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Satellite imagery and data analysis company Planet announced it had signed a $230 million contract on Wednesday, with an anchor customer for its Pelican satellites.
“It’s both our biggest deal ever and it’s a significant step for us into this satellite services business,” Planet CEO Will Marshall told CNBC.

An animated rendering of a Pelican satellite in orbit.

Satellite imagery and data analysis company Planet announced it had signed a $230 million contract on Wednesday, with an anchor customer furthering the rollout of its next-generation Pelican satellites.
“It is a momentum-building event. … It’s both our biggest deal ever and it’s a significant step for us into this satellite services business,” Planet CEO Will Marshall told CNBC.

Planet’s deal will see it build Pelican satellites in service to a company in the Asia-Pacific region. Planet said the customer will be identified at a later date, but described the company as a long-standing partner. Marshall said the contract covers “a couple of years to construct” the satellites “and then five years of operation.”
“They get dedicated access to the satellites that we’re launching for them within their [area of interest] in Asia, and then for the rest of the world, we get to license that data,” Marshall said.
While the deal does not change Planet’s previous guidance for its fiscal 2025 fourth-quarter results, the company expects to begin seeing benefits to its balance sheet in fiscal 2026, with payments for building the satellites and providing services to be recognized over about seven years.
Planet, which operates more than 200 satellites in orbit, in 2021 unveiled its plans for the more high-powered line of Pelican satellites. Intended to replace the SkySat satellites acquired from Google in 2017, Planet aims to deploy a constellation of as many as 32 Pelican satellites. The company launched its first operational satellite for the constellation, Pelican-2, earlier this month, with the spacecraft notably featuring Nvidia’s Jetson edge artificial intelligence platform for improved data processing.
“We only had financials to specifically build a subset of [those 32 Pelican satellites], and now we’ve got the financials to build more, and so we’re scaling much faster,” Marshall said.

Shares of Planet rose as much as 14% in trading Wednesday before giving up early gains to end the day 1.65% higher. Planet late Tuesday announced a multiyear contract worth an unspecified amount with the European Space Agency.

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Additionally, Marshall said the Pelican deal represents Planet’s entrance into the satellite services market, effectively selling its spacecraft as an adaptable base to specific customers. It is a market that Planet first dipped into with its Tanager satellite product line, the first of which it built and deployed for the nonprofit group Carbon Mapper.
“These customers are often customers we’ve been working with for years, so they already know and trust our data and our ability to execute. They know we’ve got a vertically integrated stack of tech, so they know we can deliver satellites in space that work and operate,” Marshall said.
“It’s synergistic with our data business,” he added.
Planet went public in 2021 amid the SPAC boom. Similar to other space companies that went public at that time, Planet’s stock slid steadily in the years following — with company shares getting hit amid missed revenue targets and workforce layoffs — before bouncing back in 2024.
While it lags top-performing space pure-play stocks over the past year, Planet shares have more than doubled over the past 12 months, according to FactSet data. More

Major League Table Tennis has signed a national TV deal with CBS Sports.
CBS Sports Network will air matches, highlights and player profiles.
The sport has seen a recent uptick in popularity since the Olympics.

Major league table tennis player Debora Vivarelli
Masha Zolotukhina

Major League Table Tennis is going primetime.
The pro table tennis league that got its start in 2023 by software entrepreneur Flint Lane has signed its first-ever national television deal with CBS Sports, the league announced Wednesday. This comes as table tennis has seen a resurgence in popularity and as broadcasters are hungry for sports content.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but CBS Sports Network will air MLTT matches, exclusive highlights, player profiles and behind-the-scenes features throughout the season beginning Sunday at 8 p.m. ET.
“This partnership with CBS Sports is a defining milestone for Major League Table Tennis,” Lane, founder and commissioner of MLTT, told CNBC. “It’s a testament to the league’s energy, talent and growing appeal that captivates audiences. We’re excited to bring professional table tennis to millions of homes.”
MLTT said it’s one of America’s fastest-growing sports on digital and social platforms and that its viewership on YouTube grew more than 1,200% from its first season into its second season. MLTT also noted that table tennis is the sixth most popular sport in the world with 850 million fans, according to the World Atlas.
MLTT currently has eight teams from cities across the U.S. The teams compete against each other during weekend matches.
The league has raised about $10 million in capital, Flint said, with investment from names like David Blitzer, owner of Harris Blitzer Sports & Entertainment, which owns the Washington Commanders and Philadelphia 76ers, and Daryl Morey, president of the Philadelphia 76ers.

Former San Antonio Spurs star Manu Ginóbili is a minority team owner in MLTT team the Florida Crocs.
“Table tennis is considered a basement sport in America,” Flint said. “Throughout Europe, there are professional leagues, but we’ve never had a professional league in this country, so it gives us more credibility.”
Flint said the sport got a boost at the Paris Olympics, where for the first time ever two Americans made it to the round of 16. One of those players, Lily Zhang, plays for MLTT.

The USA Table Tennis team met Steph Curry at the 2024 Paris Olympics.

The sport also got some buzz during the Olympics when Golden State Warriors Star Stephen Curry met the USA Table Tennis team at opening ceremonies and later invited them to sit courtside at a game.
While MLTT hasn’t yet been approved for sports betting, betting on table tennis gained traction during the coronavirus pandemic when many sports were shuttered. In some states like Oregon, table tennis is one of the top sports for betting due to its fast pace and rapidly changing odds.
Flint said now that the league has locked in a television deal, it will focus on selling two expansion teams and increasing the sport’s presence at the grassroots level.
Disclosure: CNBC parent NBCUniversal owns NBC Sports and NBC Olympics. NBC Olympics is the U.S. broadcast rights holder to all Summer and Winter Games through 2032.
Correction: This article has been updated to correct the spelling of Lily Zhang’s name. More

With the release of its latest artificial-intelligence (AI) model, DeepSeek, an obscure Chinese firm, has laid waste to several years of American policy meant to hold back Chinese innovation—and, in the process, blown a hole in the valuations of companies from Nvidia, America’s AI chip champion, to Siemens Energy, a manufacturer of electrical equipment used in data centres. In demonstrating its ability to innovate around American export restrictions, DeepSeek has raised doubts as to whether access to piles of cutting-edge semiconductors and related equipment is as important as previously thought when it comes to training AI models. More

Frontier Airlines has again proposed merging with struggling rival Spirit Airlines, which is in bankruptcy.
Spirit executives told their Frontier counterparts that they were rejecting the deal.

A Frontier Airlines plane near a Spirit Airlines plane at the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport on May 16, 2022 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
Joe Raedle | Getty Images

Frontier Airlines said Wednesday it has again proposed merging with struggling rival Spirit Airlines, which is in bankruptcy.
Frontier and Spirit first announced a deal to merge in 2022, but a JetBlue Airways offer derailed that plan. JetBlue’s proposed acquisition of Spirit was blocked by a federal judge last year, and Spirit filed for bankruptcy protection in November.

Frontier said in a release that it has met with Spirit’s board and executives since it made its proposal this month. Frontier executives said in a email to counterparts at Spirit this week that their plan is better than Spirit’s own plan to emerge from bankruptcy.
“We continue to believe that under the current standalone plan, Spirit will emerge highly levered, losing money at the operating level, and this would not be a transaction we would pursue,” wrote Frontier Chairman Bill Franke and CEO Barry Biffle in a Tuesday email to Spirit Chairman Mac Gardner and CEO Ted Christie. “As a result, time is of the essence.”
Christie and Gardner told their Frontier counterparts that they were rejecting the deal, calling the terms “inadequate and unactionable,” according to a letter shared in a securities filing on Wednesday.
Spirit said it expects to exit Chapter 11 bankruptcy this quarter. It has cut costs recently, including by slashing some 200 jobs and selling some of its Airbus planes. The airline had also been particularly challenged by a Pratt & Whitney engine recall that grounded dozens of its jets.
Budget carriers like Frontier and Spirit have struggled post-pandemic, as costs like salaries have risen and consumers have opted for trips abroad on carriers with options for roomier and more expensive seats.

Both Frontier and Spirit have been working to upend their business models that were marked by low fares and fees for add-ons from seat assignments to cabin baggage.
The airlines last year did away with cancellation and change fees for some of their tickets and started bundling perks along with tickets. Frontier last year said it would start offering a premium section at the front of the plane. More

Fox has sold out of ad spots for the upcoming Super Bowl on Feb. 9, with more than 10 commercials selling for a record $8 million, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Live sports, especially the Super Bowl, attract the biggest audiences, meaning advertisers continue to shell out for ad spots.
While automakers and food and beverage companies will take up the bulk of air time, artificial intelligence and pharmaceutical companies took a bigger share of commercials this year.

Jake Elliott, #4 of the Philadelphia Eagles, kicks a field goal against the Kansas City Chiefs during the third quarter in Super Bowl LVII at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona, on Feb. 12, 2023.
Carmen Mandato | Getty Images Sport | Getty Images

Fox Corp. is scoring big this Super Bowl.
The broadcaster has sold out of ad spots for Super Bowl 59 on Feb. 9, and more than 10 of those commercials sold for $8 million apiece, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Fox reported during its November earnings call with investors that it sold out of ad spots for the Super Bowl in the fall of 2024. At the time, media reports pegged average prices at more than $7 million per ad.
“We’re sold out for the Super Bowl at record — what we believe [is] a record pricing,” Fox CEO Lachlan Murdoch said on November’s call.
Much of the ad inventory for the Super Bowl was sold during Fox’s Upfront presentation to investors last spring, and when it became clear that open spots were dwindling, the price of each unit stepped up, said the person familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss nonpublic matters.
Typically, pricing for Super Bowl ads can escalate by about $100,000 as remaining inventory lessens and game day approaches. This year, the jump in price was closer to $500,000 per spot, the person said.
The voracious appetite for commercial time during the country’s biggest live sports event is no surprise, even if the pricing is eye-popping. Live sports continue to beckon the biggest audiences as the cable TV bundle shrinks, making the matches some of the most coveted programming on live TV for advertisers.

Last year, an estimated 123.7 million people watched the Super Bowl, which was aired on Paramount’s CBS broadcast network, streaming service Paramount+ and Spanish-language telecaster Univision, among other platforms, according to Nielsen.
In 2023, the last time the Super Bowl aired on Fox, more than 115 million viewers tuned in. These audience sizes are a key reason why media giants have shelled out hefty sums for the rights to NFL games.
“If I learned anything, it’s that we’re in a period now where the live sporting event, where people and families come together to watch, is that much more coveted,” said Mark Evans, executive vice president of ad sales for Fox Sports. “There’s an escalation in price and interest in the demand for live sports, but we’re not at its peak. We’ve still got runway for growth.”
The advertising market has been improving since its slump during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. Traditional media companies with sports rights and tentpole live programming are benefiting the most, while advertising for general entertainment programming still lags in comparison.
This year’s Super Bowl, which will see the reigning champion Kansas City Chiefs once again take on the Philadelphia Eagles, will have plenty of commercials from the typical players, including automakers, restaurants and food and beverage companies, with lots of familiar celebrity faces, said Evans.
Viewers will notice an increase in ads from companies in the artificial intelligence and pharmaceutical industries, while there will be fewer commercials from streaming services and movie studios, he said.
Evans noted that “multiple advertisers have fallen in love with the creative,” adding there will be more 60-second ads in addition to the usually popular 15- and 30-second spots.
Advertisers will also get a little more bang for their buck this year. In addition to broadcasting on Fox, the company is also offering the Super Bowl on its free, ad-supported streaming service Tubi for the first time. Tubi will air the same ad load as the broadcast network.

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Starbucks topped Wall Street’s estimates for its quarterly earnings and revenue, but the company’s same-store sales slid for the fourth consecutive quarter.
The coffee giant said its same-store sales fell 4%, fueled by a 6% decline in visits to its stores.
CEO Brian Niccol is trying to turn around the business with his “back to Starbucks” strategy.

The Starbucks logo is seen on a cup at one of its cafes on April 26, 2024.
Jakub Porzycki/ | Nurphoto | Getty Images

Starbucks on Tuesday reported that its same-store sales slid for the fourth consecutive quarter, but the company’s quarterly earnings and revenue beat Wall Street’s expectations.
The coffee giant kicked off a turnaround plan last quarter in the hopes of reviving its U.S. business, which has slumped over the past year.

“While we have room for improvement, we’re making progress as planned, and have confidence we’re on the right track,” CEO Brian Niccol said in a video released on the company’s website Tuesday afternoon.
He added that the company has seen a “positive response” to the early steps it has taken. Those tweaks have included removing extra charges for nondairy milk options, focusing its marketing on its coffee and slashing 30% of its food and beverage menu items by the end of fiscal 2025.
Here is what the company reported compared with what Wall Street was expecting, based on a survey of analysts by LSEG:

Earnings per share: 69 cents vs. 67 cents expected
Revenue: $9.4 billion vs. $9.31 billion expected

Starbucks reported fiscal first-quarter net income attributable to the company of $780.8 million, or 69 cents per share, down from $1.02 billion, or 90 cents per share, a year earlier.
The company’s net sales of $9.4 billion were unchanged from a year earlier.

Starbucks’ same-store sales fell 4%, fueled by a 6% decline in traffic to its stores. Wall Street was expecting a steeper drop of 5.5%, according to StreetAccount estimates. Both its U.S. and international locations outperformed expectations.
U.S. same-store sales slid 4% as traffic to its cafes fell 8%. Under Niccol, who took the reins in September, the company has been trying to turn around its U.S. business by getting “back to Starbucks” and returning its focus to coffee and the customer experience.
Starbucks has also been cutting back on deals, so its discounted transactions fell 40% during the quarter. Niccol credited the pullback in discounts for the chain’s sales improvement throughout the quarter.
Outside of its home market, same-store sales also declined 4%.
Starbucks’ same-store sales in China, its second-largest market, fell 6%, fueled by a 4% decline in average ticket. The coffee giant has been leaning into discounts in China to compete with rivals that have much lower prices, such as Luckin Coffee.
Niccol said he made his first visit to stores in China last week. The company is exploring strategic partnerships to grow its business in the country.
“We’re processing these learnings, and we will share more as we do,” he told analysts on the company’s conference call.
In October, the company suspended its forecast for fiscal 2025, citing the turnaround efforts. On Tuesday’s call, executives also backed away from a target of $4 billion in supply-chain cost savings by 2028; Niccol’s predecessor Laxman Narasimhan had shared that number in April 2024, just as sales began to shrink and months before he was out of the job.
Starbucks is also planning fewer new locations and renovations in fiscal 2025 to free up capital to fuel its comeback. However, Niccol sees strong demand for more cafes in the long term.
“In the U.S. alone, we still see the potential to double our store count, while improving the overall health of our portfolio. We’ll do this through a strong store renovation program, new store builds, and store closures,” Niccol said.
The company is also trying to improve its speed of service by scheduling more workers, removing bottlenecks behind its coffee counters and making baristas’ jobs easier.
For example, Starbucks plans to prioritize installing its Siren equipment in its busiest locations, Niccol said. The new equipment includes a custom ice dispenser, milk-dispensing system and faster blenders so baristas can make drinks more quickly.
Starbucks is also piloting a new algorithm to manage the order that baristas should make both mobile and in-store drinks. If successful, the algorithm could solve Starbucks’ overcrowded pick-up counters that cause frustration for both customers and baristas.
Niccol also has plans for Starbucks’ corporate workforce. He has been reorganizing the company’s structure, including splitting the role of North American president into two jobs. Earlier on Tuesday, the company announced it has hired two alumni from Taco Bell, Niccol’s employer prior to Chipotle.
In early March, the company is planning to lay off workers, although Starbucks has not yet shared how many jobs will be affected.

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Starbucks is adding two former Taco Bell alumni to its leadership team.
CEO Brian Niccol said the company is changing the operating model for its retail team, which led to the shake-up.
Starbucks announced the move hours before it announced fiscal first-quarter earnings that topped Wall Street’s expectations.

Brian Niccols, CEO of Starbucks, speaking with CNBC on Oct. 31, 2024.

Starbucks announced another stage in its leadership shake-up on Tuesday, as CEO Brian Niccol will bring in two more executives who spent time at his former employer Taco Bell while dividing key leadership roles.
“As we focus on our ‘Back to Starbucks’ plan, we need a new operating model for our retail team, with clear ownership and accountability and an appropriate scope for each role,” Niccol said in a letter to employees shared on the company’s website.

Starbucks announced the move hours before it reported fiscal first-quarter earnings and revenue that topped analyst expectations. As the company tries to mount a turnaround, same-stores sales declined for the fourth straight quarter, but not as badly as Wall Street expected.
Before spending six years at Chipotle, Niccol served as CEO of Yum Brands’ Taco Bell. Since starting at Starbucks in September, he has already poached some of his former colleagues to help with his transformation of the coffee giant. For example, he tapped Chipotle and Yum Brands alum Tressie Lieberman as Starbucks’ global chief brand officer in the fall.
The newest changes to the Starbucks organization include splitting the role of North American president into two jobs. The company’s current North American president, Sara Trilling, will depart the company. Trilling has been with Starbucks since 2002.
Starting in February, Meredith Sandland will hold the role of chief store development officer. Sandland is currently CEO of Empower Delivery, a restaurant software company. Previously, she served as chief operating officer of Kitchen United and as Taco Bell’s chief development officer.
Additionally, Mike Grams will join the company in February as North America chief stores officer. Grams has been with Taco Bell for more than 30 years, starting as a restaurant general manager and working his way up to become the chain’s global chief operating officer, according to his LinkedIn.

Both Sandland and Grams will be tasked with implementing Niccol’s vision to go “back to Starbucks.” The strategy includes decreasing service times to four minutes per order, making its stores more welcoming and cozy, as well as slashing the menu.
Arthur Valdez, Starbucks’ chief supply officer, also plans to leave the company. He joined in 2023 after seven years at Target. Starbucks has already identified his replacement and will share that news in the coming weeks, Niccol said in the letter.

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JetBlue’s outlook disappointed investors.
The airline is in the middle of a cost-cutting program that includes culling unprofitable flying.
It lost two antitrust cases that blocked its planned acquisition of Spirit Airlines last year and a regional partnership with American in 2023.

A JetBlue Airways plane prepares to take off from the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport on January 31, 2024 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
Joe Raedle | Getty Images

JetBlue Airways shares fell more than 25% on Tuesday, the biggest one-day percentage loss since the company went public more than two decades ago, after the carrier’s financial outlook disappointed investors.
The New York-based airline forecast its unit costs, excluding fuel, will rise as much as 7% this year from 2024. In the first quarter, it said it expected this metric to rise as much as 10% this quarter year-over-year.

It estimated revenue could come in up to 0.5% lower to as much as 3.5% higher this quarter over 2024. Larger competitors Delta and United have been forecasting higher revenue growth, a sign of those airlines’ strengthening pricing power.
JetBlue is in the middle of a plan to reduce costs by culling unprofitable routes, deferring new aircraft and drumming up revenue with higher-priced seats. CNBC reported Friday that JetBlue has offered senior pilots voluntary early retirement packages. JetBlue cut costs by $190 million last year, the company said Tuesday.
“This is a multiyear strategy, and it’s not linear, and we’re focused on the long term here in getting JetBlue back to sustained profitability,” CEO Joanna Geraghty, who took the top job last year, said during an earnings call on Tuesday. “So it’s going to take a little time.”
Geraghty added she was pleased with the carrier’s progress, which puts it on track to add up to $900 million to pretax profit 2027.
The carrier expects its 2025 revenue to rise between 3% and 6% on flat capacity. The impact of a Pratt & Whitney engine recall will be worse this year, grounding a number of the company’s Airbus jets in the “mid- to high teens, up from 11 grounded aircraft last year,” CFO Ursula Hurley said on the earnings call Tuesday.

JetBlue is in the middle of a plan to reduce costs by culling unprofitable routes, deferring new aircraft and drumming up revenue with higher-priced seats. CNBC reported Friday that JetBlue has offered senior pilots voluntary early retirement packages.
JetBlue lost two antitrust cases that blocked two of its growth strategies. In 2024, a federal judge blocked JetBlue’s planned acquisition of Spirit Airlines, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in November, and in 2023, JetBlue lost a case over its regional partnership with American Airlines.
“We would note that the current management team has hit their numbers, but in a market where airlines are seeing solid earnings growth, JetBlue hasn’t been able to keep pace,” wrote Melius Research analyst Conor Cunningham. “JetBlue still needs to aggressively ramp unit revenue throughout the year to get to sustained operating profit – all possible, it just is hard to underwrite given the drag in 1Q.”
JetBlue’s fourth-quarter loss narrowed to $44 million, or a loss of 13 cents per share, down from a loss of $104 million, or a loss of 31 cents a share, in the same period in 2023. The carrier reported revenue of $2.28 billion, down 2.1% from a year earlier. More