Business

More than 70,000 people are expected to be in attendance for Friday’s fight.
The fight has brought in $17.8 million in revenue from ticket sales, according to Most Valuable Promotions.
It is the biggest gate outside of Las Vegas.

(L-R) Mike Tyson, Nakisa Bidarian and Jake Paul pose onstage during the Jake Paul vs. Mike Tyson Boxing match press conference at Texas Live! in Arlington, Texas, on May 16, 2024.
Cooper Neill | Getty Images

The highly anticipated boxing match between Jake Paul and Mike Tyson has already secured its place in the record books.
The fight’s promoter, Most Valuable Promotions, which is co-owned by Paul, told CNBC it expects more than 70,000 people to be in attendance to the Friday night bout at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas. The Dallas Cowboys’ stadium has a seating capacity of 80,000.

The gate receipts alone have brought in $17.8 million in revenue, the promoter said.
That makes it the biggest boxing gate in history outside of Nevada. The previous record was $9 million in gate receipts for the 2021 fight between Canelo Álvarez and Billy Joe Saunders at AT&T Stadium.
MVP said the gate is also higher than any non-Las Vegas UFC fight, other than Conor McGregor versus Eddie Alvarez in New York City in 2016.
Nakisa Bidarian, co-founder of MVP, told CNBC’s “Closing Bell” that both Tyson and Paul will be making eight figures from this fight and Taylor and Serrano will also be having record paydays for women’s boxing.
The fight between Paul, a 27-year-old YouTube influencer-turned-boxer and Tyson, a 58-year-old boxing legend, will air Friday at 8 p.m. ET on Netflix, free to subscribers.

The event will also feature one of the most anticipated women’s boxing rematches in history: undisputed super lightweight champion Katie Taylor versus unified featherweight champion Amanda Serrano.
Netflix has upward of 283 million paid memberships in more than 190 countries. The bout will also be a test for the streamer as it ventures deeper into the sports space and as boxing sidesteps the pay-per-view model.
“Numbers don’t lie,” Paul said Wednesday at a press conference for the fight. “People want to see this and that’s an amazing accomplishment. … This is a statement that we had the biggest live gate outside of Vegas in U.S. boxing history.”
Tickets for the fight on Friday range on StubHub from about $58 to $1,500. MVP has also sold higher-end packages, including a $2 million VIP experience that comes with ringside seats. The promotions company says its 375 VIP seats have officially sold out.
For comparison, Vegas’ biggest fight in history took place in 2015 between Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao. That fight took in more than $72 million in tickets, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. More

Several pure-play space stocks rallied 20% or more this week, in part driven by what sector analysts called a “Trump-Elon trade.”
Just this week saw Rocket Lab up 41%, Intuitive Machines up 28%, Spire Global up 26%, Planet Labs up 16%, Redwire up 15% and AST SpaceMobile up 10%.
So far in 2024, “space has been one of the best outperformers in the market,” Cantor Fitzgerald analyst Andres Sheppard told CNBC.

A hot fire test of an Archimedes engine, which powers the company’s Neutron rocket.
Rocket Lab

This past week saw several pure-play space stocks rally, with leaders up as much as 20% or more, in part driven by what sector analysts said is a “Trump-Elon trade,” a nod to the relationship between President-elect Donald Trump and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk.
“I don’t think anyone can underplay the potential catalyst that I don’t think many people were talking about before: the most important human in the history of the space industry having the ear of the president-elect, who in his past term found space important enough to create a separate branch of the military,” Andrew Chanin, CEO of ProcureAM, which runs the UFO space-focused ETF, told CNBC.

Just this week saw Rocket Lab up 41%, Intuitive Machines up 28%, Spire Global up 26%, Planet Labs up 16%, Redwire up 15% and AST SpaceMobile up 10%.
Those gains were partly catalyzed by third-quarter results and individual updates, such as Rocket Lab’s progress on Neutron and Spire’s sale of its maritime business to remove debt.
But there is a broader market sentiment that is driving these stocks, too, said Cantor Fitzgerald analyst Andres Sheppard, who has buy ratings on Rocket Lab, Redwire and Intuitive Machines.
“I think there’s definitely a risk-on, post-Trump-win rally that’s being reflected in this industry,” Sheppard told CNBC.
Back out even further to take a year-to-date perspective, and this week’s top-performing space stocks have broken out of a post-SPAC malaise to triple or even quadruple in 2024.

“Space has been one of the best outperformers in the market this year for a handful of these names,” Sheppard said.
“We’re seeing a big increase in investor inbounds,” he continued. “We’re getting calls and emails from institutional investors, which are finally starting to realize that this market is only going to continue to accelerate. It’s only going to continue to proliferate because of national security, because of the Artemis program to get the U.S. astronauts back on the moon, because of Elon [Musk]’s ambitious goals of getting to Mars.”

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Sheppard emphasized that Musk’s company SpaceX being privately held means investors are turning to other companies to get exposure to the space sector. Similarly, ProcureAM’s Chanin believes SpaceX’s dominant position in rocket launches and satellite broadband actually helps companies that have spacecraft looking for a ride to orbit.
“They all benefit from the lower cost of accessing space,” Chanin said.
Notably, this week has also seen a bifurcation between pure-play space stocks. Newer companies that have gone public over the past few years climbed while older “legacy” players slid, such as EchoStar and Viasat, both down more than 10% this week.
Alex King, CEO of Cestrian Capital Research, said that gap represents a changing of the guard between the generations of space companies.
“The need for any of those legacy businesses is declining. … What you’re seeing in space, I think, is a slower evolution of what happens in tech, where it happens really quickly, which is low cost always wins in the end,” King said.
“I think there’s an element of the market working out which of these companies are here to stay and which aren’t,” King added.

Despite the huge year-to-date gains by the top space performers, Sheppard does not see the sector slowing down any time soon.
“The overall sentiment has been very bullish and continues to be bullish, despite the outperformance,” Sheppard said.
That aligns with the views of Rocket Lab CEO Peter Beck, who said during the company’s third-quarter earnings call this week that he expects the incoming Trump administration’s “very strong focus on space” to keep up the industry’s momentum.
“When space wins, Rocket Lab wins,” Beck said. More

McDonald’s will invest more than $100 million to boost restaurant sales and speed up the recovery after last month’s E. coli outbreak.
Of that total, $65 million will be invested into supporting owners who have lost business, targeting those in the hardest-hit states.
Approximately $35 million will be invested in traffic-driving programs, including marketing efforts.
This week, the company completed the return of Quarter Pounder burgers, with slivered onions, to all restaurant menus nationwide.

A Quarter Pounder with cheese, fries and a drink arranged at a McDonald’s restaurant in El Sobrante, California, on Oct. 23, 2024.
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images

In the wake of last month’s E. coli outbreak tied to McDonald’s slivered onions, the fast-food giant said it will invest more than $100 million to boost restaurant sales and speed up the recovery at affected franchisees.
Of that total, $65 million will be invested into supporting owners who have lost business, targeting those in the hardest-hit states. Approximately $35 million will be invested in traffic-driving programs, including marketing efforts, according to a memo to owners and employees viewed by CNBC.

McDonald’s will also be driving “local recovery plans for highly impacted markets” with more details to come in the weeks ahead, the memo said.
“We have navigated a complex and fast changing situation, moved at an unmatched pace, and showed the true character of our brand through unwavering dedication to the safety and well-being of our customers. As we enter the ‘Recovery’ phase, we will continue to uphold our commitment to do the right thing,” said the memo from McDonald’s Chief Impact Officer Michael Gonda and Chief Marketing and Customer Experience Officer Tariq Hassan.
The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg earlier reported the recovery investments.
During the company’s most-recent earnings call last month, Chief Financial Officer Ian Borden told investors that daily sales and traffic turned negative immediately following a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announcement that linked the E. coli outbreak to McDonald’s Quarter Pounders. But the company does not expect the situation to have a material effect on its business, executives said.
This week, the company completed the return of Quarter Pounder burgers, with slivered onions, to all restaurant menus nationwide after temporarily removing the menu item from some locations, according to the memo to franchisees.

On Wednesday, the CDC issued its latest update on the outbreak, which now includes a total of 104 cases, 37 hospitalizations and one death across 14 states.
The same day, the Food and Drug Administration said in a statement that “there does not appear to be a continued food safety concern related to this outbreak at McDonald’s restaurants.” 

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GM laid off roughly 1,000 employees on Friday as the automaker attempts to cut costs and realign priorities amid changing market conditions, according to a person familiar with the decision.
The layoffs, which were announced Friday morning via email to those impacted, were across the business.

The GM logo is seen on the facade of the General Motors headquarters in Detroit on March 16, 2021.
Rebecca Cook | Reuters

DETROIT – General Motors laid off roughly 1,000 employees on Friday as the automaker attempts to cut costs and realign priorities amid changing market conditions, according to a person familiar with the decision.
The layoffs, which were announced Friday morning to those impacted, were across the business. Some were due to poor performance, while others were part of a review to reorganize priorities by the automaker, according to the person, who agreed to speak about the decision on the condition of anonymity.

A majority of the employees impacted were salaried workers in suburban Detroit at the automaker’s global technical center in Warren, Michigan, the person said. The United Auto Workers said about 50 union members were included in the layoffs.
The company is targeting $2 billion in fixed cost reductions this year as it deals with slowing U.S. sales, business deterioration in China and a shift in its “all-in” strategy for electric vehicles amid slower-than-expected consumer adoption.

Stock chart icon

GM, Ford and Stellantis stocks.

A spokesman for GM confirmed the layoffs but declined to disclose the total amount.
“In order to win in this competitive market, we need to optimize for speed and excellence,” GM spokesperson Kevin Kelly said in an emailed statement. “This includes operating with efficiency, ensuring we have the right team structure, and focusing on our top priorities as a business. As part of this continuous effort, we’ve made a small number of team reductions.  We are grateful to those who helped establish a strong foundation that positions GM to lead in the industry moving forward.” 
UAW Vice President Mike Booth, who oversees the union’s GM unit, condemned the layoffs. “GM is trying to cut around 50 UAW jobs, when they’re making record profits. We will fight for our laid off members with the full force of our contract,” he said in an emailed statement.

Friday’s layoffs follow more than 1,000 salaried employees working in GM’s software and services organization being let go in August.
GM’s global salaried workforce was 76,000 as of the end of last year. That included about 53,000 U.S. salaried employees.

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Home Depot’s major acquisition is boosting the business as home improvement demand remains slow.
The retailer announced in March that it was acquiring SRS Distribution, a company that sells supplies to roofing, pool and landscaping professionals, for $18.25 billion and closed the deal in June.
The companies are testing how they can work together, such as selling SRS’ wider assortment of shingles, landscaping items and more at the pro desk in Home Depot’s stores.

A warehouse for Texas Pool Supply, a company that’s part of SRS Distribution, carries pool parts such as filters and heaters, along with large buckets of pool chemicals. It’s an example of the specialized business that Home Depot includes after acquiring SRS.
Melissa Repko | CNBC

PLANO, Texas — In a suburban warehouse, giant buckets of pool sanitizer and boxed-up heaters and pumps line the shelves.
This isn’t a Home Depot store, but these aisles — and the company behind them — will shape the home improvement retailer’s success over the next decade.

Home Depot made its biggest bet yet on expanding its business earlier this year when it bought SRS Distribution, a Texas-based company that sells supplies to professionals in the roofing, pool and landscaping businesses. The company has more than 11,000 employees and more than 780 branches across 47 states, including in the Dallas area.
With the $18.25 billion deal, which closed in June, Home Depot signaled to investors that its growth will come not just from its big-box stores. It will also rely on large online orders placed by home professionals who need a long list of specific supplies for installing swimming pools, repairing roofs and tackling complex remodels.
In its first few months, the deal has buoyed Home Depot’s business at a time when consumers are taking on fewer of their own home improvement projects. Earlier this week, the retailer said the acquisition fueled a more than 6% increase in fiscal third-quarter sales, even as shoppers went to stores less and spent less per transaction than in the year-ago period.
In both of the past two quarters, Home Depot’s revenue would have fallen year over year if SRS’ sales were excluded.
In an interview with CNBC, CEO Ted Decker said Home Depot bought the company not to offset the softer do-it-yourself market, but because it fits into its strategy to sell more to pros.

Home Depot has long acted as a convenience store for pros, who might drop in to buy a tool or last-minute item. Over the past four years, it has built a nationwide distribution network with hubs in metro areas such as Dallas, Atlanta and Los Angeles, so it can deliver larger, truckload-size orders directly to the job site of a contractor or other pro.
Yet SRS caught the retailer’s attention because it offered a different area of expertise: Catering to home improvement pros with specialties, Decker said.
SRS CEO Dan Tinker said the specialty distributor brings a deeper catalog of merchandise, a dedicated sales force and a large network that delivers to about 15,000 job sites per day. It also offers trade credit, a financing arrangement that allows a customer to receive a big order and pay later. Home Depot, for its part, has just started offering that option to a small portion of its own pro customers.
“What we bring to them is an accelerant to their pro strategy,” he said.
At the time of the deal, Home Depot estimated the acquisition expands the company’s total addressable market to approximately $1 trillion, an increase of approximately $50 billion. 
SRS came with a steep price tag but could add rocket fuel to Home Depot’s pro growth, said Joe Feldman, a senior research analyst for Telsey Advisory Group. He compared the deal to Walmart’s $3.3 billion acquisition of Jet.com, an e-commerce player. Some industry watchers and Walmart’s own CEO have credited the move for accelerating Walmart’s online business, even though it eventually shut down Jet.com as a standalone.
“They see it as an opportunity to enter a completely new market with a very established player,” he said. “It will take a few years to see if it pays off.”

Home Depot acquired SRS Distribution in March for $18.25 billion. The Texas-based company sells supplies to professionals for pools, landscaping and roofing.
Melissa Repko | CNBC

A jolt to the business

For Home Depot, the expansion into the pro business comes at a challenging time. With housing turnover near its lowest in decades, the pro business has also felt pressure.
On Tuesday, the company hiked its full-year forecast, but only because of a shorter-term boost in business. Hurricane-related preparation and repairs, and homeowners taking advantage of warmer, drier weather with outdoor-related purchases and smaller projects, drove additional sales in the third quarter.
Customers have delayed home sales and purchases, or springing for pricier projects, as they wait for lower mortgage and borrowing rates.
Home Depot’s “biggest challenge — and really, their only challenge — is when do we see a great retail vertical over the past few years get back to being that way?” said Chuck Grom, a senior analyst who covers retail for Gordon Haskett.
Home Depot’s stock has underperformed the S&P 500. As of Thursday’s close, shares of the company are up 17% this year, but trail the S&P 500’s nearly 25% gains.
Yet investors have expressed some optimism. Telsey Advisory Group’s Feldman recently upgraded Home Depot’s stock. While he said he expects negative comparable sales next quarter and perhaps even in the first quarter of next year, he said he anticipates a return to growth next spring.
In other interest rate easing cycles, he said it’s typically taken about six to nine months to see housing demand pick up. The Federal Reserve kicked off interest rate cuts in September and has made one other reduction since then, with more expected.
Grom said Home Depot’s growing pro business is what helps to attract investors and set it apart from its main competitor, Lowe’s. About half of its business comes from home pros compared with about 20% to 25% at Lowe’s.
Pros are typically steadier and bigger spenders, and some of the businesses they serve better weather ups and downs in the economy.
For example, about 80% of the roofing business comes from repairs or re-roofing projects rather than for new homes, Decker said. He cited that as one of the factors that made SRS attractive.
Tinker said SRS is more insulated than Home Depot is from economic changes. As families hold off on moving, SRS has gotten business from investment companies that have been buying properties to fix up and rent, he said.
“There’s such a huge need for people to rent until they can afford to buy,” he said.
SRS is expected to contribute about $6.4 billion in incremental sales this year, according to Home Depot. Those sales include only the period after the deal closed in mid-June.
The SRS deal and the focus on pro does not mean Home Depot is abandoning efforts to jolt the rest of its business. Decker said the retailer is still trying to attract more do-it-yourself sales. It has opened 10 new stores in the U.S. since late January and it plans to open two more by early February.

Combining forces

Home Depot has already started to see the synergies the deal brings.
SRS brings a larger and more mature logistics network that can speed up deliveries and lower costs. The company has an approximately 4,000-truck delivery force. Home Depot, on the other hand, relies mostly on third-party delivery and had just started to use its own drivers, Decker said.
SRS also sells a larger catalog of products that professionals use to satisfy customers’ varied demands, such as surf blue-colored roofing or a deeper selection of outdoor fire pits, Tinker said.
The newly acquired business also has other advantages, including a dedicated sales force with expertise in specific verticals and deep relationships with pros who are frequent buyers, Tinker said. Its approximately 2,500-person specialized sales force is larger than Home Depot’s, which is in the hundreds, Tinker said. Home Depot does not disclose the size of its sales force.
In Los Angeles, Home Depot and SRS are in the early innings of testing how they can bring their existing operations together. As part of a pilot project, SRS will use space in a Home Depot distribution center to expand its sales in the part of the country where it has a smaller footprint, Tinker said.
“That’s a huge opportunity, but that’s even not touching or integrating with them,” he said. “That’s just using some of their assets.”
SRS gains other business advantages from joining the home improvement behemoth. Home Depot’s big-box stores include pro desks where contractors can go for specialized support or to place orders. Those pro desks are now promoting and selling SRS’ deeper catalog of products, Decker said.
In the meantime, SRS, which has made more than 100 acquisitions, has continued to buy small, often family-owned companies in the pool, landscaping and roofing business. It’s averaged 15 acquisitions annually in the past four or five years, Tinker said.
Home Depot has taken a more hands-off approach, allowing SRS to run more independently after the deal, Decker said.
“We’re letting them focus on their growth formula, but also beginning to look at where are their obvious synergies, without disrupting what they’re doing,” he said.
Inside the SRS-owned Texas Pool Supply in Plano, which caters only to home pros, the aisles of items include many that couldn’t be found at a local Home Depot. Contractors can buy a wider range of tiles for the bottom of a swimming pool, or bulk items, such as 100-pound buckets of pool sanitizer.
When Home Depot acquired SRS, Jeff Cabell, branch manager of Texas Pool Supply, said he got a lot of questions from customers. Some asked if Home Depot would soon carry the same products and worried it would change the business. Some employees asked if their uniform would change to Home Depot’s signature orange aprons.
In both cases, Cabell said, the answer is no. More

Disney’s theme park division posted record revenue and profit in fiscal 2024, and that growth is expected to continue next year.
The company is breaking ground on new additions and updates to its domestic and international theme parks, but it will be several years before they become available to the public.
In the meantime, Disney is using in-park entertainment and limited-time offerings to keep guests coming back.

People walk in front of Cinderella’s Castle at the Magic Kingdom Park at Walt Disney World on May 31, 2024, in Orlando, Florida.
Gary Hershorn | Corbis News | Getty Images

All is well in the Magic Kingdom.
Disney’s theme park division posted record revenue and profit for fiscal 2024, with revenue rising 5% for the full year to $34.15 billion and operating income up 4% to $9.27 billion.

Experiences, which includes parks, resorts, cruises and consumer products, was the second-highest revenue driver behind Disney’s entertainment division, which tallied $41.18 billion in fiscal 2024. However, the entertainment segment’s operating profits were smaller, collecting just $3.92 billion.
Revenue growth in experiences was the strongest of any Disney division, and company executives expect the good times to continue.
Disney expects to see 6% to 8% profit growth for experiences in fiscal 2025 — and that’s before it breaks ground on a slew of planned land expansions, new rides and rethemed attractions.
As part of Disney’s 10-year, $60 billion investment in the segment guests will finally get to see what lies beyond Big Thunder Mountain at the Magic Kingdom, visit the Land of the Dead with the cast of “Coco” at Disneyland and battle King Thanos within the Avengers Campus at California Adventure.
Many of those plans were revealed during the company’s D23 Expo back in August, however, it’ll be a few years before Disney’s park guests will have the opportunity to explore the new additions.

In the meantime, the company is driving revenue with higher ticket prices as well as in-park entertainment and limited-time offerings to keep guests coming back.

Frequent visitors

Disney has a wide variety of park guests, ranging from locals who visit often throughout the year to the once-in-a-lifetime visitors who may be traveling from afar.
“You have these different buckets of guests, all of whom are interested in having a great day at the Disney parks, but are motivated by different elements or different factors,” said Gavin Doyle, founder of MickeyVisit.com.
For those who venture to the parks less frequently, new marquee attractions and lands can serve as motivation to book tickets and hotel stays.
In the last five years, Disney has added two Star Wars-themed lands and a Marvel land as well as opened new rides like Cosmic Rewind at Epcot, which features characters from “Guardians of the Galaxy,” and a “Tron” roller coaster at Magic Kingdom. Disney also recently rethemed the iconic Splash Mountain attraction with characters from “The Princess and the Frog.”

Exterior of the Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run ride at Disney’s Galaxy’s Edge.

On the other end of the spectrum, those who visit annually or several times during the year, only need “the smallest nudge,” Doyle said. And that can come in the form of new live shows, character meet-and-greets, holiday food specials, seasonal festivals as well as parades and nighttime spectaculars.
“There’s stuff that happens all throughout the year to be able to make every day of the year different,” Doyle said. “There’s festivals all throughout the year … limited-time parades and firework celebrations. This leans into that Disney vault strategy, where you have something that’s super exciting and it has a timer on and a ticking clock that drives people to come and have a time that they have to have their trip by. I think that’s really critical here, and it causes people to come to the parks even more.”

The Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse float passes by during the daily Festival of Fantasy Parade at the Magic Kingdom Park at Walt Disney World on May 31, 2024, in Orlando, Florida. 
Gary Hershorn | Corbis News | Getty Images

It’s those more frequent guests who are crucial for Disney to reach that projected 6% to 8% profit growth in fiscal 2025, even as it expects to take a $130 million hit due to the impact of hurricanes Helene and Milton, as well as a $90 million impact from cruise prelaunch costs during the fiscal first quarter.
As Disney works on larger, longer-term projects like the revamp of its Florida-based Frontier Land to be “Cars” themed and a new Avatar-based land in California, among other projects, having these daily live entertainment options as well as unique, seasonal menu items can help drive revenue.
“It’s small things adding up to big things,” said David Lightbody, senior vice president of Disney Live Entertainment.
The company is also looking to capitalize on the upcoming opening of rival Universal’s new Epic Universe theme park in Florida, which is expected to drive travel and tourism to the area and give a bump to Disney’s local parks as well.

For a limited-time only

Guests who visit more frequently have some of the strongest emotional attachment to the parks and have more purchasing opportunities when it comes to merchandise and concessions.
Disney doesn’t break out food and merchandise sales within its parks, but shared that during the most recent quarter guests were spending more money at its domestic parks.
Doyle said that many guests will use seasonal offerings, like limited-time holiday food and drinks, as an excuse to go to the parks and have scavenger hunts to try out all the new treats.

Festive food options arrive just in time for the holidays at Disney’s theme parks. 

This also extends to Disney’s festivals, which often feature unique menu items that can’t be obtained at any other time of the year.
And these same parkgoers are more likely to purchase the limited-time merchandise, like exclusive popcorn buckets, spirit jerseys, mugs and pins, which have become popular collectibles for the company’s biggest fans.

Limited time holiday merchandise available at Disney parks.

Similarly, there are guests in this cohort who come just for Disney’s holiday experiences — like California Adventure’s Oogie Boogie Bash or Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party at Walt Disney World — which cost an additional fee on top of a daily ticket.

Tried-and-true spectacles

Throughout the year, Disney has a variety of live entertainment offerings for guests including musical shows, character meet-and-greets, parades and nighttime fireworks shows.
These events can change seasonally, with character outfits, music or color themes catered to the time of year. This meets the brief for new surprises at the parks, while maintaining its trademark nostalgia.
“Parades and nighttime spectaculars play an incredibly important role in the Disney day,” said Lightbody. “Because they’re those two times when everyone comes together, a kind of collective experience in the day, and they kind of punctuate the day.”
To celebrate Disneyland’s 70th anniversary next year, the company is bringing back the beloved nighttime parade “Paint the Night.” The parade, which debuted in Hong Kong in 2014 made its way stateside for Disneyland’s 60th anniversary in 2015 and ran on and off through 2018. It featured more than 1.5 million LED lights and paid homage to the long-running Main Street Electrical Parade, another fan-favorite spectacle.

The Paint the Night Parade travels through Hollywood Land at Disney California Adventure on the first day of Pixar Fest in Anaheim on Thursday, Apr 12, 2018.
Medianews Group / Orange County Register Via Getty Images | Medianews Group | Getty Images

“This parade is one of the best Disneyland has ever done and it is beloved by many,” wrote Lindsay Brookshier, content director of MickeyVisit.com, when Disney first teased the parade’s return back in October.
Disney hasn’t confirmed the start date for the parade, but social media has been flooded with parkgoers who are eagerly awaiting its return.
Another key benefit to the nighttime live events is that they keep guests at the park longer, which means extending sales of drinks, snacks and other merchandise into the evening hours.

A stunning firework show is held at the Magic Kingdom Park in Walt Disney World Resort on July 1, 2021 in Lake Buena Vista, Florida. .
Liao Pan | China News Service | Getty Images

Lightbody referred to Disney’s nighttime shows as a “kiss goodnight,” a way to wrap up the day and give guests a bombastic display.
For most domestic parkgoers, celebratory fireworks are often limited to holidays like the Fourth of July and New Year’s. So, having these moments at Disney punctuates the special nature of the trip, he said.
“When a parade or special offering does well, it leans into your nostalgia for a previous visit or for a childhood you may have had, or not even had but just imagined,” said Doyle. “It will also lean into that specific moment, creating a moment in time for your family. … So it’s playing on nostalgia while also creating a new experience in that moment. It’s both a setting and a reflection of a special time.”
Disclosure: Comcast is the parent company of NBCUniversal and CNBC. NBCUniversal is opening the Epic Universe theme park next year.

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SpaceX’s president and COO urged on rivals of its rocket and satellites businesses, saying competition is healthy for Elon Musk’s dominant space company.
“It’s going to be hard to catch us, but I certainly hope people try,” Gwynne Shotwell said, speaking at the Baron Investment Conference in NYC.
SpaceX’s Falcon rockets have launched more than 100 times this year and counting, while its Starlink satellite internet network is now serving almost 5 million customers.

SpaceX President and Chief Operation Officer Gwynne Shotwell speaks during the NASA Commercial Crew Program (CCP) astronaut visit at the SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California, U.S., on Monday, Aug. 13, 2018.
Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images

SpaceX’s second-in-command urged on rivals in comments Friday, describing competition as healthy for Elon Musk’s space company.
“I hope others can catch up, right? Competition is good for industries. … It keeps us tight; it keeps us very focused,” SpaceX President and COO Gwynne Shotwell said, speaking at the 2024 Baron Investment Conference in New York.

“It’s going to be hard to catch us, but I certainly hope people try,” Shotwell added.
SpaceX has reached a dominant position in the global launch industry as its semi-reusable Falcon rockets have launched more than 100 times this year and counting. The next closest U.S. rocket company, Rocket Lab, has launched to orbit 12 times this year, with others in the single digits.
Additionally, the 15,000-person company has won billions of dollars in government contracts from the Department of Defense and NASA, serving the latter as the sole U.S. option for delivering crew to and from the International Space Station with its Dragon capsule.
And SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet network is now serving almost 5 million customers, Shotwell said.
Starlink has become disruptive to incumbent satellite telecommunications companies. With nearly 7,000 Starlink satellites in orbit, SpaceX has expanded Starlink’s product offerings from consumers into enterprise markets such as aviation and maritime.

Read more CNBC space news

But the satellite broadband market is “gigantic,” Shotwell said. Several companies are working on competitors to Starlink, such as Eutelsat’s OneWeb, Amazon’s Project Kuiper, Telesat’s Lightspeed and AST SpaceMobile.
Billionaire investor Ron Baron, who said his eponymous firm’s ownership of privately held SpaceX stock stands at over $2 billion, noted that about 30% of the world’s 8 billion people don’t have access to broadband.
“I would love to say … SpaceX is going to serve all of them,” Shotwell told Baron, but “there will be competition — I think there’s plenty of room in this industry, plenty of room for competition.”

Shotwell noted that SpaceX is also steadily advancing the development of its behemoth Starship rocket, recently catching the vehicle’s booster on the first attempt during its fifth test flight last month.
“Starship is really a replacement. It obsoletes Falcon 9 and the Dragon capsule. Now, we’re not shutting down Falcon, we are not shutting down Dragon — we’ll be flying that for six to eight more years,” she said.
“But ultimately, people are going to want to fly on Starship: It’s bigger, it’s more comfortable, it will be less expensive,” Shotwell added.
SpaceX is targeting as soon as Tuesday for Starship’s sixth flight test, Shotwell said, as the company aims to further the rocket’s capabilities with additional demonstrations during the mission. The Starship system is designed to be fully reusable and aims to become a new method of flying cargo and people beyond Earth, unlike its Falcon rockets, which only have reusable boosters and nosecones.
“We just passed 400 [total] launches on Falcon and I would not be surprised if we fly 400 Starship launches in the next four years,” Shotwell said. More

President-elect Donald Trump’s trade and foreign policy team is taking a hawkish stance toward China.
U.S. companies are increasingly concerned a hard-line approach could stunt their prospects in the world’s second-largest economy – and turn them into targets of Chinese retaliation.
China’s retaliation tactics could range from economic changes to matters of diplomacy and security.

With President-elect Donald Trump’s trade and foreign policy team taking a hawkish stance toward China, U.S. companies are increasingly concerned a hard-line approach could stunt their prospects in the world’s second-largest economy – and turn them into targets of Chinese retaliation.
Trump has threatened to hit China with at least 60% tariffs and vowed to end reliance on the country. That alone would be disruptive. It would force companies to scramble to find other sources of supply, American consumers to pay higher prices at the store, and, according to many experts, lead to job losses.

On top of that, the Chinese government could respond with an expanded tool kit to target American businesses.
“The Trump administration’s actions may be seen or may be interpreted as economic war,” Scott Kennedy, senior advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told reporters in Beijing on Thursday. “If they are interpreted in that way, China might have a much more vigorous response, not limited to tariffs.”
Those actions could range from economic changes to matters of diplomacy and security, Kennedy said, adding China may “push back as hard as they can.”
More combative relations between the U.S. and China also brings the risk of public backlash amid rising Chinese nationalism. The Chinese government has strong controls over information flow which has led to consumer boycotts of international brands.
“The worst part is the consumer brands that are not of a strategic nature and themselves are not controversial and would not be subject to export restrictions might be punished by the local consumer because of their nationality,” said, Michael Hart, president of the American Chamber of Commerce in China. “Since Covid, companies have been looking to diversify and bolster their supply chains, but there are still no easy and reliable replacements for the supply chains and manufacturing that has developed in China over the past decades.”

China’s retaliation tool kit

During Trump’s first term, the Chinese government retaliated against U.S. tariffs by imposing its own tariffs on U.S. imports.
The U.S.-China Business Council, in conjunction with Oxford Economics, estimates a new tit-for-tat tariff battle could result in a “permanent loss of revenue and pressure businesses to slash jobs and investment plans” with as many as 801,000 net job losses by 2025.
The report projected that Nevada, Florida and Arizona would be among the states hardest hit by such tariffs due to their economic reliance on consumer demand. Manufacturing states such as Indiana, Kansas, Michigan and Ohio would also be vulnerable, the Oxford report found. Swing states Nevada, Arizona and Michigan all flipped to Trump in the 2024 election, helping to deliver him back to the White House.
During the last trade battle, China also stopped buying agricultural products from the U.S. The move targeted key U.S. exports like soybeans, disproportionately hurting rural parts of the U.S. where Trump has strong support.

U.S. President Donald Trump attends a bilateral meeting with China’s President Xi Jinping during the G-20 leaders summit in Osaka, Japan, June 29, 2019.
Kevin Lamarque | Reuters

James McGregor, a business consultant on China for three decades, said he sees Beijing using its leverage on U.S. agricultural purchases if it feels pressed this time, too.
“China is already focused on ridding itself of dependence on U.S. farm products. If alternative supplies are available, China may well shift away from American farmers where they can,” McGregor said.
Two years ago, China started importing corn from Brazil. The country is now China’s biggest supplier of corn, surpassing the U.S.
Beijing could also broaden its retribution methods to include targeting U.S. companies operating on Chinese soil.
The business climate in China has tightened meaningfully since Trump’s first term. Despite the Chinese leadership’s stated efforts to welcome international companies, AmCham China’s 2024 Business Climate Survey Report found 39% of companies polled felt less welcome in China.

Tougher laws, tightening regulations

There’s also the risk of legal and regulatory changes in China that could threaten U.S. companies.
In recent years, China made significant revisions to its export control regulations. Those tighter controls have restricted critical metals for the American clean energy and semiconductor sectors.
Analysts foresee China doing the same during a Trump second term, aiming to deprive U.S. industry of key minerals and components.
Beijing has also enhanced laws like an anti-foreign sanctions law that triggers probes, fines and restrictions on operations in the country.
Even before the U.S. election, Beijing had shown signs of targeting certain American companies. For example, PVH, the owner of Calvin Klein, is under investigation thanks to this law.
China has an upgraded anti-espionage law, which international business groups like AmCham China have criticized for what they say is “ambiguity” in the policy.
The law has led to executive and staff detentions and raids on international firms and has made it easier for officials to impose exit bans, barring the accused from leaving the country. 
Many worry that the day-to-day regulatory grind to operate in China could become a bigger slog under a heightened retaliatory environment.
Since Trump’s first term, Chinese leader Xi Jinping has consolidated power even further.
If Xi signals that U.S. companies are out of favor, they can expect regulations for permits, safety checks, licensing and other approvals to be interpreted more harshly by lower-level officials, experts say.
“We will likely see retaliation against American companies in China where they could be step-by-step squeezed out of the China market and replaced,” McGregor said.

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