Business

PepsiCo reported fiscal third-quarter earnings that beat Wall Street’s estimates, but its revenue was weaker than expected.
The food and beverage giant lowered its full-year outlook for organic revenue.
Recalls related to its Quaker Foods North America business continued to weigh on its sales.

A truck with Pepsi logo on a semitrailer is seen at Interstate 95 highway in Maryland, United States, on October 21, 2022.
Beata Zawrzel | Nurphoto | Getty Images

PepsiCo on Tuesday lowered its full-year outlook for organic revenue after its second straight quarter of weaker-than-expected sales.
The repercussions of the Quaker Foods North America recalls, weakening demand in the U.S. and business disruptions in some international markets weighed on the company’s performance in the quarter, CEO Ramon Laguarta said in a statement.

For 2024, Pepsi now expects a low-single-digit rise in organic revenue, down from its prior outlook of 4% growth. The company reiterated its forecast for an increase of at least 8% for its core constant currency earnings per share.
Shares of the company fell less than 1% in premarket trading.
Here’s what the company reported compared with what Wall Street was expecting, based on a survey of analysts by LSEG:

Earnings per share: $2.31 adjusted vs. $2.29 expected
Revenue: $23.32 billion vs. $23.76 billion expected

Pepsi reported third-quarter net income attributable to the company of $2.93 billion, or $2.13 per share, down from $3.09 billion, or $2.24 per share, a year earlier.
Excluding items, the company earned $2.31 per share.

Net sales fell 0.6% to $23.32 billion. Organic revenue, which strips out acquisitions, divestitures and currency changes, rose 1.3% in the quarter.
Demand for Pepsi’s snacks and drinks dropped this quarter. The company reported that volume for both its food and beverage divisions declined 2%. Last quarter, executives said shoppers across all income levels are changing their behavior.
In particular, weak demand in North America weighed on Pepsi’s overall volume. Shoppers in the U.S. have grown more cautious, snacking less and making fewer purchases at convenience stores. And Mexican sales slowed, which Laguarta attributed in part to the country’s election in June.
Quaker Foods North America reported the steepest drop-off in volume, with a 13% slide. The company issued its first recall for potential salmonella contamination in December, then widened it in January. In June, Pepsi officially closed a plant tied to the recalls, although production had already stopped.
The consequences of the recalls are now diminishing, Laguarta and Pepsi CFO Jamie Caulfield said in prepared remarks.
Frito-Lay North America reported a 1.5% decline in volume. The company has been trying to offer more value to consumers and improve in-store availability with its snacks, which include Cheetos, SunChips and Stacy’s pita chips. While the division’s volume is improving sequentially, the broader category has slowed down compared with historical performance.
“After outperforming packaged food categories in previous years, salty and savory snacks have underperformed year-to-date,” Pepsi executives said in their prepared remarks.
This fall and winter, Pepsi plans to invest more in Doritos and Tostitos, helped by the football season. The company is offering bonus packs for Tostitos and Ruffles that offer 20% more chips.
Pepsi is also broadening its portfolio in the hopes of appealing to more health-conscious consumers. A week ago, the company announced its purchase of Siete Foods for $1.2 billion. The brand makes Mexican-American food, usually with accommodations for different dietary concerns.
Volume for Pepsi’s North American beverage business fell 3%. Brands like Gatorade and Pepsi saw revenue growth in the quarter, but the energy drink category — including Pepsi’s Rockstar — has seen demand weaken as traffic to convenience stores falls.
“I think it’s part of the economic cycle that we’re in, and that will reverse itself in the future, once consumers feel better,” Laguarta told analysts on the company’s conference call.
The Latin America and Africa, Middle East and South Asia markets also reported shrinking volume for both food and drinks.

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Rolls-Royce has opened its first U.S. “Private Office,” a secret VIP design studio for ultra-wealthy clients who want highly personalized cars.
It’s central to the fabled British automaker’s new strategy of growing sales and profits from selling more customized, higher-priced vehicles rather than boosting production.
Once select customers order a car from a dealer, they can go to the Private Office to work with a designer to create an entirely personalized car.

Rolls-Royce has opened its first U.S. “Private Office,” a secret VIP design studio for ultra-wealthy clients who want highly personalized cars.
The Private Office, in Manhattan’s trendy Meatpacking District, is central to the fabled British automaker’s new strategy of growing sales and profits from selling more customized, higher-priced vehicles rather than boosting production. Rolls-Royce produced 6,032 cars last year, less than half the production of Ferrari, yet continues to generate strong profit growth for its parent company BMW.

While Rolls-Royce customers have been customizing their rides for decades, the Private Office brings the concept of a personalized Rolls to a whole new level. Once select customers order a car from a dealer, they can go to the Private Office to work with a designer to create an entirely personalized car — from special paint colors to their favorite fabrics, woods, lighting schemes and other materials.
“They may want the exterior of their Rolls-Royce to match the color of their dog’s eyes,” said Rolls-Royce CEO Chris Brownridge. “They may want to have interior panels in the car with the mother-of-pearl from their private collection. We can bring those sorts of requests to life through having direct access to the team. And the possibilities really are endless.”

Rolls-Royce CEO Chris Brownridge.

Rolls-Royce calls its top level of personalization the “Bespoke” program. Creating a Bespoke Rolls can add hundreds of thousands of dollars to the sticker price, which for a Rolls-Royce Phantom is just under $500,000, bringing the total sale price of some cars to more than $1 million.
The Private Office is reserved for the most complicated — and expensive — Bespoke projects. It’s not a dealership and there are no actual cars displayed. To get into the Private Office, customers press a black security screen outside an unmarked building and take a secure elevator to the top floor.
With its sleek black kitchen, low sofas, a dining table, outdoor terrace, and turntable with stacks of classic rock and jazz vinyl records, the Private Office looks more like a billionaire’s pied-a-terre than a car showroom. The only hint that it’s a Rolls-Royce facility is a row of shelves along the back wall displaying samples of paint colors, threads, leathers, metals and a row of the famous “Spirit of Ecstasy” hood ornaments in different finishes.

The Rolls-Royce Phantom Syntopia.
Courtesy: Rolls-Royce

The New York Private Office is the company’s third worldwide, following Dubai, United Arab Emirates, which opened in 2022, and Shanghai in 2023. The company is about to open its fourth, in Seoul, Korea.
The idea, Brownridge says, is to bring the expertise and design capability of its Goodwood, U.K., factory to clients around the world. That’s especially important as client requests become more unusual and complex.
One Rolls-Royce client wanted a car inspired by flowers. The Rolls team created an extended-wheelbase Phantom with a headliner covered with more than 1 million embroidered roses. Another client who loves Hawaii and has a favorite rocking chair made of rare Koa wood wanted a Koa-themed Rolls. Since Koa wood is protected in Hawaii, only dead or naturally fallen Koa trees can be harvested. Rolls spent three years waiting and hunting for the right tree, then built a Koa Phantom, with the wood used on the dashboard, center console and doors. The company even made a matching picnic hamper and table. The whole package took more than 500 hours to create.

Interior of the custom Rolls-Royce Koa Phantom.
Courtesy: Rolls-Royce

“A lot of these clients would never, ever sell their cars,” Brownridge said. “It’s so personal and it means to much to them.”
To keep up with the surging demand for custom cars, Rolls-Royce is also expanding its Bespoke workshops in Goodwood. Brownridge said the goal isn’t to produce more cars, but to produce higher-value, more customized cars.
“As our commissions have become more sophisticated, our business has become more successful,” Brownridge said. “Our mission is really to create value for our shareholder, to create value for our retail partners, but most importantly, to create value for our clients. Because when you produce a masterpiece for them, it means so much more than just a motorcar. I often say that the fact that they have four wheels is almost a nice-to-have, because they really are a work of art.”
Brownridge said when customers are building their special Rolls-Royces, they not only visit the factory in Goodwood, but they also get to know the paint shop specialists, the woodworkers, the embroidery experts and other members of the team.
“Every single client that I’ve met, they all say, what makes Rolls Royce Special is that they feel that they are part of a family,” he said. “They’re not customers to us, they’re part of Rolls Royce. Many of our clients will come to Goodwood, and they will know the people that are making their cars. It’s not just the personal connection to the motorcar. It’s the personal connection to the whole team who are producing these magnificent things.”

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General Motors will attempt to address investor concerns during a capital markets day Tuesday at GM’s vehicle and battery plants in Spring Hill, Tennessee.
The automaker is facing slowing consumer demand and changing market conditions.
Wall Street analysts are eager to hear about electric vehicles and hybrids, the company’s embattled Cruise autonomous vehicle unit and its China restructuring.

Mary Barra, chair and chief executive officer of General Motors Co., during a news conference at the Hudson’s building in Detroit, Michigan, US, on Monday, April 15, 2024.
Jeff Kowalsky | Bloomberg | Getty Images

DETROIT — A lot has changed since General Motors’ last investor day two years ago, but one thing that hasn’t is the automaker’s ability to outperform Wall Street’s expectations — doing so every quarter since then.
GM CEO Mary Barra will attempt to convince investors during a capital markets day Tuesday that she and her executive team can continue to do that despite slowing consumer demand and changing market conditions.

Wall Street analysts are eager to hear about plans for electric vehicles and hybrids, the company’s embattled Cruise autonomous vehicle unit, its China restructuring and GM’s near-term plans for free cash flow, lowering costs and rewarding investors.
Many of them are expecting GM will be more grounded in its near-term targets and messaging than it has in its most recent investor days, including three years ago, when Barra and others laid out ambitious long-term financial targets by to double the automaker’s revenue to about $280 billion by 2030.
“It’s clear we enter a very different industry environment vs. three years ago,” Barclays analyst Dan Levy said last week in an investor note. “Accordingly, whereas the theme for GM three years ago was “Growth Motors,” we believe the theme today is “praGMatic Motors.”
The company is expected to tout its “flexibility” when it comes to producing EVs, as well as vehicles with traditional internal combustion engines, commonly called ICE, at the event. To underscore that effort, the event is taking place GM’s vehicle assembly and Ultium EV battery plants in Tennessee. Spring Hill Assembly produces both types of vehicles.
Barra and other executives have stressed such a dual strategy since lowering or withdrawing nearly all of the company’s EV targets amid slower than expected adoption of electric vehicles.

“We are making the most of every opportunity we have in ICE and in EV and leveraging our core strengths,” Barra said during the company’s second-quarter investor call in July. “We’re being flexible and opportunistic, but also importantly, we’re being very disciplined.”

Low expectations

Despite this being the first GM investor day since November 2022, several Wall Street analysts have low expectations.
“Net, while we remain favorable on the stock, we don’t see a particularly attractive tactical risk/reward into the event,” UBS analyst Joseph Spak said in a Sept. 23 investor note.
But as Wolfe analyst Shreyas Pati points out, “relatively low” expectations could provide “room for GM’s message to be more constructive-than-anticipated.”

Mary Barra, CEO, GM at the NYSE, November 17, 2022.
Source: NYSE

Heading into the event, GM’s stock has been under pressure as of late despite billions of dollars in buybacks. While shares are up roughly 28% for the year, they’re off 9% from a high of more than $50 reached in July and down about 8% from the beginning of last month.
The stock also saw a 5.4% drop in one day last month, its second-largest daily decline this year, due to Wall Street analyst downgrades of price adjustments.
Morgan Stanley and Bernstein recently downgraded GM and cut price targets, citing challenging market conditions and low upside potential, among other things.
“We want to wait and see which updates GM shares with the market and downgrade the stock to Market-Perform,” Bernstein analyst Daniel Roeska wrote in a Sept. 23 investor note.
GM’s stock remains overweight with a price target of $54.64 a share, according to average estimates of 29 analysts compiled by FactSet.

Ongoing issues

Investors aren’t only concerned about peak profits potentially being in the rearview mirror for automakers such as GM.
They’re also worried about the company’s restructuring in China. That change was announced with little to no information of what should be expected, other than the company saying it was necessary after GM’s business in the country has been in a yearslong freefall.
The operations, which recorded $2 billion in equity income in 2018, posted a loss of $104 million during the second quarter — its second consecutive quarterly loss after hitting a roughly 20-year low in 2023.
China has been inundated with domestic automakers such as BYD that have caused a pricing war, especially when it comes to EVs.

GM’s 2024 Chevrolet Equinox EV (right) next to a gas-powered Chevy Equinox on May 16, 2024 in Detroit.
Michael Wayland / CNBC

In GM’s home market, investors are seeking updates to its plans for EVs as well as hybrids. Unlike crosstown rival Ford, which has amped up its focus on hybrids, GM hasn’t offered a hybrid option other than a Corvette for many years.
“The event will likely provide a glimpse into GM’s efforts to balance the slowdown in EV adoption with its Future business plan, which we still expect will be centered on electrification, but with a greater emphasis on hybrid technology,” BofA Securities analyst John Murphy said in a Sept. 20 note.
GM has maintained expectations that its EVs will be profitable on a production, or contribution-margin basis, once it reaches output of 200,000 units by the fourth quarter.
Regarding Cruise, Wall Street is particularly interested in the company’s future funding plans for the embattled autonomous vehicle unit.
After ceasing all on-road operations last year and ousting leaders following an accident involving a pedestrian in October, Cruise has slowly been attempting to relaunch operations, but it remains far from it was before the incident. More

Walmart-owned Sam’s Club is opening a club in the Dallas area that offers a glimpse of its future.
The club will have no checkout lanes, will display online-only items and will have a larger area for fulfilling e-commerce orders for curbside pickup and home delivery.
Sam’s Club has been trying to differentiate itself from Costco and other rivals with technology.

Sam’s Club is opening a store in the Dallas area that will require customers to go all digital. Shoppers will use a smartphone app to scan and pay for their own purchases rather than standing in a checkout lane.
Sam’s Club

GRAPEVINE, Texas — When shoppers walk into Sam’s Club’s newest store, they’ll soon see a shiny blue Mercedes-Benz SUV, a sectional sofa and zero checkout lanes.
Welcome to the Walmart-owned membership club’s first all-digital store — and a preview of what could be its future.

Inside the club, which will open in mid-October, customers will have to use a smartphone app called Scan & Go to ring up their purchases as they walk through the aisles. In the area typically reserved for cash registers, the company will display online-only items as wide-ranging as a 12-foot Christmas tree and a five-carat lab-grown diamond. Members can scan QR codes and go straight to the items in the app.
Store workers will have about four times more space for preparing customers’ e-commerce orders for curbside pickup and home delivery, according to Sam’s Club executives.
“It’s kind of the physical manifestation of a journey we’re trying to go on as a company,” Sam’s Club CEO Chris Nicholas said, as he showed off the club before its grand opening.

Online-only items will be on display in Sam’s Club’s new location in the Dallas area. The items will range from a 12-foot Christmas tree to a sectional for the living room. Each will have an QR code nearby where shoppers can scan for more information or to make a purchase.
Sam’s Club

Since Walmart founder Sam Walton opened the first Sam’s Club in 1983, the membership-based club has become the more tech-savvy arm of its retail-behemoth parent. The club has spun out several key innovations that its parent company now uses, too, such as Scan & Go. It’s also used digital offerings to try to outmatch its largest rival, Costco.
Sam’s Club is doubling down on that strategy with the Dallas-area store, which is reopening nearly two years after it was damaged by a tornado.

Nicholas said upon its reopening, the location will become a testing ground for Sam’s Club’s newest features and emerging technology.
“The idea is that over time, we will be 100% digital engagement as a business, and you’ve got to prove that things work before you scale them,” he said.
He added that he hopes “it feels like what it’s like to shop in the future.”

Rivaling Costco

Costco has long been “the king of the warehouse club channel,” said Peter Keith, senior research analyst at Piper Sandler. But Sam’s Club has added features to “upgrade the shopping experiences,” he said, such as introducing a permanent station in some of the clubs where a chef makes sushi rolls in front of customers.
And notably, Sam’s Club has differentiated iself by embracing e-commerce offerings and appealing to customers who are seeking easier and faster ways to shop, such as Scan & Go.
“It really eliminates the most painful part of these membership clubs, which is the long lines to check out,” he said.
Sam’s Club and Costco have roughly the same number of U.S. clubs, but Costco pulls in about twice as much annual revenue. Net sales for Sam’s Club totaled $86.2 billion in its most recent fiscal year, compared with $176.63 billion for Costco’s U.S. clubs.
Sam’s Club has made several other key moves to catch up to Costco: It consolidated its private labels from more than 20 different brands into a single one: Member’s Mark. It cut back on the number of unique items it sells, so it focuses on the proven and popular ones. And it recently announced it would raise average hourly wages for nearly 100,000 of its workers ahead of the holiday season.
Sam’s Club also opened The Clubhouse in August, an approximately 37,000-square-foot office building across from the retailer’s headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas. It includes workshop rooms and tools such as white boards, arts and crafts supplies, and cardboard models that will help the retailer to come up with new ideas, test products and collaborate on projects with cross-department teams.
And it’s in the middle of an aggressive expansion, with plans to open about 30 new clubs over a five-year period.
Sam’s Club’s comparable sales in the U.S., a metric that includes sales from stores and clubs open for the previous 12 months, grew 5.2% in the most recent quarter, which ended July 31, compared with the year-ago period. That included 22% year-over-year e-commerce growth.

The Dallas-area club will have 6,000 square feet to fulfill e-commerce orders — a jump from an average of about 1,500 square feet at other clubs. It will also have cooling plates where employees can store totes of frozen and chilled items.
Sam’s Club

Nicholas said the new clubs, including the one that’s opening in Grapevine, will be designed to better handle higher volume, too.
For example, the club’s cafe will include a pizza robot that will be able to make as many as 100 pizzas in an hour. It will also test a new system that delivers food orders to an assigned cubby after customers order through Scan & Go.

Digital age

Like its parent company, Walmart, Sam’s Club has been attracting customers across a wider range of incomes and ages as it focuses on offering convenient ways to shop. About half of the new members that joined Sam’s Club during the most recent quarter were millennials or Gen Z, according to the company.
The company said 1 in 3 members currently use Scan & Go when shopping in clubs. It has recently rolled out new exit technology that automatically checks customers’ shopping carts and allows them to exit the club without an employee looking at a receipt or auditing their cart. Shoppers walk under an archway that’s powered by computer vision and artificial intelligence. That system functions similarly to Amazon’s Just Walk Out technology that’s begun to take hold at events stadiums in addition to some of the e-commerce giant’s physical storefronts.
But Nicholas, the Sam’s Club CEO, acknowledged some shoppers may be reluctant to embrace new technology or a new routine.
Tiffany Zuniga, a mom and a Lyft driver who lives in the Dallas area, said she’s eager to return to Sam’s Club, but is a little wary of the new technology. Zuniga said she used to turn to the club for easy family dinners or supplies for church events, but switched to Costco when Sam’s Club was closed because of tornado damage.
She’s never used Scan & Go and said she hopes the new technology doesn’t come at the expense of customer service.
“Sometimes it can get a little dicey if you scan the wrong thing or need help,” she said. “Hopefully, they will have enough staff on hand.”
As construction crews finished up work on Sam’s Club in Grapevine, the retailer put up signs at the nearby Sam’s Club gas station and car wash to alert customers to the return of the club and encourage them to download the Scan & Go app.
And when customers walk into the newly reopened club, employees will be ready to help them download the app or to tag along on a shopping trip if they need help learning how to use it, the company said.
Nicholas said there will be no change to the number of store workers in Grapevine, but some will have new roles. More

Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp told CNBC that he only had one question for Jeff Bezos when he interviewed for the top job last year: Is the space company “a hobby or a business?”
“Jeff felt that [Blue Origin] needed manufacturing expertise; it needed decisiveness; it need a little bit of energy,” Limp said.
Limp is confident that the long-awaited debut of the towering New Glenn rocket will happen before the end of the year, one of his top goals as he leads Blue Origin “to scale to be a world class manufacturer.”

Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp, left, and founder Jeff Bezos look up at a New Glenn rocket on at the company’s LC-36 facility in Florida.
Blue Origin

Dave Limp had only one question for Jeff Bezos when he interviewed last year to become CEO of Blue Origin, the billionaire’s space venture.
“Jeff, is Blue Origin a hobby or a business?” Limp asked.

After 14 years as a senior Amazon executive, Limp told CNBC he made it clear to Bezos that he wasn’t interested in leading Blue Origin if the nearly 25-year-old venture wasn’t intended to be a serious company.
“I don’t know how to run a hobby,” Limp said, adding that “if it was a hobby, it’s not right for me.”
But he said Bezos was adamant that Blue Origin needed to be a business.

Read more CNBC space news

Limp admitted that it took some convincing from Bezos for him to make the move over to the space sector. “My initial reaction was: It’s not the right role for me because I’m not an aerospace engineer,” he said. But he decided to take the leap of faith.
“Jeff felt that [Blue Origin] needed manufacturing expertise; it needed decisiveness; it need a little bit of energy,” Limp said.

Limp has now been the CEO of Blue Origin for nine months and counting. He took the reins from prior leadership who had widely expanded the company’s workforce and infrastructure but had fallen years behind on several major programs and lost competitions for key government contracts.

CEO Dave Limp, third from the left, with Blue Origin employees at the company’s New Glenn facility in Florida.
Blue Origin

Blue Origin for years has been flying tourists and research to the edge of space on short jaunts, including Bezos himself. And over the past two decades, Bezos has been spending billions of dollars a year to turn Blue Origin into a space sector powerhouse. The company’s projects reach from rockets and spacecraft to space stations and lunar landers.
Yet in the industry table stakes of orbital missions, Blue Origin has not entered the serious rocketry game, as the U.S. launch market remains dominated by SpaceX, followed by United Launch Alliance, Rocket Lab and Firefly Aerospace.
But the company said it’s closer than ever to the long-awaited debut of its New Glenn rocket. Towering about 320 feet tall, the launch vehicle is advertised as lifting as much as 45,000 kilograms (or over 99,000 pounds) to low Earth orbit — double that of SpaceX’s workhorse Falcon 9 rocket.

A New Glenn rocket stands at LC-36 for the firs time for tanking and mechanical system testing on Feb. 21, 2024.
Blue Origin

Like Falcon 9, New Glenn is designed to be partly reusable. Blue Origin aims to return and land the rocket’s booster, its largest and most valuable section, to unlock the kind of cost and time efficiencies that SpaceX claims with its rockets.
New Glenn’s first launch attempt is slated for November. Blue Origin is in the final stages of putting it all together, including conducting a recent crucial test firing of the rocket’s upper stage last month.
Originally the company was aiming for the audacious feat of flying NASA’s ESCAPADE mission to Mars on New Glenn’s debut. But with a dwindling launch window, the agency delayed ESCAPADE to a later launch. In the mission’s place, Blue Origin will fly a demonstration of its spacecraft Blue Ring on the first New Glenn launch.

Culture shift

Company employees stand below a New Glenn rocket during testing in February 2024.
Blue Origin

Headquartered in the Seattle suburb of Kent, Washington, Blue Origin has over 10,000 employees there and in half a dozen other major locations around the country, including in industry strongholds of Texas, Florida and Alabama. Speaking plainly, Limp said Blue Origin has been “in kind of an R&D phase for a long time,” an aspect of the company’s culture he’s trying to change.
“We were very, very good at building shiny factories and very good at building high fidelity prototypes. And some of those prototypes even flew … but that’s not what we want to do to scale to be a world class manufacturer,” Limp said. 
“We need to be able to build things a lot,” he added.
But he said he sees genuine excitement for space across Blue’s workforce, calling that passion the foundation of a “missionary culture.” In Limp’s view, Amazon’s customer-centric principles drive the tech giant’s culture — but Amazon doesn’t have “the vehement mission that exists at Blue.”
“People’s eyes light up, almost to a T. They grew up thinking about space, they always wanted to work in the space industry and here they are at Blue working on space,” Limp said.
Now he’s trying to install Amazon’s customer-centric focus as a key part of Blue Origin. While Blue’s customers — the likes of NASA, ULA, and suborbital astronauts — are quite a bit different than the consumers Limp used to focus on, his message to Blue’s employees is to make delivering for its customers the top priority.
“Even if the technology is really nice and fun … the customer has to be front and center,” Limp said.
To further shift Blue’s culture, Limp highlighted a number of key leadership additions: Allen Parker as CFO after past executive finance roles at Zillow and Amazon; Jennifer Pena-Leanos as chief people officer, after running human resources in Limp’s prior Amazon Devices team; Ian Richardson as senior vice president of manufacturing operations after a long stint as SpaceX production director; and Tim Collins as the vice president of global supply chain after previously leading global operations for Flexport and Amazon.
Limp also made a change by moving more of the company’s headcount to the factory floor.
“You can walk into a factory and know when it’s running well and know when it’s not,” he said. “It doesn’t matter how much capex you put in place, what kind of machines you have, if you’re not using them the right way. It’s like having a shiny new car that just sits in the driveway — what fun is that?” 

2024 top priorities

A test of a BE-4 engine at Blue Origin’s Launch Site One facility in West Texas, Aug. 2, 2019.
Blue Origin

Limp has two main goals for his first year as CEO: Launch New Glenn and get Blue’s engine production humming.
“We aren’t going anywhere without engines, and we had to figure out how to build engines at rate,” Limp said.
Blue Origin’s BE-4 engine powers both its New Glenn rocket as well as ULA’s Vulcan rocket. The latter requires two engines per launch.
With ULA aiming for four Vulcan launches this year — with two down and two to go — Blue has delivered eight flight-ready BE-4 engines to ULA, as well as seven BE-4 engines for its first New Glenn launch. On the first two Vulcan launches, the BE-4 engines performed as expected.
“We’d like to [be delivering] about an engine a week by the end of the year. I’m not sure we’ll get exactly to a week, but it’ll be sub-10 days … [and] by the end of 2025, we have to be faster than that,” Limp said.

A United Launch Alliance Vulcan Centaur rocket launches from pad 41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 7:25 a.m. on October 4, 2024 in Cape Canaveral, Florida.
Paul Hennessy | Anadolu | Getty Images

Limp has “a very high level of confidence” that New Glenn will launch before the end of the year. And Blue plans to scale the cadence of New Glenn missions quickly, wanting to perform as many as 10 New Glenn launches next year. Yet it still has a ways to go to rival SpaceX, which is targeting nearly 150 Falcon rocket launches this year.
Perhaps even more optimistically, Blue aims to land New Glenn on its very first launch, cheekily naming the booster “So You’re Telling Me There’s a Chance.” No company has stuck the landing on the first try with an orbital rocket booster, and New Glenn will be aiming for a 200-foot-wide pad on a vessel named Jacklyn in the Atlantic Ocean.
“It’ll be adventurous. It’ll be fun. I’m excited about it … but if we [don’t] stick the landing the first time, that’s OK. We’ve got another booster right behind it. We’ll build more,” Limp said.

The first flight New Glenn rocket booster.
Blue Origin

It seems almost inevitable that New Glenn’s future will involve a crew spacecraft — especially given Blue’s long-standing mission: “We envision millions of people living and working in space for the benefit of Earth.” Currently, only SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft is certified by NASA to fly astronauts to-and-from orbit after Boeing’s Starliner suffered another setback this summer. 
But Limp deferred when asked about development of a New Glenn crew capsule: “Nothing to say about that.”
Blue Origin has gained experience in the lower-risk, suborbital realm of human spaceflight with its New Shepard rocket and capsule. Limp noted that Blue Origin is working to get “New Shepard back to a cadence of regular flights,” flying both crews and research cargo.
It’s done two New Shepard missions this year, and is aiming for a third next week. That mission will also feature a new rocket booster and capsule to add a second vehicle “to better meet growing customer demand,” the company said, having lost a booster during a cargo flight failure in September 2022.
Beyond New Glenn and engine production, Blue’s making more progress: Last year it won a $3.4 billion NASA contract to build a lunar lander for the agency’s astronauts. In the spring, Blue got entry into the Pentagon’s lucrative National Security Space Launch program, a turnaround from having missed out on the previous phase of NSSL in 2020.
As for Limp, he’s spending his time on “a little bit of a round trip between” Blue Origin’s facilities every 2½ weeks. He goes from its Seattle headquarters, to meeting with customers in Washington, D.C., to seeing engine production and testing in Huntsville, Alabama, and finally checking out New Glenn work at Cape Canaveral, Texas. It’s all part of his interest in leading a proper space company, rather than a billionaire’s hobby.
“Let’s have the financial discipline to build a business that we love, and let’s make decisions quickly, knowing that we’ll make some mistakes. But let’s not make the same mistakes, and let’s cure them quick,” Limp said. More

Stellantis is suing the United Auto Workers, escalating a monthslong battle between the trans-Atlantic automaker and American union, CNBC has learned.
In an internal message to employees that was confirmed to be authentic, the company said it is suing the UAW as well as a local chapter in California.

Carlos Tavares, chief executive officer of Stellantis NV, speaks to the media at the Stellantis auto manufacturing plant in Sochaux, France, on Thursday, Oct. 3, 2024. 
Nathan Laine | Bloomberg | Getty Images

DETROIT — Stellantis is suing the United Auto Workers, escalating a monthslong battle between the trans-Atlantic automaker and American union, CNBC has learned.
In an internal message Friday to employees that was confirmed to be authentic, the company said it is suing the UAW as well as a local chapter in California that participated in a strike authorization request vote at Stellantis’ Los Angeles Parts Distribution Center.

“This lawsuit would hold both the International and the local union liable for the revenue loss and other damages resulting from lost production due to an unlawful strike,” Tobin Williams, Stellantis senior vice president of North America human resources, said in the message.
A supermajority of UAW members at Stellantis’ Los Angeles Parts Distribution Center voted to request strike authorization from the International Executive Board if the company and union can’t reconcile, the union said Friday morning.

United Auto Workers (UAW) President Shawn Fain speaks to the attendees during a campaign rally for U.S. Vice President and Democratic Presidential candidate Kamala Harris and her running mate Tim Walz in Romulus, Michigan, U.S., August 7, 2024. 
Rebecca Cook | Reuters

The complaint is intended to “prevent and/or remedy a breach of contract” by the UAW, according to a copy of the lawsuit that was filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in the Central District of California.
The lawsuit argues that if the union does strike, the court “should award Stellantis monetary damages” that result from a breach of contract.
UAW President Shawn Fain addressed the lawsuit Friday in a letter to union leadership at Stellantis. He called it and other actions by the company “desperate actions from a desperate executive who has lost control.”

“Our legal team has complete confidence in our right to strike. The company’s legal threats are just that—threats intended to intimidate us, so we won’t fight back,” Fain said.
The dispute between the two sides centers on the union alleging Stellantis has not kept contractual obligations as part of a deal the two sides reached late last year. It comes after Stellantis has made several cuts to plant production, conducted worker layoffs and delayed potential investments outlined as part of the 2023 contract.
Fain has routinely said the union will strike if needed, however Stellantis has argued that would be unlawful under the contract.
The automaker has contended that there’s language in the contract that gives it leniency to change plans based on market conditions, plant performance and other factors.
The company reiterated that stance in its lawsuit and cited “Letter 311,” which includes the company’s expected investments: “The planned future investments in the letter are conditional, require Company approval, and are subject to change based on these business factor contingencies.”
The lawsuit came the same day Fain and union members held their latest rally against Stellantis in suburban Detroit.
“We’re here today for one reason. Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares is out of control and it’s once again up to UAW members to save this company from itself,” Fain said during the event. “A strike will cripple this company. And if we have to strike, it’s Stellantis’ decision to do so because they are not honoring their commitment.”
The union and several local chapters have filed grievances against the automaker regarding contract obligations and other issues.
Stellantis, in the lawsuit, called the grievances a sham designed to “justify mid-contract strikes against Stellantis that otherwise would violate the [contract’s] no strike clause.”

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First Street just launched a suite of climate risk data for every for-sale property listed on Zillow.
Each for-sale listing on Zillow now displays First Street risk scores for flood, fire, wind, air and heat. They also show those same risk percentages estimated 15 years and 30 years into the future.
More than 80% of buyers now consider climate risk when purchasing a home, according to a survey by Zillow. Respondents ranked flood risk as their highest concern, followed by fire.

Insured losses for Hurricane Helene are now estimated at over $6 billion, but the uninsured losses are far higher. That’s because the vast majority of homes impacted by the storm, especially in hard-hit North Carolina, did not have flood insurance.
New risk-assessment technology is designed to help change that for the future.

Most homeowners in North Carolina do not have flood insurance, because they are not in flood zones designated by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Government-backed mortgages require flood insurance in those designated areas.
Just 4% of North Carolina homes are in a FEMA flood zone. But climate risk firm First Street, which incorporates the effects of climate change into its property risk scores, shows nearly 12% of homes in the state at flood risk.
First Street just launched a suite of climate risk data for every for-sale property listed on Zillow.
“Climate risks are now a critical factor in home buying decisions,” said Skylar Olsen, chief economist at Zillow, in a release. “We’re providing buyers and sellers with clear, property-specific climate data so they can make informed decisions. As concerns about flooding, extreme temperatures, and wildfires grow, this tool also helps agents inform their clients in discussing climate risk, insurance, and long-term affordability.”

A house along the Broad River in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene on October 1, 2024 in Bat Cave, North Carolina. 
Sean Rayford | Getty Images

Each for-sale listing on Zillow now displays First Street risk scores for flood, fire, wind, air and heat. They also show those same risk percentages estimated 15 years and 30 years into the future — the standard lengths for fixed-rate mortgages.

On properties with some risk now, it often shows that risk rise over time, as First Street incorporates the effects of climate change. This is especially true for the flood risk, because climate change is already intensifying the severity of rainfall, even in minor storms.
The data also includes a recommendation as to whether the homeowner should have flood insurance and a link to the First Street site, which will help estimate insurance costs.
“A lot of people think that they are safe from flood if they’re not in a FEMA flood zone, and that’s decidedly not true. Heavy rainfall can affect many, many people across the country, and there’s no indication from the FEMA flood zone designation that that is a risk for you,” said Ed Kearns, chief science officer at First Street. “We’ve created these new flood maps that do bring that into account, that will allow consumers to make that informed choice about whether they need flood insurance.”
More than 80% of buyers now consider climate risk when purchasing a home, according to a survey by Zillow. Respondents ranked flood risk as their highest concern, followed by fire.
A Zillow analysis of August listings found that more homes nationwide had a major climate risk than did those listed for sale five years ago. That was true across all five climate risk categories, the analysis found. For new listings in August, 16.7% are at major wildfire risk and 12.8% show a major risk of flooding, according to Zillow and First Street data.
As more and more consumers consult these climate scores in their purchase decisions, the effect on home values will surely increase. The cost of insurance is already factored into home prices, and as both the cost and necessity of insurance rise, home values in the most affected areas will fall.
“I think that’s going to be the most direct impact of having scores on homes that quantify risk is that there may be some direct impact on real estate values, but a lot of that is going to go through the amount of insurance necessary to cover that home,” Kearns added. More

The average rate on the 30-year fixed mortgage is now 6.53% according to Mortgage News Daily.
That is 42 basis points higher than the day before the Federal Reserve cut its benchmark rate by half a percentage point. 

The average rate on the 30-year-fixed mortgage jumped 27 basis points Friday morning following the release of the government’s monthly employment report. The rate is now 6.53%, according to Mortgage News Daily.
That is 42 basis points higher than Sept. 17, the day before the Federal Reserve cut its benchmark rate by half a percentage point. Mortgage rates do not follow the Fed, but they loosely follow the yield on the 10-year U.S. Treasury.

For mortgage rates, it is all about what the expectation is next for the Fed. As such, there was a lot of anticipation leading up to this particular monthly report, since the last two pointed to weaker labor market conditions.
“Indeed, the Fed’s decision to cut by 0.50 vs 0.25 last month had much to do with the fear/expectation that reports like today’s would be in shorter supply going forward,” wrote Matthew Graham, chief operating officer at Mortgage News Daily. “The only salvation here would be the notion that this is just one jobs report in a recent run that’s been mostly weaker and that perhaps the next one won’t be so damning for bonds.”
However, the report does shift the outlook slightly for rates going forward, since most had assumed the trajectory would be lower.
“MBA’s forecast is for longer-term rates, including mortgage rates, to remain within a relatively narrow range over the next year,” the Mortgage Bankers Association’s chief economist, Michael Fratantoni, wrote after the jobs report was released. “This news will push mortgage rates to the top of that range, but we do expect that mortgage rates will stay close to 6% over the next 12 months.”
Today’s homebuyers are highly sensitive to rate moves, as house prices continue to rise from year-ago levels. There is also still very low inventory on the market, which has only served to keep prices higher. Rates are a full percentage point lower than they were a year ago, but the housing market has not seen much of a boost yet.

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