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CNBC Finance

Cruise companies aim to keep fuel costs down. Their strategies for doing so differ

Carnival, Royal Caribbean and Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings posted strong earnings for their most recent quarters despite rising fuel prices. How the leading cruise companies navigate fuel costs boils down to starkly different strategies. Oil prices have skyrocketed since the U.S.-Israel war with Iran began on Feb. 28. Brent crude oil reached a six-month high on Friday, settling at $116.72 per barrel. With no clear end in sight for the conflict in the Middle East, the pressure affecting cruise ships' lifeblood seems poised to last into the holiday travel season and beyond. Both Royal Caribbean and Norwegian practice "hedging," or a strategy of using derivatives to reduce exposure to swings in the price of fuel, to account for sharp increases. Carnival CEO Josh Weinstein, on the other hand, told CNBC in an interview last month that cutting fuel consumption is the best way to avert the effects of expensive fuel. "At the end of the day, fuel is an input cost for us. The best thing that we can do to control that cost is to use less," Weinstein said at the time. Jefferies analyst David Katz told CNBC in an interview that companies that hedge do so primarily to manage the cost of fuel, but also to manage Wall Street expectations and prevent hectic stock trading based on fluctuations in the price of fuel. "When you're public, the Street will trade your stock around based on the price of fuel," Katz said. "The Street's argument is that volatility puts pressure on your multiple." "While it is mathematically most likely true that over the long term it is more expensive," he explained. "The benefit of having less fuel volatility in the model and less trading volatility is [it's] good for your multiple." Despite the potential positives of the strategy, Carnival has maintained the stance it has held since 2019: Cutting fuel consumption works better than hedging. And Carnival's third-quarter earnings report last month suggests the strategy may be paying off. Carnival beat analysts' expectations on both the top and bottom lines for its most recent quarter and reported an all-time high net income of $1.9 billion. Weinstein told CNBC in an interview on "Squawk on the Street" following the release that the company has been "maniacal" about cutting its fuel consumption, saying it's slashed its unit fuel consumption rate by 26% since 2019.

Cruise companies aim to keep fuel costs down. Their strategies for doing so differ
Asia-Pacific
The Straits Times

British telecoms firm Virgin Media O2 to cut thousands of jobs, Sky News reports

British telecommunications operator Virgin Media O2, which is jointly owned by Liberty Global and Spain’s Telefonica, will cut thousands of jobs in a sweeping shake-up, Sky News reported on Oct 31, citing people close to the company. Up to 4,000 of Virgin Media O2’s 16,000 employees could be affected, although the precise number of job cuts has yet to be finalised, the report said. Most of the job cuts are expected to affect non-customer-facing roles, while a number of senior leadership changes are already under way, the report said. The company is also expected to review its usage of contractors and suppliers in an effort to reduce costs, the report said. The Financial Times reported in July that the company’s owners were weighing options to reduce the company’s £22 billion (S$37.7 billion) debt pile. In September, the Financial Times reported Virgin Media O2’s shareholders were seeking to reduce costs by about £600 million. REUTERS

British telecoms firm Virgin Media O2 to cut thousands of jobs, Sky News reports
North America
Fortune

Cisco chief found a 27-year-old ex-founder ‘buried away in the organization doing something unstrategic’—now he’s upgrading 98% of its code

Gen Z can’t catch a break. Entry-level jobs are vanishing; some 40% of bosses say they plan to hire fewer grads because AI can do the job cheaper, and young workers are routinely slammed for showing up late and refusing to put in overtime for free. Cisco’s president and chief product officer Jeetu Patel isn’t buying it—he’s just handed one of the company’s biggest jobs to a 27-year-old he found hidden in the org chart “five levels” below him. “I’ve given him unlimited tokens because he’s going to refactor code,” Patel told Fortune at a small roundtable dinner. “So I’m like, you can go, you can go nuts.” The “him” is Padmanabhan Krishnamurthy, or “Paddy,” as Patel affectionately calls him. He joined Cisco in 2025 after the $429 billion tech giant acquired EzDubs, the real-time translation startup Krishnamurthy cofounded in 2023. And despite coming in as a former founder with CEO experience, he was, in Patel’s words, “buried away in the organization doing something unstrategic.” That changed when Patel dropped into Cisco’s San Francisco office, and the pair got talking. Krishnamurthy reckoned he could rewrite Cisco’s legacy code with a two-person team. Patel says even the most AI-forward people on his own team weren’t thinking that way. So he has given himself four weeks to prove it, with the final goal of refactoring 98% of Cisco’s legacy code within 24 months. Now, he’s on the hunt for more Paddys: young hires who will “challenge the system and the status quo,” or, as he puts it, be “an energizer bunny that just goes out and kind of revs everyone up.” At most companies, only someone with decades of experience under their belt would be trusted with a project this size. Patel thinks that’s a problem. “If you don’t hire the early-in-career [workers], and you just let your workforce continue the way that they were, where do fresh ideas get injected? How do you challenge the status quo?” he said. Seasoned staff can still come up with new ideas, Patel added. What they can’t do is ask the questions that only someone with no experience would think to ask. And getting the two to get along isn’t always smooth. Patel admits that putting a Gen Zer in a room with people who’ve been at Cisco for decades can create friction—but he says that’s the point. “Tension is good,” he said. “I actually try to create tension in the teams because you want to have enough friction on the ideas. You don’t want to have friction with people and personalities.” “What you have to do is establish enough trust with people to say you are going to be expected to create unreasonable goals for yourself,” he added. “And so, in order to go out and achieve those unreasonable goals, think outside of the box.”

Cisco chief found a 27-year-old ex-founder ‘buried away in the organization doing something unstrategic’—now he’s upgrading 98% of its code
North America
Fortune

Grandson of Reese’s inventor says Hershey is selling a ‘total imitation’ of the candy recipe. The rest of the family insists it tastes the same

Orange is all but synonymous with Halloween. You have pumpkins, trick-or-treat baskets, costumes featuring a certain NBA team or the soccer team from a certain European country. And you’ll see it stacked highest in checkout aisles across the country: Halloween is Reese’s holiday. Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups were the top Halloween candy in Instacart’s and DoorDash’s order data last year. (Unsurprisingly, a third of October candy sales occur in its final week.) Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups—for those among us who live under a rock and missed the “You got your chocolate in my peanut butter” commercials that ran for years starting in the 1970s (in one, bizarrely, a woman walks down the street eating peanut butter straight from the jar)—have been around for nearly a century. The inventor, H.B. Reese, a former dairy farmer and shipping foreman for chocolatier Milton Hershey, mixed simple chocolate and peanut butter and started selling candy out of his home. The product quickly exploded in popularity, and to this day, that orange wrapper is all but synonymous with the candy. For years, parents would look through a child’s Halloween haul and attempt to allot a portion or else, they noted, “your teeth will fall out.” In these instances, parents were alleged to have taken “the good ones” from their children’s loot, and, objectively, among those reserved would be a Reese’s product. But that was until recently, when debates over whether the recipe has changed have caused some connoisseurs of the orange-wrapped concoction to question their taste: Did they really like this stuff as a kid? Or did the recipe actually change? These questions culminated earlier this year in a public spat between H.B. Reese’s grandson and the company that bought his grandfather’s invention: The Hershey Co. In a retirement community in West Palm Beach, Fla., Brad Reese, 71, has spent eight months accusing the Hershey Co. of cheapening the candy his grandfather invented. In Hershey, Pa., where the cups are still made, his cousin Becky Hilgers speaks for the rest of the family, and she wants him to stop. “Hershey’s killing Hershey,” Brad Reese told Fortune. “This is not the Hershey Company. It’s not the H.B. Reese candy. It’s not my company. My grandfather founded it. It is a total imitation. It’s a fraud.” “I’m not sure what motivates him,” Hilgers said. “But he periodically does this.” Between them stands Hershey. The company has conceded that it changed the coating on some Reese’s products and says it will change them back in 2027, and that those changes came before its current leadership took over. It says Brad Reese, who has never worked for the company, doesn’t understand how a global candy business operates. And it pointed to its third-quarter earnings, released Thursday, as evidence of how much people still love Reese’s. Hershey has a repertoire of products, from classics like Kisses and its milk chocolate bars to Kit Kats and Almond Joys. But Reese’s stands apart from the rest of the lineup in sheer volume. It became the company’s top seller in 1969 and has remained so ever since. While Hershey doesn’t break out sales by brand, Reese’s is its flagship, bringing in $3 billion a year, or roughly a quarter of the company’s sales, according to a person familiar with Hershey’s operations. The family’s stake started in 1963, when H.B. Reese’s six sons merged his company into Hershey. Hershey exchanged 666,316 shares of its stock for the Reese company, according to Hershey’s 1963 annual report, a deal worth about $23 million at the time. Not every branch of the family kept them. “Some people hung on to their money more than others,” Hilgers said. She declined to further elaborate. “We were all fortunate and blessed to share in the success of my grandfather. I’ll just put it that way.” Brad Reese was 7 when the company was sold. He declined to say whether he holds Hershey stock. The fight began on Feb. 14, often perceived as the holiday when absent-minded partners rush to the local pharmacy to grab a heart-shaped box of chocolates as a last-minute reprieve. That day, Reese opened a bag of Reese’s Unwrapped Mini Hearts, tried one, threw them out, and posted an open letter on LinkedIn. The label, he said, read only “chocolate candy” and peanut butter crème, not milk chocolate and peanut butter.

Grandson of Reese’s inventor says Hershey is selling a ‘total imitation’ of the candy recipe. The rest of the family insists it tastes the same
North America
Fortune

Weakened Netanyahu spreads claims of malfeasance by Arab-led parties as his party claims Israel’s election was ‘stolen’

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s party on Thursday amplified unsubstantiated allegations that Arab-led parties had “stolen” the election, potentially with foreign assistance, as final results showed his bloc had lost its majority in parliament. The opposition accused Netanyahu of demonizing the Arab population after a historic showing by Arab-led parties in an attempt to delegitimize the election. If the rest of the opposition teams up with Arab parties, a rare and politically risky move, they could potentially form a majority government in parliament, the Knesset. Results released by election officials on Thursday showed Netanyahu’s bloc winning 53 seats in the 120-member assembly, well below the 68 seats it had controlled at its peak in the previous parliament. His main opposition won 48 seats and Arab-led parties secured the other 19. The count is complete, but the results still need to be certified and submitted to the country’s president next Wednesday. Netanyahu’s party, Likud, has been spreading claims of malfeasance by Arab-led parties since exit polls indicated the prime minister had suffered a setback in Tuesday’s vote. But it ramped up the rhetoric after the head of Israel’s election committee, Supreme Court Justice Noam Sohlberg, said that “serious suspicions” of foreign interference had been brought before him. In a letter to the Shin Bet security agency, Sohlberg said he could not verify the claims. But given their serious nature, he asked the agency to investigate. Netanyahu’s party responded with an inflammatory statement: “The elections in Israel have been stolen!” it said, claiming — without evidence — that the alleged election interference was “aimed at facilitating a foreign takeover of the Knesset, the Islamization of Israel and toppling of the right wing government.” Israeli media reported that members of Netanyahu’s party were accusing Qatar — a country that many Israelis view as a patron of Hamas, the Gaza-based militant group. Qatar issued a quick denial, calling the allegations “ridiculous and dangerous.” As it announced its results early Friday, the election commission said the investigation was based on classified intelligence. In a video statement, the commission’s acting director general, Dean Livne, did not elaborate, but warned that reports about the probe had been “entirely unfounded.” “It does not affect the final results that will be submitted to the president, nor does it concern any particular sector of the population,” he said. Netanyahu’s main rival, former military chief Gadi Eisenkot, said Likud was trying to delegitimize the results. “They are doing this because they lost,” he said.

Weakened Netanyahu spreads claims of malfeasance by Arab-led parties as his party claims Israel’s election was ‘stolen’
North America
Fortune

Spanish PM, facing reelection, says it’s ‘unacceptable’ to suffer two high-speed rail accidents in one year as at least 68 die in collision

A high-speed train slammed into another that had stopped on the tracks Wednesday in Spain, killing at least 68 people and injuring dozens in the second deadly rail collision this year. The regional government of Castilla La Mancha confirmed the death toll and said another 58 people were receiving medical treatment at hospitals. Rescue workers searched the wreckage through the day for survivors and bodies. The collision came just nine months after another deadly crash involving high-speed trains operated by the same two companies in southern Spain in January. “Today all of Spain is grieving,” Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said from the crash site, where he announced that his government would declare three days of mourning. Sánchez called for increased safety measures to restore confidence in a high-speed rail system that was once a source of national pride. “It is unacceptable for a country like Spain to suffer two high-speed rail accidents in the same year,” said Sánchez, who faces an election on Nov. 29. Spain’s rail system operator ADIF said the crash occurred Wednesday morning in the central province of Toledo, involving two high-speed trains carrying hundreds of passengers and heading south in the same direction from Madrid to Seville. A train operated by the state-owned RENFE company struck the rear of another train operated by private company IRYO that was stopped. The collision derailed two carriages on the tail of the IRYO train and the front of the RENFE train. Samy Paul, a British tourist, described the shock of the impact to The Associated Press after being rescued from the RENFE train. “Suddenly, everything started falling apart. Bang! We fell down,” he said. “We realized carriage two, carriage one, all gone, all smashed. There was blood all over.” David Gómez, a construction worker, was working nearby when he heard the crash and ran to help, he told the newspaper El País. “People were trying to get out through the windows … We cut through some fences to access the area and treated people with the first-aid kits we had brought until emergency services arrived,” he said. “As I was trying to pull a young woman out, there was a piece of a leg.”

Spanish PM, facing reelection, says it’s ‘unacceptable’ to suffer two high-speed rail accidents in one year as at least 68 die in collision
North America
CNBC Finance

Eli Lilly blows past estimates, hikes sales outlook as Zepbound and Mounjaro demand surge again

Eli Lilly on Thursday reported third-quarter earnings and revenue that blew past estimates and hiked its full-year sales outlook, as demand for its blockbuster weight loss drug Zepbound and diabetes treatment Mounjaro soared again. Despite that strength, sales of its new GLP-1 obesity pill Foundayo, which launched in the U.S. in April, were under Wall Street's expectations for the quarter. The pharmaceutical giant now expects 2026 revenue to come in between $91 billion and $92 billion, up from a previous guidance of $85 billion to $87 billion. Lilly projects its full-year adjusted earnings will be between $35 and $36 per share, which compares with a previous outlook of $35.50 to $36.50 per share. The company said it raised the underlying profit guidance by $4.07 per share at the midpoint, but noted that it is offset by $4.57 per share in charges tied to deals in the quarter. Lilly's massive diabetes and obesity windfall – and market share lead over chief rival Novo – shows no signs of slowing down, even as the company grapples with lower net prices in the U.S. The pharma giant is converting its massive profits into a dealmaking spree, most recently striking an agreement to buy Merida Biosciences to develop a new class of treatments for serious autoimmune and allergic diseases. Resilient demand for Zepbound and Mounjaro has helped fuel several strong quarters for Lilly despite lower prices for the medications in the U.S., which came after a drug pricing deal struck with the Trump administration last year. In a release, Lilly also pointed to expanded U.S. coverage for obesity care, referring to Medicare's decision to start covering GLP-1s for weight loss in July under a temporary pilot program. Mounjaro's worldwide revenue rose 65% to $10.72 billion for the quarter, including U.S. sales of about $5 billion. That surpassed the $10.10 billion in worldwide sales and $4.79 billion in U.S. revenue that analysts were expecting for the quarter, according to StreetAccount. Mounjaro notably saw strength internationally, with sales outside the U.S. jumping 93%. Zepbound, which entered the market roughly three years ago, posted $5.35 billion in revenue for the third quarter. That's up 49% from the year-earlier period, as demand for the drug also rose while realized prices dropped. The vast majority of those sales came from the U.S. Analysts were expecting $5.09 billion in global sales for Zepbound, including $4.99 billion from the U.S., according to StreetAccount. Lilly's newly launched obesity pill, Foundayo, which won U.S. approval in April, took in $184 million in sales for the third quarter. That fell under analyst forecasts of around $229 million in sales, StreetAccount estimates showed. It marks the second earnings report that includes revenue from the GLP-1 pill, which is competing head-to-head with a rival oral drug from Novo that launched in January.

Eli Lilly blows past estimates, hikes sales outlook as Zepbound and Mounjaro demand surge again
North America
CNBC Finance

Merck tops quarterly estimates, hikes profit outlook as new Keytruda form shows strength

Merck on Thursday topped third-quarter estimates and hiked its adjusted profit outlook, as its immunotherapy Keytruda, including a newer injectable form of the drug, showed stronger-than-expected sales. The pharmaceutical giant now expects adjusted earnings to be between $2.77 and $2.82 per share. That adjusted profit outlook is up from a previous range of $2.66 to $2.76 per share. The guidance now includes a one-time charge of $400 million, or 12 cents per share, related to its licensing agreement with the Chinese cancer drugmaker SciBrunch. Merck also narrowed the low end of its 2026 revenue guidance, now expecting sales between $66.8 billion and $67.3 billion. That compares to a previous outlook of $66.3 billion to $67.3 billion. The company has been on a deal spree as it races to offset generic competition for Keytruda after key patents begin expiring in 2028. Merck is also positioning the new form of the drug, Keytruda Qlex, as a cornerstone of its growth strategy. The goal is to transition patients from the original intravenous version to Qlex, considered a more convenient under-the-skin injection. This strategy allows the company to defend its market share and sustain Keytruda's blockbuster sales beyond the original version's loss of exclusivity. Keytruda raked in $8.60 billion in sales for the quarter, beating the $7.73 billion that analysts were expecting, according to StreetAccount. That includes $830 million in sales for Qlex – the highest seen in a quarter since it launched in 2025. Analysts were expecting $649 million in sales, StreetAccount estimates said. The blowout quarter for the shot suggests it could soon eventually be a multibillion-dollar product annually. The company posted a net income of $5.07 billion, or $2.04 per share, for the quarter. That compares with net income of $5.79 billion, or $2.32 per share, for the year-earlier period. Excluding acquisition and restructuring costs, Merck posted earnings of $2.49 per share for the third quarter. Merck raked in $18.09 billion in revenue for the quarter, up 5% from the same period a year earlier. Winrevair, which is used to treat a rare, deadly lung condition, generated $694 million in sales for the quarter, up 93% from the same period a year earlier. Analysts were expecting sales of $645 million. Meanwhile, the Gardasil vaccine, which prevents cancers from HPV, a very common sexually transmitted infection, drew about $2 billion in sales due to higher demand in the U.S. That tops the $1.76 billion in sales that analysts were expecting.

Merck tops quarterly estimates, hikes profit outlook as new Keytruda form shows strength
North America
Fortune

‘I get more meetings because of the brand’: BlackBerry’s CEO on keeping a famous name

Good morning. Interbrand came out with its 2026 Best Global Brands list yesterday. Apple occupies the top spot. It first hit No. 1 in 2013, the year smartphone pioneer BlackBerry fell off the list. I wrote a lot of stories about BlackBerry over the years, from its stunning rise to its precipitous fall. There have been books, case studies, even a “comedy” about co-founders Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis that you can now stream on Netflix. And there’s also a serious company that continues to proudly boast the name BlackBerry, even though it no longer makes BlackBerry handsets and went by the name Research In Motion when it did. So when I met with BlackBerry CEO John Giamatteo recently, the first question I asked was why he stays attached to such a notorious name. After all, the company now makes its money—more than $600 million and growing this year, compared with close to $20 billion at its height—from a business called BlackBerry Secure Communications and the very popular QNX software that powers more than 275 million smart vehicles and is expanding into robotaxis, medical devices, and robots. The main reason is that having a recognized brand makes the company stand out in the crowd. “I get more meetings because of the brand,” he told me. “If I’m just ‘John from QNX,’ it’s like, ‘QNX what?’ I love the fact that it gets you in the door almost across the board.” The cost? “I have to spend the first 10 minutes of every conversation, whether it’s an investor, whether it’s a media, whether it’s a customer, recalibrating people on who we are and what we’re doing,” he said. “But more times than not, people are like, ‘Oh, great, I like them. Glad to hear you guys are doing so well.’” That said, a little attention can go a long way. “Being a public company, you have to have a proctology exam every quarterly result,” says Giamatteo, who joined the company as president in 2021, becoming CEO in 2023. “But I net out that it’s probably better to be public.” To him, the BlackBerry brand is less a cautionary tale about missing market shifts than a testament to resilience and reinvention. Balsillie and Lazaridis also deserve credit for having the foresight to buy QNX software for $200 million back in 2010. Says Giamatteo: “BlackBerry will endure.” Certainly, it’s got a sticky name.Contact CEO Daily via Diane Brady at diane.brady@fortune.com Alphabet shares dropped more than 11% after hours as slower search growth and heavy AI spending overshadowed Google Cloud’s revenue, which more than doubled to $30.7 billion. Quarterly capital spending reached $51.4 billion. Microsoft’s Azure cloud revenue grew 48%, lifting total quarterly revenue to $92.3 billion. Shares were up more than 4% in initial after-hours trading. Capital spending rose to $45.2 billion as Microsoft continued building capacity to meet demand for AI services. Amazon is warning engineers against “tokenmaxxing”—using more AI simply to boost usage numbers—and says token counts are poor measures of productivity. In updated guidelines, the company encouraged engineers to explain when AI doesn’t help their work. S&P 500 futures are down 0.19% this morning. The last session closed up 0.28%. The STOXX Europe 600 was up 0.38% in early trading. The U.K.’s FTSE 100 was up 0.33% in early trading. Japan’s Nikkei 225 was up 1.10%. South Korea’s KOSPI was down 1.24%. China’s CSI 300 was down 1.03%. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng was down 0.59%. India’s NIFTY 50 was up 1.08%. Bitcoin is down at $80k.

‘I get more meetings because of the brand’: BlackBerry’s CEO on keeping a famous name