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Dear Max, I am hiring for an open position on my team. We are having trouble finding good candidates, and my boss just came in to tell me that we shouldn’t waste time looking for a purple squirrel. I had absolutely no idea what he meant but did not want to let on, and said that we probably shouldn’t hold out for a crimson gerbil either. He paused for what seemed like a year, then nodded and agreed with me. What the hell is going on? More

Secondhand fashion, once relegated to charity shops, is now in style. Vestiaire Collective, a luxury resale site, featured in an episode of the latest season of “Emily in Paris”, a Netflix drama known for its designer costumes. eBay, an online marketplace, has partnered with “Love Island”, a cult British reality show, to kit contestants out in used clothes. At London Fashion Week last year Vinted, a Lithuanian resale site, and Oxfam, a charity, showcased second-hand outfits. More

Boeing might have hoped that coughing up $1m for Donald Trump’s inauguration fund would ease relations with America’s incoming president. Yet “not happy” was the verdict he delivered on February 20th. His displeasure concerns a contract that the American aerospace giant signed during his first term to replace the twin planes that serve as Air Force One. The new jets, which should have arrived in time for Mr Trump’s second term, may no longer be delivered during his current stint in the White House, after difficulties with supply chains, the customisations required and a shortage of workers with the right security clearance. Mr Trump has said he is considering buying secondhand instead. More

Warner Bros. Discovery said Thursday it added 6.4 million global streaming subscribers in the fourth quarter for a total of 116.9 million subscribers.
Fourth-quarter revenue for the streaming segment, which is anchored by flagship service Max, totaled $2.65 billion, up 5% from $2.53 billion in the same quarter last year.
In a shareholder letter, the company forecast adjusted EBITDA of $1.3 billion for its streaming business for the year and said it has a “clear path” to hit 150 million global subscribers by the end of 2026.

A sign outside of the Warner Brothers Discovery Techwood Turner Broadcasting campus is seen on June 26, 2024 in Atlanta, Georgia.
Kevin Dietsch | Getty Images

Warner Bros. Discovery said Thursday it added 6.4 million global streaming subscribers in the fourth quarter for a total of 116.9 million subscribers.
Fourth-quarter revenue for the streaming segment, which is anchored by flagship service Max, totaled $2.65 billion, up 5% from $2.53 billion in the same quarter last year. Adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization for the unit came in at $409 million, compared to an adjusted EBITDA loss of $55 million in the fourth quarter of 2023.

In a shareholder letter, the company forecast adjusted EBITDA of $1.3 billion for its streaming business for the year — roughly double the $677 million adjusted EBITDA it reported for 2024 — and said it has a “clear path” to hit 150 million global subscribers by the end of 2026. Max is set to launch on television service Sky in the United Kingdom and Ireland by the second quarter of 2026, and will debut in Germany and Italy in the first quarter of that year.
“In this generational media disruption, only the global streamers will survive and prosper, and Max is just that,” CEO David Zaslav said on the company’s earnings call on Thursday.
The media and entertainment company announced Wednesday that Max would keep its B/R Sports and CNN content available at no additional cost to subscribers in its standard and premium tiers. Initially WBD planned to charge an additional cost for sports.
However, it will pull both verticals from its basic, ad-supported tier beginning March 30.
Here’s how Warner Bros. Discovery performed in the fourth quarter of 2024 compared with what Wall Street was expecting, based on a survey of analysts by LSEG:

Loss per share: 20 cents vs. earnings per share of 1 cent expected
Revenue: $10.03 billion vs. $10.19 billion expected

WBD’s overall fourth-quarter revenue fell 2% to $10.03 billion from $10.28 billion during the same quarter in 2023. Full-year 2024 revenue came in at $39.32 billion, down 5% from $41.32 billion in 2023.
Warner Bros. Discovery reported a net loss of $494 million for the fourth quarter of 2024, or a loss of 20 cents per share, compared with a net loss of $400 million, or a loss of 16 cents per share, during the fourth quarter of 2023.
TV networks revenue came in at $4.77 billion, compared to $5.04 billion in the year-earlier period. The company previously wrote down $9.1 billion for its networks business in its 2024 second-quarter earnings report. In its shareholder letter, Warner Bros. Discovery noted that it expects further declines in cable subscribers and that the advertising market for U.S. linear television is shrinking faster than expected.
For the studios business, fourth-quarter revenue totaled $3.66 billion, an increase of 15% from $3.17 billion in the fourth quarter of 2023.
“We are laser-focused on getting our studios back to a place of industry leadership,” Zaslav said.
This story is developing. Please check back for updates. More

When tucked between lip and gum, a small white pouch of Zyn is intended to give the user a pleasant nicotine hit. Its maker is getting a lift, too. Shares in Philip Morris International (PMI), the world’s largest publicly traded tobacco company, are at record highs. Investors’ enthusiasm, which has surged since a bumper earnings report in early February, has little to do with sales of Marlboro or PMI’s other cigarettes. It is fuelled by the firm’s booming “smoke-free” products (broadly, anything but burning tobacco)—and chiefly by Zyn. More

A March meeting of vaccine advisors to the Food and Drug Administration has been canceled without explanation, a member of the advisory panel told CNBC.
It comes as Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a vaccine skeptic who now leads the Department of Health and Human Services, makes early moves that could affect vaccination uptake and policy in the U.S.
The meeting of the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee, or VRBPAC, is held every March to pick flu select flu strains for shots released in the upcoming fall and winter. 

FILE PHOTO: The headquarters of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is seen in Silver Spring, Maryland November 4, 2009. 
Jason Reed | Reuters

A crucial March meeting of vaccine advisors to the Food and Drug Administration has been canceled without explanation, a member of the advisory panel told CNBC on Wednesday. 
The meeting of the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee, or VRBPAC, is held every March to select flu strains for shots released in the upcoming fall and winter. 

But Dr. Paul Offit, a member of that panel, told CNBC that he received an email at 4:18 p.m. ET on Wednesday saying that the upcoming March 13 meeting is canceled. He said there was no indication of whether it will be rescheduled.
“Who canceled this meeting? Why did they cancel the meeting? Will manufacturers now turn to the World Health Organization to determine strains for this year’s influenza vaccines?” Offit told CNBC. 
The Department of Health and Human Services did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The canceled meeting comes as Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who now leads HHS, makes early moves that could affect vaccination uptake and policy in the U.S. Kennedy has a lengthy track record of being a vaccine skeptic. 
It also comes amid a particularly brutal flu season in the U.S. CDC data shows the flu has caused up to an estimated 910,000 hospitalizations since October, which puts the season on track to be the most severe in at least a decade.

Earlier this month, a separate meeting of advisors who help the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention make recommendations for vaccines was postponed to “accommodate public comment in advance of the meeting,” several news outlets reported. It is also unclear if that meeting will be rescheduled. 
Kennedy also said last week that he will review the childhood vaccine schedule despite earlier pledges not to do so. He promised that a new “Make America Healthy Again” commission would investigate vaccines, pesticides and antidepressants to see if they have contributed to a rise of chronic illness in the U.S.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration is weighing pulling funding for Moderna’s bird flu vaccine, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday.
The country is grappling with a record-breaking bird flu outbreak that’s impacted dozens of cattle herds along with poultry flocks, which has sent egg prices skyrocketing. Its rapid spread in animals has raised concerns about broader spread to humans.” More

DURING a recent summit in Paris, J.D. Vance, America’s vice-president, declared that the world’s most powerful artificial-intelligence (AI) systems would be developed in America with “American-designed and manufactured chips”. That is a lofty ambition, for although America leads the world when it comes to designing AI chips, it long ago ceded its position as the global centre of chip manufacturing to Taiwan. More

Eli Lilly said it will invest at least $27 billion to build four new manufacturing sites in the U.S. as demand for its weight loss and diabetes injections soars and the company develops new drugs.
The move comes as companies work to build goodwill with President Donald Trump, who has emphasized reshoring manufacturing to the U.S. and reducing reliance on foreign supply chains. 
The announcement brings Eli Lilly’s total U.S. manufacturing investments to more than $50 billion in recent years.

Eli Lilly on Wednesday said it will invest at least $27 billion to build four new manufacturing sites in the U.S., as demand for its blockbuster weight loss and diabetes injections soars and the company develops new drugs for other conditions.
It comes as drugmakers and companies across different industries work to build goodwill with President Donald Trump, who has emphasized reshoring manufacturing to the U.S. and reducing reliance on foreign supply chains. He has threatened companies — and pharmaceutical businesses in particular — with tariffs if they do not manufacture products in the U.S.

Eli Lilly made the announcement at an event in Washington, D.C. — emphasizing the political undertones of the strategy. The event featured several speakers from the Trump administration, including Kevin Hassett, director of the White House National Economic Council, and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who explicitly tied the announcement to Trump’s policies.
Lutnick said the investment is “exactly what the Trump administration is all about, which is building and manufacturing and reshoring in America, investing in America, building in America.” He thanked Eli Lilly for “doing exactly what the president was hoping would happen.”
Lutnick added that “if you want to understand the tariff policy” of the U.S., “I have just articulated it.”
The move brings Eli Lilly’s total U.S. manufacturing investments to more than $50 billion in recent years. The other $23 billion is from the company’s investments in new plants and site expansions since 2020, which has helped ease supply shortages of its popular drugs.  
“This represents the largest pharmaceutical expansion investment in U.S. history,” Eli Lilly CEO David Ricks said at the event. “We’re making these investments … to prepare for the demand we anticipate for future pipeline medicines across our therapeutic areas.”

Shares of the company closed more than 1% higher on Wednesday.
Three of the future U.S. sites announced Wednesday will manufacture active ingredients in medications, such as tirzepatide, the active ingredient in Eli Lilly’s obesity drug Zepbound and diabetes treatment Mounjaro. Ricks noted that there is a “real gap in supply chain in the U.S. as it relates to active ingredient availability in our country.”
The fourth site will extend the company’s global manufacturing network for future injectable therapies, he added.
Eli Lilly has not decided on where the four new U.S. sites will be located, Ricks said. The company will be accepting location submissions through March 13 and will announce decisions on new sites in the coming months.
Eli Lilly said the four new sites will create more than 3,000 jobs for workers such as engineers and scientists, along with 10,000 construction jobs as the plants are built. The company’s other U.S. plants include sites in North Carolina, Indiana and Wisconsin.
The new investments aren’t solely dedicated to Eli Lilly’s current and future obesity and diabetes treatments. The company is charting its future beyond Zepbound and Mounjaro, with hopes to deliver drugs from its broad pipeline of products for cancer, Alzheimer’s disease and other conditions.
Ricks said the company is optimistic about its pipeline across therapeutic areas, including cardiometabolic health, oncology, immunology and neuroscience.
Still, the new investments build on the success of Zepbound and Mounjaro, which share dominance of the booming market for so-called GLP-1 drugs with Novo Nordisk’s weight loss drug Wegovy and diabetes treatment Ozempic. Some analysts expect the global obesity drug market to be worth more than $150 billion annually by the early 2030s, making it critical for both companies to maintain their share as other drugmakers scramble to join.
During the event, Ricks took a shot at cheaper compounded versions of its injectable drugs, saying “America faces a growing threat from an influx of counterfeit and compounded medications.”
Eli Lilly’s efforts to boost the supply of Zepbound and Mounjaro aim to ensure that eligible patients are safely accessing those branded treatments instead of cheaper compounded versions. Patients flocked to those unapproved copycats when the branded drugs were in short supply, or if they didn’t have insurance coverage for the costly treatments. 
The FDA has since declared the shortage of tirzepatide over, which will essentially bar many compounding pharmacies from making copycats. 
Hassett said the issue also “disturbs the White House” because offshore producers of copycat drugs are “threatening lives in the U.S.”

More CNBC health coverage

In another sign of the political goals of the announcement, Ricks touted Trump’s 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, saying that the legislation has been “fundamental” to the company’s manufacturing investments. He called it “essential that these policies are extended permanently this year.”
Key provisions from that law are set to expire at the end of December — though a reduction in the corporate tax rate will remain in effect.
That legislation, passed by a majority-Republican Congress during Trump’s first term, was the largest tax code overhaul in nearly three decades that slashed taxes for individuals and businesses. It cut the corporate tax rate to 21%, capped deductions for state and local taxes at $10,000, and expanded the child tax credit, among other efforts. 
“Long-term progress will also require U.S. policies to continue to protect the intellectual property rights and foster an innovative environment where we can do our work,” Ricks said.
Novo Nordisk has similarly invested billions in manufacturing to ramp up supply of Wegovy and Ozempic, announcing in 2024 it would take over three sites from contract manufacturer Catalent for $11 billion.

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