Starbucks reported lower profits Tuesday in results that still topped expectations as the company’s new CEO described various pilot program tests to reinvigorate the chain.Profits came in at $780.8 million, down 23.8 percent from the year-ago level. Revenues declined 0.3 percent to $9.4 billion, as comparable store sales fell in both North America and international markets.The chain, which has hit a rough patch of sagging sales, installed Brian Niccol as CEO last year, recruiting him from Chipotle after the short-lived tenure of Laxman Narasimhan.Niccol has reinstated self-service condiment bars for customers in US stores and shifted policies to permit bathroom use only to patrons.On Tuesday, prior to the earnings announcement, Starbucks announced the departure of two longtime executives, Sara Trilling and Arthur Valdez, whose roles will be reconfigured under a new operating model.Niccol’s goal is that Starbucks “gets back” to its identity as “a welcoming coffee house where people gather and where we serve the finest coffee handcrafted by our skilled baristas.”The chain is working to ensure that customers are moved through and served within four minutes with a “touch of humanity,” Niccol said on a conference call with analysts.To that end, the company has reintroduced ceramic mugs and handwritten notes to customers on coffee cups. Starbucks is also experimenting with algorithms that can improve efficiency in the production of drinks ordered through the company’s smartphone app, Niccol said. Customers have complained of lengthy wait times for online orders where they stand near rows of prepared drinks waiting for other customers.”Right now mobile ordering is just a first in, first out proposition and we’ve got to fix it,” he said, adding that fixing the issue will take “the brand right back where it needs to be, which is a premium experience.”Shares rose 0.6 percent in after-hours trading.

Stunned American federal workers feel “under siege” after President Donald Trump issued a flurry of orders aimed at reforming the US government, some have told AFP, as they grapple with the Republican’s right-wing agenda.In the eight days since his return to the White House, Trump has launched a series of head-snapping moves dismantling programs to combat inequality and environmental injustice, firing workers carrying them out, and further slashing government spending at home and abroad.The ripple effects on the wider American population are yet to be seen — but for many of the three million federal workers tasked with carrying out US government policies, the effect has been swift and destabilizing.”People are crying in their supervisors’ offices, wondering what might happen to their jobs,” one employee at the Department of the Interior — a remote worker whose own future is now in question after Trump ordered all federal employees back to the office — told AFP. Employees were already anxious and fearful, she said, after Trump made repeated promises to target spending on the campaign trail last year.”And when the executive orders just kept coming, people go, ‘Wow, this is way worse than we envisioned.'”She, like others who spoke to AFP, agreed to do so only under the condition of anonymity. “Everyone is kind of somber, everyone’s kind of bracing for impact. There’s a lot of uncertainty,” said one remote worker from outside the capital, Washington, who has been employed by the federal government since 2014. “You kind of feel like you’re under siege,” he said.Another, a woman at the Environmental Protection Agency in Washington, said employees were grasping for information.”A lot of rumors are circulating in the corridors, everyone gets together to talk about what we’ve heard from our supervisors,” she said — though it was hard to tell what was true.”We’re worried about budget cuts,” she said.- ‘Rat out our colleagues’ -It’s not just the cuts.Several of the civil servants who spoke to AFP described an email which ordered employees to report if any federal workers were concealing efforts to continue with so-called diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs.The programs are meant to combat inequality, but Trump has complained that they discriminate against white people — white men in particular — and vowed to end them. “I’ve never seen like an email that just seems so kind of unprofessional and aggressive,” said the remote worker, who has been with the government since 2014.”It feels like the gloves are off … and he’s kind of just going more for his worst kind of initiatives,” he continued, referring to Trump. “We are being told to rat out our colleagues,” said the Interior Department employee. “People have taken to using their personal communications because they’re worried that we’re being surveilled somehow. That is crazy,” she said. “Everybody is looking over their shoulder. Everybody is so worried about trying to figure out how to navigate the cascade of implications … All this angst is actually preventing the work that people are paid to do,” added one long-term senior employee with the Commerce Department.  – ‘Can’t bully me’ -Before he even took office, Trump announced that he was tasking his backer Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, which steering a “Department of Government Efficiency” that would restructure the federal executive branch and gut public spending. Around two-thirds of federal spending goes towards programs that Trump would not be able to cut, or those he has pledged not to, including Social Security and Medicare.That has not stopped him from freezing large swathes of federal aid funding, throwing rafts of programs — and the employees who carry them out — into disarray at home and abroad.”It is literally, ‘I, as the leader of these agencies, am going to come into the home and burn it down,'” said the Interior Department employee. “Half the people are like, I need to hold my head up, because I know that’s what you’re trying to do, and I’m not going to let you to let you win. And then the rest are like, wow, this is just brutal,” she said.The goal is to “make the government as inefficient as they claim it is,” said the remote worker who had been with the government since 2014. “In a way, it’s making me more resolved,” he said.Trump “can’t bully me around.”ube-ia-hg-es/cyb/st/jgc

Boeing reported a hefty fourth-quarter loss Tuesday following a bruising 2024, but shares rallied on hopes that early turnaround signs under a new CEO may bear fruit.The US aviation giant reported a loss of $3.9 billion as the company continued to experience a hit from a more than seven-week labor strike that shuttered two major assembly plants.But Chief Executive Kelly Ortberg, who joined Boeing in August, said the company is making progress.Company officials said they expect to lift 737 MAX production in 2025 and to clear out planes in inventory, improving the outlook for free cash flow later in the year.Boeing has worked with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on “an agreed upon path for rate increases” on the 737 MAX, Ortberg told analysts.Ortberg described a number of operational performance indicators that look at parts shortages, work performed out of sequence and other factors. The FAA has limited Boeing’s output of the MAX to 38 planes per month as it keeps close oversight of Boeing following two fatal MAX crashes in 2018 and 2019 that killed more than 300 people. The FAA will only lift that level if Boeing makes continued progress on safety concerns. “We need to stay disciplined on maintaining a stable production system,” he said. “But early signs are encouraging.”Boeing’s fourth quarter loss took the company’s full-year loss — its sixth in a row — to $11.8 billion.The results were consistent with a January 23 profit warning in which Boeing flagged the impact of the labor strike on company operations. The 31 percent drop in fourth-quarter revenues to $15.2 billion reflected a hit from fewer plane deliveries, which came in at barely a third of the level in the 2023 period as the labor stoppage halted output on the 737 MAX and the 777. Boeing’s performance was also marred by a troubled flight in January 2024 in which a 737 MAX flown by Alaska Airlines made an emergency landing after the plane suffered a mid-flight blowout on a window panel.Following that incident, Boeing faced intensified scrutiny from US air regulators and slowed output.Boeing has also continued to suffer from legacy fixed-cost defense contracts that have led to losses for the company. Boeing’s profit warning flagged one-time costs of $1.7 billion in its defense, space and security division.- Ramping up -Ortberg told CNBC that Boeing is “actually a little ahead of where I expected” in terms of ramping up production on the 737 MAX following the strike and intensified process control checks after the Alaska Airlines incident.Boeing has been producing the MAX at under the 38 per month authorized by the FAA. Analysts view the restoration of output to 38 per month and subsequent production increases as critical to Boeing’s profit outlook.Ortberg expressed confidence in achieving higher MAX output, telling CNBC “I expect by the second half of the year, we’ll have that approval, and we’ll be moving to a higher production rate.”Ortberg also said he had met with Trump administration representative Elon Musk about Air Force One, the highly customized Boeing plane that flies the president. Trump has installed Musk, the world’s richest man, as an advisor on cutting government spending.”The President wants the airplane sooner, and so we’re working with Elon and the team to figure out what can we do to pull up the schedule of that aircraft,” Ortberg said, speaking about replacement planes.Shares of Boeing finished up 1.5 percent.”It seems investors are focusing on the improvements on the production front and focusing less on the financial results,” said Briefing.com. “We also think investors are looking a few quarters ahead on the hopes of a turnaround.”