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Hear that?
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That's me in Tokyo learning to make sushi from a master. How did I get here? I invested wisely. Now the only thing I worry about is using too much wasabi. Get where you're going with spy, the world's most traded etf. Getting there starts here with State Street Investment Management. Before investing, consider the fund's investment objectives, risks, charges and expenses. Visit state street.comim for prospectus containing this and other information. Read it carefully. SPY subject to risks similar to those of stocks. All ETFs are subject to risk, including possible loss of principal. Alps Distributors Inc.
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Distributor Dollar General takes on Ollie's army plus Petco soars on up we put tickers on a sticker for our special role through retail earnings. Lucid, the American luxury EV maker says it's accelerating to profitability. But our investors pumping the brakes and from a toy company to a Costco customer how the Davids of Illinois are taking on the Goliaths for tariff refunds we break down the latest on a pot class action lawsuit looking for rebates to shoppers for Thursday, March 12. It's blue markets Daily and I'm Anne Barry. More market details to come. But first, when it comes to fighting tariffs, it seems to be all about the little guy and specifically ones in Illinois, starting with an Illinois based family owned toy company that's Learning Resources Inc. Which was one of the first small businesses to bring a lawsuit against President President Trump's IPA tariffs last April, ultimately taking its case all the way to the Supreme Court and winning the ruling that broad levies the President had instigated citing the International Emergency Economic powers Act that's IIPA are not legal impacting about 60% of the administration's Liberation Day tariffs. Now thousands of businesses are trying to recover the money they paid in tariffs as a result of that ruling, with estimates suggesting that more than $160 billion in potential refunds could be up for grabs. And now picking up the sling in the next David versus Goliath tariff pushback is a single shopper and that's in a new lawsuit filed by a Costco member named Matthew Stockhov, who lives in Illinois, posing the question, if companies get that $160 billion of tariff refund money back, should customers get some of it too? And that's because many companies, including Costco, the $445 billion market cap retailer, say that they were forced to either absorb those tariffs or pass them along to shoppers in of higher prices while plaintiff stock of the latest Illinois campaigner argues that if Costco receives a refund from the government, its customers who bore those higher prices should be compensated as well. Costco hasn't publicly commented on the specific lawsuit, but I nerded out and went back to the company's earnings calls to reconfirm for myself how it has said it has handled tariffs since they were implemented last year. In December, Costco CEO Ron Vacra said, quote, we're going to do everything we can to mitigate tariff impacts. And last effect would be we pass on price. And if we do that, we're going to be the last one to go up and always the first one to go down. More recently in Costco's March 5 earnings call, so that's just last week, Vacra's commented on tariff refunds explicitly saying, quote, throughout the past year we have taken action to reduce the impact of tariffs. In many cases, we did not pass the full cost on to our members. So implicit in there is acknowledgment that some, some, even if not the full cost of tariffs perhaps did hit Costco customers. Now one mechanism through which Costco has tried to assuage tariff cost pressure, just as a side note, is by offering new Kirkland Signature products. That's its own private label company saying that it is, quote, high quality alternatives to some tariff impacted goods. That's in addition to supply chain adjustments to try to source brands from lower cost nations. All of this activity to try to offset highlights just how hard it's actually likely to be to trace the direct impact of tariffs on actual shelf prices. Now, executives also said in last week's call that if the company does recover tariff money, it plans to return value to members through lower prices and better deals in the future. But the plaintiff, who seems to be focused on just cold hard cash, is saying that this promise isn't enough, arguing that future discounts do not reimburse customers who have already shelled out by paying more. And his suit is seeking class action status on behalf of Costco shoppers nationwide. Now, legal experts say cases like this could become more common, which is why it caught our eye. Shoppers would not get a government refund directly because they're not actually the importer of record, which suggests that these kinds of suits against retailers may provide the only avenue for recourse. Well, it's going to take a while for all of this to play out. The Supreme Court's ruling did not specify whether the federal government would have to refund tariff receipts. And although the Court of International Trade has said that this should happen. Exactly how and when remains unclear. Now the irony in all of this, Costco was one of the hundreds of companies that sued the federal government last year asking explicitly for a refund if the Supreme Court deemed tariffs legal. Well, taking a look at the shares of Costco, the ticker that cost up slightly today despite the suit. One it's got a long way still to go, but when it happens, it happens. We saw that the Supreme Court ruling, but also just taking a big step back in this nervous market, investors are standing by the relative safety represented by Costco's 90% global membership renewal rate. Read sticky revenue and its staple product portfolio. Well, coming on up, Robotaxi subscription software Timothy Chameleon. We survey the goodies mentioned in Lucid Motors investor presentation and gotta catch em all. We have the latest on Nintendo's newest game and it's sending shares higher. But first, a word from our presenting sponsor, CME Group. No matter what the market is doing, you can still manage risk and capture opportunities at just the right moment.
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CME Group provides a wide range of global benchmark products based on interest rates, equity indexes, foreign exchange, cryptocurrencies, energy, agricultural products and metals.
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Get started@cmegroup.com podcast. That's cmegroup.com podcast.
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Well, there's been a barrage of retail earnings reported this week and John and I wanted to tackle some of the big names, including the United States biggest retailer by number of stores. And so to do it with a little bit of energy, we're going to roll through four company earnings with our favorite form of role play. We're going to take on a retail brand. We're each going to pretend that we are a specific company. We're going to put that company's ticker on a sticker. I'm going to give you the latest through the voice of the company itself. So John, kick us off. I can see your sticker at the ready. You're so excited because you've been like glowing about this all day.
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That's right. I am. Dick's Sporting Goods, founded in 1948 in Pittsburgh, ticker DKS on the New York Stock Exchange market cap of $17 billion. For the quarter, I reported total net sales of $6.2 billion. And for fiscal 2025, total net sales of $14 billion. Adjusted earnings per share of 345 beat estimates. Now, Ann, I was thrilled by my headlines. Today. My revenue is up 60. Can you believe it? Actually, let me remind you in confidence that this was my first full quarter since acquiring Foot Locker last year. So we're not comparing Pumas to Pumas with those numbers. Two thirds of my revenue last quarter was from Dick's and one third was from Foot Locker. And let's talk about Dick's. Comparable sales, excluding the Foot locker business, jumped 3.1% year over year. So I'm doing well. But, Ann, much like a high school flag football player who no longer fits into my uniform, I'm going through growing pains. I issued weak profit guidance for the year ahead. As the acquisition of Foot Locker continues to weigh on my bottom line. I'm looking to spend a few hundred million more dollars clearing out stale Foot Locker inventory and closing unproductive stores. My stock bounced around today, initially up 2%, then falling down to flat, and I'm nearly flat year over year.
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Well, I'm going to tell you something, Dicks, because your investors are going to say, I told you so because I'm looking back at your share price chart. And when the deal was announced, it is in May of last, Dick's announced it was going to buy Footlocker. And we saw your share price Dicks drop like a rock while we saw Footlockers shoot on up. And that was the market's way of saying, footlocker, you're getting a great deal, someone's putting you out of your misery. And Dicks, you are going to have the heavy lift of trying to turn around a retail brand that was getting a little bit sluggish. And just to that point, just to reiterate, Dick's, what you just said in the voice of John Croteau, having to spend a few hundred million dollars clearing out old obsolescent footlocket inventory, closing on product stores, there's always a cost of exiting business lines. That lift is not only expensive, it's going to take Dick's core teams time and attention. And as of all of these integrations, it's often about bandwidth and it's also about culture as much as it is about the money. So the fact that your stock was bouncing around essentially flat as a result, flat year over year, telling me that the market is still trying to figure out whether they're buying what you are selling from a stock perspective, well, we're going to go on to the next one. This time I am going to be Petco. Here is my ticker on a stick ticker. The ticker is woof woof. Trading on the NASDAQ with a market cap of a mere 875 million. John Croteau producer is the bigger, bigger companies on the sticker today. So far, so far and I'm really small so this kind of, it's, this is fitting well for the quarter we saw that Petco had its net sales hit $1.5 billion but down 2.2% year over year. And it's same store sales, that magic metric for retail declined so there was a decrease of 1.6%. So those two headline numbers for the revenue line, not fantastic. However, my stock at Petco was up as much as 35 today. And here is why I've been telling the market and one thing I think I have been doing quite well is being very clear that I'm in a turnaround. I've been communicating in a fairly transparent way managing people's expectations, telling investors you've got to stick with me, it's going to take time. And I Petco, I'm now in phase three of my three turnaround plan and I think that share price reaction is investors way of saying to me today I actually have conviction that what you're doing is setting you on the right path. Now in 2025 I established a new leadership team. We closed underperforming stores, still doing that, we cut costs and we really focused on the experience and the quality of the experience when pet parents come through my doors. So I've been increasing vet services, grooming services, training offerings and when they come in store they're going to find something that we're really excited about which is fresh pet food. Because with the humanization of pets in the same way that we see people like producer John and I going into stores looking for fresh food, we know that pet parents want to make sure that their human, their furry family are also being fed the best in terms of organic and fresh is a big trend there. So we've been installing more chillers in our stores. We've been increasing also our higher margin Petco branded products. We like keeping that margin to ourselves. And then the other thing we've been doing, I'm going to describe using the words of my chief executive, that's Joel Anderson who said quote we believe our ability to gain market share is not entirely reliant on a cooperative macro environment or pet industry sales growth. His way of saying we are going to take control of our own destiny. We're going to do it ourselves and we're not going to hold what's going on outside of our four walls as an excuse for not doing well. That is the kind of gung ho message, by the way, that the market and investors wants to see. They want to see executives saying we're going after it no matter what. Well, when you take a look at the analyst reaction, Jefferies was listening. We saw analysts there and others upgrading my stock today to buy from hold saying they've be completed our turnaround. We've done the tough stuff and it's growth from here.
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I love to hear a company say this is on us.
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This is.
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We're going to figure it out.
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Absolutely. Absolutely. Investors want to hear it. It's good. You've got to own your stuff.
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Okay. I am Ollie's Bargain outlet where you can find good stuff. Cheap ticker O L L I on the NASDAQ market cap of $6.5 billion for the quarter, total net sales just under $780 million. That was up 17% year over year. Adjusted earnings per share of $1.39 was also up. And the rough winter we had for some store closures throughout the quarter late. But my adjusted EBITDA of $127 million was up 16% year over year. So the numbers are strong. And I've been around for 40 years. And with over 650 stores in 34 states, I remain America's largest retailer of closeout merch and excess inventory. Now at Ollie's, we've got our mind on expansion. In 2025, we opened up a record 86 stores, beating our previous record of 50 in one year. And how do we break that record? We embraced a soft opening strategy. No more big grand openings. And here's the thought behind that. It slows initial sales. So that might look negative in the numbers, but it gives our team a chance to get to know the layout and point of sale systems before the high traffic hits the stores. And we found it gives the staff less stress, it improves our operational execution and it allows us to open more stores. And you're wondering, Ann, who's allowed into the store?
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Who is going early? Who is going early?
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It's our Ollie's Army.
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Your Ollie's Army.
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That's right. It's our loyalty program. It keeps growing. We added 17 million new members in 20. That's an increase of 23%. And that early access to stores plus other events and the rollout of our Ali's credit card is keeping the army from going awol. My stock price was up three and a quarter percent today and up nearly five percent year over year.
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Ali Zami Check it out. One that doesn't get a ton of coverage and usually when we think about discount, it's TJ Maxx and the like that tends to grab our attention. So Ollie's Bargain Outlet Holdings PS Take a look at their website. If you go to www.ollie's.com it literally cartoon it is one of the oddest corporate websites I've seen. If you go to the investor relations section it's a lot of fun and it's very yellow. So something bright to brighten up the day.
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That's right. I like to say you can save up to 70% on those fancy stores.
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Fancy stores. Well there you go. Well, let's stay in the realm of value. I am now going to be Dollar General Ticker DG ticker on my sticker, pinning my sticker to my forehead and then my sweater. I'm now going to speak as Dollar General again ticker DG on the New York Stock Exchange and I am huge. I have a market cap of $30 billion. So Ollies, you may have the army but I am the general because I have the largest portfolio of stores in the US with nearly 21, 000 outlets and for the quarter our net sales were really good. Total net sales beat expectations at $11 billion and same store sales that magic metrics up 2% now my customers are value conscious, they love a deal and I'm here to deliver and I do that by offering more than 2, 000 items at or below the $1 price point. Those are the items that are very popular particular in this K shaped economy where we have seen people feeling the pressure of inflation, we have seen job uncertainty and as a result consumer spending when it comes to the lower income demographic paring back our dollar items though sales were up 18 year over year and just again consumer sentiment cautious thin margins in my business means I'm vulnerable to headwinds like changes in consumer sentiment like changing tariffs and the possibility of higher gas prices meaning there's less discretionary income for my core consumer base. So I'm still really watching closely what the inflation dynamics could be and as a result while again my revenue is great for the quarter, my guidance was weak and I'm expecting slower sales same store growth for my company this year. Now also one view, it's going to be a bit cheeky. I don't want to neg my own stores. But when you walk around them, you may not enjoy it as much as you may other places because the experience is frankly a little bit glum and uninspiring. It's a little bit just stack it high and let it roll. All of these things leading sadly to my stock being the worst performer in the S P 500 today, down over 6%. That's it. We did it. We did ticker on a sticker. So I drew. Did you draw breath that whole time?
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Oh no, I was.
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You didn't. You just held your breath and you just razzled through it. It's so much fun doing these. I enjoy ticker on sticker. I'm gonna hang onto it. Well, let's take a break and when we come back, we'll look at what's driving buzz out of Lucid Motors and then we're gonna take a spin through the headlines that move the markets today. John, what if I told you you could turn any idea into an investable index?
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I might accuse you of wizardry.
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It's not magic, it's generated assets from public.com it allows you to turn any idea into an investable index with AI. Start with any prompt you want and the AI can screen thousands of stocks and build one of a kind index. Then you can invest into it directly on public.
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Head to public.com brewmarkets and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.com brewmarkets paid for by Public Investing. Full Disclosure in Podcast Description it's not
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just something you made, it's the privilege
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that you get to work with your hands.
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It's building something that serves a purpose. Proof that you have the grit to keep going. At Timberland, we understand you take your craft seriously and we do too, which is why our products are built to the highest quality.
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We put in the work so you
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can perfect yours with purpose, in every detail and crafted with intention.
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Timberland Built ON CRAFT Visit timberland.com to shop.
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Well, there's a lot of talk of oil, which of course has an impact on gas prices. So instead we're going to go then look the other direction which is look at evs. So we're going to talk about Lucid Motors, the American luxury luxury EV vehicle maker. Well, Lucid held its first investor day in nearly five years today and it had a theme which is accelerating to profitability. And this was a pretty big moment for the company, presenting updates on a new fleet of mid sized models, a revenue generating subscription plan and Also a new robo taxi. Well, before we get into the investor day, John, give us some numbers around the company.
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That's right. Lucid Motors took her LCID on the NASDAQ market cap of $3.2 billion. In its earnings last month, Lucid reporting a net loss of $2.7 billion for the year 2025. Of course, that's what we're talking about with the accelerating to profitability. It also reported full year 2025 deliveries of nearly 16,000 vehicles. That was up 55% year over year, huge increase. And it represented the eighth consecutive quarter of record deliveries for the company. For 2026, the company expects to produce 25 to 27,000 vehicles. Now, for context, Tesla manufactures over one and a half million vehicles a year. So these are widely different numbers. Lucid is accelerating, but investors are wondering about the prospects of profitability during the day. Today, during the event, shares dropped as much as 7%.
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Well, one of the big things that did come out today is something that's been a theme across the EV sector has been Lucid's announcement of a new mid sized platform. And so just to paint the picture for a moment, Lucid currently sells two vehicles. It's got its Air sedan, prices start at a chunky $71,000. And it's also got the Gravity SUV where prices started an even chunkier $96,000. And I've been to these, so there's actually a Lucid showroom here in Manhattan. So I popped along to go check these out and they're beautiful vehicles. I mean they're beautifully designed. Well, according to Kelly Blue Book, which is a vehicle valuation and automotive research company, the average new car in the US costs around $49,000. So you can see this really is premium pricing. Now Lucid is looking to launch three new vehicles on what is called the platform, each with a price tag starting below 50,000, so around that average price point. And the idea is to try to expand to get scale and as a result to tackle the unit costs across its portfolio. By the way, a strategy that we've seen across the auto sector and specifically, well, according to the company, these cars will have the same range and efficiency as their other vehicles, but have a new lighter and smaller drive unit that will make sure that the line is more affordable. So production is set to begin later this year. That was a big announcement. But again, that 7% drop in share prices. The market still not quite saying that it's seeing visibility to the scale that is needed to make these economically viable. At A larger scale over time.
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That's right. And there was also another interesting headline today that seems to be on trend with autonomous vehicles. Lucid announced it plans to drive revenue through recurring subscriptions for its self driving features ranging from 69 to $199 a month. And we saw that big announcement out of Tesla just last month that it's replacing its $8,000 one time full self driving purchase option with a $99 per month membership recurring subscription. So Lucid is forecasting about $1 billion in annual non vehicle revenue by late in the decade. So these, these milestones far off.
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Well, the company also unveiled a brand new Robotaxi concept today. It's called Luna and that's a two seat vehicle designed specifically for fleet and autonomous use. And just on the, on the subject of Robotaxi, I just wanted to talk a little bit too about its program with Uber. So you remember that they'd struck a robotax with Uber that was anchored around the gravity model. Well, today Lucid also highlighted that its strategic relationship with Uber is continuing and they are looking to finalize an agreement to deploy those mid sized platform vehicles. So that would be another way in which Lucid is trying to get to scale faster through that partnership rather than just relying on direct sales to the consumer market. So lots going on at the business, just, you know, just a ton of activity. And I would just add here that the, the interim CEO Mark Winterhoff, who we had on the show last year, who's a great guy by the way, I'm going to be interview him for our sister podcast after earnings. So you know, stay tuned for that so we'll really get his operators perspective on how to manage all these different work streams at the same time.
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Yes, get into the numbers.
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Oh, I'm looking forward to the execution. Exactly.
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And so back to the path of profitability. Last month there were reports that Lucid cut about 12% of its workforce, around 800 employees. But let's talk about the real numbers, the real spend here and that's that the company partnered with Timothee Chalamet last year to be their first ever global brand ambassador. And last night, Ann, while I was scrolling through Reddit and I couldn't sleep, there it was, Timmy's face on my feed.
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Timmy, that's what I call him. That's very familiar. Okay.
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I've seen some of his movies.
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Yeah, sure, go for it. The Dylan one was very good. The Bob Dylan one?
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No, just because I'm not a fan of Dylan. So I didn't say I'm sure his
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performance got you grimaced. I just wanted to make sure I clarified the grimace.
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Thank you. Nothing to do with Tim.
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Okay.
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Got it. And in fact, if he wins the Oscar this weekend, maybe it'll help.
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Shares and lucid shares down, you know, around 7% today, down over 50% year over year. The market really does need to see proof of concept coming through this. But again, lots of potential. We're going to keep watching this and just on the Oscars because I'm not going to let John Cotto just slide that past. John, could you please share with our listeners with the family, what's your association with the Oscars?
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Well, I worked with and for Conan O' Brien for 20 years and last year I got to work backstage with him.
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Was it an amazing experience?
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Yes, we'll cut all that part. It was an amazing experience.
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It was an amazing experience. All right. We're going to come back to this on Monday after the Oscars. Put you back there. Okay. It is 4pm on the east Coast. The market's wrapping up for today. There's the closing bell. We don't have a ticker tape, so we'll throw it over to our human ticker. Our producer John on that's right.
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The S&P 500 and the Dow both finished down one and a half percent today and the NASDAQ finished down one and 810 of a percent. Some market headlines, shares in Nintendo traded as an ADR were up almost 2% today and up 18% this week, all thanks to Pokemon. Pokemon Poke Opia, a newly launched game became an unexpected Superstar title with 2.2 million units sold in the first four days of its release last week, making it the fourth best selling game so far on the Nintendo Switch 2. Share price rallied as investors hope that the game might drive sales of the Nintendo Switch 2 console to which Pokemon Pokeopia is exclusive.
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There's so many syllables and there are lots of Pokemon syllables. And finally, shares in bumble surged over 36% today and that's been long awaited. Like the whole online dating industry has been really struggling. We actually had the chief financial officer of Match Group on here a couple of weeks ago. We talked about many of the names. Bumble OB being an important one in this space, surged over 36 today. And that's after the dating app posted earnings results that did in fact beat Wall street estimates. Now driving some of that excitement, the dating app has a new AI Chatbot called B. That's B E E and it's designed to be a personal matchmaker that learns users preferences and then helps them find more compatible matches based on that deep intelligence. So an exciting thing to watch. We're going to come back to that because there's a lot more going on in the space. We do need to take another look at Match Group and look if there's anything else that you want to hear about, shoot us a because we do want to get your thoughts on where we should be digging in. That's it for today's Brew Markets Daily.
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Brew Markets Daily is hosted by Anne Barry and produced by John Croteau, Tarkat Belletif, Avani Laroya and Emily Milian. Technical direction by Uchena Wogu. Brittany Dotako is our audio engineer and the President of Morning Brew Inc. Is Devin Emery.
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Wake up tomorrow with the Morning Brew newsletter and tune in to Neil and Toby on Morning Brew Daily. We'll see you back in tomorrow, same time, same place.
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