.
Ahead of Wednesday’s vote, the major proxy advisory firms were split in their recommendations. Institutional Shareholder Services, or ISS, backed two of Macellum’s candidates, while Glass Lewis said shareholders would be best served by supporting Kohl’s current board.

This isn’t the first time Macellum has put pressure on Kohl’s, either. The two struck a deal in April 2021 to add two directors from a slate that a group of activists, which included Macellum, was pushing for. Kohl’s also appointed one independent director, with the activists’ backing.
Kohl’s board “remains focused on running a robust and intentional review of strategic alternatives,” said Chairman Peter Boneparth.
“While we have had differences with Macellum, this board is committed to serving the interests of all our shareholders,” he said.
And while Macellum didn’t win the vote, the activist firm says it won’t be staying silent.
“I think the vote was a referendum on a sale, and people who voted for the company bought the narrative that any changes of the board in the middle of this process had run the risk of disrupting the process,” Duskin told CNBC.
“The vote for the company was a vote for a sale of a business,” he said. “We aren’t going away.”
— CNBC’s Courtney Reagan contributed to this reporting.

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CNBC’s Jim Cramer said Wednesday that while the hot consumer price index suggests the Federal Reserve is losing in its struggle against inflation, the dismal performance of stocks, particularly in the Russell 1000, offers a different view.
When you look at the collapse of the IPO market and see the stocks in the Russell 1000 … we’re witnessing the most extreme wealth destruction that we’ve seen since the dotcom bust in 2000,” the “Mad Money” host said.

CNBC’s Jim Cramer said Wednesday that while the hot consumer price index suggests the Federal Reserve is losing in its struggle against inflation, the dismal performance of stocks, particularly in the Russell 1000, offers a different view.
“When I talk about the Fed winning or losing the fight against inflation, I mean the fight to tamp down on expensive spending, allowing overstretched supply chains to play catch up, easing some of the strain on the labor market,” the “Mad Money” host said.

“When you look at the collapse of the IPO market and see the stocks in the Russell 1000 … we’re witnessing the most extreme wealth destruction that we’ve seen since the dotcom bust in 2000,” he said. “It’s exactly what the Fed needs on still one more day where a government inflation figure is just too darned hot,” he later added.
Cramer’s comments come after the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Wednesday that the consumer price index gained 8.3% year-over-year, remaining near 40-year highs.
To illustrate his point, Cramer showed a list of the worst performers in the Russell 1000 put together by CNBC statistician Gina Francolla.
“All of this wealth destruction makes those stocks the trump cards in [Fed Chair] Jay Powell’s” fight to control inflation, Cramer said. “The losses in these names represent the extra vacation, the new roof, the fancy dinner. … These losses slow the economy.”
Here is Cramer’s list of the worst-performing companies in the Russell 1000:

Carvana
Upstart
Skillz
Unity Software
Rivian
TuSimple
Fluence Energy
GoHealth
Wayfair
Novavax
Fastly
Netflix 

“This is a rogue’s gallery of losers that’s expanding every day. … Same with almost all of the IPOs and the SPACs. Their declines are part of the fight against inflation,” Cramer said.

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It’s that time again! “Mad Money” host Jim Cramer rings the lightning round bell, which means he’s giving his answers to callers’ stock questions at rapid speed.

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Unity Software expects slower growth in the second and fourth quarters while rebuilding its data but expects to be profitable at the end of the year, chief executive John Riccitiello told CNBC’s Jim Cramer on Wednesday.
Shares of the video software developer tumbled 37.05% on Wednesday, reaching a new 52-week low earlier in the day.

Unity Software expects slower growth in the second and fourth quarters while rebuilding its data but expects to be profitable at the end of the year, chief executive John Riccitiello told CNBC’s Jim Cramer on Wednesday.
“We brought our guidance down, and what that’s about is [a] self-inflicted wound. We did some things on the advertising side of the business that reduced the accuracy of our models. It’s going to take us a couple of quarters to fix and we’re going to have slower growth for a couple of quarters while we fix that,” Riccitiello said in an interview on “Mad Money.”

Unity missed top line expectations in its latest quarter and lowered its revenue guidance. The company cited flaws with its Audience Pinpointer tool in its Operate business and said it expects the impact to the business to be about $110 million this year.
Shares of the video software developer tumbled 37.05% on Wednesday, reaching a new 52-week low earlier in the day.
“We know our stock was a lot higher nine months ago at the very peak of the market. And my sense is we probably had about 10% too much in spending in our business as a consequence of sort of euphoria that goes with that,” Riccitiello said, adding that the company brought its spending down by $100 million compared to its original plan in response. 
“What that allows us to do is to bring profitability from future years into this year. At the end of this year at Q4, we expect to be profitable,” he added.
Riccitiello also said that Apple’s privacy changes were not a notable headwind in its latest quarter. “That’s largely digested, and so that’s not really the issue. … That was baked into our guidance this year,” he said.

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Roblox CEO David Baszucki said Wednesday that bookings fell partially because the company saw boosted user engagement last year during the Covid pandemic.
“March was a very difficult compare. We were all locked down a year ago,” Baszucki told Jim Cramer in a “Mad Money” interview.
Roblox is starting to more seriously develop alternative sources of sales and new users for the virtual world, the CEO added.

Roblox CEO David Baszucki told CNBC on Wednesday that the company is seeing its bookings recover in April after the company said earlier this week that they declined 3% in the March quarter.
Bookings are how the company describes sales of its virtual currency, Robux, which players use to buy digital items such as avatars and other premium features.

Roblox is a virtual world game particularly popular with children that’s played on phones, PCs and game consoles. Players can inhabit virtual worlds, play games and even sell their creations to other players.
Baszucki told Jim Cramer in a “Mad Money” interview that bookings fell partially because the company saw boosted user engagement last year during the Covid pandemic, which has subsided.
“March was a very difficult compare. We were all locked down a year ago,” Baszucki said. “We’re happy that in April, we’ve seen that start to turn around. We think longer term, we’ll see booking start to catch up with user growth.”
After the closing bell Tuesday, Roblox reported disappointing first-quarter results, which prompted investors to sell the stock. It plunged 10% in after-hours trading Tuesday. However, it closed Wednesday up nearly 3.4% in a major turnaround. While it’s unclear what drove the surge, the company appeared bullish about the current quarter’s growth rates.
Roblox recorded a per-share loss of 27 cents in the first quarter, which was wider than expectations. Revenue and active daily users also came in light. The company said it was optimistic about growth rates in the current quarter and that the summer could represent a growth opportunity.

Roblox is also starting to more seriously develop alternative sources of sales and new users for the virtual world, Baszucki said. As economies emerge from the pandemic, Roblox will push for new search features and easier partnerships with brands and to expand the amount of user-generated content (UGC) sold on the platform.
“I think this quarter is the first time we’ve come out and said look, we’re going to nudge a bit towards the efficient frontier on our economy, both around how we do search and discovery, the amazing possibilities for how brands can bring traffic, and also our UGC catalog, which has an enormous amount of economic activity,” he said.
One possibility in the future is that Roblox could be used to connect co-workers in an enterprise setting, the Roblox CEO told Cramer. “Someday we’ll use Roblox in our own office to stay connected as some of our people work remotely,” he envisioned.

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Less than 700 cases of BA.4 have been detected across at least 16 countries.
More than 300 cases of BA.5 have been found across at least 17 countries.
Another omicron subvariant called BA.2.12.1 has been detected in 23 countries, according to Van Kerkhove. 

coronavirus impact business and economy
Mf3d | E+ | Getty Images

Omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5 have been detected in more than a dozen countries, helping fuel sporadic Covid outbreaks across the world, but the heavily mutated strains are still circulating at low levels, the World Health Organization said Wednesday. 
Less than 700 cases of BA.4 have been detected across at least 16 countries and more than 300 cases of BA.5 have been found across at least 17 countries, WHO’s technical lead on Covid Maria Van Kerkhove said during a Q&A on the organization’s social media platforms. 

While the two sublineages don’t make people more sick than the original omicron strain, they appear to be more contagious, Van Kerkhove said. She noted the WHO will monitor BA.4 an BA.5 to determine if they will eventually overtake BA.2 as the dominant strain worldwide. 
“We don’t know how this variant will behave, how these subvariants will behave in other countries that had a dominant wave of BA.2,” Van Kerhkove said. “This is what remains to be seen.” 
The two subvariants, BA.4 and BA.5, have high rates of detection in South Africa in particular, according to Kerhkove. 
South Africa reported 395 cases of BA.4 and 134 cases of BA.5 as of May 6, the highest numbers across all countries, according to a report released by the U.K.’s Health Security Agency last week. Countries aren’t sequencing the genetic data for every Covid case so actual infections are likely higher.
Just over 36 cases of BA.4 were found in Austria, 24 in the U.K., 20 in the U.S. and 17 in Denmark, according to the report. Belgium, Israel, Germany, Italy, Canada, France, the Netherlands, Australia, Switzerland and Botswana all reported under 10 cases of BA.4, the report said. 

Some 57 cases of BA.5 have been detected in Portugal, 52 in Germany and 17 in the U.K., according to the report. The U.S., Denmark, France, Austria, Belgium, Hong Kong, Australia, Canada, Israel, Norway, Pakistan, Spain and Switzerland all reported less than 10 BA.5 infections, the report said. 
The report noted the number of sequences is low, but “the apparent geographic spread suggests that the variant is transmitting successfully.”

Tracking BA.2.12.1

Another omicron subvariant called BA.2.12.1 has been detected in 23 countries, according to Van Kerkhove. 
She said there are more than 9,000 reported sequences of the subvariant, most of which comes from the U.S. 
BA.2.12.1 made up about 42.6% of all sequences new cases in the U.S. during the week that ended on May 7, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. BA.2 was still the dominant subvariant in the country, making up 56.4% of all new sequences cases that week. 
But BA.2.12.1 was dominant in New York, New Jersey, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, making up 66.3% of all new sequenced cases in those states and territories, CDC data said. 
Van Kerkhove said she expects to see an increase in case detection of BA.2.12.1 worldwide due to its higher growth rate over BA.2. But BA.2.12.1 has shown no difference in hospitalization rates in comparison to BA.2, according to Van Kerkhove. 
She urged governments across the world to closely monitor BA.2.12.1, BA.4, BA.5 and other subvariants that could emerge in the future, emphasizing the need to maintain Covid testing and sequencing. 
“We talk to government all the time about the need to maintain the surveillance systems so that we can track this, we can trace it, and we can assess it in real time,” Van Kerkhove said.

CNBC Health & Science

Read CNBC’s latest global coverage of the Covid pandemic:

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Rivian’s first-quarter loss was slightly narrower than Wall Street expected.
Rivian now has over 90,000 preorders, including more than 10,000 new orders since a March price increase.
The company confirmed that it still expects to make 25,000 vehicles this year as it continues to ramp up production.

Production of electric Rivian R1T pickup trucks on April 11, 2022 at the company’s plant in Normal, Ill.
Michael Wayland / CNBC

Electric vehicle maker Rivian Automotive on Wednesday maintained its 2022 production target, saying it’s still on track to build 25,000 vehicles this year, as it reported a jump in reservations and a first-quarter loss that was slightly narrower than Wall Street had expected.
Here are the key numbers from Rivian’s first-quarter earnings report:

Loss per share: $1.43, narrower than Wall Street’s $1.44 consensus estimate per Refinitiv.
Revenue: $95 million, versus $130.5 million per Refinitiv consensus estimates.
Net loss: $1.59 billion.
Vehicle reservations: Over 90,000.

Rivian said it now has over 90,000 reservations for its R1-series truck and SUV, up from 83,000 as of its last update in March. That total includes about 10,000 new reservations made since it raised prices at the beginning of March, it said, at an average purchase price of over $93,000.

But it may be a while before Rivian fills those most recent orders. The company said it has lost “approximately a quarter” of its planned production since the end of March due to tight supplies of some critical components, including semiconductor chips.
Through May 9, Rivian had produced a total of about 5,000 vehicles since starting production last fall, including R1T pickups, R1S SUVs and an electric delivery van for Amazon called the EDV 700. A second, smaller van for Amazon, called EDV 500, is currently in final testing, CEO RJ Scaringe said.
Rivian’s Illinois factory will have a capacity of up to 150,000 vehicles per year once its production line is running at full speed.
The automaker’s 2022 production goals reflect supply chain constraints and internal manufacturing issues. The 25,000 target is half the full-year number that Rivian laid out in its roadshow presentation to investors ahead of its IPO last November.

Rivian’s manufacturing efforts will soon get a new leader. Frank Klein, the current leader of auto supplier Magna International’s contract-manufacturing unit, will join the company as chief operating officer on June 1. Klein is expected to focus on resolving those supply chain issues and scaling up Rivian’s production.
The company had $17 billion in cash remaining as of March 31, according to its first-quarter release. It said that will be enough to cover its spending through the launch of its next model, a lower-cost vehicle called R2, at a planned new factory in Georgia in 2025.
Shares of the company rose roughly 8% in after hours trading Wednesday, after shedding nearly 10% during the regular trading session.
Through Wednesday’s close, Rivian’s shares had lost about 28% of their value since a post-IPO lockup period for insiders and early investors expired on Sunday. Ford Motor sold 8 million of its roughly 102 million Rivian shares on Monday at an average price of $26.80 per share. The stock debuted on the public markets at $106.75 per share six months ago.

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