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A consortium including ex-Disney CEO Bob Iger, sports agent Rich Paul, eBay and the Chernin Group are taking a 25% stake in toy maker Funko.
As part of the investment, eBay and Funko agreed to make eBay the preferred secondary market for Funko products.

Sarah Whitten

A consortium including former Disney CEO Bob Iger, sports agent Rich Paul, eBay and the Chernin Group is buying a 25% stake in toy maker Funko.
The investment, which is worth $263 million, or $21 per share, means Chernin will add two directors to Funko’s board. Chernin Group CEO Peter Chernin and Iger will serve as advisors to the board.

Shares of Funko were initially halted on the news, but have since resumed trading after hours, jumping more than 20% to around $21 per share.
“We believe Funko is significantly undervalued in the public markets and at this highly attractive entry price provides a runway of opportunity and growth potential,” Chernin said in a statement Thursday. “There are many areas of identifiable growth across content, commerce, marketplaces, consumer products and technology that should drive substantial increases to Funko’s performance.”
In addition to his investment business, Chernin produces television and films through Chernin Entertainment, which launched titles such as “New Girl,” “Hidden Figures,” “The Greatest Showman” and “Ford v Ferrari.” Previously, he served as president and COO of News Corp and chair and CEO of the Fox Group, where he helped greenlight “Titanic” and “Avatar,” two of the highest-grossing films of all time.
Iger is well-known in the entertainment industry for leading the charge at Disney to acquire Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm and, most recently, 20th Century Fox. Many of the characters from franchises within these brands can be found as part of Funko’s product line.
Paul, CEO and founder of Klutch Sports Group and head of sports at United Talent Agency, is expected to bring his expertise in the sports and music sectors to help advance Funko’s product expansion in those areas. He represents LeBron James.

As part of the investment, eBay and Funko agreed to make eBay the preferred secondary market for Funko products. They will also team up for exclusive product releases.
“Funko sits at the intersection of pop culture, passion and collectibles, with one of the most engaged communities of enthusiasts,” said Stefanie Jay, eBay chief business and strategy officer, in a statement. “Building on the incredible appetite for Funko products on eBay, we look forward to what our companies can do together.”

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Formula 1’s CEO Stefano Domenicali is shopping around its success with potential media partners for a more lucrative U.S. media deal.
The racing league’s current deal with ESPN expires at the end of 2022.
The sport’s recent surge in the U.S. is in large part powered by the Netflix docuseries “Drive to Survive,” which has been renewed for a fifth and sixth season.

Formula 1 is riding a wave of popularity in the U.S., and its CEO is shopping around its success with potential media partners for a more lucrative U.S. media deal.
The racing league’s current deal with ESPN expires at the end of 2022. It was extended in 2019 to the tune of $5 million per year. Sports Business Journal reported the league, which is owned by Liberty Media, is seeking as much as $75 million a year for its next TV rights deal.

Formula 1 Group CEO Stefano Domenicali declined to specify which potential partners the league is speaking to, or how much the league is seeking, but he told CNBC he sees “great opportunity” in the negotiations and expects the next deal to “build on” the ESPN fees.
“We need to be respectful for the fact that ESPN did a great job for us to promote the business in that landscape,” he said from the inaugural Miami Grand Prix. “But the great opportunity we have is to make sure that the future offers we are discussing with the partners are well positioned in terms of content, in terms of opportunity for the fans to follow and of course in terms of fees. The future is very interesting for us.”
Formula 1 set a new viewership record last season when it averaged 934,000 viewers per race on ESPN channels and the ABC network — up 54% compared with F1′s 2020 races. F1′s 2021 viewership included an average 1.2 million viewers for the U.S. Grand Prix in Austin.
The growth shows no signs of slowing. ESPN said the season-opener Bahrain Grand Prix in March averaged 1.3 million viewers in the U.S. and peaked at 1.5 million viewers in the race’s final minutes.
The share price of Formula 1’s main tracking stock is up 34% over the past year and has doubled since 2017.

The sport’s recent surge in the U.S. is in large part powered by the Netflix docuseries “Drive to Survive.” Season 4 of the show, released in March, attracted its largest audience to date and broke into the weekly Top 10 in 56 countries, according to Formula 1 and Netflix. The parties announced Thursday the series has been confirmed for a fifth and sixth season.
Some have speculated Netflix could seek to buy the live F1 media rights, and mark its first foray into live sports. Domenicali declined to rule it out.
“Netflix has helped us a lot,” he said. “They did an incredible job. We did an incredible job together, because that’s something that you cannot do alone. I think that together we may have also some other things that we can do together to improve our accessibility in the American market.”
In 2023, F1 will host three U.S. races, with the addition of a race in Las Vegas in November and the U.S. Grand Prix in Austin in October. The first Miami Grand Prix runs this weekend.
While the sport has long been popular overseas, with a global audience averaging more than 80 million per race, it has lagged far behind NASCAR in the U.S., which averaged just under 3 million viewers per race last year.
“We are just at the beginning of this new journey,” Domenicali said. “The popularity of our sport has grown tremendously. It requires a lot of attention, to be sure that our narratives hit the tastes of the American fans.”

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SMALL BUSINESS PLAYBOOK 2022
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Inflation may have peaked, but it isn’t going away.
Even with its “notoriously blunt” tools and Fed chair Powell expressing confidence in a “soft-ish” landing, the Federal Reserve will not be able to keep markets from being volatile and the economy from a rocky period.
The long-term outlook remains positive, but the next 18 to 24 months will be tough for businesses, according to former Fed official and former head of investing giant TIAA Roger Ferguson

Roger Ferguson
Michael Nagle | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Anyone who read a Fed chair coining the term “soft-ish” for an economic landing, as Jerome Powell did on Wednesday, as a bullish signal, has a transitory understanding of how much significance to give to any single day’s trading action. Stocks tanked on Thursday after the relief rally, giving up all of the post-FOMC meeting gains, and more, on pace for the worst day of 2022 for stocks.
Now back to the rougher economic reality, on Main Street, small business owners likely weren’t fooled by the market head fake at all. They have a sobering view of the rest of 2022. More than 80% of small business owners tell CNBC that a recession will hit the U.S. economy this year. The primary business issue they are facing is inflation, which is driving up prices they pay for raw goods and other inputs, while they are growing increasingly fearful about passing along more price increases to the consumer.

The Fed’s battle with inflation is not one that Main Street has much confidence in right now. Just 27% of small business owners are confident in the Federal Reserve’s ability to control inflation, according to the just-released CNBC|SurveyMonkey Small Business Survey for Q2 2022, while 70% say the current Fed rate hike plans will have a negative impact on their business over the next six months.
For Roger Ferguson, a former Fed vice chair and former head of investing giant TIAA, the Fed is doing what it can, but it can only do so much, and the downturn in market and economic sentiment won’t reverse quickly. He recently told CNBC the risk of recession is very high.

The reasons for inflation, including the supply chain disruptions, geopolitical shocks from the Russian war in Ukraine, and the strong demand from consumers in the U.S. fueled by pandemic fiscal and monetary policy, can be mitigated by a Fed that is raising rates, but not entirely controlled.
Even the Fed’s forecast suggests inflation above 2% for at least a couple of more years, Ferguson, who is now vice chair at The Business Council and a distinguished fellow for International Economics at the Council on Foreign Relations, told the CNBC Small Business Playbook virtual event on Thursday. “So there should be the expectation inflation will be bit of a challenge,” he said.
He cited some financial markets indicators which expect inflation to remain “stubbornly high” for several years to come, and while he isn’t in that camp, he added, “it would be nice to say inflation will be behind us relatively quickly, but it will be an issue, though of lessening importance, for more than a year, perhaps two years.”

He sees signs that inflation might be peaking, but has no expectation it becomes dramatically lower.
“We need to get used to inflation at some elevated levels, not getting worse but not getting better,” Ferguson said.
For small businesses, this means there will continue to be specific materials and commodities where supply remains limited, and inflation high, and while it will look like inflation may be getting marginally better, that will be incremental in the macro sense, and not the case with every single input cost. Labor costs will remain high though wage inflation should begin to slow too.
“Powell, in his post-meeting conference, observed that the Fed has tools, as he described, ‘notoriously blunt’ tools,” Ferguson said.
And while Powell was clear that some factors might be outside their control (such as the supply chain functioning, Covid and war), “he was clear that he sees a credible path toward bringing inflation back down to the target of around 2%, and doing so in a way that is soft or a ‘softish’ landing,” Ferguson said.
Inflation will not be back at 2% soon, and the Fed has no illusions about that either, but it will slow and become less of a factor in business decisions, just not across the board, or soon.
For small businesses, those who want to start a business today or are already running one, Ferguson said they should be expecting “a pretty volatile time.”
Small businesses are a huge driver of the economy and job growth, he added, and from the supply issues to labor, the long-term outlook is positive if the Fed is successful in combatting inflation. But before we know the answer to that, the next 12 to 18 to 24 months, will “perhaps be a little rocky,” he said. More

Elon Musk’s SpaceX rolled out a $25 monthly fee this week for customers who seek to relocate their Starlink internet service satellite dishes.
Users who activate the feature will see the base price for Starlink service increase to $135 a month, from $110 a month.
Portability does not mean mobility, however, as SpaceX does not authorize customers to use the service on a moving vehicle.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX rolled out a $25 monthly fee this week for customers who seek to relocate their Starlink internet service satellite dishes.
“Portability enables customers to temporarily move their Starlink to new locations and receive high-speed internet anywhere Starlink provides active coverage within the same continent,” SpaceX wrote in an email to customers on Wednesday, copies of which were seen by CNBC.

Users who activate the feature will see the base price for Starlink service increase to $135 a month, from $110 a month.
Notably, many users in the past year self-reported on social media that they were able to move Starlink dishes outside of the address that they had registered for service, without seeing significant disruptions to service. Starlink has been increasingly embraced by the nomadic, “vanlife” community due to its relativity high speeds – but SpaceX is now charging a price for that flexibility.
Starlink dishes weigh about 10 to 15 pounds, and the kit included with the antenna includes a WiFi router and a base to stand it upright.
The Starlink network of about 2,000 satellites in low Earth orbit is designed to deliver high-speed internet anywhere. SpaceX said in March that there are about 250,000 total Starlink subscribers, which includes both consumers and enterprise customers.

SpaceX’s new portability option comes with several notable caveats to users, according to the Starlink support website. Users who activate the feature will get service “on a best effort basis,” with the company’s advertised speeds of 100 Mbps to 200 Mbps “not guaranteed.”

“Starlink prioritizes network resources for users at their registered service address. When you bring your Starlink to a new location, this prioritization may result in degraded service, particularly at times of peak usage or network congestion,” SpaceX says.
For users with multiple Starlink antennas, portability “must be selected and purchased for each location” – meaning it’s a $25 fee per dish. While the service can be activated instantaneously, SpaceX will invoice customers on a full-month basis.
“For example, if you enable Portability on March 12th and your next billing date is on April 1st, you will be charged $25 on April 1st for the full previous month,” the company said.

A map of Starlink satellite internet coverage, as of May 5, 2022.

International travelers are also restricted to using Starlink dishes “within the same continent as the registered service address.”
“If you use Starlink in a foreign country for more than two months, you will be required to move your registered service address to your new location or purchase an additional Starlink to maintain service,” SpaceX said.
SpaceX’s descriptions of portability also don’t specify whether the feature is only activated by the users, or if the company can start charging the fee if it detects a customer has moved their dish beyond their registered address.
Additionally, portability does not mean mobility.
While SpaceX emphasizes that its Starlink “teams are actively working to make it possible to use Starlink on moving vehicles” such as automobiles, boats and recreational vehicles, customers need to be in a fixed location to use the service.
“Using the Starlink Kit in motion will void the limited warranty of your Kit,” SpaceX says.
A driver in California last year was fined by law enforcement for bolting a Starlink antenna to the hood of their vehicle, which was in place while they were driving.

California Highway Patrol Officer T. Caton

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Higher interest rates will make loans for new or used cars more expensive.
New-car prices are up 12.5% year over year, according to the most recent data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The average price of used cars is up 35.3% from a year ago.

Newsday Llc | Newsday | Getty Images

On top of elevated prices for new and used cars, financing the purchase of one is about to get more expensive.
With the Federal Reserve boosting a key interest rate by half a percentage point on Wednesday, borrowing costs are poised to head higher on a variety of consumer loans, including those for autos. This marks the Fed’s largest increase in more than two decades.

“In the past, interest rate hikes didn’t affect the new car market significantly because automakers subsidize many loans,” said Jessica Caldwell, executive director of insights for Edmunds.
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“However, this is the biggest rate hike we’ve seen in over 20 years, so there may be a small impact but it will likely only reinforce the new vehicle buyer base of higher income shoppers,” Caldwell said.
The bigger effect will likely be felt in the used car market, she said.
“Given used car prices are already at record highs, this increase will only make this market more expensive, and buyers will be forced to sit out due to affordability or buy an older vehicle to keep payments within a digestible range.”

Amid the auto industry’s persisting struggles with limited inventory due to an ongoing computer chip shortage, consumers have largely been forced to deal with new-car prices that are up 12.5% year over year, according to the most recent data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The average price of used cars is up 35.3% from a year ago.
The average amount paid for a new car has reached $45,232, according to an estimate from J.D. Power and LMC Automotive. The average monthly payment is about $650 for 70.2 months (just shy of six years), according to Edmunds.com. The average rate paid for dealer financing is 4.7% and the term is 70.2 months.
For used cars, the average paid is more than $30,000, Edmunds research shows. The monthly average payment is $544 over 70.7 months with a rate of 8%.

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Nikola’s revenue was higher than Wall Street expected.
Nikola expects to ship 300 to 500 of its battery-electric semis in 2022.
Its fuel cell truck is on track to begin production next year.

Nikola Motor Company
Source: Nikola Motor Company

Electric heavy-truck maker Nikola said it expects to deliver between 300 and 500 of its battery-electric semitrucks in 2022, after moving its first vehicles off the production line during the first quarter.
Production of Nikola’s battery-electric Tre semitruck began in late March, and its first 11 trucks were shipped to dealers in April. While Nikola didn’t recognize any revenue from truck deliveries in the first quarter, it did collect about $1.9 million in services-related revenue, helping it to beat Wall Street’s expectations.

Here are the key numbers:

Adjusted loss per share: 21 cents, narrower than the loss of 27 cents per share expected by Wall Street, according to Refinitiv consensus estimates.
Revenue: $1.9 million, beating Wall Street’s expectation of about $100,000, according to Refinitiv consensus estimates.

The analyst coverage on Nikola, which went public via a merger with a special-purpose acquisition company in June 2020, is still thin. None of the seven analysts surveyed in Refinitiv’s revenue consensus estimate expected Nikola to crack $1 million.
The battery electric Tre is designed as a short-range truck for local use. Nikola said a fuel cell version of the Tre, which will have range sufficient for long-haul duty, completed an initial series of tests with Anheuser-Busch in California in late April and is on track to go into production in the second half of 2023.
Nikola was one of the first EV startups to go public. Like other post-SPAC EV makers, its shares soared in the weeks after the merger was completed – only to fall back to earth after a scandal surfaced.
Nikola’s outspoken founder, Trevor Milton, abruptly resigned in September 2020 after short-seller Hindenburg Research alleged that he had misled investors about the state of Nikola’s technology. Milton has since been indicted by a federal grand jury for making false statements. Nikola paid the Securities and Exchange Commission $125 million in December to settle related charges.
This is breaking news. Please check back for updates.

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FORTO SEEMS an unlikely tech darling. It does not make gadgets, build the metaverse, forge cryptocurrencies or launch rockets. The six-year-old startup from Berlin, whose main business is arranging the transport of cargo from one place to an other, has nevertheless managed to raise nearly $600m from venture capitalists. Its backers reckon the firm can shake up the archaic freight-forwarding industry. It has tripled its business in each of the past four years, boasts Michael Wax, its boss, and is now one of the top ten forwarders in the busy trade lane between China and Germany. In March it announced $250m in new funding at a valuation of $2.1bn.Forto is not the only freight tech startup attracting investors’ attention. With the world’s supply chains gummed up by bottlenecks, lockdowns and other disruptions, venture-capital (VC) firms are pouring billions into companies offering ways to make freight transport more efficient. In 2021 supply-chain-technology firms raised more than $62bn, according to PitchBook, a data provider, more than twice the figure in pre-pandemic 2019 (see chart). Of that, nearly $9bn went to freight-tech startups. PitchBook counts more than a dozen private freight-tech “unicorns”, valued at more than $1bn. Viki Keckarovska of Transport Intelligence, a firm of consultants, expects more funding rounds this year.Part of the appeal lies in the industry’s size and potential for disruption. The freight-forwarding business alone is worth $475bn in annual revenues, reckons Armstrong & Associates, a supply-chain research and consulting firm. The broader “third-party logistics” market, which includes transport management and warehousing, generates sales of $1.4trn. At the same time, freight remains technologically backward, especially the cross-border sort. “This industry is completely offline,” marvels Zvi Schreiber, boss of Freightos, a digital-freight marketplace. “You would expect that shipping a container would be just as digital as booking a flight,” he says, “but it is not at all.” Just getting a quote can be a headache. “For 90% of the freight-forwarders today it still takes one or two days to come back with a price,” says Mr Wax.This is starting to change thanks in part to whizzy new software platforms designed to streamline the process of shipping freight overseas. Flexport, a digital freight-forwarder based in San Francisco, automates many of the supply-chain processes that were traditionally done manually, including getting quotes, filling out documents and co-ordinating with shippers and carriers along the supply chain. The nine-year-old startup, which earned $3.2bn in revenues in 2021, was recently valued at more than $8bn. Project44, a supply-chain visibility platform from Chicago, lets retailers and brands monitor milestones in their cargo’s journey, such as when it is loaded onto a ship, leaves the port or arrives at its final destination—all in real time. They can also make adjustments or reroute shipments if needed.One common feature of such platforms is the ability to glean insights from data. Big shippers and logistics providers typically manage their shipments in software known as a transport-management system (TMS), which tracks shipments as they make their way along logistics networks, from the factory to the port and finally to the customer. Such systems, which have been around since the late 1980s, are useful databases of information, says Evan Armstrong, president of Armstrong & Associates. But they are not clever. “The first step was getting everything onto a TMS. Now the next step is taking those TMSs and making them intelligent.”Although recent supply-chain snarl-ups have played a part in boosting demand for logistics software, they are not the main force behind the boom. That, industry-watchers agree, would be Amazon. The e-emporium “is the absolute number-one catalyst for supply-chain transformation, no question”, says Julian Counihan of Schematic Ventures, a VC firm. Whereas the supply chain has historically been seen as a cost centre, Amazon has turned it into a money-maker. With the rise of next-day and same-day delivery, consumers’ expectations have changed dramatically. As shipping times plummet, logistics requires “way, way more supply-chain technology”, says Mr Counihan.Some scepticism is in order. Many of the startups look little different from the incumbents they are seeking to disrupt. Kuehne + Nagel, a big Swiss freight-forwarder, has invested heavily in digitisation even if it doesn’t “sing and dance that they are a ‘digital’ freight forwarder”, as Mr Schreiber of Freightos freely admits. C.H. Robinson, a big American logistics firm, is “really a digital freight broker”, says Mr Armstrong. And although some of the big incumbents rely on antiquated technology, he adds, they have much more scale than any of the newcomers. That lets them secure lower prices from ocean liners, air freighters and other carriers.Still, as Ms Keckarovska points out, the upstarts have a shot. The freight-forwarding market remains highly fragmented, so they need not take on a huge incumbent. DHL and Kuehne + Nagel, the two biggest brokers, have a combined global market share of just 6%. And despite their digital aspirations, the incumbents’ tech nous leaves plenty of room for improvement. Of the 20 biggest established freight-forwarders, 15 apparently use the same off-the-shelf TMS to manage their shipments. ■For more expert analysis of the biggest stories in economics, business and markets, sign up to Money Talks, our weekly newsletter. More

WHEN VLADIMIR PUTIN’S tanks rolled into Ukraine in late February, crude-oil markets reacted instantly to the uncertainty and, in short order, to the sanctions imposed on Russia, the world’s second-biggest exporter of the black stuff. The war’s impact on another set of crucial oils—the edible vegetable fats such as sunflower oil, of which Ukraine and Russia are the world’s two biggest exporters—has taken longer to digest. It is now causing heartburn for the consumer-goods giants that use them by the tonne to make everything from snacks to lipstick.Exports from war-torn Ukraine have all but stopped. Russia has placed an export quota on its sunflower oil. Worries about scarce supplies have led countries including Egypt and Turkey to ban exports of edible oils. And from April 28th Indonesia has banned exports of palm oil, another widely traded variety.The archipelagic country sold $18bn-worth of the stuff abroad in 2020, accounting for half of all palm-oil exports. So the move sent prices, which had dipped after the initial war-induced spike, soaring again (see chart). A tonne of palm oil for delivery in May is trading at over $1,700, 70% higher than the average spot price in 2021. This is piling more inflationary pressure on global producers of consumer goods—and sabotaging their environmental bona fides.Unilever, a soap-to-soup group, spent $2.7bn on palm oil last year, around 15% of its total spending on commodities. Procter & Gamble, a similarly sprawling giant, and big packaged-goods firms like Mondelez and Nestlé are in a similar pickle. Everyone is paying more for soyabean and other alternative oils, too, so substituting one kind for another would bring little financial relief. Investors typically view the big consumer firms as being resilient to economic shocks. But as input prices rise some may be beginning to doubt the companies’ ability to pass on the extra costs to shoppers, who are becoming fed up with rising bills.The ban, which does not have a specified end date, will also complicate the companies’ efforts to present themselves as environmentally responsible. Palm-oil production has historically often come at the expense of rainforests, which were razed in places like Indonesia to make room for plantations. Today Nestlé says that 90% of the palm oil it purchased in 2021 was certified as deforestation-free, thanks to close monitoring of supply chains, from the plantation to the port. Such capacity has taken years to develop in Indonesia and will be hard to replicate elsewhere at short notice. If the Swiss giant and its rivals have to resort to buying oils from more opaque places, that could leave a greasy stain on their carefully manicured green reputations. ■For more expert analysis of the biggest stories in economics, business and markets, sign up to Money Talks, our weekly newsletter. More