Boeing has lost more than $2 billion and counting on its Starliner spacecraft after a rough year in which the capsule’s first astronaut flight turned into a headache for NASA.

The Starliner program reported charges of $523 million for 2024 — its largest single-year loss to date — Boeing reported in a filing on Monday. The company noted that Starliner is under a fixed-price contract from NASA, so “there is ongoing risk that similar losses may have to be recognized in future periods.”

Since 2014, when NASA awarded Boeing with a nearly $5 billion fixed-price contract to develop Starliner, the company has recorded losses on the program almost every year.

Boeing’s program competes with Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which has flown 10 crew missions for NASA and counting on its Dragon capsules.

Last summer, Boeing’s first crew flight went awry after part of the capsule’s propulsion system malfunctioned. While Starliner delivered astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams to the International Space Station, NASA made the decision to bring Starliner back empty and use SpaceX to return the crew early this year — an agency choice that recently became politicized.

Neither Boeing nor NASA have provided details on how or when they plan to resolve the Starliner propulsion issue.

Boeing last week confirmed that Starliner Vice President Mark Nappi was leaving his role, Reuters reported, with the company’s ISS program manager John Mulholland named as his replacement. Mullholland previously led the Starliner program from 2011 to 2020.

Nearly four months ago, NASA said it was keeping “windows of opportunity for a potential Starliner flight in 2025,” but scheduled SpaceX to fly both its crews on missions launching in spring and late summer. NASA then specified that “the timing and configuration of Starliner’s next flight will be determined once a better understanding of Boeing’s path to system certification is established.”

The agency has not given an update on Starliner since making those comments in October.

Disney posted fiscal first-quarter earnings Wednesday that beat on the top and bottom lines, but revealed the beginnings of expected streaming subscriber losses at Disney+.

The company’s streaming business reported another quarter of profitability despite a 1% decline in subscribers for Disney+, the company’s flagship service. While domestic subscriptions for the platform increased around 1%, international numbers declined around 2%. 

Disney warned during its fiscal fourth-quarter report in November that it expected a “modest decline” in subscriptions during the December period. Disney told investors Wednesday that it expects another “modest decline” in subscribers during the second quarter. 

Total paid Disney+ subscriptions stand at 124.6 million, compared to 125.3 million at the end of the company’s fiscal fourth quarter. Total Hulu subscriptions rose 3% during the period to 53.6 million.

The slowdown in streaming subscriber growth follows an increase in prices for its services last year. Disney+’s average monthly revenue per paid subscriber increased roughly 4% to $7.99 due to those price hikes, the company said.

Disney’s stock was up about 2% in premarket trading.

Here is what Disney reported for the period ended December 28 compared with what Wall Street expected, according to LSEG

Disney’s net income increased nearly 23% to $2.64 billion, or $1.40 per share, from $2.15 billion or $1.04 per share, during the same quarter last year. Adjusting for one-time items including restructuring charges and impairments related to intangible Hulu assets, Disney reported adjusted earnings of $1.76 per share. 

Revenue increased 4.8% to $24.69 billion compared to $23.55 billion in the year-earlier period.

The company saw revenue gains across the board for its entertainment, sports and experience segments. 

Its entertainment division saw a 9% jump in revenue, reaching $10.87 billion. Operating income for the unit, which includes its direct-to-consumer, linear and content sales businesses, increased 95% to $1.7 billion during the quarter thanks to higher content sales and licensing. Linear continued to drag on overall results. 

Still, CEO Bob Iger remained positive on Wednesday’s call with investors when it came to the linear TV business, echoing similar comments made in November’s earnings call.

“They are not a burden at all. They are actually an asset,” Iger said Wednesday, noting that Disney is programming and funding the networks so they can feed into streaming.

While he said he wouldn’t rule out the possibility of changes to the TV networks in the future, he said that wouldn’t be now.

“We actually feel good about the hand that we have and the manner in which we’re managing both the linear and streaming businesses across the board,” Iger said.

Disney’s box office success helped lift the company’s results during the quarter.

The debut of “Moana 2” over Thanksgiving weekend helped push the box office to new heights. The animated sequel was still going strong at the box office through the new year, topping $1 billion during the Martin Luther King Jr. Day weekend. The company noted Wednesday its content sales/licensing and other operating income got a boost from “Moana 2.”

Overall, Disney dominated the box office in 2024, with the help of other films like Marvel’s “Deadpool & Wolverine” and Pixar’s “Inside Out 2.”

The company said it expects double-digit growth in operating income for the entertainment segment in fiscal 2025, with an increase in direct-to-consumer operating income of around $875 million.

Over at its experiences business, which includes parks, cruises and resorts as well as consumer products, revenue rose 3% during the quarter to $9.42 billion. 

Domestic theme park revenue accounted for 68% of the division’s total, or $6.43 billion. While that revenue marked a 2% improvement over the same quarter last year, the combination of Hurricanes Milton and Helene coupled with declines in attendance and investments in Disney’s fleet of cruise ships weighed on domestic operating income. 

The experiences division posted a 5% decline in domestic theme park operating income for the quarter, at $1.98 billion. 

Disney expects its experience segment to see operating income growth of between 6% and 8% in fiscal 2025.

Theme parks in the U.S. have recently experienced a slowdown in foot traffic following the post-Covid surge in attendance.

Disney CFO Hugh Johnston said Wednesday on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” that the experiences segment performed better than expected for the fiscal quarter.

“In fact, the consumer is a bit stronger than we would have expected,” Johnston said Wednesday. “I think what we’re seeing is consumers are just very value focused, and you deliver value to them, they’re willing to pay the price for it.”

Disney’s parks recently turned a record revenue and profit, even as the company has raised prices for its destinations. The company is in the midst of a 10-year, $60 billion investment in the segment.

In sports, Disney’s ESPN reported revenue growth of 8% year over year, reaching $4.81 billion, and operating income that was up 15% from the prior-year period to $228 million. 

The company expects operating income for its overall sports segment, which houses ESPN as well as Star India, to grow 13% in fiscal 2025.

Disney said on Wednesday that its sports segment operating incoming for the fiscal second quarter would be “adversely impacted” by about $100 million related to the shifting of three College Football Playoff games from the first quarter into the second quarter as well as an additional NFL game during the period.

This fall Disney’s networks broadcasted the entirety of the Southeastern Conference college football schedule.

Disney’s broadcaster ABC averaged 5.8 million viewers for 46 regular season college football games, which was a 56% year-over-year increase, Disney executives noted in a commentary release on Wednesday. The recent college football season helped lift Disney’s advertising revenue this past season.

Meanwhile, Disney also said that guidance for unit operating income includes a roughly $50 million hit tied to its exit from the Venu sports joint venture. Disney and its joint venture partners, Warner Bros. Discovery and Fox, called off their efforts to move forward with Venu, which was supposed to be a streaming app that included all of the live sports from its parent companies.

The change in strategy came after legal headaches that halted the launch of Venu last fall.

The rise of skinny bundles — traditional pay TV distributors’ slimmed-down offerings focused on sports and news networks — were a contributing factor, too. Iger said on Wednesday’s call with investors that Venu “basically looked redundant to us,” next to skinny bundle offerings.

As a result of the Venu stoppage, Fox on Tuesday announced it would move forward with its own streaming service after years of staying largely on the sidelines of the direct-to-consumer streaming game. Fox executives also noted that skinny bundles would benefit its portfolio of networks.

Disney has been looking into various ways to grow its streaming options, from merging its apps into Disney+ to exploring different options for ESPN, such as Venu.

The company also plans to launch its own direct-to-consumer streaming app for ESPN this fall, which has been the priority, company executives said Wednesday.

“We’re obviously leaning into the development of what is now called ‘Flagship,’ which is essentially ESPN with multiple, mulitple elements to it,” Iger said Wednesday, noting sports betting and consumers’ ability to customize the platforms to their preferences.

Disclosure: Comcast, which owns CNBC parent NBCUniversal, is a co-owner of Hulu.

The U.S. Postal Service has agreed to resume accepting shipments from China, less than 12 hours after announcing it would stop doing so.

‘Effective February 5, 2025, the Postal Service will continue accepting all international inbound mail and packages from China and Hong Kong Posts,’ it said in an updated statement Wednesday morning. ‘The USPS and Customs and Border Protection are working closely together to implement an efficient collection mechanism for the new China tariffs to ensure the least disruption to package delivery.’

The Postal Service had earlier announced it would stop accepting packages from China, as well as Hong Kong, in the wake of the Trump administration’s decision to impose a new round of 10% tariffs on all goods coming from the country.

Letters and flats were not affected by the initial announcement. While the Postal Service did not offer an explanation for the shipment halt, Trump ended a so-called ‘de minimis’ exemption for Chinese goods worth less than $800 in making the tariff announcement.

A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson had earlier said China would take “necessary measures” to protect its companies, The Associated Press reported — urging the U.S. to “stop politicizing economic and trade issues and using them as a tool, and to stop unreasonably suppressing Chinese companies.”

CORRECTION (Feb. 5, 2025, 10:35 a.m. ET): A previous version of this article misstated when the Postal Service announced it would resume accepting shipments from China. The move came 12 hours after it stopped doing so, not 24.

General Motors is laying off roughly half of the employees who remain at its discontinued Cruise robotaxi business.

The plans come two months after GM said it would no longer fund Cruise after spending more than $10 billion since acquiring the self-driving car business in 2016.

“Today, Cruise shared the difficult decision to part ways with approximately 50% of its workforce,” Cruise said in an emailed statement. “We are grateful for their passion and contributions to help us reach this stage, and our focus is on supporting them into their next chapter with severance packages and career support.”

Cruise had nearly 2,300 employees as of the end of last year, a GM spokesman previously told CNBC.

In an internal email sent Tuesday morning to all Cruise employees, which was viewed by CNBC, Cruise President and Chief Administrative Officer Craig Glidden wrote that the 50% reduction came “as a result of the change in strategy we announced in December.”

“With our move away from the ride-hail business and toward providing autonomous vehicles to customers alongside GM, our staffing and resource needs have dramatically changed,” Glidden wrote.

He added that a string of executives will also depart this week: Marc Whitten, CEO; Nilka Thomas, chief human resources officer; Steve Kenner, chief safety officer; and Rob Grant, chief government affairs officer. Mo Elshenawy, president and chief technology officer, will stay on at Cruise through the end of April to help with transition duties, Glidden wrote.

The Cruise layoffs, which were first reported by TechCrunch, were expected, but executives had previously declined to speculate on the amount.

The job cuts were announced in conjunction with the Detroit automaker reporting the completion of Cruise becoming a wholly-owned subsidiary within GM, which is now focusing on “personal autonomous vehicles” rather than robotaxis.

About 88% of remaining employees are in engineering or related roles, and impacted employees were given 60 days’ notice, according to the company.

During the remainder of their time with Cruise, the affected employees will receive full base pay, as well as eight weeks’ severance. Employees who had been with Cruise for more than three years will receive an additional two weeks’ pay for every additional year spent at Cruise, the company said.

“While not an easy decision, we are focused on combining efforts with General Motors to accelerate autonomy at scale on personal autonomous vehicles,” Cruise said.

GM’s Cruise was considered a leader in the business along with Alphabet-backed Waymo until the company grounded its robotaxi fleet and announced the end of its commercial operations late last year. That came after a October 2023 accident in which external probes found the company misled or deceived regulators about the incident.

In January 2024, a third-party probe into Cruise revealed that culture issues, ineptitude and poor leadership were at the center of regulatory oversights and coverup concerns that had plagued the company.

The report addressed, in part, controversy that had swirled around Cruise since an Oct. 2, 2023, accident in which a pedestrian in San Francisco was dragged 20 feet by a Cruise robotaxi after being struck by a separate vehicle. Results of the investigation, which reviewed whether Cruise representatives misled investigators or members of the media in discussing the incident, were published months later in a 105-page report.

Fox Corp. is finally getting into the direct-to-consumer streaming game.

The company known for its news and sports TV content said Tuesday it’s aiming to launch a subscription streaming service by the end of the year.

The streaming service is not meant to upend Fox’s place in the traditional bundle, CEO Lachlan Murdoch said on the company’s quarterly earnings call. Murdoch offered few details on the streaming service beyond the high-level announcement. He said the company is designing the app now, and further information will be released in the coming months.

Fox’s upcoming streaming option is expected to include both its sports and news content, Murdoch said.

Unlike its legacy media competitors, Fox has so far been on the sidelines of streaming, with the exception of the Fox Nation streaming app, which includes exclusive programming to the service and on-demand Fox News primetime shows, and its free, ad-supported service Tubi. Fox, which will broadcast the Super Bowl on Sunday, is also offering the NFL’s biggest game on Tubi for the first time ever.

However, the late move into subscription-based streaming comes after Fox, alongside Warner Bros. Discovery and Disney, in January dropped efforts to launch a joint venture sports streaming app called Venu.

The three companies had planned to pool together all of their sports content and offer it on the Venu streaming service. However, following legal hurdles that delayed the original fall 2024 launch date, the companies called off their plans.

Out of the three partners, Fox was the only one without another option to offer its sports content outside of the cable TV bundle. Warner Bros. Discovery offers its live sports content on streamer Max. Disney’s ESPN has its ESPN+ app and is developing a separate direct-to-consumer ESPN streamer. The company is targeting an August launch of ESPN “Flagship,” the unofficial name of the all-inclusive ESPN service.

Fox’s Murdoch referred to the end of Venu as the company’s “only disappointment in sports.”

Fox has focused its strategy on sports and news content after selling its entertainment assets to Disney in 2019. The company has reported stable viewership and advertising revenue, even during the recent ad market slump. Live sports and news remain the highest-rated content in the traditional TV bundle, even as consumers cut the cord for streaming alternatives.

“We’re huge supporters of the traditional cable bundle, and we always will be,” Murdoch said on Tuesday’s call. “But having said that, we do want to reach consumers wherever they are, and there’s a large population, obviously, that are now outside of the traditional cable bundle.”

He said the company’s subscriber expectations “will be modest, and we’re going to price the service accordingly.” He added Fox doesn’t intend to convert any traditional cable TV customers into streaming customers with the app.

Murdoch said the company doesn’t “expect to have any exclusive rights costs or additional incremental rights costs” and will simply package its existing content. This means the costs of creating and distributing the platform will be “relatively low,” especially when compared with competitors.

In addition to shelling out billions for original entertainment programming, media companies have been spending big on exclusive sports media rights for their streaming platforms. In many cases, exclusive live sports have helped to drive subscriber and ad revenue growth for streamers.

On Tuesday, Murdoch also noted the recent rise of so-called skinny packages from traditional pay TV distributors, saying it bodes well for Fox’s portfolio since those packages most often consist of mainly sports and news content.

“We’re very pleased with this trend of the bundle. It’s financially, economically positive for us,” said Murdoch on Tuesday. “We would hope that this bundle will be attractive to the cordless customers — the cord-cutters and cord-nevers.”

President Donald Trump said Monday he would create a sovereign wealth fund, a pool of assets like those that exist in other countries that can help pay out regular funds to ordinary citizens.

However, full details on how the fund would work were not immediately available. Trump made the announcement in an Oval Office ceremony. He had floated the idea of creating such a fund during his 2024 presidential campaign.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent offered brief remarks at the event outlining the fund.

‘It will be a combination of liquid assets, assets that we have in this country as we work … to bring them out for the American people,’ he said.

Trump said Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick would also be involved in standing up the fund, which could take as long as a year to establish. Lutnick said Monday that the fund could possibly be used to help take over TikTok, though he did not offer details about how such an endeavor would work.

“The extraordinary size and scale of the U.S. government and the business it does with companies … should create value for American citizens,” Lutnick said. “If we are going to buy 2 billion Covid vaccines, maybe we should have some warrants and some equity in these companies and have that grow for the help of the American people.”

Norway has the largest sovereign wealth fund in the world. It takes oil revenues and reinvests them in assets like stocks. Its current net worth is equivalent to approximately $325,000 per Norwegian citizen.

Other countries with large sovereign wealth funds include China, Saudi Arabia, Australia, Iran and Russia.

Alaska and Texas also have state-run funds.

A 2024 study from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace found that without proper safeguards, such as governance and regulatory structures, sovereign wealth funds can turn into ‘conduits of corruption, money laundering, and other illicit activities.’

CORRECTION (Feb. 3, 2025, 8:39 p.m. ET): A previous version of this article misattributed a quotation. Howard Lutnick said the U.S. government’s transactions with companies “should create value for American citizens,” not Scott Bessent.

By many measures, millennials are doing considerably well financially. Still, fewer younger adults are thinking about retiring in the traditional sense one day.

“Retirement is becoming more deprioritized,” said Michael Liersch, head of advice and planning at Wells Fargo.

“Ten or 15 years ago that was always the number one goal,” he said. Now, “actually living one’s life in the moment is a bigger priority.”

Although this cohort is very focused on building wealth, “the end game might not be no longer working and sitting on my Adirondack chair,” he said. “That just might not be it.”

More than one-third, or 37%, of Americans want a retirement that looks different from previous generations, according to a 2024 report from Edelman Financial Engines.

Most say that means a more active and adventurous lifestyle. And 32% say they will never be able to “fully” retire, the report found.

“This contrasts sharply with retirement stereotypes of the past, where stability and relaxation were the primary goals,” the report said.

Meanwhile, the median wealth of younger millennials and older Gen Zers — or those born in the 1990s — “more than quadrupled” in recent years, according to an analysis of 2022 data by the St. Louis Federal Reserve.

The number of millennials with seven-figure retirement balances also jumped 400% as of the third quarter of 2024, compared to a year earlier, according to data from Fidelity Investments prepared for CNBC.

Compared to other generations, millennials are also more likely to say that their income went up over the last few months and that they expect their earnings potential to increase again in the year ahead, another report by TransUnion found.

Collectively, millennials are now worth about $15.95 trillion, up from $3.94 trillion five years earlier, according to the most recent Federal Reserve data as of the third quarter of 2024.

But a lot has changed for younger generations, too, said Brett House, an economics professor at Columbia Business School.

What assets millennials have on hand and their relative financial stability “is determined by how they shape up against immediate needs — such as housing down payments or emergency medical payments — and their capacity to generate income to replace salaries and wages in retirement amidst the shift from defined benefit to defined contribution pensions, or the elimination of workplace pensions all together,” House said.

Most younger adults are no longer getting pensions of any kind, so individuals who enter retirement age are now more dependent on personal savings and Social Security, he said.

“There are a lot of financial priorities that we are all trying to reach simultaneously,” said Sophia Bera Daigle, founder and CEO of Gen Y Planning, a financial planning firm for millennials.

Many millennials must contend with hefty student loan balances, mortgages, car payments and child care costs in addition to saving for retirement or future college costs, she said.

“People are really feeling the cash crunch in their 30s to 40s,” said Bera Daigle, a certified financial planner and a member of CNBC’s Advisor Council. “Their net worth is going up but they don’t feel like they are getting ahead.”

That has also contributed to changing views on retirement for millennials, she said.

“When I got into this business, retirement was about quitting the grind … playing golf,” Bera Daigle said.

Now, “it’s really more about flexibility,” she added. “We don’t know what retirement will look like in 20 years… there’s a lot more emphasis on choosing the work they want to do in their 60s.”

Ontario will pull all American alcohol from its government-run liquor shelves beginning Tuesday in response to U.S. President Donald Trump’s 25% tariffs on Canadian imports.

Outlets of the Liquor Control Board of Ontario will also take U.S. products out of its catalog so other retailers can’t order or restock those items, according to a Sunday statement by Premier Doug Ford.

“Every year, LCBO sells nearly $1 billion worth of American wine, beer, spirits and seltzers. Not anymore,” Ford said. “There’s never been a better time to choose an amazing Ontario-made or Canadian-made product.”

Ford’s announcement came just hours after Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau slapped retaliatory tariffs of 25% against $155 billion of U.S. goods.

The LCBO is one of the largest wholesalers of alcohol, selling more than 1.1 billion liters of alcohol products in Ontario in 2023. According to the Observatory of Economic Complexity, Canada primarily imports hard liquor from America with an estimated $320 million in sales. The U.S.’s second main export destination for liquor as of October 2024 is Canada, with a $25.9 million trade value, according to the OEC.

In a statement provided to CNBC, the LCBO said it will be stopping all sales of U.S. alcohol products online and in stores “indefinitely,” adding that it is the “importer of record” for all American alcohol into Ontario. LCBO currently lists more than 3,600 products from 35 U.S. states, the statement added.

The move follows other similar Canadian premiers’ announcements of retaliation to the tariffs, including Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston directing the Nova Scotia Liquor Corporation to remove all American alcohol from their shelves on Tuesday and British Columbia Premier David Eby directing the BC Liquor Distribution Branch to “immediately stop buying American liquor from “red states” and remove the top-selling “red-state” brands from the shelves.”

Costco and the Teamsters union have reached a tentative agreement on a new contract, avoiding a strike, the union said Saturday.

Teamsters spokesman Matthew McQuaid confirmed the agreement, which will have to be approved by members. Details of the agreement weren’t immediately available. The Associated Press left a message seeking comment with Costco.

The Teamsters union represents 18,000 Costco workers in six states: California, Washington, Maryland, Virginia, New Jersey and New York. Overall, Costco has 219,000 U.S. employees and 617 U.S. stores. The company said its labor agreement with the Teamsters applies to less than 10% of those stores.

On Jan. 20, Teamsters members at Costco voted overwhelmingly in favor of a strike if a new three-year contract agreement wasn’t reached by midnight Friday, when the current contract expired.

Union members wanted the Issaquah, Washington, company to make a contract offer that reflects its sales and profit growth. Costco’s revenue rose 5% to $254 billion in its most recent fiscal year, which ended Sept. 1. The company reported net income of $7.36 billion, double its profit in 2019.

“Costco Teamsters deserve an industry-leading contract that reflects the company’s massive profits. If Costco thinks they can exploit our members while raking in billions, we’ll shut them down,” Teamsters General President Sean O’Brien said in a statement.

As cities across the country vie for the next Women’s National Basketball Association team, the league quietly filed a trademark application this week for the name “Detroit Shock.”

The filing, dated Thursday, notes the intended use is for a basketball team, merchandise, jerseys and in-arena signage that could appear on TV or radio broadcasts. It could offer clues into the league’s ultimate decision for the location of a new franchise.

On Friday, Detroit Pistons owner Tom Gores submitted a bid for the Motor City to host a new team. The ownership group would be led by Gores and also includes Detroit Lions principal owner and chair Sheila Ford Hamp; former Detroit Pistons stars Grant Hill and Chris Webber; General Motors CEO Mary Barra; and Detroit Lions quarterback Jared Goff.

“Detroit is a sports town that loves its teams deeply and consistently shows up with unwavering passion,” Gores said in a statement.

The WNBA and Detroit Pistons did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment on the trademark application.

The new trademark application by the WNBA is the only submission from the professional women’s basketball league since early December, according to Josh Gerben, a trademark attorney at Gerben IP, who is not involved with the specific filing.

Unlike other professional sports leagues where individual teams own their own trademark filings, the WNBA holds the rights to all names and logos for the league’s franchises, according to Gerben.

“Circumstantial evidence would be that [Detroit’s] is a winning bid and they’re very much planning on getting this going to have filed that trademark application,” Gerben told CNBC.

However, Gerben said the filing could also be a way for the league to protect itself against “squatters” or others trying to use the name.

Another trademark application was filed for the “Detroit Shock” by an individual named Ryan Reed in July 2023, but that trademark has yet to be approved. A person with the same name, purportedly based in Detroit, identifies as the founder of a women’s basketball league on LinkedIn.

The Detroit Shock were a WNBA team based in Auburn Hills, Michigan, from 1998 to 2009. The team won three WNBA Championships in 2003, 2006 and 2008. In 2009, the franchise moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma, where they played until 2015. Today, they play in Arlington, Texas, as the Dallas Wings.

WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert said at the WNBA Finals in October that at least 10 cities had expressed interest in launching an expansion team.

“We’re not in a huge rush. We’d like to bring it in ’27 or no later than ’28,” Engelbert said at the time in regard to adding a 16th team.

Cleveland, Kansas City, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Houston, Austin, Nashville and Milwaukee are among the locations seeking to bring women’s professional basketball to their cities.