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Disney and Pixar’s “Inside Out 2” debuted with an estimated $155 million domestically, the second-highest theatrical opening of an animated film.
It is the first film since Warner Bros.’ “Barbie” to top $100 million during its debut.
The film is expected to haul in $295 million globally for the weekend.

In Disney and Pixar’s “Inside Out 2,” Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear and Disgust meet new emotions.
Disney | Pixar

Disney and Pixar brought a big dose of joy to the box office this weekend.
“Inside Out 2” debuted with an estimated $155 million domestically, the second-highest theatrical opening of an animated film and the first film since Warner Bros.’ “Barbie” to top $100 million during its debut.

Of note, Disney does not consider its 2019 live-action remake of “The Lion King,” which generated $191.7 million during its debut, an animation film.
“Inside Out 2” is expected to haul in $295 million globally for the weekend.
“Let’s issue a collective ‘welcome back’ to Disney, Pixar, and the summer box office,” said Shawn Robbins, founder and owner of Box Office Theory.”
Both Pixar and Walt Disney Animation struggled to regain a foothold at the box office after pandemic restrictions lessened and audiences returned to theaters. Disney had opted to debut a handful of animated features directly on Disney+ and so parents were trained to seek out new Disney titles on streaming, not in theaters, even when they did return to the big screen.
Compounding Disney’s woes, many audience members began to feel that the company’s content had grown overly existential and too concerned with social issues beyond the reach of children.

“Many narratives have been written about the two studios and moviegoing in recent times, so this powerful debut by ‘Inside Out 2’ is a breath of fresh air,” Robbins said.
The film is the fifth Pixar feature to surpass $100 million during its debut in North America and the second-biggest opening weekend ticket seller for the studio just behind 2018’s “The Incredibles 2,” which tallied $182.6 million. Around 12 million patrons flocked to cinemas to see the flick, according to data from EntTelligence.
“This is clearly a big win for theaters,” said Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst at Comscore. “It’s an even bigger win for Pixar.”
The theatrical industry has struggled this year with fewer titles, as production shutdowns from the pandemic were exacerbated by a dual labor strike that closed movie sets for nearly five months last year. The result has been a 26% decline in ticket sales compared to 2023 and a 42% drop from 2019 levels, according to data from Comscore. Heading into this weekend, the domestic box office stood at $2.8 billion.
While there have been some standout performances from films like Warner Bros. and Legendary Entertainment’s “Dune: Part Two,” Warner Bros. and Toho’s “Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire” and Universal’s “Kung Fu Panda 4,” the 2024 box office has struggled to hit a consistent pace of releases and ticket sales.
Missing from this year’s early summer slate for the first time since 2009 was a Marvel Cinematic Universe title. Typically, these films average $100 million to $200 million openings, with 2019’s “Avengers: Endgame” hitting a record $357.1 million. Instead, this year, Universal’s “The Fall Guy” opened to $28 million.
Fewer films and fewer blockbusters could push the summer box office down as much as $800 million compared with 2023, according to Comscore’s Dergarabedian, and have ripple effects for the whole year. After all, the key summer period, which runs from the first weekend in May through Labor Day, typically accounts for 40% of the total annual domestic box office.
“Inside Out 2” is a bright spot for the industry. It boasts the biggest domestic debut of 2024, surpassing “Dune: Part Two” and its $82.5 million in opening weekend ticket sales.
“Does this performance wipe away all concerns of evolving consumer behavior? Of course not, but it should stay the hand of those thinking Disney or Pixar had permanently lost their commercial gravitas after an overly aggressive streaming strategy and undercooked films which together eroded some of their audiences in the past few years,” Robbins said.
And some heavy hitters are coming to close out the summer and finish up the year.
“Deadpool and Wolverine,” Marvel’s first R-rated feature, is due in theaters in July and is expected to deliver a strong opening weekend as well as a steady stream of ticket sales throughout its run.
Then “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” arrives in early September, “Joker: Folie a Deux” hits in October alongside “Venom: The Last Dance,” and November sees “Gladiator II,” “Moana 2” and “Wicked.” Additionally, December will have “Kraven the Hunter,” “Sonic the Hedgehog 3″ and “Mufasa: The Lion King.”
Disclosure: Comcast is the parent company of NBCUniversal and CNBC. More

Cocoa prices have been soaring this year, hitting record highs and causing headaches for candy companies.
While hedging contracts protect the likes of Hershey and Mondelez for now, high cocoa prices could change how they think about innovation.
Food companies will likely be reluctant to raise prices given current consumer pushback on the last two years’ price hikes.

Dried cocoa beans at the Somos Cacao farm and production facility in Ragonvalia, Norte de Santader department, Colombia, on Friday, March 22, 2024. 
Ferley Ospina | Bloomberg | Getty Images

There’s pricing pressure taking hold of a specific corner of global agriculture — and it’s bittersweet.
Prices of cocoa have more than tripled over the last year, creating a big headache for candy makers and other food companies that use the ingredient to make chocolate.

In recent years, the price of cocoa had hovered at around $2,500 per metric ton. But reports of a weaker-than-expected crop set off concerns about supply, sparking the commodity’s run-up in recent months. Cocoa hit an all-time high of more than $11,000 per metric ton in April. The price surge has since eased off slightly, but the crop is still commanding well above what food companies are used to paying.
For now, many of the largest candy companies — Hershey, M&M’s maker Mars, Kinder owner Ferrero and Cadbury parent Mondelez — are likely protected from higher cocoa costs, thanks to long-term contracts that lock in the prices they pay for key commodities to protect them from events just like this. That gives them some lead time to grapple with the issue. But come 2025, they’ll likely end up paying much more for their cocoa.
“This is absolutely impacting the ways in which these companies are managing their businesses, just because the cost impact is so incredibly significant,” said Steve Rosenstock, the consumer products lead at Clarkston Consulting, which advises clients on how to deal with problems such as the soaring cost of cocoa.
Mars declined to participate for this story. Mondelez, Ferrero and Hershey did not respond to CNBC’s requests for comment.

Costly cocoa

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West Africa, which grows the majority of the world’s cocoa supply, has been hit by crop disease and lower prices paid to farmers at the point of sale, called farmgate pricing, that push them to grow more lucrative crops such as rubber instead of cocoa. This season’s cocoa crop is expected to experience the largest deficit in at least six decades, according to a Rabobank report from May.

Reuters reported Wednesday that Ghana, the second-largest cocoa producer, is looking to delay a delivery of up to 350,000 tons of beans to next season, sending prices higher again.

A worker picks cocoa fruit at the Somos Cacao farm in Ragonvalia, Norte de Santader department, Colombia, on Friday, March 22, 2024. 
Ferley Ospina | Bloomberg | Getty Images

On recent earnings calls, executives from Mondelez and Hershey said they believe market speculation is driving at least some of the surge in cocoa. Prices could come down in September, once more information about the new crop is available — but that doesn’t mean that they’ll return to normal.
The commodity’s climbing cost comes at a tough time for many food companies. Over the last two years, many have raised prices to deal with inflation that touched on a broader array of commodities. As a result, shoppers have become choosier about what they buy and more dissatisfied with the prices they see at grocery stores. Consumers’ focus on value leaves candy companies with little leeway when it comes to pricing to cope with cocoa’s higher cost.
And then there’s shrinkflation, a buzz word that has entered the layperson’s lexicon over the last two years. Companies will cut a product’s quantity or weight while the price stays the same.  But consumers have gotten wise to the trick. A YouGov survey conducted in October found that 72% of U.S. respondents had noticed shrinkflation in food products.

Near-term workarounds

As a result, many companies will have to become more creative. 
J&J Snack Foods CEO Daniel Fachner has been keeping an eye on cocoa and chocolate prices. The company owns brands including Dippin’ Dots, SuperPretzel and Hola Churros and manufactures products for other companies, such as Subway’s footlong churro. Chocolate is a common flavor in its portfolio, which includes treats such as a chocolate-filled churro.
“It won’t stop us from using chocolate, but it will cause us to think about and say, ‘Now, if we do this innovation with that new pricing, is it sellable?’ And then when we sell it, ‘Is it at a low enough cost that customer could sell it and still make a good margin?'” Fachner told CNBC in May.
One hypothetical solution, proposed by Fachner, could involve cutting back the number of chocolate chips from 12 to nine in a certain product. He also said J&J is looking for any possible substitutes that could work for some of its recipes.

Chocolates are displayed on a shelf at Celine’s Sweets in Novato, California, March 22, 2024.
Justin Sullivan | Getty Images

RBC Capital Markets analyst Nik Modi cited Hershey’s new Jumbo Reese’s Cup as one creative workaround.
“This one has extra peanut butter, so it’s a nice way of trying to get innovation into the market at a premium price, let the consumer feel like they’re getting value, but just changing the product itself to lower the reliance on chocolate,” he said.
For food companies that don’t primarily deal in chocolate, they might start avoiding the flavor, especially when it comes to new products.
“I think more or less, people will try to stay away from chocolate at this point,” Modi said.

The long tail of the cocoa crisis

While this year’s spike in cocoa prices has been historic, it likely won’t be the last time food companies find themselves paying more for the commodity. Analysts are already predicting another cocoa shortfall next year, although it would likely be less dramatic than this season’s.
However, systemic issues, such as government-controlled farmgate pricing, and climate change will likely keep hurting the beans’ crop. Plus, the use of child labor and slavery in West African cocoa farms has led to lawsuits and scandal for candy companies.
In the long term, that means many companies will have to look for more permanent solutions. In some cases, that may mean alternatives to cocoa.
“There are examples where companies are increasing the amount of non-cocoa additives, like sugar, more economical things like cocoa butter equivalents, shea butter, palm oil, coconut oil, those types of things,” Rosenstock said.

Justin Sullivan | Getty Images

Recipe reformulation takes about nine months on average, according to a research note published Thursday from Bank of America Securities analyst Antoine Prevot. He said he thinks fast-moving consumer goods companies have been looking at changing their formulas since the beginning of this year, which means the new candy could start trickling out as soon as August.
There are more extreme substitutes, too. Startups such as Voyage Foods and Win-Win have made cocoa-free chocolate using alternatives such as grape seeds and legumes.
At least one candy company isn’t planning any major changes to its formulas.
“We will do some cost tightening, but we’re not going to change recipes or do things that are not necessarily the right thing for the business in the long run,” Mondelez CFO Luca Zaramella said June 4 at a Deutsche Bank conference.
There’s also the potential for diversification with other kinds of snacks. When Kraft spun out Mondelez more than a decade ago, it already had Triscuit, Sour Patch Kids and Wheat Thins snacks in its portfolio, in addition to chocolate products Milka, Oreo, Toblerone and Chips Ahoy.
Other candy companies have followed its lead, adding more salty snacks to their lineups to drive more growth. For example, Hershey bought Amplify Snack Brands in 2017, adding SkinnyPop to its portfolio, and Dot’s Homestyle Pretzels in 2021.
“I don’t think they did it to be less dependent on cocoa — they did it to more easily react to the ups and downs of consumer trends and to be able to really diversify their portfolio,” Rosenstock said. “But the ability to lean on some of the non-chocolate categories, whether it’s salty snacks, jelly beans or gummy products, I think that’s a good way to combat the cocoa crisis.” More

NASA announced Friday that Boeing’s Starliner capsule “Calypso” will stay at the International Space Station twice as long as the mission originally planned.
Calypso’s mission is now expected to return to Earth on June 22, departing the ISS at 11:42 p.m. ET on June 21 before landing at 6:26 a.m. ET.
Boeing’s crew flight test represents a major step toward NASA certifying the company to carry crew on operational missions with the spacecraft.

A satellite image shows an overview of the International Space Station with the Boeing Starliner spacecraft, June 7, 2024.
Maxar Technologies | Via Reuters

Boeing’s Starliner capsule “Calypso” will stay at the International Space Station twice as long as the mission originally planned, NASA announced Friday.
This developmental nature of the mission, known as Boeing’s crew flight test, is on display as the company and NASA are performing a variety of tests on Starliner while it is docked with the ISS. The mission represents the first time Starliner carries crew, with Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams set to fly the spacecraft back to Earth next week.

Before launching on June 5, Boeing and NASA planned for Starliner to be in space for nine days.
But Calypso’s mission is now expected to return to Earth on June 22, departing the ISS at 11:42 p.m. ET on June 21 before landing roughly six and half hours later, at 6:26 a.m. ET. That means the Starliner crew flight test will now last at least 17 days, about double the original plan, for further spacecraft testing.
NASA said those tests include operating the capsule’s hatch, firing seven of its thrusters and checking the cabin air temperature, all while the program’s managers and astronauts “finalize departure planning and operations.”
The agency also noted that Starliner would “repeat some ‘safe haven’ testing,” but did not explain why that was necessary. A safe haven test is when astronauts on the ISS use a spacecraft for shelter during an emergency. NASA said “the spacecraft remains cleared for crew emergency return scenarios within the flight rules,” referencing the possible scenario of an unexpected evacuation of the astronauts off the ISS.
NASA, after publishing an update Friday, deferred CNBC’s request for further clarification until a press conference that will be held Tuesday before the planned departure.

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The crew flight test represents a final major step before NASA certifies Boeing to fly crew on operational, six-month missions. Yet, similar to the previous two spaceflights that were uncrewed, Starliner is running into several problems during the mission.
Before the launch, a single leak in Calypso’s helium propulsion system was identified. The leak was deemed to be stable and not a threat to the capsule’s safety, so the launch moved forward and was successful in delivering Starliner to the ISS.
However, since docking with the ISS, the spacecraft has sprung four additional helium leaks. NASA earlier this week wrote that Calypso “has plenty of margin to support the return trip” based on the current rate of the five leaks, with 10 times the needed capacity of helium in its tanks.

While Boeing was guiding Starliner in for docking, another issue — which NASA says is separate from the helium leaks — cropped up with the spacecraft propulsion system. Starliner has 28 jets, known as its reaction control system, or RCS, engines, which help the spacecraft make small movements in orbit.
Five of the 28 thrusters were not operating but after troubleshooting, Boeing recovered four of Starliner’s malfunctioning jets and NASA allowed the spacecraft to dock.
NASA said Friday that it would perform hot fire testing before undocking with seven of the eight thrusters near the spacecraft’s tail. Hot fires are very brief bursts of the thrusters, with Boeing looking to evaluate the thrusters’ performance. NASA did not specify whether any of the seven thrusters that will undergo testing were the same as the five that stopped operating before docking.
Boeing Vice President Mark Nappi said in a statement that despite the mission doubling in length, “We have plenty of margin and time on station” remaining.
Starliner was once seen as a competitor to SpaceX’s Dragon, which has made 12 crewed trips to the ISS over the past four years. However, various setbacks and delays have steadily slipped Starliner into a backup position for NASA, with the agency planning to have SpaceX and Boeing fly astronauts on alternating flights.

Boeing’s Starliner capsule is seen while approaching the International Space Station with two NASA astronauts on board on June 6, 2024.

Correction: A previous version of this article misstated the duration of the flight test.

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Pixar’s “Inside Out 2” arrives in theaters this weekend and is aiming for a $100 million opening.
Disney seems confident in the animated sequel, as the film is expected to have a 100-day theatrical run, a nearly unheard-of stint nowadays for animated features and non-blockbuster action flicks.
Both Walt Disney Animation and Pixar struggled to regain a foothold at the box office after pandemic restrictions lessened and audiences returned to theaters.

In Disney and Pixar’s “Inside Out 2,” Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear and Disgust meet new emotions.
Disney | Pixar

Disney is looking to bring a little joy to theaters with its upcoming release of Pixar’s “Inside Out 2.”
Current expectations see the animated sequel easily topping $85 million during its domestic opening this weekend, which would make it the highest debut of any film released in the United States and Canada in 2024. Some are even forecasting the film could secure more than $100 million in ticket sales, a feat not seen since July 2023 when Warner Bros.’ “Barbie” waltzed into cinemas.

Already “Inside Out 2” has tallied $13 million from Thursday night preview showings in North America. For comparison, 2019’s “Toy Story 4” generated $12 million on its Thursday previews and snared $120.9 million for its opening weekend.
Any opening figure north of $50 million would be a boon for Pixar, which has struggled to regain its foothold at the box office in the wake of the pandemic. However, Disney seems confident in “Inside Out 2,” as the film is expected to have a 100-day theatrical run, a nearly unheard-of stint nowadays for animated features and non-blockbuster action flicks.
While most consumers are agnostic about theatrical release windows — the period of weeks or months that a film is shown exclusively in theaters before it hits streaming or other on-demand options — for cinema operators and box office analysts, a commitment to more than three months of exclusivity on the big screen is a big deal.
Before the pandemic, industry standard was what’s known as the 90-day theatrical window (though the average was actually closer to about 75 days in reality, according to market research firm The Numbers).
Only a rare few films would extend beyond that date — usually massive franchise films or blockbuster hits. After that time frame, a film could move into the home video space, which included digital downloads, DVD and Blu-Ray discs and availability on streaming sites. Films would still play in theaters after that date, but would then compete with home-market sales.

When the pandemic hit, and theaters were forced to close, studios had to decide if they were going to hold off on releasing their films until cinemas reopened or place them on streaming or video-on-demand during the interim.
Disney was one of the companies that opted to make a number of its animated offerings available in the at-home market during that time.

As theaters began to reopen, studios renegotiated the amount of time that films were required to remain on the big screen before they could go to the home market. After all, new Covid variants and a not-yet widely available vaccine had led many moviegoers to stay home. The result has been a widely variable time frame of exclusivity, as each studio negotiated its own deal with the major cinema chains.
For example, Universal and Focus Features inked a deal in which movies had to play in cinemas for at least three weekends, or 17 days, before those films could transition to the premium video on-demand platforms.
“Ninety-day windows were always going to be unsustainable,” said Jeff Kaufman, senior vice president of film and marketing at Malco Theaters. “The pandemic sort of accelerated that.”
The shifting theatrical windows has left studios and cinemas with a complex equation.

A shorter window

Studios had been pushing to slim down the window prior to the pandemic in order to cut down on marketing expenses, explained Daniel Loria, senior vice president of content strategy and editorial director at the Box Office Company.
Studios were paying a significant amount to market films for their theatrical release and then months later had to drum up buzz again for a film’s transition to the home market. With shorter windows, studios don’t need to spend as much to refamiliarize audiences with a film as it’s likely still fresh in their minds from its debut.
“My impression of films going to [premium video on-demand] early is usually a decision to not double dip on the marketing spend,” Loria said.
Last year, the average run of a widely released film was 39 days, according to The Numbers. So far in 2024, the average run is 29 days. Of course, as bigger blockbuster titles roll out in the summer months, that figure is expected to grow.

Average theatrical window by major Hollywood studio in 2023

Focus Features — 28 days
Lionsgate — 30 days
Universal — 30.8 days
Warner Bros. — 30.9 days
Paramount — 42.5 days
Sony — 47.75 days
20th Century Fox — 60 days
Searchlight — 60 days
Disney — 62 days

Source: The Numbers

There are cases where studios have extended their runs well beyond the typical theatrical window. In 2022, for example, Paramount and Skydance’s “Top Gun: Maverick” played for more than 200 days in cinemas before heading to the home market.
And, these figures only refer to when a film becomes available in the home market for rent. Typically, the wait before films are available as part of subscription streaming services, often considered “free” by those subscribers, is much longer.
The Numbers reported the average time span between theatrical release and streaming subscription launch was 108 days in 2023.
Early on there were experiments with day-and-date releases, meaning films would hit cinemas and streaming at the same time. But that faded as studios realized these simultaneous releases cannibalized sales and led to increased piracy rates.
There’s also the consideration that many actors and directors have contract stipulations that award them a percentage of theatrical gains. In 2021, actress Scarlet Johannson sued Disney for releasing the 2020 Marvel film “Black Widow” on streaming and in theaters at the same time. She claimed that her agreement with the company guaranteed an exclusive theatrical release for her solo film, and her salary was based, in large part, on the box office performance. Johannson and Disney later settled for an undisclosed monetary sum.
Still, Universal has dabbled with the day-and-date model for horror movie fare around Halloween, opting most recently to release “Five Nights at Freddy’s” in theaters and on streamer Peacock at the same time. While the film had a stellar opening weekend, topping $80 million at the domestic box office, ticket sales shrunk more than 76% in the second weekend, reaching just $19 million.
Of course, shorter exclusivity and lower ticket sales can be bad for theater chains, which are still struggling to rebound operations after Covid. But some argue that getting the window wrong can be bad for the movie, too.
“A sufficient window is important not only to exhibitors, but also to our studio partners, as it’s necessary to deliver the full promotional and financial benefits of a film’s theatrical release, which continue to meaningfully enhance a film’s lifetime value across all distribution channels, including streaming,” said Sean Gamble, president and CEO of Cinemark.

Disney’s dilemma

It’s a lesson that Disney learned in the wake of the pandemic.
Both Walt Disney Animation and Pixar struggled to regain a foothold at the box office after pandemic restrictions lessened and audiences returned to theaters. Much of this was due to the fact that Disney opted to debut a handful of animated features directly on streaming service Disney+ during theatrical closures and even once cinemas had reopened.
The company sought to pad the company’s fledgling streaming service with content, stretching its creative teams thin and sending theatrical movies straight to digital.
That dynamic trained parents to seek out new Disney titles on streaming, not in theaters, even when Disney opted to return its films to the big screen.
As a result of that and other challenges, no Disney animated feature from Pixar or Walt Disney Animation has generated more than $480 million at the global box office since 2019. For comparison, just before the pandemic, “Coco” generated $796 million globally, while “Incredibles 2″ tallied $1.24 billion globally, and “Toy Story 4” snared $1.07 billion globally.
Box office experts are looking to “Inside Out 2” as a barometer for the health of Pixar and its future. If the film can capture attention from audiences and perform well over its opening weekend and beyond, the animation studios will regain goodwill from audiences and the industry.

Recent Pixar domestic opening weekend results

“Elemental” (2023) — $29.6 million
“Lightyear” (2022) — $50.5 million
“Turning Red” (2022) — streaming release
“Luca” (2021) — streaming release
“Soul” (2020) — streaming release
“Onward” (2020)* — $39.1 million
“Toy Story 4” (2019) — $120.9 million
“The Incredibles 2” (2018) — $182.6 million

* “Onward” was released just as Covid cases spiked in the U.S. and theaters began closing.
Source: The Numbers

A 100-day window for “Inside Out 2” may be the key.
Disney is one of the only studios that doesn’t have a traditional premium video on-demand window, according to Sebastian Gomez, a research and data analyst at The Numbers. Meaning, that once that theatrical window is up it will go to Disney+ where subscribers can watch it for free, rather than an intermediate rental option.
By delaying its at-home release, Disney is signaling to audiences that its latest Pixar release is a “must see” on the big screen.
The first “Inside Out” film, which hit theaters in 2015, generated $90.4 million during its opening weekend and tallied more than $850 million at the global box office.
Disclosure: Comcast is the parent company of NBCUniversal and CNBC. More

The Pentagon announced the first winning bidders in its rocket launch contract sweepstakes on Thursday, with Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin grabbing a spot for the first time.
The Pentagon’s $5.6 billion National Security Space Launch (NSSL) program will feature the trio of Blue Origin, SpaceX, and United Launch Alliance (ULA) competing for rocket contracts.
Space Force expects to order as many as 90 rocket launches under the NSSL Phase 3 program.

A mass simulator version of a New Glenn rocket is moved for testing in November 2021.
Blue Origin

The Pentagon announced the first winning bidders in its rocket launch contract sweepstakes on Thursday, with Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin grabbing a spot for the first time.
Blue Origin’s winning bid came as part of contracts awarded under the Pentagon’s $5.6 billion National Security Space Launch program.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX and United Launch Alliance – also known as ULA, the joint venture of Lockheed Martin and Boeing – were also awarded contracts as part of the multi-year third phase of the NSSL program.
Blue Origin, SpaceX, and ULA did not immediately respond to CNBC requests for comment.

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Under the program, known as NSSL Phase 3 Lane 1, the trio of companies will be eligible to compete for contracts through mid-2029.
ULA and SpaceX have already been competing for contracts under the previous Phase 2 edition of NSSL: In total, over five years of Phase 2 launch orders, the military assigned ULA with 26 missions worth $3.1 billion, while SpaceX got 22 missions worth $2.5 billion.
Blue Origin, as well as Northrop Grumman, missed out on Phase 2 when the Pentagon selected ULA and SpaceX for the program in August 2020.

A Falcon Heavy rocket launches the USSF-67 mission from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Jan. 15, 2023.

But with Phase 3, the U.S. military is raising the stakes — and widening the field — on a high-profile competition for Space Force mission contracts. Phase 3 is expected to see 90 rocket launch orders in total, with a split approach of categories Lane 1 and Lane 2 to allow even more companies to bid.
Space Force outlined a “mutual fund” strategy to buying launches from companies under Phase 3: The military branch split the program into two lanes, in order to have one that features three companies fulfilling the most demanding and expensive missions, and the other that More

Beatrice Advisors, founded by Christina Lewis, aims to change the traditional business of managing the fortunes of the wealthy and inheritors.
The firm aims to make education and accessibility paramount since many young inheritors will be new to managing wealth amid the “great wealth transfer.”
It will welcome a more diverse group of wealth-holders in terms of race, ethnicity and gender, as well as take a “holistic approach” to a family’s assets, Lewis said.

Christina Lewis, founder of Beatrice Advisors, at her home office with a portrait of her father, Reginald Lewis.
Cindy Johnson

Christina Lewis had her first asset allocation meeting with her wealth manager when she was 13.
“I remember the meeting well,” Lewis said. “It was a turbulent time for my family. And [the advisor] was the only one who had the information I needed and [knew] how to talk to me for this new world I was in.”

That new world involved a tragic loss and sudden inheritance. Her father, Reginald Lewis, the founder of the food giant TLC Beatrice International and the first African American to build a business with $1 billion in revenue, died at the age of 50 from a cerebral hemorrhage. Christina was left with a large fortune and few answers.
Over the next 30 years, Lewis would work with six different institutional wealth managers and 12 different relationship managers. Her experience and success in forming her own family office and running two foundations has led her to her new venture: a multifamily office aimed at the next generation, targeting people like herself.
“This is about families and their assets and how you think about them,” she said. “When you’re inclusive, when you look at diverse perspectives, when you empower women, when you empower your children, when you educate your clients, when you allow them authority and autonomy and independence, that’s a better way to live. Your family will be healthier, wealthier, happier and more functional.”

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Lewis’ company, called Beatrice Advisors, aims to change the traditional business of managing the fortunes of the wealthy and inheritors. With more than $84 trillion expected to be passed down from older to younger generations in the next 30 years, according to estimates from Cerulli Associates, a market research firm, Beatrice aims to be at the forefront of managing the wealth of inheritors.
Beatrice Advisors aims to make education and accessibility paramount since many young inheritors will be new to managing wealth, Lewis said. It will welcome a more diverse group of wealth-holders in terms of race, ethnicity and gender. And it will take a “holistic approach” to a family’s assets, considering not just their money but also their values, skills and life paths, Lewis said.

Since today’s younger generations are more tech-focused, the advisory firm has spent years building a high-tech dashboard that gives families an up-to-the-minute, unified view of their portfolio and assets.
“We build the dashboard and advise the clients, but they drive the car,” she said.
Multifamily offices like Beatrice combine the hyper-personalized and confidential approach of a single-family office — which manages the fortunes and logistics of one family — with the shared costs and resources of an investment firm.
In addition to managing investments, multifamily offices typically handle taxes, trusts, family governance, philanthropy and legal issues. A growing number of ultra-wealthy families are turning to multifamily offices for generational wealth transitions, given their expertise in family wealth dynamics and governance.
Lewis’ own personal investing education began when she was 7 years old, helping her father manage his stock portfolio. In addition to owning his own company, Reginald Lewis had a portfolio of personal stocks and designated Christina as his “broker.”
“I would read the stock tables in the newspaper in the morning,” she said, “And then at the end of the day, after market close, I would call to get the evening’s close. And I had this notebook where I tracked everything.”
After her father’s death, she worked with her first wealth manager to pick stocks and build an aggressive portfolio. Among her stock picks: Disney and Limited “because we talked about investing in what I know.”
Over the years, her wealth advisors were constantly churning: Firms got acquired and her relationship managers changed year by year. It was hard, she said, to find an asset manager “who sees you for you, not just an appendage of another entity.”
Eventually, she created a family office, BFO21, and hired her own team. Beatrice will be separate from BF021, but it will have team members in common and will share best practices, investments and expertise.
Meredith Bowen, a former partner at Seven Bridges Advisors who is now president and chief investment officer of Beatrice, said the advisory firm will put a high priority on tax efficiency and custom tax structures.
“We are really trying to create an investment infrastructure that is specific to an individual taxpayer’s picture,” Bowen said.
Beatrice will target clients with between $25 million and $300 million in net worth, although Bowen said that “the largest families will get a lot out of us.”
As an active philanthropist, Lewis founded All Star Code, a nonprofit organization that provides young men of color with basic web and coding skills. She also co-founded Giving Gap, formerly Give Blck, a searchable database of vetted, Black-founded nonprofits. She is also vice chair of the Reginald F. Lewis Foundation.
Lewis said that by making wealth advice accessible to a more diverse and young population, she hopes to help more families like her own.
“When I was looking at firms, I wanted that alignment with the values and style of the clients,” she said. “I feel like [Beatrice] will be diverse and inclusive from the get-go.” More

GameStop’s 2024 annual shareholder meeting was disrupted as servers crashed under overwhelming interest.
A customer service rep for ComputerShare, the company hosting the meeting, told CNBC its servers had apparently crashed because they weren’t accustomed to the amount of traffic the event had attracted.
The debacle comes amid a new meme stock craze that surged when Keith Gill — known as Roaring Kitty online — resumed posting on his social accounts after going dark for more than three years.

Traders work at the post where GameStop is traded on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York City, U.S., June 12, 2024. 
Brendan McDermid | Reuters

GameStop’s annual shareholder meeting was disrupted by computer problems Thursday, as servers crashed under overwhelming interest in the stream, a customer service representative for the company hosting the stream told CNBC.
The meeting, slated to begin at 11 a.m. ET, was hosted on ComputerShare, but when people tried to access the event, many received error messages that the page couldn’t load, according to posts made on social media site X and CNBC’s own attempts to access the event. 

According to a YouTube stream from an unaffiliated user purporting to reproduce the feed, the annual meeting was brought to order at 11:48 a.m. ET and was “immediately adjourned … due to technical difficulties that have prevented stockholders from accessing the meeting.” GameStop said it would provide an update “as soon as possible” as to when the event would be rescheduled, according to that feed.
GameStop couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.
When reached by phone, a customer service rep for ComputerShare told CNBC that it was seeing a “mass amount” of issues from people trying to access the meeting.
The rep said ComputerShare’s servers appeared to be unable to handle the amount of traffic the meeting had received and weren’t accustomed to the volume of accounts. They added that ComputerShare’s tech team was working to solve the issue and advised interested parties to attempt to log in “every 5 to 10 minutes.” 
The debacle comes amid a new meme stock craze that surged when Keith Gill — known as Roaring Kitty online — resumed posting on his social accounts after going dark for more than three years. Gill gained notoriety in the online trading realm for his big bets on the stock, spurring a frenzy among retail traders.

GameStop surged 14.4% on Thursday in another volatile session.

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GameStop announced Tuesday that it raised more than $2 billion in a recent at-the-market equity sale as the video game company took advantage of the revived meme rally. GameStop said it intends to use the money for general corporate purposes, which may include acquisitions and investments.
Traders have been closely monitoring Roaring Kitty’s positioning, as his active selling could knock the price of the stock.
In late afternoon trading Wednesday, a sell-off in GameStop shares intensified suddenly just as the trading volume spiked in the call options that Roaring Kitty owns. Call options give the buyer the right to buy a stock at a specified price within a specific period. They increase in value if the stock rises above the so-called strike price.
GameStop calls with a $20 strike price and expiration on June 21 traded a whopping 93,266 contracts Wednesday, more than nine times its 30-day average volume of 10,233 contracts.
The price of these contracts dropped more than 40% during the session, while the stock plunged 16.5%.
Roaring Kitty owned 120,000 contracts of those calls, according to a screenshot he shared Monday evening.
It is unclear if it was indeed Roaring Kitty behind the large volume, but options traders said he could be involved given he is such a large holder of those contracts.
Open interest on those calls, the total number of contracts for an asset that have not been settled, has declined to 111,818 contracts as of Thursday morning, already below Roaring Kitty’s original 120,000.
More than 47,000 such contracts have changed hands Thursday. More

CEO Carlos Tavares said Stellantis is aiming to fix issues that led to sales declines, bloated inventories and investor concerns.
At the company’s investor day, Stellantis executives also laid out how they plan to achieve ambitious financial targets amid industry and economic uncertainty.
Tavares said the automaker has achieved 8.4 billion euros ($9 billion) in cost reductions from the merger that created the company in January 2021.

Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares speaks to media on June 13, 2024 following the company’s investor day at its North American headquarters in Auburn Hills, Mich.
Michael Wayland / CNBC

AUBURN HILLS, Mich. — Stellantis is correcting what CEO Carlos Tavares described Thursday as “arrogant” mistakes by himself and the company in the automaker’s U.S. operations that led to sales declines, bloated inventories and investor concerns.
Tavares said the convergence of three factors led to the problems: not selling down vehicle inventory fast enough; manufacturing issues, specifically with two unnamed plants; and lack of “sophistication in the way to go to market.”

“We had a convergence of three things that should have triggered, from me and nobody else, an immediate task force to address those things,” he told media Thursday after the company’s investor day at its North American headquarters. “When I’m saying that you are arrogant, I’m talking about myself. I’m talking about the fact that I should have acted immediately recognizing that the convergence of those three problems was there.”
During the investor day, Tavares and his top lieutenants broadly updated investors on the company’s operations and how Stellantis plans to achieve ambitious financial targets amid industry and economic uncertainty. The company also reconfirmed its 2024 guidance and vowed to continue to return capital to shareholders going forward.
Tavares did not elaborate on the manufacturing or go-to-market problems, but Stellantis’ inventory of vehicles leads major U.S. automakers as the company has held back incentives and cut marketing budgets. Stellantis’ U.S. sales were off 10% during the first quarter, leading to notable declines in revenue.
In May, Cox Automotive reported days’ supply of vehicles at Stellantis’ Jeep and Ram brands were more than twice the industry average of 76 days. Stellantis was the only major automaker to report a decline in U.S. sales last year; its market share dropped below 10%; and Hyundai, including Kia, outsold Stellantis for the first time ever.
While sales have been down, the company remains among the most profitable automakers globally. Since merging Fiat Chrysler and PSA Groupe to form Stellantis in 2021, the automaker’s adjusted operating income rose by 31% from 2021 through last year. Its adjusted profit margin is also up, rising 0.4 percentage point during that time frame, to 12.8%.

Stellantis reported a 12% decline in revenue in the first quarter, citing lower sales and foreign exchange effects, even as net pricing held firm. Its average vehicle transaction price in the U.S. was $57,266, according to Cox Automotive. That compares to an industry average of $48,389.

Cost reductions

As part of the event, Tavares said Stellantis has achieved 8.4 billion euros ($9 billion) in cost reductions from the merger of Fiat Chrysler and PSA Groupe that created the company in January 2021.
That amount is more than double initial expectations from when the merger was announced in 2019, and an increase from the updated 5 billion euros in expected reductions within five years of completion of the merger, which formed one of the world’s largest automakers.
Tavares said the largest reduction was achieved in the sharing and consolidation of engineering assets for the company’s vehicles, followed by purchasing.
Cost-cutting has been a critical mission of the veteran automotive executive. Other cost-saving measures have included reshaping the company’s supply chain and operations, as well as head-count reductions.

Since the merger was agreed to in December 2019, Stellantis has reduced head count by 15.5%, or roughly 47,500 employees, through 2023, according to public filings. Additional job cuts this year involving thousands of plant workers in the U.S. and Italy have drawn the ire of unions in both countries.
Several Stellantis executives described the cuts to CNBC as difficult but effective. Others, who spoke on the condition of anonymity due to potential repercussions, have described them as grueling to the point of excessiveness.

Investor day

The cuts are part of Stellantis’ strategic plan to increase profits and double revenue to 300 billion euros by 2030. The plan also includes targets such as achieving adjusted operating profit of more than 12% and industrial free cash flow of more than 20 billion euros.
“We are not looking for our way; we know where we are going,” Tavares said, referring to the automaker’s 2030 “Dare Forward” strategic plan.

Stellantis reconfirmed its 2024 guidance that included a double-digit adjusted operating income (AOI) margin, positive industrial free cash flow and at least 7.7 billion euros in capital return to investors in the forms of dividends and buybacks.
The automaker anticipates that Jeep will be a main driver for the company globally. Stellantis expects to grow sales of Jeep vehicles globally by 50% in the next three years, as the automaker attempts to leverage the quintessential American SUV brand for increased profits.
The trans-Atlantic automaker on Thursday said it will expand production and sales to roughly 1.5 million units by 2027. To do so, the company will grow its vehicle and powertrain offerings.
“The Jeep brand can be a local hero anywhere,” Tavares said. “We are going to reinforce the manufacturing footprint of Jeep.” More