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Best Buy logos and shop on South Edmonton Common. Friday, May 20, 2022, in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.

Arthur Widak | Nurphoto | Getty Images

best buy said Friday it was laying off hundreds of store workers across the country as more of its shoppers shop online and consumer electronics sales slack.

A company spokesman confirmed the layoffs, however, declined to share the specific number. The news was first reported by the Wall Street Journal.

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In a statement, Best Buy said it is “evolving our stores and the experiences we offer to better reflect changes in customer shopping behaviors, as well as how we organize our teams to ensure we continue to deliver our expertise, our products.” and provide the best possible service.”

The retailer framed the job cuts as a shift in its priorities, saying Best Buy plans to hire thousands of frontline workers and invest in growing areas like its Totaltech membership program and healthcare business.

At the end of January, Best Buy had more than 90,000 employees in the US and Canada. That’s down from the nearly 125,000 employees it had in early 2020, according to the company’s financial records.

The US job market remains strong and the job market remains tight. The unemployment rate was 3.5% as more people went back to work after the Covid pandemic, according to the latest employment report from the Department of Labour.

Still, retailers, including Best Buy, have adopted a cautious tone as shoppers pull back in some categories like consumer electronics. Retailers saw weaker Durable Goods sales as consumers pay more for essentials due to inflation and start spending more on services, e.g. B. for booking flights or eating in restaurants.

Best Buy is also following a period when many of its customers bought new laptops, kitchen appliances, and home theater systems in the early years of the pandemic. A lot of what it sells are large items that people don’t replace often.

Digital distribution has also become a more significant part of the business. About a third of Best Buy’s U.S. sales came from its online business for the fiscal year ended January, compared to 19% for the fiscal year ended January 2020, the company’s CEO Corie Barry said at his announcement of fourth quarter results at . Sales by phone, chat or virtually have also increased, she said.

Still, Best Buy’s roughly 900 US stores remain a key part of the shift: Barry said more than 40% of online sales are picked up in-store.

Boeing 737 Max aircraft stand parked at the company’s manufacturing facility in Renton, Washington on November 18, 2020.

David Ryder | Getty Images

Boeing warned on Thursday that it is likely to have to reduce deliveries of its 737 Max aircraft because of a problem with a part manufactured by the supplier Spirit AeroSystems.

Boeing said the issue was not an “immediate flight safety issue and the operating fleet is safe to continue operating.”

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However, the issue is likely to affect a significant number of undelivered 737 MAX aircraft, both in production and in storage,” the manufacturer said in a statement.

The problem, the latest in a series of production woes, hits Boeing as it scrambles to ramp up production and deliveries of its best-selling plane while customers wait for new jetliners to capitalize on a recovery in travel.

Boeing shares fell 4% in after-hours trading on Thursday after the problem emerged. Spirit AeroSystems shares fell nearly 8%.

Spirit makes some of the fuselages used on Boeing jets and said in a statement that it had notified Boeing of a “quality issue” with certain 737 models.

“Spirit is working to develop an inspection and repair for the affected hulls. We continue to coordinate closely with our customer to resolve this issue and minimize the impact while continuing to focus on safety,” the company said.

Boeing has notified the Federal Aviation Administration of the issue and is working to inspect and fix the fuselages as needed, the company said.

“We expect fewer 737 MAX deliveries in the near term while this required work is completed. We regret the impact this issue will have on affected customers and are in contact with them regarding their delivery schedule,” Boeing said in a statement. “We will provide additional information in the coming days and weeks as we better understand the impact on delivery.”

The FAA did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

It’s the latest production problem for Boeing and its customers. Boeing suspended deliveries of its 787 Dreamliners for several weeks earlier this year to fix a data analysis error, and in 2021 and 2022 the company struggled with other manufacturing errors on the widebody jets that halted deliveries for months.

The company on Tuesday reported delivering 64 aircraft in March, the highest number since December, amid an industry-wide shortage of new jets.

Airline executives have cited aircraft shortages as one of the biggest challenges in increasing air travel ahead of the peak travel season.

– CNBC’s Leslie Josephs and Phil LeBeau contributed to this report.

Rent the runway Losses narrowed in fourth-quarter results reported Wednesday as the digital retailer continues to streamline costs and work toward profitability.

Despite the improvements the company has made, its outlook for fiscal 2023 and the first quarter fell short of analysts’ estimates. The share price fell more than 6% in after-hours trading.

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Here’s how fashion rentals performed in the fourth quarter versus Wall Street expectations, based on a survey of analysts by Refinitiv:

• Loss per share: 40 cents vs. 51 cents expected
• Revenue: $75.4 million versus $75.2 million expected

The company’s reported net loss for the three-month period ended Jan. 31 was $26.2 million, or 40 cents a share, compared to a loss of $39.3 million, or 62 cents a share, a year earlier.

Revenue rose to $75.4 million for the quarter, up 18% from $64.1 million a year earlier.

In the first quarter of fiscal 2023, the company expects revenue of between $72 million and $74 million, down from analysts’ guidance of $76.8 million, and an adjusted EBITDA margin of 2% to 3%.

For the full year, the company expects sales of between $320 million and $330 million. Analysts had expected full-year 2023 revenue of $346 million, according to Refinitiv consensus estimates.

It forecasts an adjusted EBITDA margin of 7% to 8% and a nearly 50% reduction in cash spend year over year.

Rent the Runway, which offers subscription services for renting clothes and accessories and also offers a la carte service, has embarked on a path to profitability after a couple of years of roller-coaster rides decimated its market cap and plummeted its share price.

Amid the Covid pandemic, the company took a hit when consumers suddenly no longer felt the need to rent clothes and accessories for work and parties. Since then, the number of subscribers has recovered, hitting a record high in April after the subscription model was changed.

In March, the company permanently added an additional article to each show to enhance its value proposition to customers, and as of April 8, the company had 141,205 active subscribers, the highest active subscriber count since its inception in 2009. Active subscribers include those with paused memberships.

“This launch has brought 25% more value to our consumers with minimal impact on our gross margins. So we’ve been able to deliver value while maintaining those really financially healthy gross margins,” Rent the Runway co-founder and CEO Das told CNBC, Jennifer Hyman.

“And we see a couple of other benefits. First, we’re seeing improvements in loyalty across the customer base. We’re seeing improvements in re-entry rates, allowing people who had churned in the past to return to the organization, and we’re seeing improvements in pause reactivation, allowing people who were previously in a paused state to reactivate.”

At the end of the fiscal year, Rent the Runway had 126,712 active subscribers, a 10% increase over the same period last year. In total, the company counted 171,998 subscribers, including people with paused subscriptions. That’s an 8% year-over-year increase since the end of fiscal 2021.

The company expects its active subscriber base to grow more than 25% over the next fiscal year.

Investors have been watching when Rent the Runway will achieve profitability, which Hyman says will result from expanding its subscriber base and is “a stone’s throw away.”

“By the time we get to 185,000 subscribers, we will have achieved free cash flow profitability on a maintenance basis, and that means we can cover all of our fixed costs, variable costs and the cost of our inventory to service those 185,000 subscribers,” Hyman said .

“Most of our internal company resources are directed towards improving and innovating the customer experience,” she said. “We’ve already built the infrastructure we need to scale, we’ve built the technology, we’ve built operations, so now we can devote our entire workforce to improving the customer experience.”

Also on Wednesday, the company announced that Scarlett O’Sullivan, chief financial officer, will step down effective May 25 and will be replaced by Sid Thacker, the company’s current senior vice president. O’Sullivan will remain as an advisor on an interim basis following the termination of the role.

Read the full results announcement here.