Business

President Donald Trump has imposed 25% tariffs on certain goods from Canada and Mexico and is expected to follow through on broader tariffs starting on April 2.
Related Group CEO Jon Paul Pérez said contractors are raising prices in anticipation.
For now, Related said the high end of the real estate market remains strong, especially in Florida.

Related Group CEO Jon Paul Pérez.
Courtesy of Future Proof and Triangle BLVD

Building contractors are already hiking prices as much as 20% to offset potential tariffs, a move that could also raise prices of new condos and homes, according to the CEO of developer Related Group.
President Donald Trump has imposed 25% tariffs on certain goods from Canada and Mexico, including steel and aluminum, and is expected to follow through on broader tariffs starting on April 2. Even before those wider levies take effect, uncertainty over tariffs and inflation is causing many contractors to hike real estate project costs.

Related Group CEO Jon Paul Pérez said contractors bidding on seven projects that Related has in the works are raising prices.
“We’re seeing [subcontractors] throw an additional cushion into their numbers anticipating tariffs,” Pérez told CNBC during a live Inside Wealth conversation. “It could be as much as 20%, depending on what material they’re getting from another country.”

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Pérez said the price hikes are driven by the anticipation of higher costs, rather than current levels, and noted it’s unclear how the higher costs will be divided between contractor and developer.
“When you go through their numbers in detail and you start negotiating, you quickly find out they’re just sort of padding to protect themselves,” he said.
As a result, tariff fears could add further upward pricing pressure on a housing market that’s already crippled by high prices and elevated mortgage rates. According to a survey from the National Association of Home Builders, rising prices for construction materials could add $9,200 to the cost of a typical home.

Related Group is one of the largest and most prominent developers in the U.S., spanning affordable housing to luxury condo buildings, mainly in South Florida. The company currently has more than 90 projects in some stage of development, including rentals, affordable housing units, mixed-use developments and luxury condos.
Related’s founder and chairman, Jorge Pérez, said that in addition to tariff concerns, the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration could also drive up prices for developments, since the construction industry relies heavily on workers from overseas.
“There will absolutely be a cost effect in our industry, in particular the construction industry,” he said. “Losing these people will have an inflationary effect.”
For now, Related said the high end of the real estate market remains strong, especially in Florida. The company sold two condo penthouses at its exclusive new development on Fisher Island near South Beach, Miami, for a total of $150 million.
Related is also building a luxury oceanfront condo tower in Bal Harbour, Miami, called Rivage Residences Bal Harbour, that is offering a mega-mansion in the sky — combining two penthouses that could total more than 20,000 square feet and fetch over $150 million.
“The high-end buyer is a very particular buyer,” said Jorge Pérez. “Those people are buying over $10 million condominiums and typically they’re very, very wealthy. So they’re less affected, we’re not seeing a decline in that market.”
Chairman Pérez said the “middle market,” or those buying condos in the $1 million to $3 million range, are taking more of a wait-and-see approach given the uncertainties around tariffs and immigration. Many condo buyers in Miami and South Florida are from Canada and Latin America, and are therefore more sensitive to potential changes in immigration policy.
“South Americans are coming and saying, ‘What’s going to happen with immigration policies?’ or, ‘Am I going to lose my visa?'” he said. “We had a project where we just lost seven or eight Canadian and Mexican buyers that were ready to sign contracts, but when all these things came from tariffs, they didn’t want to buy. But I think that will calm down.” More

Nike expects its sales decline in the fiscal fourth quarter, which is set to end in May, to be at the “low end” of the “mid-teens range,” far worse than analysts expected.
The company said its guidance is based on its ongoing restructuring efforts, plus tariffs and sliding consumer confidence.
During the sneaker giant’s key holiday quarter, sales declined 9%, driven by weakness in China.

Pedestrians walk past a Nike store featuring a modern design and mannequins displaying winter apparel on December 5, 2024, in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China. 
Cheng Xin | Getty Images

Nike on Thursday warned that sales will drop by a double digit percentage in its current quarter as the sneaker giant contends with new tariffs, sliding consumer confidence and a slower than expected turnaround.
In a conference call with analysts, finance chief Matt Friend said Nike expects its sales decline in the fiscal fourth quarter, which is set to end in May, to be at the “low end” of the “mid-teens range.” It also anticipates its gross margin will fall between 4 and 5 percentage points as it ramps up efforts to liquidate excess inventory and stale styles that are no longer resonating with consumers — a process it expects to continue into fiscal 2026.

“We believe that the fourth quarter will reflect the largest impact from our … actions, and that the headwinds to revenue and gross margin will begin to moderate from there,” said Friend. “We are also navigating through several external factors that create uncertainty in the current operating environment, including geopolitical dynamics, new tariffs, volatile foreign exchange rates and tax regulations, as well as the impact of this uncertainty and other macro factors on consumer confidence.”
The guidance is far worse than analysts had expected. Consensus estimates from LSEG show Wall Street had expected sales to be down 11.4% in the current quarter.
Shares fell more than 4% in extended trading and are down more than 5% year to date, as of Thursday’s close.
Beyond guidance, Nike beat Wall Street’s expectations in its fiscal third quarter.
Here’s how the company performed during the quarter, compared with estimates from analysts polled by LSEG:

Earnings per share: 54 cents vs. 29 cents estimated
Revenue: $11.27 billion vs. $11.01 billion estimated

The company’s reported net income for the three-month period that ended Feb. 28 was $794 million, or 54 cents per share, compared with $1.17 billion, or 77 cents per share, a year earlier.
Sales dropped to $11.27 billion, down about 9% from $12.4 billion a year earlier. Like other retailers, Nike saw strong demand in December followed by “double digit” declines in January and February. 
While Nike delivered a strong earnings beat, expectations were low headed into the release and profits fell 32% from the year-ago period.
During the quarter, Nike’s gross margin fell by 3.3 percentage points to 41.5%, lower than expectations of 41.8%, according to StreetAccount. That’s largely because of the costs associated with Nike’s efforts to clear out old inventory in favor of new, innovative styles. In a press release, the company attributed its drop in gross margin to “higher discounts, higher inventory obsolescence reserves, higher product costs and changes in channel mix.”
Meanwhile, sales were down 9%, driven by weakness in China. During the quarter, sales fell 17% in the key region to $1.73 billion, falling short of expectations of $1.84 billion, according to StreetAccount. 
“I spent some time over there in December. I hadn’t been over there in a while. The competition is a bit more aggressive than what I remembered,” CEO Elliott Hill, who left Nike in 2020 and returned last year, told analysts. “So we’ve just got to accelerate our pace.”
Thursday’s release comes about five months into Hill’s tenure as CEO and his efforts to turn around the business and get it back to growth. He has focused on winning back wholesale partners, reigniting innovation and wooing back athletes that have fled to new competitors, but the work has not yet yielded results.
“I’ll start by saying I’m proud of the progress we made against the key actions we committed to 90 days ago. While we met the expectations we set, we’re not satisfied with our overall results,” Hill told analysts. “We can and will be better.”
During the quarter, sales on Nike’s direct channels dropped 12% to $4.7 billion. Wholesale revenue fell 7% to $6.2 billion.
Plus, since Hill took over, the company is now contending with a new set of dynamics that could make its comeback even harder to execute.
In the three months since Nike last reported earnings, President Donald Trump has put a new 20% tariff on goods imported from China, consumer sentiment has fallen, and retail sales in both January and February were weaker than expected.
Out of the hundreds of suppliers and manufacturers that Nike works with, about 24% of them are located in China, according to a manufacturing disclosure published in January. If the retailer doesn’t raise prices to offset tariffs and can’t push the cost entirely on to suppliers, Nike’s margins are expected to take a hit from the new duties. On Thursday’s call, Nike didn’t say whether it would raise prices or how exactly the new duties would affect margins.
Further, when consumers aren’t feeling confident and cutting back on spending, discretionary products like new clothes and shoes are one of the first things they cut out in favor of necessities. Over the last few years, the overall sneaker and apparel markets have been slow because consumers have cut back on clothes and shoes. But up until recently, strong companies were still performing well and taking market share from weaker competitors.
However, that trend began to shift over the last few weeks when even the strongest of companies started to sound the alarm about soft consumer spending when they reported first-quarter earnings, raising questions about the health of the economy.
During the quarter, sales in North America — Nike’s largest market — fell 4% to $4.86 billion. Still, revenue in the region came in better than the $4.53 billion analysts had expected, according to StreetAccount.
Nike is widely expected to reclaim the market share it lost and reset its business, and some insiders say the company’s problems have been overblown. Even so, the tariffs and economic fears could mean that the retailer’s turnaround could take longer, and be more difficult, than expected.
What’s key to Nike’s turnaround plan is its ability to reignite innovation and create the type of industry-leading shoes and apparel that have long made it the market leader. During a call with analysts, Hill said early releases for the company’s new Pegasus Premium “nearly sold out” across North America and will scale through fall 2025. Its Romero 18, created for the everyday runner, has seen “outstanding” results, and Nike plans to double distribution by mid-April.
“It will take time to reach the volume to replace the handful of classic franchises we over-indexed on, but our approach is simple,” said Hill. “Help consumers fall in love with something new from Nike, and that something is not replacing one icon for another.”
Nike has already made strides in its efforts to grow its female consumer base, another key component to boosting revenue and apparel sales. Last month, it announced it was teaming up with Kim Kardashian’s intimates brand Skims to create a new product line dubbed NikeSKIMS that will include apparel, footwear and accessories. The buzzy partnership is expected to give Nike improved inroads with women and allow it to better compete with Lululemon, Alo Yoga and Vuori, which cater more to women than Nike currently does.
Further, Nike debuted a new ad campaign geared toward female athletes during the Super Bowl, its first big game advertisement in decades. The campaign showed that reaching female athletes and capturing the buzz around women’s sports will be a center point of Hill’s strategy.
If Nike can continue to show positive signs from new product launches and partnerships, the rest of its headwinds might just be drowned out as noise. More

Darden Restaurants beat Wall Street’s expectations for quarterly earnings, but its revenue fell short of estimates.
Olive Garden and LongHorn Steakhouse reported weaker-than-expected same-store sales growth.

The Olive Garden logo is displayed on the front of an Olive Garden Italian restaurant in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, on February 15, 2025. 
Artur Widak | Nurphoto | Getty Images

Darden Restaurants on Thursday reported weaker-than-expected sales as Olive Garden and LongHorn Steakhouse underperformed analysts’ projections.
The restaurant company blamed weather for the sales slowdown and maintained its full-year forecast, lifting investors’ confidence that the rough quarter was a blip.

Darden shares rose 5% Thursday.
Here’s what the company reported compared with what Wall Street was expecting, based on a survey of analysts by LSEG:

Earnings per share: $2.80 adjusted vs. $2.79 expected
Revenue: $3.16 billion vs. $3.21 billion expected

Darden reported fiscal third-quarter net income of $323.4 million, or $2.74 per share, up from $312.9 million, or $2.60 per share, a year earlier.
Excluding costs related to its acquisition of Chuy’s, Darden earned $2.80 per share.
Net sales rose 6.2% to $3.16 billion, fueled largely by the addition of Chuy’s restaurants to its portfolio.

Darden’s same-store sales rose 0.7%, less than the 1.7% increase expected by analysts, according to StreetAccount estimates.
Executives blamed this winter’s low temperatures and snowstorms for the disappointing quarter ended Feb. 23. When excluding weather, same-store sales across all four of Darden’s segments grew during the quarter, and only consumers making less than $50,000 were spending less at its casual-dining restaurants.
“Even if [consumers] say they’re feeling feeling less optimistic, we haven’t seen a huge correlation between that and dining out,” CEO Rick Cardenas told analysts on the company’s conference call. “So I think as long as incomes are going up and outpacing inflation, I think they’re likely to keep spending.”
Both Olive Garden and LongHorn Steakhouse, which are typically the two standouts of Darden’s portfolio, reported underwhelming same-store sales growth. Olive Garden’s same-store sales rose 0.6%. Analysts were anticipating same-store sales growth of 1.5%. And LongHorn’s same-store sales increased 2.6%, missing analysts’ expectations of 5% growth.
In February, Olive Garden finished rolling out delivery with Uber Direct. The chain’s delivery customers typically spend 20% more than the average curbside pickup order, and Olive Garden saw delivery order volume increase every week.
“Now at the end of the third quarter, our pilot restaurants were running around 2.5% of sales in delivery, and the other restaurants were following that same pattern,” Cardenas said.
In the first three weeks of March, both Olive Garden and LongHorn saw strong momentum, executives said.
Darden’s fine dining segment, which includes The Capital Grille and Ruth’s Chris Steak House, reported same-store sales declines of 0.8%. The segment saw stronger demand during the holiday season, but consumers pulled back again in the new year.
“We are seeing more persistent check management post-holidays, so I guess we’re not ready to claim victory yet on fine dining. It’s still soft,” CFO Raj Vennam said.
The last segment of Darden’s business, which includes Cheddar’s Scratch Kitchen and Yard House, saw same-store sales shrink 0.4% in the quarter.
For the full year, Darden reiterated its forecast for revenue of $12.1 billion. It narrowed its outlook for adjusted earnings from continuing operations to a range of $9.45 to $9.52 per share. Its prior forecast was $9.40 to $9.60 per share.
Darden’s fiscal 2025 outlook includes Chuy’s results, but the Tex-Mex chain won’t be included in its same-store sales metrics until the fiscal fourth quarter in 2026.

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Correction: A previous version of this story misattributed a quote about Darden’s fine-dining business. More

Inventory at the end of February stood at 1.24 million units, an increase of 17% year over year.
The median price of a home sold in February was $398,400, up 3.8% from the same time last year.
Sales were only higher annually in the highest price categories, above $750,000.

Sales of previously owned homes in February rose 4.2% from January to 4.26 million units on a seasonally adjusted, annualized basis, according to the National Association of Realtors. Industry analysts had expected a drop of 3%.
Sales were 1.2% lower compared with February of last year.

This count is based on closings, so contracts signed in December and January, when mortgage rates were rising and briefly held in the 7% range on the 30-year fixed. Rates today are in the high 6% range.
“Home buyers are slowly entering the market,” said Lawrence Yun, NAR’s chief economist, in a release. “Mortgage rates have not changed much, but more inventory and choices are releasing pent-up housing demand.”
Sales were only higher annually in the highest price categories, above $750,000. Sales around the median price were down 3% year over year.
Inventory at the end of February stood at 1.24 million units, an increase of 17% year over year, but still just a 3.5-month supply at the current sales pace. A six-month supply is considered balanced between buyer and seller.
“We are still in a relatively tight market condition,” Yun said.

That tight supply is keeping pressure on prices. The median price of a home sold in February was $398,400, up 3.8% from the same time last year. That is a record high for the month of February. All four geographical regions of the country saw price increases.

A “For Sale” sign outside of a home in Atlanta, Georgia.
Dustin Chambers | Bloomberg | Getty Images

First-time buyers edged back into the market, making up 31% of February sales compared with 26% the year before. Investors, however, pulled back, accounting for just 16% of sales, down from 21% last year.
All-cash sales, however, remained relatively steady at 32% of sales, down just slightly from the year before. Cash is usually favored by investors, so this suggests, given the drop in investor sales, that more owner-occupants are using cash.
While these sales were higher than expected, they are more indicative of the market two months ago than they are now. A separate survey of real estate agents in February from John Burns Research and Consulting found more than half of respondents indicated this spring’s resale market is weaker than normal. This resale index dropped for the first time in four months.
“Current sales ratings remain weak, with 53% of agents reporting weaker than normal sales. This is better than 56% one year ago but lower than January’s 47%. Affordability constraints and economic uncertainty keep many buyers on the sidelines,” according to the report from John Burns.

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The Boston Celtics are being sold to an ownership group led by private equity executive Bill Chisholm.
The deal values the Celtics franchise at $6.1 billion, a record for a U.S. sports team.
Majority owner Wyc Grousbeck will stay on as team CEO and governor through 2028.

A group led by private equity executive Bill Chisholm is buying the National Basketball Association’s reigning champion Boston Celtics at a valuation of $6.1 billion, the team’s ownership announced Thursday.
Private equity firm Sixth Street is part of the new ownership group and will contribute more than $1 billion, one person familiar with the matter said. Other members of the ownership group include Boston-area businessman Rob Hale, a current team owner, and Bruce Beal Jr., president of real estate firm Related Companies.

“Growing up on the North Shore and attending college in New England, I have been a die-hard Celtics fan my entire life,” Chisholm said in a Thursday news release. “I understand how important the Celtics are to the city of Boston — the role the team plays in the community is different than any other city in the country. I also understand that there is a responsibility as a leader of the organization to the people of Boston, and I am up for this challenge.”
The Celtics’ current ownership group, Boston Basketball Partners, is led by the Grousbeck family. Wyc Grousbeck, the team’s CEO and governor, will remain in those roles through the 2027-28 season. If approved, the sale will go through this summer.

Owner Wyc Grousbeck of the Boston Celtics reacts as he holds the Larry O’Brien Championship Trophy during the 2024 Boston Celtics championship parade following their 2024 NBA Finals win on June 21, 2024 in Boston, Massachusetts. 
Billie Weiss | Getty Images

“Bill is a terrific person and a true Celtics fan, born and raised here in the Boston area,” Grousbeck said in a statement. “His love for the team and the city of Boston, along with his chemistry with the rest of the Celtics leadership, make him a natural choice to be the next Governor and controlling owner of the team.”
The NBA declined to comment.
It is unclear how much Chisholm, co-founder of the firm Symphony Technology Group, will personally pay as part of the deal.

The $6.1 billion sale price is the highest for a team in U.S. sports history, surpassing the $6.05 billion deal for the National Football League’s Washington Commanders in 2023. The Celtics’ total valuation could reach $7.3 billion by 2028 depending on the league’s overall performance, a person familiar with the matter told CNBC.
CNBC Sport’s Official NBA Team Valuations list released in February had estimated the Celtics franchise to be worth $5.5 billion. The top-valued team was the Golden State Warriors at $9.4 billion.
The sale of the Celtics to a large ownership group comes as sports franchise valuations skyrocket, making it more difficult for individuals or families to buy a team themselves. The NFL last year followed the NBA and other major leagues in allowing private equity firms to take stakes in teams.
Soaring media rights payments have contributed to rapid growth in team valuations. The 11-year, $76 billion agreement the NBA signed with Walt Disney, NBCUniversal and Amazon starting next season more than doubled the annual value of the league’s previous media deal.
The Celtics have won 18 championships, the most in the history of the NBA. The team has the second-best record in the NBA’s Eastern Conference this season and is considered a strong contender to win its second consecutive title.
— CNBC’s Michael Ozanian, Leslie Picker and Scott Wapner contributed to this story.
Disclosure: Comcast is the parent company of NBCUniversal and CNBC. More

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