From Wall Street to Silicon Valley, these are the top stories that moved markets and had investors, business leaders, and entrepreneurs talking this week on Cheddar.
HARLEY-DAVIDSON DELIVERS
Harley-Davidson this week turned in its best fourth-quarter profits and sales in five years, and investors are ready to rumble. The beat comes after years of declining sales due to a lack of interest from millennials in hopping on a "hog." But the company's fortunes changed course after launching a turnaround strategy in 2020 that reduced the number bikes in its line-up, debuted a new merchandising campaign, and got started on a plan to spin off an electric motorcycle brand. This paid off in 2021, and shares surged 16 percent on Thursday.
PELOTON SHAKE-UP
After a brutal few months, Peloton might just be getting another chance. Reports that Nike and Amazon are looking into buying the company boosted the stock 30 percent in extended trading last Friday. Since then, the company has made a series of moves designed to restore investors' confidence in the connected fitness brand. CEO John Foley stepped down; Barry McCarthy, the former chief financial officer of Spotify and Netflix, stepped up to replace him; and the company announced it's cutting 2,800 jobs. The news fueled more gains throughout the week, but that didn't spare the new CEO from getting his first all-hands meeting crashed by laid-off employees.
DISNEY DOMINATES
The House of Mouse is starting to catch up with its streaming rivals HBO Max and Netflix, and the gains are helping raise the company's stock. Disney's first-quarter earnings report showed a gain of 12 million subscribers for a total of 128.8 million globally. It also showed a 34 percent increase in revenue and a 100 percent increase in profits from last year. The earnings beat lifted shares more than 4 percent this week — as the company marked the end of its first century in business.
DISCOUNT DUO
Shares of leading discount airlines Frontier and Spirit got a boost this week on the news they were planning to merge, creating a "discount juggernaut" that the companies say will be able to better compete with the biggest airlines and even bring down costs industrywide. Regulators still have to approve the deal, but their status as discount lines could help their case, as the Department of Justice has expressed an interest in the past in a discount match-up.
CHIPOTLE CHALKS IT UP AS A WIN
Chipotle Mexican Grill saw its shares pop 8 percent on Tuesday after reporting better-than-expected earnings. Investors were giving credit to the fast-casual chain for pulling off a rather tricky maneuver. The company said it was able to offset inflation with price hikes without cutting into consumer demand. Implicit in this humblebrag is the idea that Chipotle is a big enough player in the industry that its competitors didn't benefit from its higher prices.
The State Department had been in talks with Elon Musk’s Tesla company to buy armored electric vehicles, but the plans have been put on hold by the Trump administration after reports emerged about a potential $400 million purchase. A State Department spokesperson said the electric car company owned by Musk was the only one that expressed interest back in May 2024. The deal with Tesla was only in its planning phases but it was forecast to be the largest contract of the year. It shows how some of his wealth has come and was still expected to come from taxpayers.
At 100 years old, the Goodyear Blimp is an ageless star in the sky. The 246-foot-long airship will be in the background of the Daytona 500 — flying roughly 1,500 feet above Daytona International Speedway, actually — to celebrate its greatest anniversary tour. Even though remote camera technologies are improving regularly and changing the landscape of aerial footage, the blimp continues to carve out a niche. At Daytona, with the usual 40-car field racing around a 2½-mile superspeedway, views from the blimp aptly provide the scope of the event.
You'll just have to wait for interest rates (and prices) to go down. Plus, this deal's a steel, the big carmaker wedding is off, and bribery is back, baby!
It’s a chicken-and-egg problem: Restaurants are struggling with record-high U.S. egg prices, but their omelets, scrambles and huevos rancheros may be part of the problem. Breakfast is booming at U.S. eateries. First Watch, a restaurant chain that serves breakfast, brunch and lunch, nearly quadrupled its locations over the past decade to 570. Fast-food chains like Starbucks and Wendy's added more egg-filled breakfast items. In normal times, egg producers could meet the demand. But a bird flu outbreak that has forced them to slaughter their flocks is making supplies scarcer and pushing up prices. Some restaurants like Waffle House have added a surcharge to offset their costs.
William Falcon, CEO and Founder of Lightning AI, discusses the ongoing feud between Elon Musk and Sam Altman, and how everyday people can use AI in their lives.
U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum “will not go unanswered,” European Union chief Ursula von der Leyen vowed on Tuesday, adding that they will trigger toug
The Trump administration has ordered the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to stop nearly all its work, effectively shutting down the agency that was created to protect consumers after the 2008 financial crisis and subprime mortgage-lending scandal. Russell Vought is the newly installed director of the Office of Management and Budget. Vought directed the CFPB in a Saturday night email to stop work on proposed rules, to suspend the effective dates on any rules that were finalized but not yet effective, and to stop investigative work and not begin any new investigations. The agency has been a target of conservatives since President Barack Obama created it following the 2007-2008 financial crisis.
