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Mediterranean restaurant chain Cava has filed to go public through an initial public offering.
The company plans to trade on the New York Stock Exchange using the ticker CAVA.
Cava isn’t profitable yet, but its revenue rose 12.8% in 2022, according to regulatory filings.

A person walks past a Cava restaurant location in Pasadena, California, February 6, 2023.
Mario Tama | Getty Images

Mediterranean restaurant chain Cava saw its revenue rise 12.8% in 2022, according to regulatory filings released Friday as it filed to go public through an initial public offering.
It plans to trade on the New York Stock Exchange using the ticker CAVA.

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Cava Group was founded in 2006 and opened its first fast-casual location in 2011, modeling its build-your-own Mediterranean meals after the formula made popular by Chipotle Mexican Grill. It acquired Zoes Kitchen in 2018, taking the rival Mediterranean chain private for $300 million.
Over the last five years, it’s converted Zoes’ footprint into new Cava locations. The last eight Zoes restaurants, which closed as of March, will open by this fall as Cava units.
Last year, the company’s net sales climbed to $564.1 million, 12.8% higher than the year earlier. For comparison, rival fast-casual chain Sweetgreen reported 2022 revenue of $470.1 million. The salad chain went public in November 2021 and has a market value of $1.06 billion.
But Cava’s regulatory filings showed it still is not profitable. Its losses widened from $37.4 million in 2021 to $59 million in 2022.
Still, the company has showed signs of getting closer to profitability. Its net loss during the 16 weeks ending April 16 was just $2.1 million, narrower than its net loss of $20 million during the year-ago period. Its sales have also picked up, rising 27.4% to $196.8 million in the same time.

Cava’s same-store sales soared 28.4% in the first quarter. Its 3.7 million loyalty members accounted for one-quarter of those sales, according to the filing.
The company has 263 locations open as of April 16 and plans to open 34 to 44 new units by the end of the year. More than 80% of Cava’s locations are in suburban areas. It anticipates it could have as many as 1,000 U.S. locations by 2032 as it branches out into new regions such as the Midwest.
Similar to fellow fast-casual chains Chipotle and Sweetgreen, Cava has been leaning into drive-thru pickup lanes for digital orders.
Cava’s market debut would break the long drought of restaurant IPOs, which began last year as the war in Ukraine, inflation and rising interest rates led to rocky market conditions. Even outside the restaurant industry, companies once eager to go public, such as Reddit and Impossible Foods, have held back, although J&J’s Kenvue spinoff was successful.
But investors might have an appetite for Cava stock despite concerns about a potential recession this year hitting restaurant demand. Sweetgreen’s shares have risen 10% this year, while Chipotle’s have climbed a whopping 51% during the same time. More

Bentley’s new supercar, the Continental GTC Speed, is a spectacular swan song for 12-cylinder luxury vehicles as we enter the age of EVs, writes CNBC’s Robert Frank.
The vehicle costs nearly $400,000, more with options.
“These models are already almost sold out,” Bentley CEO Adrian Hallmark told CNBC. “It’s the end of a great era.”

Bentley Continental GTC Speed in Kingfisher
Adam Jeffery | CNBC

The V-12 engine is dead. Long live the V-12.
In the coming years, supercar companies like Lamborghini, Bentley and Rolls-Royce have all announced phase-outs of their V-12 engines as they roll into the age of hybrid and electric vehicles. In the meantime, they’re launching 12-cylinder masterpieces as odes to the ultimate in petrol power – and wealthy customers are snapping them up at a record clip.

In other words, at the very top of the car market, the 12-cylinder is dying, and demand has never been stronger.
With the king of combustion hitting the end of its road, Bentley has launched the Continental GTC Speed. It’s a “W-12” road burner, in which where three banks of four cylinders are arranged in a kind of “W” configuration. Its raw power is matched only by its refined interior.

Bentley Continental GTC Speed in Kingfisher
Adam Jeffery | CNBC

Despite a price tag approaching $400,000, the GTC Speed is quickly selling out. Bentley CEO Adrian Hallmar, said there are “very few available” before Bentley rolls the last of its 12-cylinder engines off the line in April 2024.
“These models are already almost sold out,” Hallmark told CNBC. “It’s the end of a great era.”
So with the Continental GTC Speed, Bentley has decided to party like it’s 1999.

The model I drove carried a price tag of $384,000. Its color is called “Kingfisher,” a luminescent, shimmering blue that, like it’s namesake bird, was born to fly. It was loaded with some of Bentley’s most popular options, including 22″ black-painted “Speed Wheels,” a touring package for added comfort and generous helpings of carbon fiber.

Bentley Continental GTC Speed in Kingfisher
Adam Jeffery | CNBC

Inside, the GTC Speed was dripping with luxury add-ons, from the contrast stitching on the seats (with “Kingfisher” and “Beluga” colored threads) to the Bang and Olufsen sound system, precision diamond quilting and the deep-pile overmats for added foot comfort.
My favorite options, also one of the most popular, is the “rotating display,” where a section of the carbon-fiber dashboard flips over when the car starts to reveal its digital display, kind of like the supercar version of the secret wall in a mansion library. It costs an extra $6,600 — but hey, when you’re spending $380,000 for a car, what’s an extra six grand? (About 70% of Bentley owners are including it.)
The most beautiful part of the Continental GTC Speed is the drive. As befits a car with multiple personalities, The GTC Speed has three driving modes: comfort, custom, Bentley and enhanced sport. Driving in comfort mode is like floating on a cloud, even on pot-hole ridden streets of New York and New Jersey. Bentley mode offers a balance between comfort and sport.

CNBC’s Kelly Evans and Robert Frank in a Bentley
Scott Mlyn | CNBC

You could easily imagine comfort mode ferrying its well-heeled driver to the country clubs in Southern California and Southern Florida, two of Bentley’s biggest markets. All-wheel steering helps for those rare occasions when you have to park the car yourself instead of having a valet do it.
Switch to sport mode, however, and the W-12 roars like a dragon roused from sleep. The suspension tightens into a crouch and the GTC goes to 0-60 in 3.6 seconds. It can hit a top speed of 208 mph.
Even with an unladen weight of over 5,300 pounds, the Continental GTC Speed takes corners, stops and accelerations like a much nimbler supercar. Its special windscreen and aerodynamics allow top-down driving even at high speeds without a hair out of place.
Sure, there are better pure sports cars and better luxury comfort rides. But arguably no car puts the two together – with the screaming swan song of a W-12 – quite like the Continental GTC Speed. More

Elon Musk, Warren Buffett, Ray Dalio and others have weighed in on the fraying U.S.-China relations and rising tensions over a possible invasion of Taiwan.
Their consternation could help center Taiwan in the coming 2024 election cycle, where China is already bound to be a chief foreign policy issue.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former President Donald Trump, ex-Vice President Mike Pence and former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley have discussed the cross-strait tensions.

Chinese tourists walk past an installation depicting Taiwan (R) and mainland China at a tourist area on Pingtan island, the closest point to Taiwan, in China’s southeast Fujian province on April 6, 2023.
Greg Baker | AFP | Getty Images

Fraying U.S.-China relations and rising tensions over Taiwan have influential business leaders such as Elon Musk and Warren Buffett sounding alarms about a possible invasion – a matter that will likely loom over the 2024 election.
China is already bound to be a major issue in the U.S. campaign as President Xi Jinping pushes to expand his nation’s power. China’s policy regarding Taiwan, the world’s leader in the semiconductor industry, could end up making it an even bigger focus.

The cross-strait strife has already provoked commentary from some top contenders in the Republican presidential primary race who have stressed the need to deter a possible Chinese invasion invasion of the island. Taiwan is also a topic of discussion during this week’s Group of Seven meeting in Japan, which President Joe Biden is attending.
Xi has made Taiwan “reunification” a focal point of his agenda and Beijing has ramped up hostilities against the island, putting a spotlight on its importance to the global economy and conjuring fears of a major international conflict that could eclipse Russia’s devastating war in Ukraine.
“The official policy of China is that Taiwan should be integrated. One does not need to read between the lines, one can simply read the lines,” Tesla CEO Musk said in an interview Tuesday with CNBC’s David Faber.

“So I think there’s a certain — there’s some inevitability to the situation,” Musk said, adding that it would be bad for “any company in the world.”
Tesla just last month announced plans to open a new factory in Shanghai that will build “Megapack” batteries.

Musk’s remarks came one day after Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway revealed in a filing that it has completely abandoned its recently acquired stake in Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., once worth more than $4 billion. The world’s largest chipmaker, based in Hsinchu, Taiwan, produces the majority of the advanced semiconductors used by top tech companies like Apple, Amazon, Google, Qualcomm and more.
Buffett said in recent weeks that the geopolitical strife over Taiwan was “certainly a consideration” in his decision to offload the shares over the last two fiscal quarters. And in an analyst call earlier this month, Buffett said that while the company was “marvelous,” he had “reevaluated” his position “in the light of certain things that were going on.”
“I feel better about the capital that we’ve got deployed in Japan than Taiwan. And I wish it weren’t so, but I think that’s a reality,” he said.
Meanwhile, Ray Dalio, founder of hedge fund titan Bridgewater Associates, in late April wrote a lengthy post on LinkedIn warning that the U.S. and China were on the “brink of war” — though he specified that that could mean a war of sanctions rather than military might.
The apparent worries from the three members of Forbes’ list of the world’s richest people come “a little late to the party,” Longview Global senior policy analyst Dewardric McNeal said in an interview with CNBC.
“It’s frustrating to me,” McNeal said. “We’ve been talking about this for years, and we’ve also been trying to warn against being overly dependent on China as your source for selling products [and] manufacturing products.”
He also noted that Berkshire Hathaway still holds stock in BYD, an electric car maker based in Shenzhen, China. “Quite frankly, it is advantageous for China to scare investors away from Taiwan and damage or taint that economy, because that is one of the scenarios [in which] that they could bring Taiwan to heel without an armed intervention,” McNeal said.
Buffett’s company has sold more than half the stake in BYD it held as of last year.
“I don’t think an attack is imminent, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be using this time to plan,” McNeal said. “And what I often see is businesses sort of talking beyond the point, hoping — hope is not a strategy — that this won’t happen.”

The U.S. policy on Taiwan

U.S. intelligence officials have said Xi is pushing China’s military to be ready to seize Taiwan by 2027. China is “likely preparing for a contingency to unify Taiwan with the [People’s Republic of China] by force,” the Pentagon said in 2021.
China asserts Taiwan, a self-governing democracy, is part of its territory. It has pushed to absorb the island under the banner of “one country, two systems,” a status rejected by Taiwan’s government in Taipei.
Beijing in recent years has steadily ramped up its pressure over Taiwan on economic and military fronts. It flexed its might as recently as last month by conducting large combat drills near Taiwan, while vowing to crack down on any hints of Taiwanese independence.
China has not ruled out using force to take control of Taiwan.
Taiwan’s recent interactions with the U.S. have provoked aggressive reactions from China. After then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., visited Taipei last summer, China launched missiles over Taiwan and cut off some diplomatic channels with the U.S.
A meeting in California last month between Taiwan’s president, Tsai Ing-wen, and current House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., prompted more threats and fury from Beijing.

Even in a political climate where both major U.S. parties have been critical of China and wary of its encroaching global influence, leaders have tread carefully around the volatile subject of Taiwan. The U.S. has officially recognized a “One China” policy — that Taiwan is a part of the mainland — for more than four decades, and China has vowed to sever diplomatic ties with countries that seek official diplomacy with Taiwan.
While Pelosi spoke of America’s interest in preserving Taiwan’s democracy on her trip to Taipei, she stressed in a Washington Post op-ed at the time that her visit “in no way contradicts the long-standing one-China policy.”
Biden was seen to break with America’s longstanding stance on Taiwan when he said last year that U.S. forces would defend the island if it was attacked by China. The White House, however, maintains the U.S. policy on Taiwan is unchanged.

2024 contenders weigh in

Dalio predicted that the brinksmanship between the two superpowers will grow more aggressive over the next 18 months, in part because the 2024 U.S. election cycle could usher in a swell of anti-Chinese rhetoric.
There’s little doubt that China will a major topic on the campaign trail. At least three Republicans who are seen as potential presidential candidates — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin and former United Nations Ambassador John Bolton — have recently embarked on trips to Asia, including Taiwan, to meet with allied leaders.
Meanwhile, U.S. lawmakers at every level have produced an array of legislation seeking to reverse China’s growing influence, some of which has drawn accusations of fearmongering. And some of the potential presidential contenders have already weighed in with calls to meet Chinese aggression with strength.
“Xi clearly wants to take Taiwan at some point,” DeSantis said in an interview with Nikkei while in Japan. “He’s got a certain time horizon. He could be emboldened to maybe shorten that horizon. But I think ultimately what I think China respects is strength,” DeSantis said.
DeSantis had drawn criticism for a previous foray into geopolitics when he described Russia’s war in Ukraine as a “territorial dispute.” His views on U.S. policy toward Taiwan, in contrast, were more vague.

“I think our policy should really be to shape the environment in such a way that really deters them from doing that,” DeSantis said of a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan. “I think if they think the costs are going to outweigh whatever benefits, then I do think that they would hold off. That should be our goal.”
DeSantis, who is gearing up to formally announce his presidential campaign next week, is seen as former President Donald Trump’s top rival for the Republican nomination.
Trump said last year that he expected China to invade Taiwan because Beijing is “seeing that our leaders are incompetent,” referring to the Biden administration.
Former Vice President Mike Pence, who says he will make his own decision about running for president by next month, said in April that the U.S. should increase sales of military hardware to Taiwan, “so that the Chinese will have to count the cost before they make any move against that nation.”
In an interview Wednesday on CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” Pence cited the cross-strait tensions as an argument against cutting U.S. military spending.
“At a time when China is literally floating a new battleship every month and continuing military provocations across the Asia-Pacific and Russia’s waging an unprovoked war in Eastern Europe, the last thing we ought to be doing is cutting defense spending,” he said.
Former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley, who launched her presidential campaign in February, said in a statement to CNBC, “American resolve matters to China.”
“They are watching what we do in Ukraine. If we abandon our friends in Ukraine, as some want us to do, it will only encourage China to attack our friends in Taiwan,” Haley said.

‘Like trying to separate conjoined twins’

But the political will to defend Taiwan in a Chinese invasion may clash with economic forces.
“Almost no one realizes that the Chinese economy and the rest of the global economy are like conjoined twins. It would be like trying to separate conjoined twins,” Musk told CNBC on Tuesday. “That’s the severity of the situation. And it’s actually worse for a lot of other companies than it is for Tesla. I mean, I’m not sure where you’re going to get an iPhone, for example.”
Some CEOs of America’s biggest banks have said they would pull their business from China if directed to do so following an invasion of Taiwan. But Musk’s characterization of the entangled global economy is no exaggeration — and much of the focus has fallen on TSMC.
“If Taiwan were taken out, we would be like severing our brain, because the world economy will not work without [TSMC] and the chips that come out of Taiwan today,” John Rutledge, chief investment strategist of Safanad, said Wednesday on CNBC’s “Power Lunch” in response to Musk’s comments.
David Sacks, a research fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said on CNBC that Apple is in a “very tough position” because the most advanced chips it needs are made in a single building on TSMC’s campus in Taiwan.

The company’s technological edge in the production of semiconductors, which are used in all manner of products from cars to washing machines, has led to it being a potential “single point of failure” for many companies, McNeal said.
But he also noted that the global reliance on TSMC — including by China, which reportedly depends on the company to provide about 70% of the chips needed to fuel its electronics industry — could act as a sort of bulwark against an invasion.
A paper from the Stimson Center on Taiwan’s “Silicon Shield” put a fine point on the issue: “Without a doubt, the first Chinese bomb or rocket that should fall on the island would make the supply chain impact of the COVID pandemic seem like a mere hiccup in comparison.”

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There are nevertheless efforts underway to diversify the industry geographically, including through a $40 billion investment to expand TSMC chip production in Arizona.
McNeal said the issue should not solely be centered around TSMC and possible supply chain woes.
“For our Taiwan friends, that message says you don’t give a damn about them, their lives, their safety. You’re only in this for what it means for your bottom line,” he said. “For me personally, that’s not a message that I want to send.”
— CNBC’s Amanda Macias and Michael Bloom contributed to this report.
Disclosure: Dewardric McNeal is a CNBC contributor. More

Adidas will start selling some of the remaining Yeezy inventory later this month.
The company said it will donate a significant amount of the revenues to organizations that combat discrimination and hate.
The decision will have no immediate effect on the company’s financial guidance for 2023.

Arrows pointing outwards

Adidas will begin selling existing Yeezy products in late May.
Source: Adidas

Adidas said Friday that it will start selling Yeezy products later this month for the first time since it ended its relationship with rapper Ye in October.
The apparel company cut ties with Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, after he made a string of hateful, antisemitic comments. Adidas said it will donate a significant amount of revenues from the sale to at least two organizations that combat discrimination and hate, the Anti-Defamation League and the Philonise and Keeta Floyd Institute for Social Change. 

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“Selling and donating was the preferred option among all organizations and stakeholders we spoke to,” Adidas CEO Bjorn Gulden said in a statement.
The ADL aims to fight antisemitism, while the organization run by family members of George Floyd works on criminal and social justice issues. Adidas said it has explored many options for what to do with existing inventory after it ended its partnership with Ye, and spoken with a diverse group of people about how to proceed.
“We believe this is the best solution as it respects the created designs and produced shoes, it works for our people, resolves an inventory problem, and will have a positive impact in our communities,” Gulden said. “There is no place in sport or society for hate of any kind and we remain committed to fighting against it.”
The products will only be available through the Adidas website and app.
Adidas said the move will have no immediate effect on its financial guidance for 2023. Adidas’ most recent earnings beat expectations, but were weighed down by Yeezy inventory piling up.

“The decline in lifestyle and the loss of Yeezy are of course hurting us,” Gulden said during his company’s earnings call earlier this month.
Prior to the split, Adidas had said their partnership with Yeezy was one of the most successful collaborations in the history of the industry.
In October, the Anti-Defamation League urged Adidas to sever ties with its leading endorser following his hateful remarks. The ADL praised the company’s move on Friday.
“At a time when antisemitism has reached historic levels in the U.S. and is rising globally, we appreciate how adidas turned a negative situation into a very positive outcome. They have shown real thoughtfulness in engaging with community organizations working to combat this pernicious and stubborn hatred,” said ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt. More

Walmart, Home Depot and Target offered up the latest clues this week about the health of the American consumer.
The companies said they have seen fewer big-ticket and discretionary purchases.
Earnings for more retailers, including Best Buy, Lowe’s and Costco, are on tap next week.

A Target department store in North Miami Beach, Florida, May 17, 2023.
Joe Raedle | Getty Images

More grocery purchases, fewer ambitious do-it-yourself projects and last-minute splurges at the store.
This week, some of the biggest retailers in the country reported earnings and described how their customers are shopping. As Home Depot, Target and Walmart reported their quarterly sales and shared full-year outlooks, the companies offered up the latest clues about the health of the American consumer and previewed what could be ahead for the economy.

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Some smaller retailers also offered warning signs for the current quarter and this year.
Next week will give even more insight into the retail industry and economy. Best Buy, Lowe’s, Costco, Dollar Tree and Kohl’s are among the earnings on tap. Some mall retailers are also reporting earnings, including Gap, American Eagle and Abercrombie & Fitch.
Here are some of the emerging themes.

Sales trends have weakened

So far, at least five retailers — Target, Walmart, Tapestry, Bath & Body Works and Foot Locker — have spoken about sales trends across the country getting worse.
As the three-month period went on, shoppers spent less, especially on discretionary merchandise, Target CEO Brian Cornell said on a call with investors. Walmart noticed the same pattern.

Both big-box retailers reported a sharp sales drop after February.
Walmart’s Chief Financial Officer John David Rainey attributed the decline, in part, to the end of pandemic-related SNAP benefits and a decrease in tax refunds. 
Cornell said headline-grabbing events could have shaken consumer confidence too. He pointed to the March banking crisis. Silicon Valley Bank collapsed that month, sparking fears of broader economic woes.
Bath & Body Works saw sales fall off in March. Yet, sales recovered in April as the retailer turned to a common playbook: promotions. It got a boost as customers spent money at sales events toward the end of the quarter, CFO Wendy Arlin said on a Thursday earnings call.
Foot Locker also said it may have to motivate shoppers with markdowns for the rest of the year. The company cut its full-year forecast Friday, as it reported earnings that missed expectations. CEO Mary Dillon said in a statement, “sales have since softened meaningfully given the tough macroeconomic backdrop.”
On a call with investors Friday, Dillon said the sneaker seller’s sales got hurt by lower tax refunds and high inflation as customers spent more on food and services. While she said sales rebounded in April, “they did not improve nearly to the extent we expected, and that weakness has continued into May.”

A few other retailers that reported earnings had specific factors working in their favor.
When Tapestry, the parent company of Coach and Kate Spade, reported earnings last week, the company said sales softened as the quarter progressed and into April as consumers became more cautious.
But it has a factor going for it that some other retailers don’t: A growing business in China and other international markets to offset some of those softer sales.
Home Depot bucked the slowing sales trend, but that may have to do more with what it offers than consumer health.
Spring is peak season for home improvement. The retailer’s comparable sales in the U.S. declined 4.6% in the quarter versus the year-ago period. In February, its comparable sales were down 2.8%. March was its weakest month of the quarter, as comparable sales fell nearly 8% year over year in the U.S.
Home Depot’s trends were still negative in April but saw a slight improvement as comparable sales slid 3.7%, according to CFO Richard McPhail. Customers may have been buying more spring items such as potted plants.

Inflation is still a key factor

Inflation is easing, according to a Labor Department report this month. Yet, that’s cold comfort for shoppers who are still paying a lot more at the grocery store than they were a few years ago.
Stubbornly high prices, especially for food, are a storm cloud that hangs over many families who shop at Walmart, and looms over the retail industry as a whole, the big-box giant’s CEO Doug McMillon said. On a call with investors Thursday, he called the persistent inflation “one of the key factors creating uncertainty for us in the back half of the year.”
“We all need those prices to come down,” he said on the call. “The persistently high rates of inflation in these categories, lasting for such a long period of time, are weighing on some of the families we serve.”
For example, he said general merchandise costs in the U.S. are lower than a year ago, but still higher than two years ago. In dry grocery and consumables categories, Walmart is seeing high single-digit to low double-digit cost inflation on items such as toilet paper or paper towels. For food, inflation has climbed more than 20% on a two-year basis, according to Walmart’s Rainey.

A shopper browses the eggs section at a Walmart store in Santa Clarita, California.
Mario Anzuoni | Reuters

Walmart is feeling the inflation crunch even though it is better positioned to manage higher costs than other retailers. As the nation’s largest retailer and biggest grocer, Walmart can use its scale to manufacture private-label merchandise or negotiate with vendors over price.
One rare item that dropped dramatically in price? Lumber. Home Depot cited the sharp price decrease as a factor that contributed to its fiscal first-quarter revenue miss.
In plenty of other categories, however, inflation is still driving a higher average ticket for customers, Home Depot CEO Ted Decker said on an earnings call Tuesday.

Consumers are spending on needs, not wants

Target, Home Depot and Walmart all saw a noticeable pattern: fewer pricey and fun items in shopping carts.
At Home Depot, customers bought fewer big-ticket items such as appliances and grills in the fiscal first quarter.
Home projects got more modest, too, Decker said on an investor call. Contractors and other home professionals noticed a change from large-scale remodels to smaller renovations and repairs.
Decker said consumers’ increased focus on value could be contributing to that shift, along with an uptick in spending on traveling, dining out and other services. He added some homeowners already tackled big projects and bought some high-priced home items during the early years of the Covid-19 pandemic, leaving less for them to do or to buy now.

The trend extended beyond home improvement.
Customers at Walmart have become more selective when shopping for electronics, TVs, home items and apparel, Rainey told CNBC. The items have become a tougher sell and when customers do buy them, they often wait for a sale, he said.
At Target, sales declined in some discretionary categories as much as low double-digits as customers bought less clothing and home decor, Chief Growth Officer Christina Hennington said on an investor call. Groceries and essentials drove a bigger portion of the retailer’s quarterly sales.
One exception? Beauty. Hennington said Target’s beauty category was its strongest in the fiscal first quarter. Sales grew in the mid-teens year over year, showing shoppers are still willing to replenish the cosmetic case and get a new tube of lipstick.

Weather dampened demand (literally)

Weather has not worked in retailers’ favor, at least not yet.
As the weather turns warm and sunnier, it can inspire shoppers to buy summer dresses, beach towels or gardening supplies.
Yet, Home Depot said cooler and wetter weather in California and parts of the western U.S. hit its sales, contributing to its biggest revenue miss in more than 20 years.
Walmart is eager for warmer weather too. Sam’s Club has noticed slower sales of patio sets, perhaps because of the later-to-hit spring weather, its CEO Kath McLay said on an investor call. Walmart has seen a sharp drop in air conditioner sales at its big-box stores, its CFO Rainey said.
“We’re ready to get some spring or summer weather,” he said on a call with CNBC.
Target noted it’s looking forward to another upcoming season: back-to-school.
The discounter expects to get a sales boost in the back half of the year due to the big shopping season, Hennington said on an investor call. She said the return to classrooms and college dorms triggers sales across almost every department of its store, from lunch ingredients in the grocery aisles to new outfits in the kids’ clothing department.

Shoppers have become more last-minute

Retailers may be saying so long to the days of stockpiling and early shopping.
Company leaders said there are signs shoppers are reverting to some of their old ways.
At Walmart-owned Sam’s Club, McLay said shoppers are not just opting for lower price points. They’re also shopping later for seasonal items. For example, she said, customers used to buy patio furniture just as soon as it was set at the stores.
“Now we’re seeing people wait a little bit later into the season,” she said.
It saw a similar pattern with Mother’s Day sales, she said.
McLay said that may indicate people have returned to shopping habits of 2018 and 2019. The trend could be fueled by shoppers’ reluctance to open their wallets or because they’re not as worried about out-of-stock items — or a combination.
At Target, shoppers have also embraced more procrastinator tendencies, especially for discretionary items such as apparel.
“Guests are shifting to shop more just in time in these categories, as they wait until the last moments before key events to invest in new decor or wardrobe refreshes,” Hennington said on an earnings call. More

Blue Origin won a key contract from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to develop a crewed lunar lander for delivering astronauts to the moon’s surface later this decade.
The Blue Origin-led effort is effectively a more than $7 billion project.
NASA’s award reignites the moon race between Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, whose SpaceX previously won and has begun development on a lunar variation of its Starship rocket.

The moon seen from the International Space Station on July 9, 2018. 
Alexander Gerst | NASA

WASHINGTON — Jeff Bezos has his NASA moon ticket.
The billionaire’s space company, Blue Origin, won a key contract from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration on Friday to develop a crewed lunar lander for delivering astronauts to the moon’s surface later this decade under the agency’s Artemis program.

The effort is effectively a more than $7 billion project. NASA’s contract award is worth just over $3.4 billion, officials said Friday, and Blue Origin Vice President John Couluris said the company will contribute “well north” of the contract’s value as well.
“We’re making an additional investment in the infrastructure that will pave the way to land the first humans on Mars,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said in announcing the Blue Origin award. “Our shared ambitions now are no less lofty than when President [John F.] Kennedy dared a generation of dreamers to journey to the moon.”

An artist’s rendering of the lunar lander.
Blue Origin

Bezos said in a tweet Friday he’s “honored to be on this journey with @NASA to land astronauts on the Moon — this time to stay.”
The Blue Origin-led team — which includes Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Draper, Astrobotic and Honeybee Robotics — topped the proposal of a team led by Leidos-owned Dynetics.
Leidos, in a statement to CNBC, said that “helping NASA with the inspiring efforts to return to the Moon will remain a priority.” The company highlighted its existing and ongoing work on NASA systems and said the team is “committed to continuing to assist on these critical missions.”

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NASA received two additional proposals for the SLD contract but neither was considered “fully compliant with solicitation requirements” and so were quickly discounted, Jim Free, NASA associate administrator for the agency’s exploration division, wrote in documents released Friday.
Known as the Sustaining Lunar Development, or SLD, program, the competition was essentially a second-chance contest that NASA organized after Elon Musk’s SpaceX was the sole winner of the first crew lander contract in 2021. 
That first program, called the Human Landing System, or HLS, gave SpaceX a contract to develop a variation of its Starship rocket for Artemis missions. Prior to the HLS award, NASA was expected to choose two winners, but the agency’s budget at the time and SpaceX’s more-affordable bid resulted in there being a single winner.
Both HLS and SLD are part of NASA’s Artemis program to land astronauts on the moon, with the agency hoping to start flying crews to the lunar surface within the next few years. In December, NASA completed the first Artemis mission, which had no people on board, flying its Space Launch System, or SLS, rocket and Orion spacecraft around the moon for the first time.
Free, in explaining NASA’s selection, wrote that Blue Origin’s plan featured “compelling” strengths such as two uncrewed pathfinder missions in 2024 and 2025, early-stage technology maturation, excess capabilities of the lander itself, and a “reasonable and balance” price. He mentioned just two weaknesses in Blue Origin’s bid, noting an issue with its plan for communications during flights as well as “numerous conflicts and omissions” in the company’s schedule.
Regarding Dynetics, the strengths highlighted by Free were not enough to outweigh parts of its plan that were “uncertain” and “unclear,” he said. The company’s price point, which NASA did not disclose, was also “substantially higher in amount” than Blue Origin, Free wrote.

A messy saga

Elon Musk, founder of SpaceX, left, and Amazon and Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos.
Getty Images

Competition with Starship

Last year, Nelson explained the reasoning behind a second bidding process to add another privately built lunar lander, saying, “Competition is critical to our success.” 
“We can leverage that money by working with a commercial industry and, through competition, bring those costs down to NASA,” Nelson said during Senate testimony in 2022.
SpaceX has continued to develop its nearly 400-foot-tall Starship rocket in the meantime. The company in April attempted to reach space with the vehicle for the first time but it exploded in midflight. Recently, Musk estimated that SpaceX will spend about $2 billion on Starship development this year and said he expects the company to reach orbit around the Earth with its next launch.
Last year, NASA gave SpaceX an additional $1.15 billion award under the HLS contract, exercising an option to buy a second crewed demonstration landing from the company. That brought the total value of SpaceX’s HLS contract up to $4.2 billion through 2027.
To date, NASA has paid out about $1.8 billion to SpaceX under HLS, according to federal records. More

Lionsgate’s “John Wick” franchise, comprised of four films starring Keanu Reeves in the titular role, crossed $1 billion at the global box office.
The milestone comes as the studio’s parent company has been exploring strategic alternatives to separate its film studio and cable and streaming business, Starz.
Lionsgate reports its quarterly earnings Thursday.

Keanu Reeves stars in “John Wick: Chapter 4.”

What started with a retired hitman avenging his murdered dog has turned into a billion-dollar blockbuster movie franchise for Lionsgate.
This week, the John Wick series, comprised of four films starring Keanu Reeves in the titular role, crossed $1 billion at the global box office.

Each film has generated significantly more box office returns that its predecessor, a dynamic that’s rare in Hollywood.
The first “John Wick” was widely praised by critics and audiences for its highly choreographed fight sequences, which were often shot in long, single takes to convey the action. In many action flicks directors and editors utilize rapid cuts and closeups, often obscuring the fight choreography.

Guns blazing at the box office

Here’s how much each John Wick movie has grossed worldwide, according to Lionsgate:

“John Wick” (2014): $87.7 million; estimated budget of $20 million to $30 million
“John Wick: Chapter 2” (2017): $171.5 million; estimated budget of $40 million
“John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum” (2019): $326.7 million; estimated budget of $75 million
“John Wick: Chapter 4” (2023): $425 million and counting; estimated budget of $100 million

The film franchise has set up a miniseries called “The Continental: From the World of John Wick,” which tells the story of how Winston Scott (played by Ian McShane in the movies) came to own and operate The Continental hotel in the 1970s. The hotel is a safe haven for assassins. The show will air on NBCUniversal’s Peacock streaming service later this year.
Lionsgate is also set to launch a spinoff starring Ana de Armas called “Ballerina.”

The milestone for its “John Wick” franchise comes as Lionsgate has been exploring its options for the two key parts of its business – its film studio and Starz cable and streaming unit.
Despite being overshadowed by larger peers including Warner Bros. Discovery, Disney, Amazon and Comcast’s NBCUniversal, Lionsgate’s stock has surged this year. In February, the company reported earnings that beat expectations.

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Lionsgate shares have been on a steady rise in the last year.

Lionsgate has been exploring its options for Starz for some time now. Last year, it held talks to sell a 20% stake in Starz, and had also engaged in talks with multiple potential buyers for its studio business, CNBC previously reported. Originally, in 2022, the company had said it expected to complete a sale or spinoff of Starz by the end of the summer.
CNBC previously reported at the time Lionsgate had been leaning toward divesting its studio division, which has a robust library that also includes “The Hunger Games” franchise and TV series like “Mad Men,” instead.
Lionsgate executives said during the February earnings call that the company was on track to separate Lionsgate and Starz by September. “Separation will give our two core businesses the opportunity to pursue strategic and financial paths that makes sense for each of them,” CEO Jon Feltheimer said in February. “We’re exploring a number of financial strategies to leave both companies with strong balance sheets at the time of separation.”
In March, Feltheimer said at an investor conference that the company was still “looking at a bunch of different alternatives” when it came to exploring strategic options. “We don’t need any money, we’ve delevered ourselves,” referring to their debt load, he added.
Lionsgate is scheduled to report its fiscal fourth quarter earnings Thursday.
Disclosure: Comcast is the parent company of NBCUniversal and CNBC. NBCUniversal operates Peacock. More

Disney World’s Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser, a two-day hotel experience, is closing.
It’s final voyage will take place in late September.
The experience has earned some of the highest guest satisfaction ratings in the history of Walt Disney World and earned a Thea Award for outstanding achievement in the themed entertainment space.

Ouannii, a Rodian musician, is aboard the Halcyon with galactic superstar Gaya.

Disney World’s Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser, a two-day hotel experience, is closing and will make its final voyage this September after being open for only more than a year.
The experience blends elements of the company’s resorts, cruise lines and theme parks into a 48-hour romp in space. First teased during Disney’s D23 Expo in 2019, the Galactic Starcruiser, located near the company’s Orlando, Florida-based Disney World Resort opened in March 2022.

The voyage costs around $1,200 per person per day, with family packages reaching closer to $6,000 for the two-day excursion. That can be a hard number to digest, especially considering a typical Disney vacation for a family of four can cost that much for a week-long trip, depending on hotel and restaurant choices.
However, the Galactic Starcruiser has been lauded as a dream come true for fans looking for the ultimate Star Wars experience. The two-day jaunt includes a hotel room, all food and drink except alcoholic and specialty beverages, a day trip to the Hollywood Studios park, a Magic Band and valet service at drop-off.

The Galactic Starcruiser is more than a hotel, however. It is an immersive experience. Voyagers spend their time on the Halcyon meeting new characters and aligning themselves with the light or the dark side.
The main gist of the overarching story goes as follows: You are a passenger on a starcruiser for a two-day voyage. During that trip, a First Order officer and several stormtroopers board the ship to root out Resistance spies. Alongside these villains there are spies, musicians, rebels and reluctant heroes, everything that makes up a Star Wars story.
And, of course, some familiar faces also appear, including Chewbacca, Rey and Kylo Ren.

The experience has earned some of the highest guest satisfaction ratings in the history of Walt Disney World and earned a Thea Award for outstanding achievement in the themed entertainment space.
Still, the boutique hotel proved to be too pricy for general Star Wars fans.
“Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser is one of our most creative projects ever and has been praised by our guests and recognized for setting a new bar for innovation and immersive entertainment,” the company said in a statement. “This premium, boutique experience gave us the opportunity to try new things on a smaller scale of 100 rooms, and as we prepare for its final voyage, we will take what we’ve learned to create future experiences that can reach more of our guests and fans.”
Disney reportedly spent $2 billion to construct its two immersive Star Wars parks in Florida and California — though it is unclear if the cost of building the Starcruiser is included in the sum. More