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TikTok’s “#underconsumptioncore” trend has been displaced by the start of the back-to-school shopping season — and with it “#backtoschoolhauls.”
This latest hashtag trend comes surprisingly swiftly on the heels of a movement centered around resisting overspending.

Customer shopping for school supplies with employee restocking shelves, Target store, Queens, New York.
Lindsey Nicholson | UCG | Universal Images Group | Getty Images

Just when it seemed more Americans were inspired by the ideas of “underconsumption core” and “conscious consumerism,” which aim to put a lid on social media-influenced overspending, the back-to-school shopping season kicked off early — followed by TikTok hashtag #backtoschoolhauls.
As of the beginning of July, more than half, or 55%, of students and families had already started buying supplies for the start of the academic year, according to the National Retail Federation.

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“The back-to-school shopping season has increasingly started earlier each year,” largely driven by retail strategies, said Cassandra Happe, an analyst at WalletHub.
Sales events like Target Circle Week and Amazon’s Prime Day started even earlier in 2024, “aiming to capture early-bird shoppers and outpace competitors,” Happe said.

Back-to-school spending could reach nearly $40 billion

Families with children in elementary through high school plan to spend an average of $874.68 on school supplies, just $15 less than last year’s record of $890.07, according to the NRF.
Altogether, this year’s back-to-school spending, including for college students, is expected to reach $38.8 billion, the NRF also found. That’s the second-highest tally ever, after last year’s $41.5 billion marked the most expensive back-to-school season to date.

According to another report, by Intuit Credit Karma, nearly one-third, or 31%, of parents said they can’t afford back-to-school shopping this year and 34% expect to take on debt to cover the cost of supplies.
Higher prices are partly to blame: Families are now paying more for key back-to-school essentials such as backpacks ahead of the new school year. CNBC used the producer price index — a closely followed measure of inflation — to track how the costs of making certain items typically purchased for students has changed between 2019 and 2024.

On the upside, starting earlier may offer the best opportunities to find the best deals, a separate survey by Deloitte found, at a time when household finances are particularly squeezed.
“However, this approach can also lead to increased spending due to rising costs and the temptation for impulse buys,” Happe said. “Parents might find themselves spending more overall, especially on high-ticket items and electronics.”
More than 75% of parents said they believe schools ask them to buy too much during back-to-school season, another report by WalletHub found.

Parents influenced to splurge on ‘must-have’ items

“Back-to-school hauls have started infiltrating TikTok earlier than I’ve ever seen it,” said Casey Lewis, a social media trend expert and founder of trend newsletter After School.
“As soon as the Fourth of July holiday weekend was over, I began seeing them — and not just shopping hauls, but also outfit ideas and calls for advice about the best shoes and backpacks to buy this year,” Lewis said.
Despite having to navigate tight budget constraints, 85% of parents said they could be influenced to splurge on a “must-have” item or brand, Deloitte also found.

According to Lewis, low-rise jeans, $110 Adidas Campus sneakers and Jester backpacks from North Face, which retail for $75 or more, are topping this year’s wish lists.
“There’s a lot of pressure to have the right look,” Lewis said. And as trends cycle through faster and faster, “young people have even more pressure to keep up,” she added. “It feels like their popularity and perceived coolness rides on the products they have.”

How to keep back-to-school spending in check

Consumer savings expert Andrea Woroch advises families to shop for gently used clothing, sporting goods, school supplies and certified-refurbished electronics on resale sites, use a price-tracking browser extension or app and apply coupon codes. There are a growing number of online retailers that offer children’s product overstock, open-box and returned goods, often at a significant discount.
Also take advantage of sales tax holidays when you can, she said. Review the 2024 Sales Tax Holiday list to see if and when your state lifts sales taxes for a few days.
Otherwise, shop your own stock, which is what TikTok’s #underconsumptioncore is all about. “Rip out pages in a partially used notebook, collect scattered markers and crayons to make a full set and clean up last year’s backpack and lunch tote,” Woroch said.
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#Underconsumptioncore is taking over TikTok.
I’ve been on the underconsumption train long before it was trending. But given the barrage of influencer marketing these days, it’s a lifestyle that is increasingly harder to maintain.
Now the stakes are higher as more consumers are feeling cash-strapped.

Recently I posed this question to my teenage daughter: Aren’t we tired of influencers?
“No,” she said.

But despite my daughter’s opinion — she’s 16 — I know I’m not the only one fed up with the barrage of things I’m told to buy on social media. Which is why the rise of “underconsumptioncore” came as a welcome shift away from influencer culture — and made me finally feel seen.
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Years ago, I made a commitment to live with less. But adhering to a standard more in line with minimalism than overconsumption is a vow I’ve had to renew yearly, monthly, daily.
Let’s just say it’s a struggle. Instagram doesn’t help.
Increasingly, I have found the incessant shilling of everything from protein shakes to private vacation villas exhausting. Not to mention how this steady stream of influencer marketing is often at odds with my own lifestyle aspirations (and budget).

Pro tips: I have a screen time limit set for Instagram, keep sponsored posts “snoozed” and regularly “report” ads that feel intrusive. Also, I follow “the 48-hour rule,” which requires waiting at least two days before making any discretionary purchase, through social media or otherwise.

‘An arms race for consumer dollars’

Although most Americans say they are living paycheck to paycheck, consumers routinely spend more than they can afford on impulse purchases, many studies show — particularly those advertised on sites such as TikTok, Instagram and Facebook.
“We are bombarded with shopping opportunities,” said Casey Lewis, a social media trend expert and founder of trend newsletter After School. “Now it’s sort of an arms race for consumer dollars.”
One report by Intuit Credit Karma found that roughly 2 in 5 Americans have purchased products advertised on social media in the past year, and nearly a quarter — 23% — of them coughed up $1,000 or more on those purchases. 
Generation Z, especially, makes shopping decisions heavily driven by TikTok and Instagram, where influencer recommendations play a very significant role, another KPMG report showed.

The rise of #underconsumptioncore

TikTok’s latest financial trend, #underconsumptioncore, is about making the most of what you already have and rejecting the temptation to buy more (and more and more). That’s also something personal stylist Allison Bornstein told me in 2023, which has stuck with me ever since.
The timing is on point, given that consumers feel increasingly cash-strapped and their confidence in the economy is showing signs of strain, according to Brett House, economics professor at Columbia Business School. “It’s a movement that is cyclical, driven by macroeconomic conditions,” he said.

In fact, the idea behind underconsumption has emerged with “predictable regularity” at similar times in recent history, including in the early 1990s, then when the dot-com bubble burst in early 2000 and again during the Great Recession, House said. “In each case the aesthetics were a little different, but it represented a back-to-basics mentality.”
This time around, #underconsumptioncore stems from a number of other factors, as well, including a desire to live more intentionally and sustainably. Gen Z is also the most eco-conscious generation.
But still, this trend is primarily born out of necessity. To be sure, few people can afford all of this stuff.

Young people are just sort of like ‘enough, we can’t possibly keep up.’

Casey Lewis
social media trend expert

Americans are feeling the pain of persistent inflation, with various reports showing many have exhausted their savings and are now leaning on credit cards to make ends meet.
Financial well-being is deteriorating and young adults, especially, are struggling.
Similarly, interest in “conscious consumerism” and “de-influencing” have also peaked, both of which aim to put a lid on social media-related overspending.
“Young people are just sort of like ‘enough, we can’t possibly keep up,’ and it doesn’t feel good anymore,” Lewis said.
But whether #underconsumptioncore is simply a mood or a movement, it’s still hard to say. “The lifespan of this trend depends, in a lot of ways, on how long the economy continues to slow and incomes remain below price gains,” House said.
Lewis is skeptical about whether this trend will have any sustained traction at all. Already, her feed is being overrun with #backtoschoolhauls, including outfits, gear and dorm décor, she said.
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Google headquarters in Mountain View, California, on Jan. 30, 2023.
Marlena Sloss | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Earnings season is in full swing, with results from tech giants and sector leaders influencing the market’s direction.
While these updates provide key insights into a company’s performance, investors should remember their investment decisions must not be based on a single quarter’s results.

Instead, they should consider the recommendations of top Wall Street analysts, who perform an in-depth analysis of a company’s fundamentals so they can highlight stocks with solid long-term growth potential.   
Here are three stocks favored by the Street’s top pros, according to TipRanks, a platform that ranks analysts based on their past performance.
Alphabet
The first stock pick for this week is Google parent Alphabet (GOOGL). The company recently reported results for the second quarter, highlighting the strength in its Search and Cloud businesses. However, the growth in YouTube advertising revenue slowed down in the quarter and missed analysts’ expectations.
Following the results, BMO Capital analyst Brian Pitz reiterated a buy rating on GOOGL stock with a price target of $222. The stock remains a top pick for BMO.
Pitz noted artificial intelligence-related tail winds in Alphabet’s Search business. He said, “The combination of higher query volume and lower incremental costs implies that AI benefits to Search will be a multi-year event.”  

Additionally, he raised his 2024 and 2025 estimates for the Cloud business to reflect AI-led gains. Pitz highlighted that the company’s AI infrastructure and generative AI solutions for cloud clients have been adopted by over 2 million developers and are already contributing “billions” in revenue.
Despite YouTube’s Q2 revenue miss, Pitz continues to be confident about this business. He thinks that YouTube is well-positioned to gain from the expected shift in a significant portion of the $150 billion global linear TV ad dollars to the digital world. He also expects YouTube’s superior AI Creator tools to boost its prospects.
Pitz ranks No. 189 among more than 8,900 analysts tracked by TipRanks. His ratings have been successful 74% of the time, with each delivering an average return of 17.1%. (See Alphabet Hedge Fund Trading Activity on TipRanks)
ServiceNow
Next up is ServiceNow (NOW), a cloud-based software company that recently impressed investors with its strong results for the second quarter. The workflow automation platform witnessed better-than-expected net new annual contract value, or NNACV, and generative AI contributions. ServiceNow also raised its 2024 subscription revenue outlook.
In reaction to the strong results and guidance, Goldman Sachs analyst Kash Rangan increased the price target for NOW stock to $940 from $910 and reaffirmed a buy rating.  
Shares surged 13% the day following ServiceNow’s quarterly report. The analyst said that the post-results rally in NOW stock was an indication of investors’ “renewed conviction in ServiceNow’s GTM [go-to-market] execution and the quality and breadth of its platform that is clearly resonating with IT buyers irrespective of choppier macro conditions.”
Rangan highlighted that the 22.5% growth at constant currency in ServiceNow’s current remaining performance obligation, an indicator of future revenue, was driven by robust NNACV and early renewals.
He thinks that the acceleration in remaining performance obligation to 31% in Q2 2024 indicates the adaptability of NOW’s platform across the enterprise. Overall, the analyst is optimistic about the company’s ability to sustain a growth rate of more than 20%, backed by continued AI momentum and an accelerating backlog.  
Rangan ranks No. 579 among more than 8,900 analysts tracked by TipRanks. His ratings have been profitable 57% of the time, with each delivering an average return of 8.7%. (See ServiceNow Stock Charts on TipRanks)
Travel + Leisure
This week’s third stock is Travel + Leisure (TNL), a membership and leisure travel company. TNL exceeded analysts’ earnings expectations for the second quarter but lagged revenue estimates. The company raised its full-year adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization guidance to reflect solid consumer demand for vacation ownership or timeshares.
On July 29, Tigress Financial analyst Ivan Feinseth reaffirmed a buy rating on TNL stock and raised his price target to $58 from $54. The analyst’s bullish stance is backed by the demand for vacation ownership. Feinseth also expects TNL to benefit from lower interest rates in the second half of this year and additional rate cuts in 2025.
He expects TNL’s revenue and cash flows to be driven by “a combination of property development, membership sales, and increases in subscription and resort operating fees” amid strong travel trends.
Feinseth thinks that TNL’s strategic partnership with Sports Illustrated Resorts and the launch of the Ultimate Sports-Themed and Active Lifestyle Resort Network are major growth catalysts. He also expects the company to benefit from technology investments, marketing partnerships and acquisitions, including the purchase of Accor Vacation Club.
Feinseth ranks No. 235 among more than 8,900 analysts tracked by TipRanks. His ratings have been successful 60% of the time, with each delivering an average return of 12.8%. (See Travel + Leisure Stock Buybacks on TipRanks) More

Many wedding costs, such as meals, invitations and favors, are based on your headcount.
“The No. 1 way to save money on your wedding is to cut the guest count,” Shane McMurray, CEO and co-founder of The Wedding Report, recently told CNBC.

Victor Dyomin | Moment | Getty Images

Many wedding costs, such as meals, invitations and favors, are based on your headcount.
The average cost of a wedding ceremony and reception in 2023 was $35,000, according to The Knot 2023 Real Weddings Study. The total cost is a $5,000 increase from 2022.

“The No. 1 way to save money on your wedding is to cut the guest count,” Shane McMurray, CEO and co-founder of The Wedding Report, recently told CNBC.
When the Covid-19 pandemic hit, engaged couples pivoted from large-scale events to smaller, intimate weddings, said Lauren Miller, owner of Tiny Wedding Collective, a wedding planning agency in Washington, D.C., and in Baltimore, Maryland.
While the average guest count at weddings has been declining since 2006 — when the average was about 184 people — the lowest average count was in 2020, when it hovered at 107 people due to pandemic restrictions, according to The Wedding Report.
Miller noted a surprising upside to the pandemic.
“What we saw was that the pandemic gave people permission to have a tiny wedding,” Miller said. “Now, you don’t need a pandemic to have a tiny wedding.”

In 2023, the average guest list was 134, The Wedding Report found.
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Narrowing down the guest list can be difficult.
“Planning a wedding with your partner is the first big group project the two of you tackle together,” said Jessica Bishop, founder and CEO of The Budget Savvy Bride.
“The key to not hurt people’s feelings is creating a rule and sticking with it for every guest that’s invited,” said Miller.
Here are ways experts suggest reducing your wedding guest list without cutting ties with family and friends in the process:

1. Create a guest-list hierarchy

“You have to start thinking, ‘Would you buy that person a $200 dinner?’ Because that’s what you’re doing at your wedding,” said Shannon Tarrant, co-founder of the Wedding Venue Map, an online marketplace of wedding venues across central Florida.
Experts recommend engaged couples to categorize their guests into two to three lists in order of priority:

A-List: These “are people who you would actually notice on your wedding day if they aren’t there,” said Tarrant. “That’s like your most important, VIP people.” 
B-List: The people you would love to come, but you would be fine if they declined the RSVP, said Tarrant. Miller added that the B-List could consist of “co-workers that are close to you or maybe some extended family members.”
List C: Think of this as an extension of the B list, said Bishop. Ask yourself when the last time was that you saw a person “and had meaningful one-on-one time with them,” she said.

A lot of the etiquette rules have gone out the window.

Shannon Tarrant
co-founder of the Wedding Venue Map in Orlando, Florida

Being on a lower-priority list “doesn’t mean we’re not inviting them at this point,” said Tarrant. “We’re just starting to organize the people with a different mindset.”
“Once you figure out the list, you can really build a budget,” she said.
Sometimes your parents will have their own guest lists in mind. “If your parents are paying and contributing, you might need to allow them to have a certain number of guests,” said Bishop.
But “a lot of it is case by case,” added Bishop. If the parents are contributing financially, it is important to discuss what kind of wedding the bridal couple wants and what will be realistic.

2. Set plus-one rules

“Old-school etiquette says that if someone is married or has been in a long-term relationship more than a year … they should be invited,” said Tarrant.
“But in the world we’re living in, a lot of the etiquette rules have gone out the window,” she said.
One approach is to completely forgo plus-ones and group those individual guests in a singles table so they don’t feel alone or left out, said Shannon Underwood, vice president and conference director of Wedding Merchants Business Academy, a conference for wedding professionals.
“That’s the thing with the plus-ones — you never want to feel like you’re the only one that wasn’t allowed to bring a date and everyone else was,” said Underwood. “Consistency is key.”

Set parameters with your partner and there might be special cases, said Bishop. It is helpful to have guidelines.
It is okay to have a frank conversation with solo guests, said Tarrant. If that person does not know anyone else or have a connection to anybody else attending your wedding, you may decide it is OK for that person to bring a plus-one, she said.
Bishop noted that it is important to remember that each wedding is unique. “There are probably going to be special cases,” she said.

3. Pick a smaller venue

If you are exploring the idea of hosting a smaller wedding, keep the venue in mind, experts say.
“Sometimes when people want to plan smaller weddings, they don’t choose smaller venues. They’ll pick a venue that seats 200 and say, ‘I’m only budgeting and I only want to have 50 people,'” said Tarrant.
Choosing a more intimate venue with a smaller capacity can help you maintain a solid guest list limit, experts say.
Plus, smaller venues can also bring down the overall spending.
“The savings is not just in the food and beverage,” said Miller. “It really does trickle down overall from all of the things that you might need to rent or buy for the wedding.”

4. Avoid save-the-date invitations

Another way to wrangle the guest count is by not sending save-the-date invitations. “That also can help control the numbers,” said Tarrant, as your closest family and friends are likely to have already etched the date in their calendars.
“It’s a little sneaky,” said Tarrant, but it can help couples whose lists have run out of control, she said.

5. Have a separate, low-cost celebration

Another solution couples could consider is keeping the wedding itself small and later hosting a separate, low-cost ceremony or celebration where you invite more people, experts suggested.
“It does give you the best of both worlds,” said Bishop.
If the budget is very small, consider having a one-year anniversary party that is low cost at an affordable venue, said Underwood. “It doesn’t include all the extras and intricacies of a wedding.”
“At the end of the day, it’s just about preserving relationships and considering people’s feelings,” she said.

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The Palisades Power Plant in Covert, Michigan, could become the first nuclear reactor to restart operations in U.S. history.
The plant’s owner, Holtec International, aims to reopen the plant in late 2025, subject to review and approval by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Holtec has plans to expand the plant in 2030 with small modular reactors — a new technology that could speed deployment of nuclear power in the future.

The Palisades Nuclear Generating Station in Covert, Mich.
John Madill | The Herald-Palladium | AP

The Palisades Power Plant on the shores of Lake Michigan had become a piece of history, a relic of an era when nuclear energy was viewed as the future.
The reactor in Covert, Michigan, about 70 miles of southwest of Grand Rapids, ceased operations in May 2022 after providing power to the industrial Midwestern state for more than 40 years.

The closure was part of a decade-long wave of reactor shutdowns in the U.S., as nuclear power struggled to compete against cheap, abundant natural gas in the wake of the shale boom and the rapid expansion renewable energy.
Plus, the power source had long been controversial, with opponents who feared the consequences of waste produced by the process or the potential of radiation leaks in the event of an accident.
But Palisades is now poised to become the first reactor in U.S. history to reopen after shutting down. Lawmakers on both sides of the political divide, tech companies and leading utilities increasingly view nuclear as a crucial source of reliable, carbon-free energy to supply rising electricity demand in the U.S. while slashing emissions to address climate change.
Holtec International, the privately held owner of the Palisades, aims for the plant to resume operations by the end of 2025 with the support of up to $1.5 billion in loans from the Department of Energy and $300 million in grants from the state of Michigan.
The plans to reopen Palisades are under review by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. If successful, Palisades could provide a road map for other mothballed plants to resume operations such as Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania.

“It’s a bridge to our small modular reactor program,” Kelly Trice, president of Holtec, said in a nod to its long-term plan to nearly double the facility’s power generation in 2030 with small modular reactors. The new technology, which could become the first of its kind on the U.S. grid, promises to speed deployment of nuclear plants in the future.
“Our goal is to be able to increase plants in the country and elsewhere in the world with small modular reactors,” he said.

Road map for restarting reactors

Florida-based Holtec bought Palisades in 2022 with the intention of dismantling it. The previous owner, Entergy, shut down the facility as its finances deteriorated under the strain of competing with cheap natural gas.
But Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer made restarting Palisades a priority, saying it could support the state’s push to produce all of its energy from clean sources by 2040. Whitmer signed bipartisan legislation that provided state funding and supported Holtec’s application for federal financing.
“It was not shut down for so long that it was irreversible,” Trice said. “This plant actually had a 10-year period where we weren’t going to do heavy decommissioning work.”
A restart of Palisades could mark a turning point for the nuclear industry after a decade in which a dozen reactors have shut down across the country. The 800-megawatt reactor would provide enough power for more than 800,000 homes.

Gretchen Whitmer, governor of Michigan, right, and Jennifer Granholm, US energy secretary, center, in the control room simulator during a tour of the Holtec Palisades Training Center in Covert, Michigan, US, on Wednesday, March 27, 2024. 
Kristen Norman | Bloomberg | Getty Images

The U.S. is facing historic growth of electricity demand from data centers that support artificial intelligence, the return of domestic manufacturing, and the electrification of vehicles as well as the broader economy. Data centers and electric vehicles alone are expected to boost demand by 290 terawatt hours by 2030 — the equivalent of the electricity consumption of Turkey, according to a recent report from Rystad Energy.
Nuclear is the most dependable energy source, generating maximum power 93% of the time without emitting carbon dioxide. It’s nearly four times more reliable than solar and three times more than wind, according to the Energy Information Administration.
Executives at some of the largest utilities have warned that failure to meet this demand could jeopardize U.S. economic growth. Southern Company CEO Chris Womack said in June that the U.S. needs to a build a significant number of new nuclear plants to meet the country’s growing power demand. The U.S. and a coalition of more than 20 other countries pledged in December to triple nuclear energy by 2050.
But building new nuclear plants is slow and expensive. Sometimes plants can get mired in legal challenges. Southern recently completed the first new plant in decades, but the project was years behind schedule and billions of dollars over budget.
Trice said restarting a reactor can be “easier, cheaper and faster” than building a new one, though he emphasized that this depends on how far the decommissioning process has progressed.
“There are a few other plants that have talked to us about how to do it,” the executive said. “And we’re hopeful that they will. From that regard, maybe it becomes a model on a few plants where that fits.”

‘On the grid first’

Holtec hopes to expand Palisades with two 300-megawatt small modular reactors, or SMRs, which would nearly double its capacity to 1,400 megawatts — enough power for 1.4 million homes.
The company aims to break ground before the end of 2027, Trice said. He expects the first SMR would come online in mid-2030.
“Our goal is to be on the grid first,” Trice said.
SMRs are viewed as an important path to expand nuclear power because they promise to reduce capital costs, a major hurdle to building new plants. They use a pressurized water reactor, like traditional plants. However, SMRs are prefabricated in pieces and then assembled at the construction site.
“It’s a smaller, simpler plant in comparison — it’s easier to operate,” Trice said.
Once the first SMR is built, Holtec plans to build an order book to “continually manufacture components for whatever plant is needed,” he said. “We’ve had more utilities than I can count contact us and want to be on the list,” Trice said.
The Big Tech companies are also showing growing interest in nuclear, including Holtec’s SMR program. As the tech giants build out power-hungry data centers to support AI, they are still hoping to meet their climate goals.
“We’ve talked to pretty much all of them, especially the big ones have talked to us,” Trice said. “They’re all interested in carbon-free, green, baseload power.”

Possible Three Mile Island project

Constellation Energy, the largest U.S. operator of nuclear plants, has hinted that Palisades could serve as a model for a restart of Three Mile Island near Middletown, Pennsylvania. The company owns the Unit 1 reactor at the facility, which ceased operations in 2019. (Unit 1 is not the reactor that partially melted down in 1979 in the worst nuclear accident in U.S. history.)
“We’ve obviously seen what happened with Palisades. I think that was brilliant,” CEO Jose Dominguez said on Constellation’s first-quarter earnings call in May.
Constellation is considering a “number of different opportunities” and Three Mile Island “would probably be certainly one of those that we would think about,” Dominguez said.
“We’re at a point where we believe that it is technically feasible,” Kathleen Barrón, Constellation’s chief strategy officer told CNBC regarding a Three Mile Island restart. “But there are a number of economic and commercial and regulatory questions that we’re still evaluating.”
NextEra Energy, the largest renewables operator in the U.S., is weighing whether to restart the Duane Arnold Energy Center in Palo, Iowa. It ceased operations in August 2020.
“There would be opportunities and a lot of demand from the market if we were able to do something with Duane Arnold,” NextEra CEO John Ketchum said on a second-quarter earnings call on July 24.
“We’re looking at it,” Ketchum said. “But we would only do it if we could do it in a way that is essentially risk free with plenty of mitigants around the approach. There are a few things we would have to work through.”
But Palisades, Three Mile Island and Duane Arnold ceased operations relatively recently. Finding more plants to restart could prove difficult, said Doug True, chief nuclear officer at the Nuclear Energy Institute.
“It gets harder and harder,” True said. “A lot of these plants have already started the deconstruction process that goes with decommissioning and the facility wasn’t as thoroughly laid up in a way that was intended to restart in any way.”
Three Mile Island and Duane Arnold would “require a lot of thought and effort to see what it’s going to take to get those back online,” True said.

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Pavlo Gonchar | Lightrocket | Getty Images

Company: Five9 (FIVN)

Business: Five9 provides intelligent cloud software for contact centers in the United States and internationally. It offers a virtual contact center cloud platform that delivers a suite of applications, which enables the breadth of contact center-related customer service, sales and marketing functions. The platform also matches each customer interaction with an agent resource and delivers customer data to the agent in real-time through integrations with adjacent enterprise applications. The company serves customers in a range of industries, including banking and financial services, business process outsourcers, retail, health care, technology and education.
Stock Market Value: $3.01B ($40.77 per share)

Stock chart icon

Five9’s year-to-date performance

Activist: Anson Funds

Percentage Ownership:  n/a
Average Cost: n/a
Activist Commentary: Anson Funds is a multi-strategy fund founded in 2007 by Moez Kassam, and it has $1.9 billion in assets. While not historically activists, in October 2023, Anson hired Sagar Gupta (former senior analyst and head of technology, media and telecommunications investing at Legion Partners) to build out the firm’s activism strategy.

What’s happening

On July 11, Reuters reported that Anson acquired a position in Five9.

Behind the scenes

Five9 is a cloud-based contact center software provider empowering clients with solutions for customer service, sales and marketing. The company is a leader in the space and the only pure-play cloud contact center provider with peers InContact and Genesys, which are respectively owned by Nice and Permira.

In 2021, Zoom Video made a $14.7 billion offer to acquire Five9 for about $200 per share using Zoom stock. However, the value of the deal declined to approximately $170 per share as the price of Zoom stock fell, and Five9 shareholders voted against it. Two years later, in December 2023, with Five9 shares trading in the low $80s, the company received another acquisition offer which was widely reported to be from Zoom. Five9 rejected that offer. On Friday, the stock closed at $40.77.
Five9’s shares have been tumbling for two main reasons: First, its growth has slowed to 17% last year from 40% in 2021. Second, this happened at a time when the market perceived the company as a potential artificial intelligence victim. There is a misguided belief that as AI applications reduce the staffing of contact centers, Five9 will lose market share and revenue. However, this is a fundamental misunderstanding of what Five9 is and what it does. The company is not being disrupted. Rather, it’s the disruptor. It is a developer and provider of AI contact center solutions that augment or replace human beings often at more than double the price. Moreover, only 20% of contact centers are in the cloud, 80% are still on premises, and on-premise contact centers cannot use AI without converting to the cloud. Five9 is cloud native and offers the software that large enterprises need to implement AI in their contact centers. Considering that, there is tremendous market share left to be captured by the three incumbent cloud providers. So as AI becomes more prevalent in contact centers, the total addressable market and revenue for Five9 and its peers should greatly increase. In other words, the bear case for this company is, in fact, the bull case.
As an independent company, Five9 has a tremendous opportunity for value. First, while the company is not likely to get annual growth back to 40% at this level of revenue, it can certainly get it over 20%, particularly if the AI thesis plays. Second, as the revenue mix skews more toward “software as a service” as expected, Five9’s gross margins should increase from the mid-60% over 70%. Finally, as SaaS revenue increases, a lot of that will go straight to the bottom line improving the company’s operating margins.
Reuters, citing sources familiar, has also reported that Anson is pushing the company to explore a sale. We do not think that is the case as much as the investor is encouraging the board to responsibly manage any incoming interest to sell the company and weigh that against the risk-adjusted value of Five9 on a standalone basis. While this could lead to a more robust sales process, as the last remaining pure-play cloud-based contact center, there are a handful of potential acquirers, all strategic: ServiceNow, Salesforce and Zoom. Despite reportedly trying to buy the company twice before, at significantly higher prices, Zoom has made no secret of its goal to use its $7.4 billion of net cash for an acquisition and has specifically mentioned a contact center.
The question is whether Five9 management is receptive to a sale. We think they are for several reasons. First, Five9’s current chairman and CEO Mike Burkland was the chairman of the company in 2021 when he first agreed to sell to Zoom. Second, the company has had a change of control severance agreement since 2014, which had a five-year term and was renewed for an additional five years in 2019. In 2024, Five9 renewed it for only one year. Finally, to put a little additional pressure on management, while Five9 has a staggered board, its lead independent director for the past 10 years is up for election next year and would certainly prefer to go out with a sale of the company at a premium rather than through a negative vote if it comes to that.
Ken Squire is the founder and president of 13D Monitor, an institutional research service on shareholder activism, and the founder and portfolio manager of the 13D Activist Fund, a mutual fund that invests in a portfolio of activist 13D investments. Five9 is owned in the fund. More

Nonfarm payrolls grew by just 114,000 in July, down from 179,000 in June, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported on Friday.
The unemployment rate increased to 4.3%, the highest since October 2021, the agency noted.
If you’re looking for a job, some sectors are still hiring. Here’s where to start.

Tom Merton | Ojo Images | Getty Images

Job seekers have been sour on the job market for awhile now — and with good reason.
“The soft landing in the U.S. labor market is in danger,” Nick Bunker, Economic Research Director for North America for Indeed Hiring Lab, wrote in a statement on Friday.

“Yellow flags had started to pop up in the labor market data over the past few months, but now the flags are turning red,” Bunker said. 
While some market areas like the information services sector posted a loss of 20,000 in Friday’s jobs report, other sectors might still have “Help Wanted” signs on their doors. 
If you’re currently battling through a competitive labor market, here are the sectors that are hiring and how you can transfer your skills to pivot into a different field, according to experts.

A ‘warning sign’ from entry-level workers

Job growth in the U.S. slowed more than expected and the unemployment rate bounced higher, according to the latest information from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Nonfarm payrolls grew by just 114,000 in July, down from 179,000 in June, the agency reported on Friday. Meanwhile, the unemployment rate increased to 4.3%, the highest since October 2021.

A key driver in the July’s unemployment rate was an increase in “job loser unemployment,” or temporarily laid-off workers, Bunker said. This can happen in the manufacturing sector, he said.
“They are unemployed, but their connection to their old employer isn’t entirely severed,” Bunker said. “Their probability of finding a job in the next six months is much higher than other unemployed workers.”

The jobless rate is also driven by young workers under the age of 24 facing increased competition, said Alí Bustamante, a labor economist and director of the Worker Power and Economic Security program at the Roosevelt Institute, a liberal think tank based in New York City.

These sectors are still hiring

“The only constants in this labor market over the last 18 months have been government jobs, health-care jobs and construction, too, remarkably,” said Julia Pollak, chief economist at ZipRecruiter.
A small share of the private sector is adding jobs, according to Bunker.
“It’s not like the broad share of sectors is adding jobs right now,” he said.

Health care and social assistance took the lead in job creations by adding 64,000 openings, according to the BLS. Other growing sectors include construction (25,000); leisure and hospitality (23,000); government (17,000); transportation and warehousing (14,000); wholesale trade (4,300); retail trade (4,000); and manufacturing (1,000).

Some fields ‘see insatiable demand from employers’

It can be hard to optimize the job search on a growing sector because of cyclical market fluctuations, economists said.
But if you were to make a career pivot, “health care does make sense,” Bunker said.
In some cases, that might involve going back to school, Pollak said.
“We see incredibly high demand in health care throughout every level of job for registered nurses, for nursing assistants,” she said.
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Training in skilled trades is a way to go as well, she added. Some fields are seeing a strong demand, especially those where the workforce is aging and on the brink of retirement, and industries that are unlikely to be disrupted by artificial intelligence automation, Pollak explained.
“It’s the skilled trades, like an electrician or a [heating, ventilation and air conditioning] technician, where we see insatiable demand from employers and rising wages,” she said.

To pivot, assess ‘transferrable skills’

Because the labor market is weakening, it might be hard for workers to find opportunities in their preferred industries, Bustamante noted.
Looking at other occupations and other industries that may have a similar occupation than the one that they were looking for could be a start, he said.
Say, for example, “you’re an IT worker and you want to work at a startup firm,” said Bustamante. It might be difficult to find an opportunity there, but perhaps looking into the medical field or in government service, which is “doing pretty strong hiring as well,” could be fruitful, he said.

It’s really about not just looking at the industries but “really looking at the occupations and where those occupations or opportunities are really present at the moment,” Bustamante said.
Pollak agreed: “Definitely look at things where you have transferable skills.”
Job seekers can become better competitors by making these kinds of changes: tailoring the resume, browsing job listings, applying right away and seeing that “AI can be your best friend,” from resume rebuilding, interview preparation to discovering roles, she said.

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As the de facto Democratic nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris’ financial records are under fresh scrutiny.
Her tax returns have been “fairly basic,” according to Craig Hausz, CEO and managing partner at CMH Advisors.
Still, there could be missed tax savings opportunities from her conservative approach, experts say.

U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris and second gentleman Douglas Emhoff descend from Air Force Two in Wilmington, DE, U.S., July 22, 2024. 
Erin Schaff | Via Reuters

Vice President Kamala Harris’ personal financial records are under fresh scrutiny now that she is running for the highest office in the United States.
Experts say recent tax filings show she and her husband, Second Gentleman Douglas Emhoff, have largely kept their finances simple during her years as vice president.

“Her returns are fairly basic,” said Craig Hausz, a certified financial planner and certified public accountant, who is CEO and managing partner at CMH Advisors in Dallas.
Yet that approach may have cost the couple as they left unclaimed tax savings through additional deductions, as well as other missed financial strategies.
The financial disclosures may raise few red flags in her career in public office. Unlike most other Americans, Harris and Emhoff can afford to avoid to miss those savings.
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“Even if she doesn’t win president, as an ex vice president, she’ll always have lots of money coming in,” said Carolyn McClanahan, a CFP and founder of Life Planning Partners in Jacksonville, Florida.

“They will never lack for money, so they don’t really need to worry too much about how [tax] efficient they are, or how much they save,” said McClanahan, who is also a member of the CNBC FA Council.
Harris’ office did not respond to a request for comment by press time.
The couple’s recent tax filings mirror millions of other Americans’, according to Boston-based CFP and enrolled agent Catherine Valega, founder of Green Bee Advisory.
“They took a conservative approach and that’s the right thing to do,” Valega said. “You don’t see them trying to do anything super creative here to reduce their taxes.”

What tax savings Harris may have missed

Overall, Harris’ return could have been more aggressive to reduce tax liability, experts say.  
“Somebody in her position could probably take more deductions,” particularly against her book income, Hausz explained.
To that point, Harris reported $7,272 in gross book income in 2023 with a single business deduction of $1,273 for “commissions and fees.” By comparison, her 2021 book earnings were $452,664 with the same deduction worth $65,951.
“If I were advising her, I would say ‘let’s keep this as uncomplicated as possible, so there’s no talking points,'” Hausz said. “She’s done a very good job of that.”

‘A little too conservative’ with cash

Another possible missed opportunity is Harris’ cash allocations, with $50,603 in bank account interest reported for 2023, up from $6,054 in 2022, experts say.Bank account yields have been higher after a series of interest rate hikes from the Federal Reserve. But Harris’ jump in interest could mean they have significant cash allocations, which may be “a little too conservative,” Hausz said.”They’ve missed out on growth in the stock market,” he added.
However, the cash allocation could be a good fit, depending on their short-term financial goals and other investments, Valega said.

Yields will fall once the Federal Reserve begins cutting interest rates again. In the meantime, earning $50,000 on Federal Insurance Deposit Corporation-protected cash is a “pretty good deal,” she said.  
It is possible Harris and Emhoff may not be getting the best returns on their cash, depending on whether that money is locked up in certificates of deposit, or sitting in a lower-yield savings account, according to McClanahan.
Yet having lots of cash on hand may give them the financial flexibility they need, particularly as Emhoff took a big pay cut to become Second Gentleman, McClanahan said.
“It’s good to have lots of cash when you’re a politician, so you could stay out of trouble with meeting your expenses,” McClanahan said.

More money toward retirement

Harris could also put more of her income in tax-deferred retirement accounts to boost her tax savings.
“Even though she could have put money in retirement plans, she didn’t need to,” McClanahan said.
Hopefully, Harris is maxing out a Thrift Savings Plan, a retirement savings and investment plan for federal employees, McClanahan said.
In addition, she could contribute to a simplified employee pension plan, or SEP, a variation of individual retirement accounts, to further boost her retirement savings, she said.
While those contributions may help Harris save on taxes, she already has retirement security through pensions from her time as vice president, senator and attorney general of California, McClanahan noted. In addition, she stands to receive Social Security benefits based on her payroll tax contributions to the program. More