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Mark Tritton, chief executive of Bed Bath & Beyond, says buyers are increasingly skipping national brand names and trying to try private label products, which are often cheaper.

“In 2020 alone, we’ve seen a migration to own brands across the industry, not just at home,” Tritton told CNBC’s Courtney Regan on Thursday morning. “Customers are open to new brands, discovering new brands, from trusted resources and retailers with whom they have a good relationship. … We believe Bed Bath and Beyond is well placed to be one of them.”

The big box retailer announced Wednesday that it will be launching six of its own brands over the next six months to get these items on shelves and on its website before the busy school and college season. The plan is to bring at least 10 private labels to market over the next two years while rebuilding around 450 Bed Bath & Beyond stores.

Later this month, Bed Bath & Beyond will make its debut with Nestwell, which sells bed and bath products. The Haven bathing brand is launched in April.

Tritton said the company also has a private label called Simply Essential in the works, which will sell more than 1,000 essential household items at competitive prices.

Bed Bath & Beyond predicts that private label sales will account for 30% of its business within three years, up from 10% today. The company said these efforts should also help increase profitability.

“We have … created a game plan for our business partners to communicate our new brands, the benefits and the ways they can create real joy in our customers’ homes,” said Tritton.

Bed Bath & Beyond shares fell 2% Thursday morning. The stock is up more than 180% over the past year. Bed Bath & Beyond has a market cap of $ 3.44 billion.

Here are the top news, trends, and analysis investors need to get their trading day started:

1. Stock futures indicate more weakness

Traders on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.

Source: NYSE

Futures linked to major US stock indices were lower, pointing to Wall Street for the third day in a row.

Futures contracts linked to the Dow Jones Industrial Average indicated a loss of around 50 points on opening. S&P 500 futures fell 0.2% and Nasdaq 100 futures lost 0.2%. Big Tech, badly hit in the previous session due to rising bond yields, continued to trade in the red on the pre-market. Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, Alphabet and Netflix all fell slightly in early trading.

Stocks posted heavy losses during Wednesday’s regular trading as rising bond yields frightened investors. The S&P 500 fell 1.3% while the DJIA was down 119 points, or 0.38%. The Nasdaq Composite was the relative underperformer, falling 2.7% as tech names fell.

Among the market-moving events on Thursday was the speech by Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell at the Wall Street Journal’s Jobs Summit.

2. Unemployment claims on deck

Married couple Renne Alva, 37, and Travis Wasicek, 43, sit among their belongings on Seawall Boulevard and hug to keep warm after record breaking winter temperatures in Galveston, Texas on February 18, 2021. The couple said they were last left homeless a year after losing their jobs due to the economic fallout from the global coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.

Adrees Latif | Reuters

Investors will also be informed of the pace of the labor market recovery when unemployment claims data is first released for the week ending February 27. Economists polled by Dow Jones forecast 750,000 first-time applicants.

The previous week, unemployment claims reached 730,000, well below the Dow Jones estimate of 845,000. The ongoing claims hit a new low in the pandemic-era just over 4.42 million.

3. Biden agrees to curb $ 1,400 of stimulus checks

United States President Joe Biden speaks during a virtual meeting with the House Democratic Caucus at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in Washington, DC on Wednesday, March 3, 2021.

Yuri Gripas | Abaca | Bloomberg | Getty Images

President Joe Biden has endorsed a plan to lower income caps for Americans to receive stimulus checks under the $ 1.9 trillion coronavirus aid package due to be passed in the coming days, a Democratic said Source on Wednesday with.

The structure would lower the House-approved ceilings on direct payments income. According to the lower chamber’s bill, individuals earning up to $ 100,000 (and joint applicants earning up to $ 200,000) would have received some amount. Under the new plan, the stimulus exam exit levels would be $ 1,400, $ 75,000 for single applicants, $ 112,500 for heads of household, and $ 150,000 for joint applicants.

The House is expected to approve the Senate version of the bill next week.

4. Melvin Capital gained more than 20% in February

This illustrative photo shows a person checking GameStop inventory on a smartphone in Los Angeles on February 17, 2021 while the Reddit, Citadel, Robinhood and Melvin Capital logos appear before the virtual hearing with GameStop inventories in the background.

Chris Delmas | AFP | Getty Images

5. The SpaceX Starship prototype rocket explodes after a successful landing

Starship’s SN10 prototype rocket is on the launchpad at the company’s Boca Chica, Texas facility.

SpaceX

SpaceX’s spaceship prototype exploded shortly after landing for the first time after a high-altitude flight test.

The cause of Wednesday’s explosion or whether it was intentional was not immediately clear. Elon Musk alternatively refers to explosions as “RUDs” or “Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly”.

The company test flew with the Starship rocket Serial Number 10 or SN10. SpaceX wanted to launch the prototype to an altitude of 10 kilometers or an altitude of 32,800 feet. There were no passengers on board the rocket, which is a development vehicle and flies autonomously.

– Follow all developments on Wall Street in real time with CNBC Pro’s live market blog. Find out about the latest pandemics on our coronavirus blog.

A woman receives the second component of the Gam-COVID-Vac (Sputnik V) COVID-19 vaccine.

Valentin Sprinchak | TASS | Getty Images

LONDON – The European Medicines Agency announced Thursday that it will begin assessing the Russian coronavirus sting Sputnik V as the block aims to speed up its vaccination program.

“The EMA will assess compliance with the usual EU standards for effectiveness, safety and quality by Sputnik V. While the EMA cannot predict the overall deadlines, the evaluation of a possible application should take less time than normal,” it says in one Declaration by the regulator.

The EMA uses an ongoing review to examine the data for the sting developed in Russia. This will allow the European Medical Authority to assess its effectiveness as it will have all the information it needs before the vaccine manufacturer can apply for formal approval. By analyzing the studies before submitting the application, the potential EMA approval could come faster than usual.

The news comes after some European countries announced they would be giving Sputnik V bypassing the regulator. Slovakia and Hungary have already ordered doses of the Russian sting, while the Czech Republic and Austria are considering the vaccine.

Chancellor Angela Merkel said in January that she was “open” to the idea of ​​producing Russia’s coronavirus vaccine in the European Union.

Negative pressure

European countries are under pressure to accelerate the adoption of Covid shocks as their program lags well behind other parts of the world such as Israel, the United States and the United Kingdom.

The region is still largely closed due to social restrictions, which has a negative impact on the economy and people’s livelihoods.

Austria and Denmark recently partnered with Israel to manufacture second generation vaccines to treat variants of Covid-19. At the time of the announcement, Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz mentioned that the EMA had approved vaccines to combat the pandemic too slowly.

The facility has approved three vaccines to date: Pfizer’s, AstraZeneca’s, and Moderna’s.

In addition, European countries have criticized pharmaceutical companies for some hurdles in manufacturing and supplying the vaccines.

The European nations have agreed that coordinated action is the best way to address the health emergency and tasked the European Commission with negotiating contracts with the pharmaceutical companies.

However, under European law, EU member states are still allowed to approve their own vaccines without waiting for approval at EU level.

The SN10 spacecraft prototype returns for a soft landing on a concrete slab at the company’s facility in Boca Chica, Texas.

SpaceX

SpaceX’s spaceship prototype exploded for the first time shortly after landing after a high-altitude flight test on Wednesday.

The cause of the explosion, or whether it was intentional, was not immediately clear. Elon Musk alternatively refers to explosions as “RUDs” or “Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly”.

The company test flew with the Starship rocket Serial Number 10 or SN10. SpaceX wanted to launch the prototype to an altitude of 10 kilometers or an altitude of 32,800 feet. There were no passengers on board the rocket as it is a development vehicle and flies autonomously.

The SN10 flight was similar to SpaceX’s December and February when it tested the SN8 and SN9 prototypes. Both earlier missiles served multiple development goals – including testing aerodynamics, turning off the engines one at a time, and turning them around to align for landing – but both prototypes exploded on impact when attempting to land and couldn’t slow down enough.

As with the SN8 and SN9, the goal of the SN10 flight was not necessarily to reach the maximum altitude, but rather to test several important parts of the spacecraft system. SpaceX fired all three engines to take off, then shut them off one by one as the rocket neared its intended altitude.

SN10 then transferred propellant from the main tanks to the collection tanks before turning for the “belly flop” re-entry maneuver – which allows it to descend through the air in a controlled manner using the missile’s four flaps. In the final moments of the descent, SpaceX turned the rocket over and brought it back into a vertical orientation. The Raptor engines were fired to slow down for landing.

“The third time is the allure, as the saying goes – we had a successful soft touchdown on the landing pad,” said John Insprucker, SpaceX principal integration engineer, on the company’s webcast

The spacecraft SN10 ignites its three engines and turns around before landing.

SpaceX

The Starship prototype stands about 150 feet tall, or about the size of a 15-story building, and is powered by three Raptor rocket engines. The rocket is made of stainless steel and represents the early versions of the rocket introduced in 2019.

“The Texas team has several more suborbital test vehicles under construction, with the number 11 going to be available on the pad in the near future,” Insprucker said.

Musk’s company develops Starship with the goal of bringing cargo and people on missions to the moon and Mars.

Starship is one of two “Manhattan projects” that SpaceX is developing at the same time. The other is the Starlink satellite internet program. Musk previously estimated that Starship would cost around $ 5 billion to fully develop, although SpaceX has not yet disclosed how much it has spent on the program.

The company raised $ 850 million in its most recent capital raise, valued at $ 74 billion, last month.

Musk remains “very confident” that Starship “will be safe enough for human transportation by 2023” – an ambitious target as the company began serious development and testing of the missile in early 2019.

But Musk’s schedule is crucial, as Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa has paid to fly a spacecraft around the moon until 2023. Maezawa announced Tuesday that he is inviting eight members of the public to join his DearMoon mission, which will be a six-day trip to the moon and back.

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