Business
Wayfair stock surges 20% as earnings beat, revenue jumps
Online home goods company Wayfair reported a jump in third-quarter revenue on Tuesday, as it beat Wall Street estimates on the top and bottom lines.
The company said total net revenue increased 8.1% year over year.
Here’s how the company performed in its third quarter, compared with what Wall Street was expecting, based on a survey of analysts by LSEG:
- Earnings per share: 70 cents adjusted vs. 43 cents expected
- Revenue: $3.12 billion vs. $3.02 billion expected
Wayfair shares climbed more than 20% on Tuesday.
For the period ended Sept. 30, Wayfair reported a net loss of $99 million, or 76 cents per share, compared with a loss of $74 million, or 60 cents per share, the year prior.
The company’s U.S. revenue rose 8.6% year over year to $2.7 billion, while international revenue climbed 4.6% to $389 million. Wayfair said its total net revenue excluding its Germany exit jumped 9% year over year.
The revenue increase comes as the overall home goods sector has seen recent struggles, partly due to rising inflation and lower home turnover during a stretch of high interest rates. The sector has also faced challenges in President Donald Trump‘s furniture tariffs, in addition to other duties — though rates on imported goods from many countries are now lower than Trump proposed earlier this year.
CFO Kate Gulliver told CNBC that the company doesn’t credit the growth to any macro-related factors like tariffs or interest rates.
“We think it’s really being driven by our share gain, and that, we believe is really coming from a confluence of factors and initiatives that we started over a year ago that are now starting to bear fruit,” Gulliver said.
Those initiatives include what Gulliver calls the company’s “core recipe” – price, product availability and speed – in addition to growth from its loyalty program, site improvement and physical retail. The retailer opened its first large store in Illinois last year to ride the wave of physical stores’ comeback. Based on that success, it plans to open another location in Yonkers, New York, in early 2027.
Though tariff policy has created uncertainty for the company, she said it has been able to lean on the strength of its model: operating as a marketplace on the back end and as a retailer on the front end.
Wayfair saw a post-pandemic slump in sales in what was a “somewhat challenged” time for the home goods category, Gulliver said, but the past year has brought increased momentum. Despite tariff volatility, Wayfair’s stock had gained roughly 95% this year as of Monday’s close.
CEO Niraj Shah added in the earnings release that the company’s delivered orders for the quarter grew 5% year over year.
“Our 6.7% Adjusted EBITDA margin marks the highest level achieved in Wayfair’s history outside of the pandemic period,” Shah said on a call with analysts. “As we’ve promised, substantial profitability flow through is powered by a strong contribution margin and fixed cost discipline as our business has returned to growth.”
Wayfair said its active customers totaled 21.2 million at the end of the quarter, a 2.3% decrease year over year.
Shah added on the Tuesday call that Wayfair’s growth plan is driven by “Wayfair-specific factors” and is “not reliant upon a recovery in the housing market.” He said the company saw few isolated examples of early purchases to avoid tariffs like a “short-lived” increase in large appliance sales in the early spring.
“We see our outperformance as structural share capture driven by our strong day-to-day execution against the core recipe, the early success of the new programs we’ve been able to launch and from the broad gains we have brought to bear from our technology team,” Shah said.
Business
SHANTI shields N-plants from safety oversight: Experts – The Times of India
NEW DELHI: The new nuclear energy bill, which was passed in Rajya Sabha by voice vote after a four-hour discussion while rejecting many amendments moved by opposition to send it to a parliamentary panel for scrutiny, marks a decisive shift in India’s nuclear governance, embedding safety oversight in law across the lifecycle of an atomic plant, unlike the existing framework that relied largely on executive discretion and post-accident accountability.Sustainable Harnessing of Nuclear Energy for Transforming India (SHANTI) Bill will allow private participation in India’s tightly controlled civil nuclear sector as the country seeks to meet its clean energy goals by 2047. As opposition raised safety and liability concerns, officials said it establishes a statutory safety regime that ensures continuous compliance rather than reliance on one-time permissions. It seeks to provide for a “pragmatic civil liability regime for nuclear damage and confer statutory status to Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB)”.Officials said unlike the previous law – in which nuclear safety oversight was shaped largely by broad executive authority and administrative rules – SHANTI fundamentally recasts the framework by shifting to a “statutory, lifecycle-based regulatory regime”. Govt manages radiation risks and radioactive waste, but does not mandate separate safety authorisations or legally bind safety obligations to each phase of a nuclear plant’s life. AERB’s stage-wise consent process for construction, commissioning and operation existed only as an administrative practice. Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage (CLND) Act, 2010 further reinforced a post-accident approach by focusing on compensation and insurance rather than prevention.“These laws (Atomic Energy Act and CLND Act) treated safety primarily as a post-damage responsibility, rather than a proactive governance requirement,” said an official. SHANTI separates “permission to operate” from “permission to operate safely”, requiring both a licence and an independent safety authorisation. Any activity involving radiation exposure risk – including construction, operation, transport, storage, decommissioning, or waste management – will now require explicit safety approval.It also consolidates regulation, enforcement, civil liability and dispute resolution within a single statute, reducing legal complexity and compliance uncertainty. “It grants a clear statutory authority to AERB to inspect facilities, investigate incidents, issue binding directions, and suspend or cancel operations that do not meet safety standards. Regulatory action is no longer dependent on executive discretion. Accident prevention is significantly enhanced by legally recognising serious risk situations as nuclear incidents, even without actual damage,” said the official. Core functions such as fuel enrichment, spent-fuel reprocessing, and heavy water production will remain exclusively under Centre’s control.Anujesh Dwivedi, partner at Deloitte India, said continuing with the existing legal framework would make it difficult for nuclear energy to replace thermal power in the long run. “Over decades, India added only about 8GW of nuclear capacity. Scaling this up to 100GW by 2047- and potentially 300GW or more by 2070 – required major reforms, which these regulations seek to address,” he said.Meanwhile, PM Modi said passing of the bill marks a “transformational moment for our technology landscape”.
Business
American Airlines no longer lets basic economy flyers earn miles
American Airlines
Grant Baldwin | Getty Images
American Airlines customers flying on basic economy fares will no longer earn frequent flyer miles or points toward elite status, the carrier said this week.
“We routinely evaluate our fare products to remain competitive in the marketplace. Customers who purchase a Basic Economy ticket on December 17, 2025 and beyond will not earn AAdvantage miles or Loyalty Points towards AAdvantage status,” it said. “Basic Economy customers will continue to receive one free personal item and one free carry-on bag, free snacks, soft drinks and in-flight entertainment.”
Elite loyalty members will still be eligible for first-class upgrades on domestic flights if they’re on basic economy tickets, an American spokeswoman told CNBC.
Basic economy tickets are airlines’ cheapest but most restrictive fares, rolled out across the industry over the past decade. Generally, they do not allow customers to change their tickets without fees or pick their seats in advance.
The move comes as airlines across the board have been chasing customers who are willing to spend more to fly. American has fallen behind large rivals Delta Air Lines and United Airlines in the post-Covid luxury travel boom.
American’s change, posted earlier by X user JonNYC, follows a similar policy by competitor Delta Air Lines, which said travelers on its Delta Main Basic, or basic economy tickets, wouldn’t receive Delta SkyMiles.
United Airlines does allow its MileagePlus loyalty program members to earn miles on basic economy tickets, but it has a different limitation: Basic economy customers on most flights aren’t allowed to bring a carry-on bag.
American had the same restriction after it launched basic economy fares but backpedaled in 2018.
Southwest Airlines this year launched its first no-frills basic fares that stipulate those customers will board last and get a seat assignment at check-in and earn miles at a lower rate than more expensive fares.
Business
Space funding surge: India’s private space sector raises $150 million so far this fiscal, says INSPACe chief – The Times of India
India’s space industry has attracted $150 million in funding so far in the current financial year, marking the highest-ever fund mobilisation since the government opened up the sector to private participation in 2020, INSPACe Chairman Pawan Goenka said on Thursday, PTI reported.Speaking at the India Economic Forum in New Delhi, Goenka said the funding milestone had been reached earlier this week and total investments were expected to cross $200 million by the end of the financial year. “This year will see the highest funding ever for the space sector,” he said, adding that the expected inflows would be more than double what the sector raised in the previous fiscal.Goenka said investor interest in India’s space ecosystem had picked up sharply, driven by policy reforms and expanding commercial opportunities. He added that INSPACe, which acts as both promoter and regulator for private participation in the space sector, was working to sensitise investors about emerging opportunities across launch services, satellites and downstream applications.The INSPACe chairman said India’s space economy was currently valued at around $8 billion and was projected to grow to $44 billion by 2033.He noted that much of the demand for space start-ups was coming from government departments, which had earlier relied largely on ISRO for technological solutions. Goenka added that the private sector would need to play a larger role in developing space technologies for government use.He also said private companies should increasingly look at space start-ups for technology solutions relevant to their own business needs.
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