Store closures have emerged as an ominous through line across the retail business landscape this year, with decades-old chains trimming their physical footprints, seeking Chapter 11 bankruptcy protectionsometimes twice in one yearand even winding down operations altogether in some cases.
Petco Health and Wellness Company is not facing such dramatic dire straits yet, but the beloved pet retailer has been reevaluating the size of its brick-and-mortar fleet as it struggles to lift its bottom line.
Shares of Petco (Nasdaq: WOOF) are down almost 16% year to date and almost 26% over the last 12 months as of this writing.
How many stores is Petco closing?
In an earnings release last month, the company said it expected to close 25 locations in 2025, the same number of stores it closed in 2024. The news comes as net sales have declined 2.3% to $1.5 billion for the second quarter while comparable sales fell 1.4%.
Sabrina Simmons, Petco’s CFO, further clarified in a second-quarter earnings call that 10 locations had already closed year to date as of the end of the second quarter. The closures brought Petco’s U.S. store count to 1,388 locations.
Reached for comment by Fast Company, a Petco spokesperson said the closures are in line with the company’s full-year outlook and broader transformation efforts. “[We] have been accelerating initiatives to strengthen our operating model, including optimizing our fleet of more than 1,500 stores across the U.S., Mexico, and Puerto Rico,” the company said.
Which Petco locations have closed?
Petco declined to provide a full list of the locations that will shutter this year. A Fast Company review of local media reports, online review sites such as Yelp, and Petco’s own store locator tool indicates that at least 13 locations have closed in 2025 so far. It includes Petco locations in 11 states and the District of Columbia
You can check out the list below, which was confirmed by Petco.
125 W Lincoln Hwy, Exton, PA 19341
1725 Twin Creek PL, Walla Walla, WA 99362
3100 14th St Ste 124, Washington, DC 20010
16835 E Shea Blvd Ste 105, Fountain Hills, AZ 85268
8775 Tualatin Sherwood Rd, Tualatin, OR 97062
1006 Keller Pkwy Ste 103, Keller, TX 76248
300 Ryders Ln, Milltown, NJ 08850
210 Fortune Blvd, Milford, MA, 01757
239 Newburyport Turnpike, Topsfield, MA 01983
32074 Gratiot Ave, Roseville, MI 48066
4840 N Pulaski Rd Ste 100, Chicago, IL 60630
2842 NW 63rd St, Oklahoma City, OK 73116
444 N Santa Cruz Ave Los Gatos, CA 95030
This story is developing and may be updated…
Eli Lilly’s experimental weight-loss pill could be fast-tracked under a one- to two-month review process recently launched by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, several Wall Street analysts said.
Analysts speculate that the drug, orforglipron, is a viable candidate given the growing cost burden of expensive injectable weight-loss drugs and the fact that Lilly is expanding its U.S. manufacturing issues the Trump Administration has prioritized.
Lilly, based in Indianapolis, declined to comment.
The FDA is reviewing an oral version of Denmark-based rival Novo Nordisk’s GLP-1 obesity drug, with a decision expected in the fourth quarter.
Goldman Sachs recently estimated that if orforglipron were to launch one quarter earlier than expected, it would bring in another $1 billion in revenue to Lilly.
The FDA in July detailed terms of its new “Commissioner’s National Priority Voucher,” under which an experimental drug meeting certain criteria could be approved within a month or two. The agency’s standard review takes 10 months.
“FDA policymakers have tried to come up with ideas to speed important products to market. It is in part directed to achieving some of the (Trump) Administration’s goals,” said Chad Landmon, chair of Polsenelli’s patent and FDA practice.
The program is part of the FDA’s push to streamline drug reviews and, if new competition results in lower prices, aligns with President Donald Trump’s goal of reducing pharmaceutical prices in the United States, which pays the most in the world.
Lilly’s injected weight-loss drug – with an estimated net price of nearly $8,000 a year – and similar drugs from Novo Nordisk pose a cost burden in the United States, where about 40% of adults are obese. Employers and health insurers have cited the spending as unsustainable.
“We think orforglipron is a prime candidate for this pilot program as it treats a high-burden chronic condition and can be priced at parity,” Jefferies analyst Akash Tewari said in a recent research note. He referred to the idea of a worldwide price for the drug, rather than the industry’s usual strategy of pricing at a premium in the United States.
The new FDA program is “a perfect fit” for Lilly’s pill, according to Citi Research analyst Geoffrey Meacham.
The FDA, which declined to comment, has said it would issue five of the new nontransferable vouchers in 2025.
To be eligible, the agency said applications need to support at least one of five objectives: address a U.S. public health crisis; deliver innovation; address a large unmet medical need; onshore drug development and manufacturing; or increase affordability.
Orforglipron is designed to mimic the appetite-suppressing GLP-1 hormone targeted by Lilly’s blockbuster injection tirzepatide sold under the brand names Mounjaro and Zepbound. The GLP-1 class, which includes Novo Nordisk’s Ozempic and Wegovy, has enjoyed unprecedented demand in recent years, with some analysts projecting annual global sales of $150 billion by the end of the decade.
Lilly, in an emailed statement, said the new FDA program is “a promising initiative,” but it was “too early to discuss how this submission pathway might relate to any of our specific programs.” The company has said it plans to submit the daily GLP-1 pill for regulatory review later this year. CEO Dave Ricks told CNBC in August that Lilly expects to launch the pill around the world “this time next year.”
Orforglipron was shown in a recent study to help patients lose 12.4% of their body weight. Full results from that trial will be presented this week at a meeting in Vienna of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes.
Goldman Sachs, in a recent analysis, forecast U.S. net prices for new GLP-1 obesity pills at around $400 a month. It said feedback from medical experts “points to the importance of affordability for competitive positioning” and patient access. It also said competition from new market entrants will lead to price erosion.
A recent report from the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review estimated a current U.S. net price for tirzepatide of about $664 a month. People without adequate insurance coverage can buy the drug directly from Lilly for $499 a month.
Unlike orforglipron, which is a synthetic drug, Novo’s experimental obesity pill is a more difficult-to-manufacture peptide, which analysts say could give Lilly more leeway on price.
Deena Beasley, Reuters
The world’s fondness for matcha is about to be tested by steep price increases.Global demand for the powdered tea has skyrocketed around the world, fueled by consumer interest in its health benefits and by the bright green matcha lattes bubbling up on social media. In the U.S., retail sales of matcha are up 86% from three years ago, according to NIQ, a market research firm.But the matcha market is troubled. In Japan, one of the biggest matcha producers, poor weather reduced this year’s harvest. Matcha is still plentiful in China, another major producer, but labor shortages and high demand have also raised prices there.For Americans, there’s the added impact of tariffs. Imports from China are currently subject to a 37.5% tariff, while the U.S. has a 15% tariff on imports from Japan. It’s not clear if tea will be exempted from tariffs because it’s a natural product that’s not grown in significant quantities in the U.S. an accommodation that the Trump administration has made for cork from the European Union. The Commerce Department and the U.S. Trade Representative didn’t respond to messages left by The Associated Press.Aaron Vick, a senior tea buyer with California-based tea importer G.S. Haly, says he paid 75% more for the highest-grade 2025 crop of Japanese matcha, which will arrive in the U.S. later this fall. He expects lower grades of matcha to cost 30% to 50% more. Chinese matcha while generally cheaper than Japanese matcha is also getting more expensive because of high demand, he said.“People should expect an enormous increase in the price of matcha this year,” Vick said. “It’s going to be a bit of a tough ride for matcha devotees. They will have to show the depth of their commitment at the cash register.”Even before this year’s harvest, growing demand was straining matcha supplies. Making matcha is precise and labor intensive. Farmers grow tencha a green tea leaf in the shade. In the spring, the leaves are harvested, steamed, de-stemmed and de-veined and then stone ground into a fine powder. Tencha can be harvested again in the summer and fall, but the later harvests are generally of lower quality.There are ways to cut corners, like using a jet mill, which grinds the leaves with high pressure air. But Japan has other issues, including a rapidly aging workforce and limited tencha production. And despite Japanese agricultural ministry trying to coax tea growers to switch to tencha from regular green tea, many are reluctant to do so, concerned that the matcha boom will fade.That’s giving an opening to China, where matcha originated but fell out of favor in the 14th century. Chinese matcha production has been growing in recent years to meet both domestic and international demand.Chinese matcha has historically been considered inferior to Japanese matcha and used as a flavoring for things like matcha-flavored KitKat bars instead of as a drinking tea. But the quality is improving, according to Jason Walker, the marketing director at Firsd Tea, the New Jersey-based U.S. subsidiary of Zhejiang Tea Group, China’s largest tea exporter.“We are seeing more and more interest in Chinese matcha because of capacity issues and changing perception,” Walker said. “It used to be the idea that it has to be Japanese matcha or nothing. But we have a good product too.”Starbucks is among the companies using matcha from China for its lattes. The company said it also sources matcha from Japan and South Korea. Dunkin’ and Dutch Bros. didn’t respond when asked where they source the matcha.Josh Mordecai, the supply chain director for London-based tea supplier Good & Proper Tea, said he is approached almost daily by Chinese matcha suppliers. For now, he only buys matcha from Japan, but the cost to acquire it has risen 40% so he’ll have to raise prices, he said.Mordecai said he saw more demand for matcha in the last year than in the previous nine years combined. If matcha prices continue to rise, he wonders if consumers will switch to other tea varieties like hojicha, a roasted Japanese green tea.“We’ll see if this is a bubble or not. Nothing stays on social media that long,” Mordecai said.Julia Mills, a food and drink analyst for the market research company Mintel, expects the social media interest in matcha to die down. But she thinks matcha will remain on menus for a while.Mills said matcha appeals to customers interested in wellness, since it contains antioxidants and l-theanine, an amino acid known for its calming effects, and it’s less caffeinated than coffee. Millennials and Generation Z customers are more likely to have tried matcha than others, Mills said.The traditional way of preparing it, whisking the powder together with hot water in a small bowl, also appeals to drinkers who want to slow down and be more intentional, Mills said.That’s true for Melissa Lindsay of San Francisco, who whisks up some matcha for herself every morning. Lindsay has noticed prices rising for her high-end matcha, but it’s a habit she’d find hard to quit.“It’s not just a tea bag in water,” Lindsay said. “It’s a whole experience of making it to your liking.”David Lau, the owner of Asha Tea House in San Francisco, hopes to keep customers drinking matcha by limiting price increases. Lau raised the price of his matcha latte by 50 cents after the cost the matcha he buys from Japan more than doubled. He’s also looking into alternate suppliers from China and elsewhere.“We’re in the affordable luxury business, you know, just like any other specialty cafe. We want people to be able to come every day, and once you reach a certain price level, you start to price people out,” he said. “We want to be really cognizant and aware of not doing that.
AP Video Journalist Haven Daley contributed from San Francisco.
Dee-Ann Durbin, AP Business Writer
President Donald Trump filed a $15 billion defamation lawsuit against The New York Times and four of its journalists on Monday, according to court documents.The lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Florida names several articles and one book written by two of the publication’s journalists and published in the lead up to the 2024 election, saying they are “part of a decades-long pattern by the New York Times of intentional and malicious defamation against President Trump.”“Defendants published such statements negligently, with knowledge of the falsity of the statements, and/or with reckless disregard of their truth or falsity,” the lawsuit says.The New York Times did not immediately respond to an email requesting comment early Tuesday.In a Truth Social post announcing the lawsuit, Trump accused The New York Times of lying about him and defaming him, saying it has become “a virtual ‘mouthpiece’ for the Radical Left Democrat Party.”Trump has gone after other media outlets, including filing a $10 billion defamation lawsuit against the The Wall Street Journal and media mogul Rupert Murdoch in July after the newspaper published a story reporting on his ties to wealthy financier Jeffrey Epstein.
Associated Press
Luigi Mangione is due to appear on Tuesday in New York state court, where a judge may rule on the 27-year-old’s bid to dismiss one of the two indictments he faces over the December 2024 killing of health insurance executive Brian Thompson.
Mangione has pleaded not guilty to state and federal charges of killing Thompson, the former chief executive of UnitedHealth Group’s insurance unit UnitedHealthcare. Thompson was shot and killed on December 4 outside a Midtown Manhattan hotel, where the company was gathering for an investor conference.
Mangione’s 9 a.m. EDT (1300 GMT) appearance before Justice Gregory Carro in Manhattan comes as last week’s killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk has fueled fears of a spike in political violence in the U.S.
Tyler Robinson, the suspect in Kirk’s killing is expected to be formally charged with state crimes in Utah later on Tuesday. Elected officials from both the Republican and Democratic parties have condemned the killing.
While the killing of Thompson was also widely condemned by public officials across the political spectrum, Mangione has become a folk hero to some Americans who decry steep healthcare costs.
In May, Mangione’s defense lawyers asked Carro to dismiss the state case, arguing that facing parallel prosecutions violated his constitutional right against being prosecuted twice for the same conduct.
“Prosecutors are trying to get two bites at the apple to convict Mr. Mangione,” wrote the defense team, led by former Manhattan state prosecutor Karen Friedman Agnifilo.
In state court, Mangione is charged with murder as a crime of terrorism, which carries a potential life sentence. Prosecutors with Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office say Mangione was intending to intimidate workers in the health insurance industry and spark a revolution in U.S. health care.
The Justice Department is seeking the death penalty in the federal case, which charges Mangione with stalking Thompson across state lines and killing him.
Mangione’s lawyers have said the two cases are based on conflicting theories. They wrote in their motion that if their client were theoretically to defend himself against the state charges by arguing his conduct was intended to target a single individual, rather than to sow terror, he may end up incriminating himself in the federal case.
In a June response to Mangione’s motion to dismiss, prosecutors with Bragg’s office said there was no basis for Mangione to argue it was unfair that a potential defense in one case could compromise his defense in the other.
“The unpleasant options facing this defendant arise out of his own depraved actions,” prosecutors wrote.
Trial dates have not yet been set in either the state or federal case.
Mangione has been held in federal custody in Brooklyn since his arrest in December.
Luc Cohen, Reuters
Robert Redford, the Hollywood golden boy who became an Oscar-winning director, liberal activist and godfather for independent cinema under the name of one of his best-loved characters, died Tuesday at 89.Redford died “at his home at Sundance in the mountains of Utah the place he loved, surrounded by those he loved,” publicist Cindi Berger said in a statement. No cause of death was provided.After rising to stardom in the 1960s, Redford was one of the biggest stars of the ’70s with such films as “The Candidate,” “All the President’s Men” and “The Way We Were,” capping that decade with the best director Oscar for 1980’s “Ordinary People,” which also won best picture in 1980. His wavy blond hair and boyish grin made him the most desired of leading men, but he worked hard to transcend his looks whether through his political advocacy, his willingness to take on unglamorous roles or his dedication to providing a platform for low-budget movies.His roles ranged from Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward to a mountain man in “Jeremiah Johnson” to a double agent in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and his co-stars included Jane Fonda, Meryl Streep and Tom Cruise. But his most famous screen partner was his old friend and fellow activist and practical joker Paul Newman, their films a variation of their warm, teasing relationship off screen. Redford played the wily outlaw opposite Newman in 1969’s “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” a box-office smash from which Redford’s Sundance Institute and festival got its name. He also teamed with Newman on 1973’s best picture Oscar winner, “The Sting,” which earned Redford a best-actor nomination as a young con artist in 1930s Chicago.Film roles after the ’70s became more sporadic as Redford concentrated on directing and producing, and his new role as patriarch of the independent-film movement in the 1980s and ’90s through his Sundance Institute. But he starred in 1985’s best picture champion “Out of Africa” and in 2013 received some of the best reviews of his career as a shipwrecked sailor in “All is Lost,” in which he was the film’s only performer. In 2018, he was praised again in what he called his farewell movie, “The Old Man and the Gun.”“I just figure that I’ve had a long career that I’m very pleased with. It’s been so long, ever since I was 21,” he told The Associated Press shortly before the film came out. “I figure now as I’m getting into my 80s, it’s maybe time to move toward retirement and spend more time with my wife and family.”
Sundance is born
Redford had watched Hollywood grow more cautious and controlling during the 1970s and wanted to recapture the creative spirit of the early part of the decade. Sundance was created to nurture new talent away from the pressures of Hollywood, the institute providing a training ground and the festival, based in Park City, Utah, where Redford had purchased land with the initial hope of opening a ski resort. Instead, Park City became a place of discovery for such previously unknown filmmakers as Quentin Tarantino, Steven Soderbergh, Paul Thomas Anderson and Darren Aronofsky.“For me, the word to be underscored is ‘independence,'” Redford told the AP in 2018. “I’ve always believed in that word. That’s what led to me eventually wanting to create a category that supported independent artists who weren’t given a chance to be heard.“The industry was pretty well controlled by the mainstream, which I was a part of. But I saw other stories out there that weren’t having a chance to be told and I thought, ‘Well, maybe I can commit my energies to giving those people a chance.’ As I look back on it, I feel very good about that.”Sundance was even criticized as buyers swarmed in looking for potential hits and celebrities overran the town each winter.“We have never, ever changed our policies for how we program our festival. It’s always been built on diversity,” Redford told the AP in 2004. “The fact is that the diversity has become commercial. Because independent films have achieved their own success, Hollywood, being just a business, is going to grab them. So when Hollywood grabs your films, they go, ‘Oh, it’s gone Hollywood.'”By 2025, the festival had become so prominent that organizers decided they had outgrown Park City and approved relocating to Boulder, Colorado, starting in 2027. Redford, who had attended the University of Colorado in Boulder, issued a statement saying that “change is inevitable, we must always evolve and grow, which has been at the core of our survival.”Redford was married twice, most recently to Sibylle Szaggars. He had four children, two of whom have died Scott Anthony, who died in infancy, in 1959; and James Redford, an activist and filmmaker who died in 2020.
Redford’s early life
Robert Redford was born Charles Robert Redford Jr. on Aug. 18, 1937, in Santa Monica, a California boy whose blond good looks eased his way over an apprenticeship in television and live theater that eventually led to the big screen.Redford attended college on a baseball scholarship and would later star as a middle-aged slugger in 1984’s “The Natural,” the adaptation of Bernard Malamud’s baseball novel. He had an early interest in drawing and painting, then went on to study at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, debuting on Broadway in the late 1950s and moving into television on such shows as “The Twilight Zone,” “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” and “The Untouchables.”After scoring a Broadway lead in “Sunday in New York,” Redford was cast by director Mike Nichols in a production of Neil Simon’s “Barefoot in the Park,” later starring with Fonda in the film version. Redford did miss out on one of Nichols’ greatest successes, “The Graduate,” released in 1967. Nichols had considered casting Redford in the part eventually played by Dustin Hoffman, but Redford seemed unable to relate to the socially awkward young man who ends up having an affair with one of his parents’ friends.“I said, ‘You can’t play it. You can never play a loser,'” Nichols said during a 2003 screening of the film in New York. “And Redford said, ‘What do you mean? Of course I can play a loser.’ And I said, ‘OK, have you ever struck out with a girl?’ and he said, ‘What do you mean?’ And he wasn’t joking.”
Indie champion, mainstream star
Even as Redford championed low-budget independent filmmaking, he continued to star in mainstream Hollywood productions himself, scoring the occasional hit such as 2001s Spy Game, which co-starred Brad Pitt, an heir apparent to Redfords handsome legacy whom he had directed in A River Runs Through It.
Ironically, The Blair Witch Project, Garden State, Napoleon Dynamite and other scrappy films that came out of Sundance sometimes made bigger waves and more money than some Redford-starring box-office duds like Havana, The Last Castle and An Unfinished Life.
Redford also appeared in several political narrtives. He satirized campaigning as an idealist running for U.S. senator in 1972s The Candidate and uttered one of the more memorable closing lines, What do we do now? after his character manages to win. He starred as Woodward to Hoffmans Carl Bernstein in 1976s All the Presidents Men, the story of the Washington Post reporters whose Watergate investigation helped bring down President Richard Nixon.
With 2007s Lions for Lambs, Redford returned to directing in a saga of a congressman (Tom Cruise), a journalist (Meryl Streep) and an academic (Redford) whose lives intersect over the war on terrorism in Afghanistan.
His biggest filmmaking triumph came with his directing debut on Ordinary People, which beat Martin Scorseses classic Raging Bull at the Oscars. The film starred Donald Sutherland and Mary Tyler Moore as the repressed parents of a troubled young man, played by Timothy Hutton, in his big screen debut. Redford was praised for casting Moore in an unexpectedly serious role and for his even-handed treatment of the characters, a quality that Roger Ebert believed set the film apart from the sophisticated suburban soap opera it could easily have become.
Redfords other directing efforts included The Horse Whisperer, The Milagro Beanfield War and 1994’s Quiz Show, the last of which also earned best picture and director Oscar nominations. In 2002, Redford received an honorary Oscar, with academy organizers citing him as actor, director, producer, creator of Sundance, inspiration to independent and innovative filmmakers everywhere.
The idea of the outlaw has always been very appealing to me. If you look at some of the films, its usually having to do with the outlaw sensibility, which I think has probably been my sensibility. I think I was just born with it, Redford said in 2018. From the time I was just a kid, I was always trying to break free of the bounds that I was stuck with, and always wanted to go outside.
Associated Press journalists Hillel Italie, Jake Coyle and Mallika Sen contributed to this report. Bob Thomas, a longtime Associated Press journalist who died in 2014, was the principal writer of this obituary.
Bob Thomas, Associated Press
An “everything rally” in markets greets the start of a two-day Federal Reserve meeting, with stocks at record highs, bond yields subsiding and a two-month low dollar taking the heat ahead of what is widely expected to be the first U.S. interest rate cut of the year.
A quarter point Fed rate cut on Wednesday is fully priced. But the spotlight is as much on the central bank’s institutional standing as on the policy call itself, after a pair of developments underscored the White Houses growing sway over the Fed. Meanwhile, gold set a new record high, and China’s offshore yuan hit its highest level of the year after positive signs from the U.S.-China trade talks in Madrid.
The Senate’s narrow confirmation of Stephen Miran to the Fed’s Board hands President Donald Trump’s top economic adviser a policy vote just as the FOMC convenes, while a U.S. appeals court ruling means Governor Lisa Cook can attend unless the Supreme Court intervenes. Together with Trump’s public call for a ‘bigger’ cut and his stated intent to replace Chair Jerome Powell when his term ends next May, the moves highlight the degree of political pressure now bearing down on the central bank. Ahead of a 20-year bond auction later today, long-term Treasury yields hover close to four-month lows.
Big Tech led Wall Street gains on Monday, with Tesla shares climbing 3.6% after regulatory filings revealed CEO Elon Musk had acquired nearly $1 billion worth of the electric vehicle maker’s stock last week and Alphabet hit a record high to race past $3 trillion in market capitalization. Nvidia underperformed after China’s market regulator said it will continue an investigation into the AI chip leader after early findings showed it had violated the country’s anti-monopoly law.
Although the S&P500’s year-to-date gains of 12% are still only half of that of the MSCI world index excluding U.S. stocks, funds tracking the ‘Magnificent Seven’ megacaps are now up 16% for 2025. S&P futures were higher again ahead of Tuesday’s open.
China’s offshore yuan hit 2025 highs even though its ebullient stock benchmarks stalled on Tuesday after U.S. and Chinese officials said they reached a framework agreement to switch short-video app TikTok to U.S.-controlled ownership – a move expected to be confirmed in a Friday call between U.S. Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping. The Madrid talks encouraged hopes of another extension of the trade truce beyond the world’s two biggest economies beyond November. Elsewhere, data showed the British jobs market and wage growth softened ahead of this week’s Bank of England meeting and German investor morale unexpectedly strengthened in ZEW’s September update.
In today’s column, I discuss how euro zone credit markets are converging, erasing the old ‘core-periphery’ divide and reshaping the bloc’s borrowing dynamics.
Today’s Market Minute
U.S. President Donald Trump sued the New York Times, four of its reporters, and publisher Penguin Random House for at least $15 billion on Monday, claiming defamation and libel, and citing reputational damage, a Florida court filing showed.
U.S. and Chinese officials said on Monday they have reached a framework agreement to switch short-video app TikTok to U.S.-controlled ownership that will be confirmed in a Friday call between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping.
U.S. companies should be allowed to report earnings every six months instead of on a quarterly basis, Trump said on Monday, announcing what could prove to be a major shift for corporate America.
The U.S. labor market appears to be deteriorating rapidly just as the country’s housing market is also creaking, two negative forces that risk feeding off each other and smothering economic growth. Read the latest from ROI markets columnist Jamie McGeever.
While U.S. corporate taxes and interest rates fell over the past 40 years, the federal deficit soared. Does that mean the federal government is now justified in taking a slice of corporate profits and is this the tax hike the United States needs? Find out in Robinhood Markets Chief Investment Officer Stephanie Guilds latest piece for ROI.
Chart of the day
In the increasingly polarized world of American politics, there is bipartisan agreement that Americans are less tolerant of opposing views than they were 20 years ago, according to the latest Reuters/Ipsos survey.
Today’s events to watch
U.S. August import/export prices (8:30 AM EDT), August retail sales (8:30 AM EDT), August industrial production (9:15 AM EDT), September NAHB housing index (10:00 AM EDT), August business/retail inventories (10:00 AM EDT); Canada August housing starts (8:15 AM EDT), Canada Aug consumer prices (0830)
U.S. Federal Reserve’s Federal Open Market Committee starts two-day meeting on interest rates, decision on Wednesday
U.S. President Donald Trump visits Britain
US Treasury sells $13 billion of 20-year bonds
Want to receive the Morning Bid in your inbox every weekday morning? Sign up for the newsletter here. You can find ROI on the Reuters website, and you can follow us on LinkedIn and X.
(The opinions expressed here are those of the author, a columnist for Reuters)
Mike Dolan, Reuters
Meditation app maker Calm is no stranger to helping people sleepusers have played its bedtime stories more than 1 billion times in the decade theyve been available. But with the new Calm Sleep app, its helping people build habits that will help them sleep better overall.
The CDC reports that as of 2022, more than a third of American adults arent getting the recommended seven hours of sleep a night. That lack of sleep seems to be coming to a head, with a 2024 survey from Sleepopolis showing that 92.6% of American adults want to improve the quality of their sleep, and that more than half of those surveyed said they planned to purchase a sleep product in the next year.
When you see all this put together, we just felt it was really important to have more of an end-to-end experience going forward in sleep, says David Ko, CEO of Calm. The new Calm Sleep builds on demand for existing tools within Calm while helping users adjust their lifestyles to improve their sleep quality.
[Photo: Courtesy of Calm]
The big business of sleep
Sleep has been a growing market for nearly a decade, and its not slowing down. 2025 has seen big funding rounds for companies that make devices focused on measuring or optimizing sleep quality.
Health tracker Oura raised $200 million in December 2024, and smart mattress maker Eight Sleep raked in $100 million in August. Calmwhich was last valued at $2 billion when it completed a series C funding in late 2020thinks it has an opportunity to turn its already strong position in sleep, built by its meditation app, into a distinct product.
So many devices out there either help you get to sleep, like Calm today, or they tell you how you slept, but they don’t give you the checks and balances you need to prep throughout the day, says Ko.
What does Calm Sleep do?
For $69.99 a year (or $19.99 per year on top of an existing Calm subscription), Calm Sleep personalizes sleep plans for users based on answers to a questionnaire about their habits.
The result is a list of assignments like Leave your phone in another room for 30 minutes, Skip the caffeine after 12 p.m., and Take two minutes to reflect on how today feltthat will fill a readiness bar leading up to a desired bedtime of the users choosing. When its full, users are ready for a high-quality night of sleep, the company says.
[Photo: Courtesy of Calm]
Beyond the app
Calm is supporting the Calm Sleep launch with various products that will roll out by the end of the year. Starting October 1, the Tempo by Hilton New York Times Square will feature hotel rooms designed for optimal sleep, including upgraded mattresses, cooling pillows, blackout shades, and Calm Sleep content built into the rooms TVs.
Its also planning a collaboration with Ozlo Sleepbuds blending Calms Sleep Stories with the earbuds sleep detection technology, and will sell a line of of bedding at Target in December. The hotel stay and Sleepbuds will come with a free year of Calm Sleep, while each product purchased from Target comes with a free month of the app.
[Photo: Courtesy of Calm]
The broad approach to supporting the Calm Sleep launch, Ko says, is designed to highlight the company as more than its mainstay meditation app (which has been downloaded 180 million times), and a partner for its users health.
This launch is just the beginning, Ko says. We are continuing to invest in your consumer health journey, and sleep is such an integral part of that.
Here’s a mash-up you didn’t see coming: It turns out that LimeWire was the mystery buyer of the Fyre Festivals brand assets back in July, when it spent $245,300 to acquire the failed music festival’s trademarks, intellectual property, and social media off eBay. But branding doesn’t really follow mathematical logic: Does the combination of two failed but infamous brands equal a net positive?
LimeWire’s betting on it. Fyre Fest’s new owner believes it can take the meme value of the failed festival to power something new that audiences will still find familiar. (Besides, it’s LimeWire. It can’t be too scared about Twitter dunks.)
A test case for two wrongs making a right
Anyway, neither company has had much success on its own. LimeWire is the Y2K-era peer-to-feer file-sharing service that in the early aughts offered internet users access to free, illegally downloadable music, all from the comfort of their home computers alongside competitors like Napster and Kazaa. LimeWire shut down in 2010, but Austrian brothers Julian and Paul Zehetmayr bought up the assets and relaunched it as an NFT platform in 2022.
And the 2017 Fyre Fest was, of course, a flop. Billed artists like Blink-182 pulled out, and after festival organizers suffered severe logistical failures they stranded attendees on an island in the Bahamas eating cheese sandwiches out of Styrofoam containers. Never mind that those attendees spent thousands of dollars to attend. Accommodations included disaster relief tents. And founder Billy McFarland’s plans for a Fyre Fest II never got off the ground.
But what Fyre Fest did do wellif by accidentwas establish real brand recognition by becoming something of a schadenfreude content factory, inspiring a pair of documentaries on both Netflix and Hulu. Ryan Reynolds also referenced it in a 2019 ad for his brand Aviation Gin, in which he detailed just how far he was willing to go for his company. “He gets it,” Fyre festival investor Andy King said in the ad. The name “Fyre Fest” itself has become a cautionary tale and pop cultural shorthand for hubris and failure.
Reynolds and his production company Maximum Effort bid on Fyre Fest as well, though LimeWire outbid them. Maximum Effort then got in touch after the auction, Julian Zehetmayr tells Fast Company, and the two entities have already collaborated. Most immediately, the Fyre Fest brand appears briefly in a new ad Reynolds narrates for Visa that reimagines the company’s famous “It’s everywhere you want to be” slogan. Zehetmayr says they have other plans for the brand name, though he declines to share specifics.
“Congrats to LimeWire for their winning bid for Fyre Fest,” Reynolds said in a statement. “I look forward to attending their first event but will be bringing my own palette of water.”
LimeWire, Fyre Fest, and the trick to reviving zombie brands
Zehetmayr says he learned from his experience with LimeWire what not to do when buying up a “zombie brand,” or a failed brand that’s worth something only because it’s well-known. (Napster and Enron, which have been repurposed by new buyers, offer additional examples.) The most important thing is sticking to what people know the brand name for.
“One thing that we’ve learned with buying brands is that obviously you can’t go too far from the original concept,” Zehetmayr says.
After the Zehetmayrs bought LimeWire, they turned it into an NFT platform. But in 2024 LimeWire added decentralized file sharing, once again making the site a file-sharing platform. This time, however, it’s for legal and encrypted files.
Julian Zehetmayr says he and his brother are being intentional with the Fyre Fest brand, and “not trying to rush ourselves too much,” but they plan to make an announcement as soon as early next year about what they plan to do with it. Zehetmayr says they’re not bringing back the festivalor the cheese sandwichesbut they are bringing back the brand and meme through experiences.
“We’ve got quite a few concepts,” he adds. The value of the Fyre Fest brand, he says, is in the attention that it gets, but one thing he says they won’t do is take it too seriously.
“I think we’ll do the whole thing with a lot of self-awareness and humor, so we’re not pretending that we are buying a premium brand,” he says. He also sees the LimeWire and Fyre Fest brands as complementary.
“The brands kind of match,” Zehetmayr says. “Both very infamous and chaotic, both obviously very music and entertainment focused as well.” They also hit different age groups. While millennials might all know LimeWire, Fyre Fest “kind of also bridges the gap,” he says, for everyone under 28 who’s too young to remember the file-sharing era.
Like buying restaurantsor even a gin brand or sports team, for that matterbuying up zombie brands can require a gentle touch. Stray too far from what the brand’s known for and you lose the power of the name ID that you bought in the first place.
As Zehetmayr says: Stick to the core that the brand represents.
Usually when a company recalls a food item, it’s because there is something wrong with the food itselfa bacterial contamination or an ingredient that isnt supposed to be there.
But this week, Costco announced a recall for another reason: The product in question might explode. Heres what you need to know about Costcos recall of its Kirkland Signature Prosecco Valdobbiadene.
Whats happened?
This week, Costco began sending out letters to members who purchased the companys Kirkland Signature Prosecco Valdobbiadene, a brand of sparkling white wine. Kirkland Signature is Costcos private-label brand of products. Under that brand, Costco sells a Prosecco Valdobbiadene sparkling wine that it sources from wine producer Ethica Wines.
Costcos letter, which it has published on its recalls page, states that unopened bottles of Kirkland Signature Prosecco Valdobbiadene with the Costco item number 1879870 are at risk of shattering, even if the bottle is still sitting on a shelf or counter.
Right now, it is unknown how Costco found out about this bottle defect, as the companys letter does not state whether there have been any incidents of bottles exploding.
The sparkling wines producer, Ethica Wines, does not appear to have any details about the recall posted on its website. Fast Company has reached out to Ethica Wines for comment.
Given that the bottle can shatter even when not handled or in use, Costco’s warning is especially urgent, although it’s not the first time a retailer has warned about an apparently defective glass bottle in recent months.
Back in March, Trader Joes issued an unrelated recall of 61,000 bottles of sparkling water due to a defect with the glass bottle that could cause it to crack, leading to a laceration hazard.
What Prosecco is covered under the recall?
Costcos letter shows that just one item is covered under the recall. That item is:
Kirkland Signature Prosecco Valdobbiadene (item #1879870)
When was the recalled item sold?
The recalled item was sold between April 25 and August 26, 2025.
Where was the recalled item sold?
According to the notice, the recalled item was sold in the following states and regions:
Iowa
Illinois
Indiana
Kentucky
Michigan
Minnesota
Missouri
North Dakota
New England
Ohio
South Dakota
Wisconsin
What should I do if I have the recalled Prosecco?
In an unusual move for food recalls, Costco says those who have the recalled prosecco should not return it to a Costco store. This is likely due to the fact that handling and transportation may increase the risk of explosion.
Costo says that you should not open the bottle but instead dispose of it immediately by wrapping the unopened bottle in paper towels and placing it in a plastic bag before placing it in the garbage to avoid risk from shattered glass.
Costco says you can then bring the letter you received from the company regarding the recalled Prosecco into a Costco store to get your full purchase price refunded.
If you have additional questions or concerns about the recalled Prosecco, Costco says you should contact Ethica Wines at (786) 810-7132 or email them at customercare@ethicawines.com.
