Are you not entertained? The next frontier of brand entertainment
In partnership with Omnicom, Jeff Beer sits down with Patty Morris, the head of brand at State Farm; Erwin Dito, the VP of global brand leadership at McDonald's; and Jae Goodman, the founder and CEO of Superconnector Studios, to discuss why effectiveness and efficiency are not the same thing in the advertising world.
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Yahoo
9 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Lululemon Is Cutting 150 Corporate Jobs
Lululemon Athletica Inc. is changing up part of its organizational structure, resulting in about 150 job cuts at its corporate headquarters. The impacted employees are part of the yoga-inspired apparel firm's store support centers. More from WWD Beyond Yoga Puts Lululemon and Athleta on Notice With Bigger Store Format Revenue Rises at Lululemon in Q1, CEO Calvin McDonald Bullish Despite Cautious U.S. Consumer Why TikTok Can't Stop Talking About Lululemon's 2-in-1 Dress and Its Styling Frenzy With Shoes: The $148 Debate, Explained 'As we continue to deliver on our strategy, we regularly assess our business operations to ensure we are well-positioned for the future. Following a recent review, we have decided to evolve some aspects of our organizational structure to operate with more agility and further invest in our growth,' a Lululemon company spokesperson said, confirming media reports of the layoffs. 'This is not a decision we made lightly, and we are committed to supporting our employees through this transition.' Despite first-quarter revenue gains, investors earlier this month were spooked when Lululemon chief executive officer Calvin McDonald warned that U.S. consumers were being more cautious in their spends. That sent shares of Lululemon down 22 percent to $258 in after-hours trading on June 5. Shares of the apparel firm have fallen further, and Wednesday's close was down 2.8 percent to $228.65. While the company did provide second-quarter guidance — net revenue in the range of $2.54 billion to $2.56 billion — and kept its top-line forecast for the year, Lululemon did cut its earnings per share to a range of $14.58 to $14.78, down from its earlier forecast of $14.95 to $15.15 in March. BMO analyst Simeon Siegel noted that the updated EPS forecast market the 'first' fiscal-year EPS lowering in the first quarter since fiscal-year 2014. 'We continue to see Lululemon as a strong, but overstretched, brand and worry about long-term domestic revenue sizing,' he said. UBS softlines analyst Jay Sole has shares of Lululemon at 'neutral.' 'A pivotal Lululemon question is if the slowdown in its U.S. business over the last 12-plus months has been temporary, driven by one-off factors, or a sign of something more fundamental. Our main takeaway from Lululemon's 1Q report is the likelihood that something more fundamental is at play has increased,' he wrote in a note. Sole also said the U.S. could slow down in the back half of this year due to the impact of tariffs on consumer spending, and he said that there's also risk that Lululemon's 'China sales growth rate decelerates, too.' This year, the company signed British race car driver Lewis Hamilton as brand ambassador, and in April teamed with the Professional Women's Hockey League for an inaugural collaboration that spotlighted fan-favorite Lululemon designs. Best of WWD Harvey Nichols Sees Sales Dip, Losses Widen in Year Marred by Closures Nike Logs $1.3 Billion Profit, But Supply Chain Issues Persist Zegna Shares Start Trading on New York Stock Exchange Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
TechCrunch
10 minutes ago
- TechCrunch
The Robinhood founder who might just revolutionize energy, if he succeeds
Baiju Bhatt is building something the space industry has largely dismissed, and it might be more groundbreaking than anyone realizes. When Baiju Bhatt stepped away from his role as Chief Creative Officer at Robinhood last year, only those close to him could have predicted his next move: launching a space company built around tech that much of the aerospace industry has written off as impractical. That's just fine with Bhatt, co-founder of the trading app that democratized investing for millions – it means less competition for his new company, Aetherflux, which has raised $60 million on its quest to prove that beaming solar power from space isn't science fiction but the next frontier of both renewable energy and national defense. 'Until you do stuff in space, if you happen to be an aerospace company, you're actually an aspiring space company,' Bhatt said on Wednesday night at a TechCrunch StrictlyVC event held in a glass-lined structure on Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park. 'I would like to transition from 'aspiring space company' to 'space company' sooner.' Bhatt's space ambitions date back to his childhood. He says that his dad, who worked as an optometrist in India, spent a decade applying to graduate physics programs in the United States, eventually taking a hard left turn and landing at NASA as a research scientist. He then proceeded to use the powers of reverse psychology on his son, says Bhatt. 'My dad worked at NASA through my whole childhood,' Bhatt said. 'He was very adamant: 'When you grow up, I'm not going to tell you you should study physics.' Which is a very effective way of convincing somebody to do exactly that.' Image Credits:Slava Blazer Photography / TechCrunch Now, at roughly the same age his father was when he joined NASA, Bhatt is making his own move into space, seemingly with an eye toward creating even more impact than at Robinhood. Techcrunch event Save $200+ on your TechCrunch All Stage pass Build smarter. Scale faster. Connect deeper. Join visionaries from Precursor Ventures, NEA, Index Ventures, Underscore VC, and beyond for a day packed with strategies, workshops, and meaningful connections. Save $200+ on your TechCrunch All Stage pass Build smarter. Scale faster. Connect deeper. Join visionaries from Precursor Ventures, NEA, Index Ventures, Underscore VC, and beyond for a day packed with strategies, workshops, and meaningful connections. Boston, MA | REGISTER NOW He's certainly taking a big swing with the effort. Traditional space solar power concepts have focused on massive geostationary satellites the size of small cities, using microwave transmission to beam energy to Earth. The scale and complexity made these projects perpetually '20 years away,' Bhatt said Wednesday night. 'Everything was too big,' Bhatt continued. 'The size of the array, the size of the spacecraft was the size of a small city. That's real science fiction stuff.' His solution is both far smaller and more nimble, he suggested. Most notably, instead of massive microwave antennas that require precise phase coordination, Aetherflux's satellites will use fiber lasers, essentially converting solar power back into focused light that can be precisely targeted at receivers on the ground. 'We take the solar power that we collect from the sun with solar panels, and we take that energy and put it into a set of diodes that turn it back into light,' Bhatt said. 'That light goes into a fiber where there's a laser, which then lets us point that down to the ground.' The idea is to launch a demonstration satellite in June of next year. National security, first While Bhatt envisions eventually building 'a true industrial-scale energy company,' he's starting with national defense – a strategic decision that could give America a significant advantage. The Department of Defense has approved funding for Aetherflux's program, recognizing the military value of beaming power to forward bases without the logistical nightmare of transporting fuel. 'It allows the U.S. to have energy out in the battlefield for deployed bases, and it doesn't have the limitation of needing to transport fuel,' Bhatt explained. The precision Bhatt is promising is pretty remarkable. Aetherflux's initial target is a laser spot 'bigger than 10 meters diameter' on the ground, but Bhatt believes they can shrink it to 'five to 10 meters, potentially even smaller than that.' These compact, lightweight receivers would be 'of little to no strategic value if captured by an adversary' and 'small enough and portable enough that you can literally bring them out into the battlefield.' While much remains to be seen, success for Aetherflux could potentially change the game for American military operations worldwide. In addition to his own father, Bhatt said that he draws inspiration from another entrepreneur who proved you can master multiple industries: Elon Musk. Importantly, like Musk, who moved from payments to revolutionize electric vehicles and space travel, Bhatt believes his outsider perspective 'is actually an advantage,' he said, echoing how fresh eyes sometimes see what industry veterans miss. Of course, unlike the iterate-fast mentality of companies like Robinhood that can roll out, and also sometimes roll back, software features, space hardware requires a higher-stakes approach. You only get one shot when your satellite launches. 'We build one spacecraft, we bolt it to the fairing inside of the SpaceX rocket, we put it in space, and it detaches, and then the thing better work,' Bhatt said. 'You can't go up there and tighten the bolt.' Asked during the sit-down how he pressure-tests that spacecraft, Bhatt said that Aetherflux is pursuing a 'hardware-rich' approach, which means building and testing components while refining designs. 'The right balance is not waiting five years, 10 years, 15 years, 20 years, as is the case with many important space programs,' he said. 'People's careers are oftentimes shorter than that.' He also noted that if Aetherflux succeeds, the implications extend far beyond military applications. Space-based solar power could provide baseload renewable energy, or solar power that works day and night, anywhere on Earth. That might mean turning upside down the ways we currently think about energy distribution, offering power to remote locations without massive infrastructure investments, and providing emergency power during disasters. Aetherflux has already hired a mix of physicists, mathematicians, and engineers from Lawrence Livermore Labs, Rivian, Cruise, and SpaceX, among other places, and Bhatt said the 25-person organization is still hiring. 'If you are the kind of person that wants to work on stuff that's super, super difficult, please come and contact us,' he told attendees. He has more than his reputation riding on what happens from here. Bhatt self-funded Aetherflux's first $10 million, and he also contributed to a more recent $50 million round that was led by Index Ventures and Interlagos, and included Bill Gates's Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, and NEA, among others. Its timeline is aggressive, too. The plan is to launch a demonstration satellite precisely one year from now. But there's a prototype for Bhatt's approach. GPS started as a DARPA project before becoming ubiquitous civilian infrastructure. Similarly, Aetherflux is working closely with DARPA's beaming expert, Dr. Paul Jaffe, who Bhatt called 'a pretty good friend to our company.' Jaffe also works with other companies developing similar technology, positioning DARPA as a bridge between military applications and commercial potential. 'There's this precedent of doing stuff in space where there's a really important part of working with the government,' Bhatt said. 'But we actually think, over time, as the technology matures and things like [SpaceX's reusable super heavy-lift launch vehicle] Starship really open up commercial access to space, this is not going to be just a Department of Defense thing.'
Yahoo
21 minutes ago
- Yahoo
David Zaslav will take a pay cut after Warner Bros. Discovery splits up—with a big hit to his bonus
CEO David Zaslav's pay package will be impacted by the upcoming company split. While he will earn less, he has been given options that could let him pocket $150 million if the company hits targets. Zaslav earned $51.9 million last year. The looming split of Warner Bros. Discovery is going to impact CEO David Zaslav's paycheck, in both negative and potentially positive ways. After collecting a pay package of $51.9 million last year, making him one of the highest-paid CEOs in the country, Zaslav is facing cuts in the coming year, reports the Wall Street Journal. Under a new contract offered by the board, he will retain his $3 million annual salary, but his target bonus would fall from $22 million last year to $6 million moving forward (with a cap of $12 million). In addition, he would receive a target of $15.5 million in equity next year, then $7.5 million in following years. Beyond that, though, Zaslav was given options for 21 million shares last week. He's also due to get at least 3 million more shares in January. He will become 40% vested in those over five years, with additional vesting benchmarks happening if the company's stock price increases in three levels over that time by 20% to 65%. Should all of the targets be hit, those options could let him pocket $150 million. The new pay package will kick in only if the split occurs by the end of next year. Zaslav's salary has historically been controversial. Earlier this month, shareholders of Warner Bros. Discovery voted down his compensation package, as well as that of other top executives, in a 'Say on Pay' vote. That vote, however, was symbolic and nonbinding, and the board gave Zaslav his $51.9 million. The media and entertainment giant announced on June 9 that it will separate into two publicly traded companies through a tax-free transaction. Zaslav will lead the streaming and studios company, which will oversee movie properties and the HBO Max streaming service. Gunnar Wiedenfels, who has been CFO since 2022, will become CEO of global networks, which will include cable channel businesses CNN, TNT, TBS, Discovery, and more. Zaslav has been CEO of WBD since 2022. His pay rate is higher than that of several competitors, including Disney's Bob Iger ($41.4 million), Comcast's Brian Roberts ($33.9 million), and SiriusXM's Jennifer Witz ($32.1 million). This story was originally featured on Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
