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The long-running legal battle over America’s opioid epidemic was reignited when, on August 10th, the country’s Supreme Court said it would review an earlier settlement secured by Purdue Pharma, a main character in the saga. Back in 2021 a federal judge had approved a bankruptcy plan for Purdue—the maker of OxyContin, a highly addictive painkiller—under which the business was to be restructured as a public-benefit company with all future profits going towards settling claims from victims and funding addiction-treatment programs. Members of the Sackler family, which owns the drugmaker, were to contribute $4.5bn (later increased to $6bn) towards the settlement.Listen to this story. Enjoy more audio and podcasts on More

“WE ARE WORKING flat-out,” says Armin Papperger, chief executive of Rheinmetall, Germany’s biggest arms-maker. Ever since Russia invaded Ukraine in February last year, the Düsseldorf-based maker of tanks, ammunition and other military kit has been inundated with orders. On August 10th the firm reported that sales of its military ware in the first half of the year had risen by 12% compared with the same period in 2022, and Mr Papperger expects growth to hit 20-30% for the year as a whole. A few days later the company said it had secured an order from the Ukrainian army for drones, and on August 18th it is due to inaugurate a large new factory in Hungary. Its share price has roughly tripled since the start of last year.Listen to this story. Enjoy more audio and podcasts on More

Walmart lifted its outlook for the full fiscal year, after beating Wall Street’s expectations for sales and earnings.
E-commerce sales for Walmart U.S. jumped 24% year over year.
Chief Financial Officer John David Rainey said there was “modest improvement” of sales of big-ticket and discretionary items in the quarter.

Walmart on Thursday raised its full-year forecast, as the discounter leaned on its low-price reputation to draw grocery customers and drive online spending.
The big-box retailer beat Wall Street’s expectations for sales and profits. E-commerce sales for Walmart U.S. also jumped 24%.

Walmart said it now expects full fiscal-year consolidated net sales to increase by about 4% to 4.5%. It said adjusted earnings per share for the year will range between $6.36 and $6.46. That compares with its prior guidance for consolidated net sales gains of 3.5% and an adjusted earnings per share range of between $6.10 and $6.20.
In a CNBC interview, Chief Financial Officer John David Rainey said Walmart saw “modest improvement” in sales of big-ticket and discretionary items like electronics and home goods during the quarter. Sales of those products have been weaker for more than a year as Americans spend more on necessities like food.
He described the consumer as “choiceful or discerning” and said seasonal moments, such as the Fourth of July holiday and back-to-school, have helped drive sales.

The company’s shares were up less than 1% in premarket trading.
Here’s what the company reported for the three-month period ended July 31 compared with what analysts were expecting, according to consensus estimates from Refinitiv:

Earnings per share: $1.84 adjusted vs. $1.71 expected
Revenue: $161.63 billion vs. $160.27 billion expected

Walmart’s net income for the fiscal second-quarter jumped by 53% to $7.89 billion, or $2.92 per share, compared with $5.15 billion, or $1.88 per share a year earlier. 
Customers visited Walmart’s stores and website more often and bought more when they did. Transactions increased by 2.9% and the average ticket rose by 3.4% for Walmart U.S.

Same-store sales for Walmart U.S. grew by 6.4% in the second quarter, excluding fuel, compared with the year-ago period. That’s higher than the 4.1% increase that analysts expected, according to FactSet.
At Sam’s Club, same-store sales rose 5.5%, excluding fuel, in line with analysts’ expectations.

Walmart’s online sales in the U.S. grew, as customers bought more items from the company’s growing third-party marketplace and placed more orders for store pickup and delivery.
“It really shows that the value proposition for Walmart is much, more than just low prices or value. It’s convenience today,” Rainey said. “And so we’re leaning heavily into that and really both aspects of this part of our business.”
Walmart has stood apart from other retailers such as Target, which have struggled with softer sales. It is better insulated from shoppers’ changing tastes and reactions to economic factors like high inflation because it sells more everyday staples as the nation’s largest grocer.
Rainey said he continues to be surprised by consumers and their “willingness to spend.” But he added they still want to to save money.
Customers are buying more food from Walmart’s private brands, which typically cost less. In the grocery department at Walmart U.S., sales of private labels rose 9% year over year. Those brands make up 20% of Walmart’s total U.S. sales.
Shoppers may also be looking to save by making more of their own meals rather than dining out. Walmart has noticed “a little bit of a shift to cook from home,” Rainey said. It saw an uptick in sales of prepared meals and tools to cook with, such as blenders and mixers.
While general merchandise trends are improving, sales are still down by low single-digits year over year, he said.
Walmart has gained momentum with new revenue streams, too, including selling more advertisements and convincing more shoppers to sign up for its membership program, Walmart+. Those higher margin businesses are a major reason why CEO Doug McMillon has said he expects profits to grow faster than sales over the next five years.
That upward trajectory continued in the most recent quarter. Sales for Walmart Connect, the company’s advertising business in the U.S., grew 36% year over year. More

Blue Shield of California will use Mark Cuban’s Cost Plus Drugs and Amazon pharmacy as its preferred pharmacy networks starting in the next two years.
The nonprofit health insurer, with 4.8 million members, expects the move to the low-cost pharmacies will provide $500 million in annual savings on drug costs.
Blue Shield marks only the second health insurer to sign with Cost Plus, since the online pharmacy launched in January 2022.

Source: Blue Shield of California

Blue Shield of California is teaming up with Mark Cuban’s Cost Plus Drug Company and Amazon Pharmacy — turning away from traditional drug store chains and ditching in part health giant CVS — in a move to save on drug costs for its 4.8 million members.
The CEO of the nonprofit health insurer, which spent over $3 billion on member prescriptions in 2022, calls the move a major milestone in its efforts to move toward a value-based model for pharmacy care.

“I expect we’re going to — when this ramps up completely — we’re going to be saving $500 million a year,” said Paul Markovich, CEO of Blue Shield of California. “So, this is a very significant reduction in cost that we ultimately, as a nonprofit that caps our income, will be putting back into our premiums.”
The health insurer will continue to use CVS Caremark for specialty drugs to provide prescriptions and services for patients with complex conditions, but the online pharmacies will provide services for the rest.
Shares of CVS fell 7% in premarket trading Thursday.
CVS Health has been Blue Shield’s pharmacy benefits partner for more than 15 years. Analysts at Evercore ISI estimate that specialty drugs represent roughly 50% of Blue Shield’s pharmacy costs.
“Helping customers achieve common goals is one of the many ways we provide value to health plans of all shapes and sizes,” said Michael DeAngelis, a spokesman for CVS Health in a statement. “We look forward to providing care for Blue Shield of California’s members who require complex, specialty medications – as we have for nearly two decades.”

Amazon Pharmacy, which launched a $35 per month insulin program this week, will provide what the companies are calling up-front pricing, free delivery and round the clock access to pharmacists through its online services.
For Cost Plus, which sells drugs at 15% above wholesale prices, California Blue Shield is only the second insurer to sign with the online pharmacy since it launched in January 2022. Capital Blue Cross based in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, with 1 million members, signed with Cuban’s venture last fall.  
“It takes time. There are a lot of bad habits they need to break,” said Cuban, Cost Plus co-founder, about the challenges of contracting with health insurance plans, which are often called payers.
“I think all payers realize that now that Cost Plus has made the price of medications transparent. Providers and patients can see what prices should be, and the entire industry will have to adjust,” Cuban said. “Other than the big three [health insurers] we will be in discussions with all other payers.”
For Blue Shield of California the transition to Cost Plus and Amazon will begin with its own workers in 2024, before being introduced to members, to ensure that the online pharmacies will have the scale to meet its members needs.
“We’re talking about life saving drugs, in many cases for people. So, making sure we get it right is important. And that’s why you need a lot of lead time,” Markovich said.
The health insurer expects to launch the program for its members in 2025. More

The new owners of Buy Buy Baby plan to reopen 11 stores as soon as this fall while Harmon is coming back, too, after Bed Bath & Beyond’s bankruptcy.
Buy Buy Baby will need to differentiate itself and focus on a unique store experience to compete with retailers like Walmart and Target.
The new owner of health and beauty chain Harmon has plans to reopen at least five stores.

Bed Bath & Beyond and Buy Buy Baby signage is displayed outside of store in Los Angeles.
Patrick T. Fallon | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Bed Bath & Beyond may never return to its brick-and-mortar heyday, but the doors at former corporate siblings Buy Buy Baby and Harmon are set to reopen, CNBC has learned. 
The group that bought Buy Buy Baby’s intellectual property at a bankruptcy-run auction in June, the owners of baby goods retailer Dream on Me, plans to reopen 11 stores in the Northeast as soon as this fall, Dream on Me’s chief marketing officer, Avish Dahiya, told CNBC. 

But the group isn’t stopping there. 
It’s setting off on an ambitious plan to return the brand to its glory years, with 100 to 120 stores over the next one to three years, said the marketing chief, who is also an officer on the Buy Buy Baby transition team. 
“We definitely see merit in expanding to that number across the U.S.,” Dahiya told CNBC in the company’s first interview since its acquisition. “Similar to what we have done in the Northeast, it will be more cluster-based versus one-off.”
Dahiya added: “We believe omnichannel is critical for the success of the business and stores play a role, so it’s important that we have stores come in sooner than later.” 
Meanwhile, private investor Jonah Raskas, who brought the dog-walking app Wag! public through a special purpose acquisition company in 2022, plans to reopen five Harmon stores in the tri-state area of New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania and potentially more down the line.

“This business never failed. This business was shut down because Bed Bath was failing,” Raskas told CNBC. “We have the luxury of deciding which stores to reopen … we have that ability to focus on the right places at the right time where the customers really want us back again.” 

Courtesy: masonre studio

When Bed Bath & Beyond filed for bankruptcy April 23, it repaid its creditors by auctioning off bits and pieces of its broken empire to investors. No one was willing to buy the entire company, but some saw the value of its individual assets — and managed to snag them for a song. 
Overstock bought the intellectual property to Bed Bath’s namesake banner for $21.5 million, a price that Bank of America internet analyst Curtis Nagle bluntly described to CNBC as “pretty cheap.” Dream on Me’s owners, meanwhile, have the chance to rebuild Buy Buy Baby after it received its trademark, data and 11 of its store leases for about $16.7 million, far below what the chain could’ve gone for as a going concern. (The new Buy Buy Baby will operate independently from Dream on Me.)
Raskas, on the other hand, snapped up Harmon’s trademark for a mere $300,000 when the chain could’ve once went for $5 million to $10 million, he said. 
The new operators of Buy Buy Baby and Harmon have a chance at making something out of the bankrupt businesses, thanks to better balance sheets and less exposure to underperforming locations, according to Neil Saunders, retail analyst and managing director at GlobalData.
“People have picked over the carcass of Bed Bath & Beyond and they’ve managed to get some quite good bargains in terms of the value that they’ve paid for the intellectual property and the business,” he said.

What will the new Buy Buy Baby offer?

When Buy Buy Baby’s doors reopen, shoppers can expect smaller stores, national brands and a focus on experiences, community building and learning, said Dahiya, Dream on Me’s marketing chief. 
About 80% of the staff — including the merchant, tech and marketing teams — previously worked at Buy Buy Baby, and the company has tapped Bed Bath veteran Glen Cary to be its chief of stores, Dahiya said. Cary spent about two decades with BB&B, overseeing stores at Buy Buy Baby and Bed Bath’s namesake banner, according to his LinkedIn profile. 
The revamped Buy Buy Baby is envisioning registry events and product displays that will allow new parents to meet each other, learn from each other and test out big-ticket items like travel strollers before making a purchase. 

A brick-and-mortar footprint is important for the company’s overall strategy because it’ll give it a competitive edge that’ll better differentiate it from mass retailers like Target and Walmart, which would be tougher to do if the business was online only. The big-box stores have leaned heavily into the baby category but they lack the expertise and focus that comes with a specialty store.
“[Mass retailers] have an aisle or two aisles of baby. We have a store of baby. That’s the difference, right?” said Dahiya. “We are very focused on the category we are in.”
When it comes to baby goods, especially higher-priced items that are more technical, consumers need more “hand-holding” that’s better suited for an in-store experience than online, said Melissa Gonzalez, the principal at architecture and design firm MG2 and founder of the Lionesque Group.
“There’s a mix of so much education that’s needed that cannot really be fulfilled online in a way that doesn’t feel overwhelming and intimidating,” Gonzalez told CNBC. “On average, when somebody’s spending like more than, say, $200, then it’s a different price point of consideration where they’re going to need multiple touch points before they can make a decision and on average, there’s not as much comfort to do that online-only.” 

A display of diaper bags at a Buy Buy Baby location in Brooklyn, New York in January 2023.
Gabrielle Fonrouge

Dream on Me has been in the baby business since the 1990s. While its manufacturing capabilities and expertise make it well-suited to compete, busy families need convenience and are already comfortable doing their baby shopping at Walmart and Target. In order to survive this time around, Buy Buy Baby will need to focus on offering a unique value proposition, said Saunders from GlobalData. 
“It’s not only Buy Buy Baby that failed. There’s also before it, Babies R Us failed and Toys R Us, which used to have baby stuff, and it failed. So, it’s a difficult model to get right,” said Saunders. 
“It really needs to focus on specialism and that means having products that other retailers don’t, having services that other retailers don’t and being renowned for really strong advice and expertise in the baby segment and having really good locations as well.” 

What’s next for Harmon?

Raskas, who bought the intellectual property for Harmon, had been a longtime customer of the chain when he heard its 50 stores were shutting down. 
Immediately, his curiosity was piqued, and he started doing outreach to a board member to figure out if there was something wrong with the business.
“There was nothing. There was no red flag,” said Raskas, 37, during an interview with CNBC. “The exact line was, ‘There’s so many fires here to put out every single day, it just was something we needed to kind of move past.'” 

Investor Jonah Raskas bought the intellectual property rights to discount chain Harmon.
Courtesy: masonre studio

When Bed Bath declared bankruptcy a few months later and investors began swarming over its namesake banner and Buy Buy Baby, Raskas started asking about Harmon, which had all but gotten lost in the noise. 
He learned the company had done about $150 million in sales in 2022, had been profitable every year for the past two decades, and that seven out of every 10 customers who came into the store bought something.
“I went and discussed with my lawyers and we said, ‘OK, what’s the kind of bare minimum bid that we can throw out?'” Raskas recalled. “And that’s what we did.”
With a $300,000 bid, he secured the rights to Harmon’s trademark and plans to reopen five of its best-performing locations in New York and New Jersey hopefully by year-end. More could come down the line, Raskas said.
David Abrams, the founder and CEO of brokerage and advisory firm Masonre, has been advising Raskas and scouting locations for the stores, one of which could open in Manhattan. 
“There’s probably no better time to be a tenant,” said Abrams, adding that he’s looking for storefronts with better rents and visibility.

The view from the aisle at a Harmon store in Brooklyn, New York in January 2023.
Gabrielle Fonrouge

At its heart, Harmon is a drugstore chain that sells a lot of the same products that CVS and Walgreens do, but it earned a cult-like following with its wide assortment, travel-sized products, low prices and its beloved private label Face Values. 
Standing outside of a now-shuttered Harmon’s location in New Rochelle, New York, where Raskas and his family used to shop about an hour north of Manhattan, he pressed his face against the glass and recalled what the store was like during better times. 
“What stood out was wide aisles, great lighting, the employees were super friendly,” said Raskas. “In today’s age, where a lot of times your in-person shopping experience is just kind of fine, painful or hellish, it was refreshing. I knew I’d get what I need … and I’d get out fast.” 
The location, situated at the end of the North Ridge Shopping Center alongside an Italian restaurant and a smoothie shop, was one of Harmon’s bette- performing stores and one Raskas is considering reopening.
Jennifer Kiggins, a trainer at the Rumble Boxing studio a few doors down, can’t wait. 
“I think they had really great prices and they had everything you need from like toilet paper and paper towels to sunscreen to makeup, any like random thing,” said Kiggins, 28, who grew up shopping at Harmon with her mom. “I feel like it was always there.” 
Luckily, aside from a few optimizations and tweaks, Raskas plans to keep everything the same. 
“I’m not just buying a retailer, I’m buying something that was a community-loved favorite store that they went to throughout their entire lifetime and throughout all these different life-cycle journeys. … That’s why I think this is so exciting,” said Raskas.
“Everyone loves a comeback story and everyone loves to come back to something that they thought was gone and now is back again.” More

On August 15th VinFast, a Vietnamese electric-vehicle (EV) manufacturer, made its trading debut on the Nasdaq, an American stock exchange. It was quite the entrance: the company’s share price rocketed, pushing its market capitalisation from $23bn to $85bn. That is almost as much as Ford and General Motors, two giant American carmakers, combined, and seven times that of Vingroup, its parent company. On August 16th it fell a little, to $69bn.Investors are racing to get a stake in VinFast. The company is still a minnow in the EV business, but has big ambitions. In May Pham Nhat Vuong, the company’s founder and Vietnam’s richest man, said it hoped to sell 50,000 cars this year, up from 7,400 last. Although most of its vehicles are currently sold in Vietnam, it has its eyes set on the American market. Last month it broke ground on a factory in North Carolina, and has already begun selling imported vehicles in California, where it has 13 dealerships.The reviews have not been glowing. The VF8 model VinFast is selling in California is “simply not ready for America”, says Kevin Williams, an industry journalist. “Yikes,” is how Steven Ewing, another reviewer, titled his assessment of the car, citing a poor steering experience. At $46,000, it is not much, if any, cheaper than the entry-level models offered by rivals like Tesla, America’s EV goliath. A mere 128 VF8s were sold in America between February and May, according to Experian, a data-analytics firm. Even if VinFast achieves its lofty growth targets for the year, its valuation will continue to strain belief. It made a $2.1bn net loss last year, and has said it will break even, at the earliest, at the end of next year. AlixPartners, a consultancy, reckons EV makers need to produce around 400,000 cars a year before they start turning a profit. After that, the company would still have a long way to go before it caught up with the industry’s leaders. Last year Tesla sold 1.3m EVs. BYD, a fast-growing Chinese carmaker, sold 1.9m, around half fully electric and half plug-in hybrid.With a mere 1% of its shares put up for trading, VinFast’s lofty market valuation is vulnerable to rapid swings. Investors in the company may be in for a bumpy ride.■To stay on top of the biggest stories in business and technology, sign up to the Bottom Line, our weekly subscriber-only newsletter. More

Novo Nordisk’s blockbuster weight loss drug Wegovy could prevent up to 1.5 million heart attacks and other cardiovascular events in the U.S. over 10 years, according to a study from UC Irvine.
The study was partly funded by Novo Nordisk. 
The results complement the initial data Novo Nordisk released last week from a large clinical trial, which found Wegovy slashed the risk of serious heart problems and heart-related death by 20%. 

A selection of injector pens for the Wegovy weight loss drug are shown in this photo illustration in Chicago, Illinois, March 31, 2023.
Jim Vondruska | Reuters

Novo Nordisk’s blockbuster weight loss injection Wegovy could prevent up to 1.5 million heart attacks, strokes and other cardiovascular events in the U.S. over 10 years, according to a study released this week. 
Researchers from the University of California, Irvine, also found that Wegovy could result in 43 million fewer Americans with obesity over a decade. Notably, the study was partly funded by Novo Nordisk. 

The study results complement the initial data the Danish company released last week from a large clinical trial, which found that Wegovy slashed the risk of serious heart problems and heart-related death by 20%. 
Novo Nordisk’s trial studied overweight or obese patients with established cardiovascular disease, while UC Irvine’s study examined similar patients, albeit without the disease. 
Together, the results suggest that Wegovy and, likely, similar obesity drugs have significant health benefits beyond shedding unwanted pounds. Physicians and Wall Street analysts hope that could eventually put more pressure on insurers to cover obesity medications, which cost more than $1,000 a month.
“It is one of the biggest advances in the obesity and cardiovascular medicine world,” said Nathan Wong, who led the study and is director of the Heart Disease Prevention Program in UC Irvine’s division of cardiology. “We now have a weight control therapy that also significantly reduces cardiovascular events beyond the diabetes population where it was originally studied.” 
Researchers based their projections on Novo Nordisk’s STEP 1 trial, which showed Wegovy helped patients lose 15% of their body weight and also resulted in lower cardiovascular risk factors.

The study estimated that 93 million U.S. adults would meet the eligibility criteria for the STEP 1 trial, which studied people who are overweight or obese and excluded those with Type 2 diabetes. 
Researchers projected that nearly half, or 43 million people, would no longer have obesity after treatment with Wegovy for 10 years. 
An estimated 83 million Americans without established cardiovascular disease would also experience heart health benefits after taking Wegovy for a decade. 
Wegovy would reduce the risk of serious heart problems in that population by 17.8%, which translates to 1.5 million preventable heart attacks, strokes and other cardiovascular events. 
The analysis did not estimate the additional events that might be prevented among eligible adults with established cardiovascular disease. 
Wegovy and Novo Nordisk’s diabetes drug Ozempic sparked a weight loss industry gold rush last year for helping patients lose unwanted weight. They are part of a class of drugs called GLP-1 agonists, which mimic a hormone produced in the gut to suppress a person’s appetite. 
But Novo Nordisk is grappling with supply constraints that have led to shortages of both drugs. 
There are also reports of patients who had suicidal and self-harm thoughts after taking Wegovy and other weight loss drugs, which raised questions about the unintended and potentially life-threatening side effects of the treatments More