Apple, Microsoft, Amazon and Google were the four leading global brands at the end of 2023, according to consulting firm Interbrand. They’re are also four of the world’s five most valuable companies.

The other is Nvidia, which for a time this week, surpassed Microsoft to become the largest company in the world by market cap.

But despite its $3.1 trillion valuation (it reached $3.3 trillion before a two-day slide), Nvidia doesn’t even crack the top 100 most iconic names on Interbrand’s most recent list, which is populated by such companies as McDonald’s, Starbucks, Disney and Netflix.

Nvidia’s historic rise in valuation — the stock has climbed almost ninefold since the end of 2022 — has been driven almost entirely by demand for its graphics processing units (GPUs) that are at the heart of the boom in generative artificial intelligence and, more broadly, by the hype over AI. Nvidia has over 80% of the market for chips used to train and deploy AI software like ChatGPT. A handful of huge tech companies are the primary buyers of its chips.

The speed of Nvidia’s ascent and its relative lack of contact with consumers along the way combines to put the 31-year-old company’s brand recognition on Main Street far behind its allure on Wall Street. No. 100 on Interbrand’s list for 2023 is Japanese camera maker Canon, with Dutch brewer Heineken at No. 99.

“As a product company recently moving onto a global stage, Nvidia has not had time, nor has it dedicated resources, to change its role of brand and strengthen its brand to protect future revenue,” Greg Silverman, Interbrand’s global director of brand economics, said in an email. The risk for Nvidia, Silverman added, is that its “weak brand strength will limit how valuable it will be, despite its market cap heights.”

A spokesperson for Nvidia declined to comment.

Nvidia’s annual revenue growth has exceeded 200% in each of the past three quarters. For fiscal 2025, revenue is expected to almost double from a year earlier to over $120 billion, according to LSEG.

The company’s data center GPUs, which made up 85% of sales in the most recent quarter, are installed in massive facilities, and typically require a team of expensive data science and supercomputing experts to configure them to efficiently create AI software.

By contrast, Apple, ranked No. 1 by Interbrand, makes the vast majority of its money by selling iPhones and other devices to consumers across the globe. Microsoft, ranked second, is an enterprise sales giant, but is ubiquitously known for its Windows and Office software. Third-ranked Amazon strives to be consumers’ everything store, and No. 4 Google is, for many people, the front door to the internet.

Rounding out Interbrand’s top 10 are South Korean electronics giant Samsung, along with three car companies (Toyota, Mercedes-Benz and BMW), Coca-Cola and Nike.

Further down the list, at No. 24, is Nvidia rival Intel, which is best known for making the processor at the heart of laptops and PCs and for its long-running “Intel Inside” advertising campaign. Even Hewlett Packard Enterprise, a company that builds servers, made the list at No. 91.

However, a competing survey shows that Nvidia’s brand value is catching up to that of its peers.

In a ranking of the 100 most valuable global brands published this month by Kantar BrandZ, Nvidia landed at No. 6, leaping 18 places from its prior survey. The brand’s overall valued jumped 178% in a year to an estimate of about $202 billion. Kantar surveys enterprise buyers to evaluate brands that primarily sell to other businesses to come up with a total estimate of brand value.

“Nvidia is pound for pound as relevant and meaningful to that B2B buyer that’s looking to make big, large purchases in-house for their company as Apple is to the consumer who’s buying an iPad or a Mac,” Marc Glovsky, senior brand strategist at Kantar, told CNBC.

And while Nvidia may not be a name known to your parents — or your kids — it does have resonance in a particular corner of the consumer world. Just ask your hard-core gaming buddy.

When Nvidia was founded in 1991, AI was a nascent field. The company’s primary focus was on designing chips that could draw digital triangles quickly, a basic capability that led to a huge expansion in 3D games.

For years, Nvidia, and its GeForce brand and green logo were well known to the type of people who tweaked their computers to run the most advanced games. Nvidia provides the chips for the Nintendo Switch console, which has shipped over 140 million units around the world.

Unlike Intel, Nvidia never put its name in front of consumers with flashy ad campaigns. And gaming is now just a nice side business for chipmaker. In the latest quarter, it accounted for $2.6 billion of revenue, or 10% of total sales, rising 18% year over year.

When it comes to Nvidia’s most important products, companies and institutions vying for its AI chips have to go through an extensive quoting and sales process, often through a computer-equipment company, like Dell or HPE. Those vendors sell complete systems, including memory, a central processor and other parts. Even experts who want to train AI models are more likely to rent Nvidia access through a cloud provider than build their own server clusters.

Still, Nvidia’s name recognition is rapidly increasing. Among retail investors, Nvidia has emerged as the most widely held stock, according to data collected and published last month by Vanda Research.

And while the name didn’t make Interbrand’s top 100 list for 2023, the firm’s data shows its brand awareness quadrupled in the past 12 months, which will help when it’s time for the next ranking, Silverman said.

Maybe by then people will know how to say its name, a topic that’d been the source of debate on obscure gaming forums. The company pronounces it en-VID-ia.

WATCH: The ‘Magnificent Seven’ should have another good earnings season

Sneakers are among the most sought-after collectibles. They are also a prime target for scalpers.

Grand View Research values ​​the global sneaker industry at $86 billion and predicts it will reach $128 billion by 2030. The resale market is also growing strongly, with Cowen Research estimating it will grow to $30 billion by the end of the decade.

Such popularity makes sneakers an easy target for bots or software applications that can replace humans in performing certain tasks. Sneaker bots can speed up the checkout process, wait in a virtual queue, or even fill out payment information.

Sneaker bots took off in 2012 when Nike released their Air Jordan Doernbecher 9 shoes on Twitter. Nike requires users to send a direct message to the company to be able to reserve the shoe. What followed was the creation of bots that would send messages to Nike when they found keywords like “RSVP now” and “Doernbecher.” The bots were able to respond faster than humans, beating out customers for a chance at the shoes.

Sneaker bots are now big business for the people behind them

“In 2022, I grossed $131,000,” said “Botter Boy Nova,” a sneaker bot developer and YouTube creator who uses that pseudonym due to security concerns.

Jesper Essendrop, CEO of Queue-it, agrees. His company specializes in controlling Internet traffic with virtual waiting rooms.

Essendrop said that when looking at “sales of high-end items like sneakers,” 40 percent to 95 percent “of all traffic coming to web stores is from bots.”

In 2021, cybersecurity software company Imperva found that nearly 23% of retail site traffic came from bots with malicious intent. And CHEQ, another software vendor in the space, found that 1 in 4 Black Friday 2022 shoppers were fake.

There are currently no laws against using bots to buy sneakers or other retail goods. But legislation, such as a bill called the Stop the Grinch Bots Act, authored by Rep. Paul Tonko, DN.Y., has been introduced.

“Bots are like a thorn in my side,” said Richie Roxas, who collects New Balance sneakers. “Now I compete with them all the time for special editions and collaborations.”

Top sneaker brands like Nike, Adidas and New Balance are under constant bot attack. Nike says their SNKRS app receives an average of 12 billion bot calls or logins trying to game the system per month.

In the SNKRS app, a customer can submit a drawing entry by selecting a shoe and size. Nike then selects participants at random to buy the shoe. Many of these clients are actually bots.

According to Nike, bots can make up to 10% to 50% of entries depending on demand. For example, on the 2023 edition of the Travis Scott x Air Jordan 1 Low OG “Olive,” almost half of the entries were bots. But Nike told CNBC that it has up to a 98 percent bot-fighting success rate on high-demand releases.

Nova and other bot creators have been less successful in recent years, but still find loopholes and ways to circumvent anti-bot measures such as CAPTCHA systems. One workaround is called jigging, when the creator slightly changes an address, name, or other identifying information.

“People still manage to boot Nike SNKRS,” Nova said. “However, the way to do it is to really understand how the Nike filter works.”

Nike has not commented on whether customers can still successfully use bots in the SNKRS app.

Watch the video to learn more about sneaker bots and how companies like Nike are tackling them.

On Thursday, Nike said it had a strong fiscal first quarter despite supply chain issues as well as declining sales in Greater China, its third-largest market by revenue.

But Nike shares fell more than 9% in after-hours trading as the company described problems with overstocked levels and aggressive steps it was taking to reduce them.

Nike and other retailers are facing supply chain headwinds such as increased delivery times and costs and disruptions from Covid-related store closings.

Here’s how Nike fared in its fiscal first quarter compared to what Wall Street expected, based on a survey of analysts by Refinitiv:

• Earnings per share: 93 cents vs. 92 cents expected
• Revenue: $12.69 billion vs. $12.27 billion expected

As shipping times and consumer demand increased this year, retailers responded by ordering goods earlier than usual. When shipping times began to improve rapidly, Nike CFO Matthew Friend said, that led to an increase in inventory.

Nike’s CEO noted that, mixed with consumers facing greater economic uncertainty, promotional activity has accelerated in the market, especially for apparel brands.

“As a result, we’re facing a new level of complexity,” Friend said on Thursday’s call with investors, adding that Nike will try to clear inventory for specific pockets of “late-season products,” particularly apparel.

Nike executives said their inventory in North America alone is up 65 percent from last year, reflecting a combination of late shipments for the past two seasons and early holiday orders that are now slated to arrive earlier than planned.

This led to the availability of goods for several seasons at the same time. Because of that, Friend said, “we decided to take that inventory and liquidate it more aggressively so we could put the latest and greatest inventory in front of the consumer in the right places.”

Nike reported net income for the three months ended Aug. 31 fell 22 percent to $1.5 billion, or 93 cents a share, from $1.87 billion, or $1.18 a share, a year earlier. early.

Revenue in the period increased 4% to $12.7 billion, compared with $12.2 billion a year earlier.

Recently, Nike has been changing its strategy and is looking to sell its sneakers and other merchandise directly to customers and cut back on what is sold through wholesale partners like Foot Locker. The company said Thursday that its direct sales rose 8% to $5.1 billion and sales for its digital brand rose 16%. On the other hand, sales for Nike’s wholesale sales rose 1%.

In its fiscal first quarter, Nike said its inventory rose 44 percent to $9.7 billion on its balance sheet from the same period last year, which the company said was driven by supply chain issues and partially offset by strong consumer demand. search.

Total sales in Greater China fell 16 percent to about $1.7 billion, compared with nearly $2 billion a year earlier. The company has faced business disruption in the region where the Covid lockdown has affected its business. Nike said in the previous quarter that it expected problems in Greater China to weigh on its business.

Meanwhile, total sales in North America, Nike’s biggest market, rose 13 percent to $5.5 billion in the fiscal first quarter, compared with roughly $4.9 billion in the same period last year. The sneaker giant has consistently stated that consumer demand, particularly in the US market, has not declined despite inflation.

The company said Thursday it expects fiscal second-quarter revenue to grow in the low double digits based on strong consumer demand, despite supply chain and foreign exchange headwinds.

Read the company’s earnings release here.

As companies see a record number of women leaving their jobs during the “Great Resignation”, Alphabet, a parent of Google, is investing money in an initiative that can help them stay.

Launched in 2019, Chief is a membership-based company for women executives that is designed to provide meetings with select peer groups, mentors and fireside chats with people like former First Lady Michelle Obama.

The startup has physical spaces in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago and, as of last month, another $ 100 million in cash from Alphabet CapitalG’s venture capital. The money will help the Chief open a club in San Francisco this summer, which will include a bar with special coffee, an open lounge, meeting rooms, private booths and a mother’s room.

“Technology is such a male-dominated industry, so I think it’s a great ability to take advantage of something that is a little more detached from that mold,” co-founder Carolyn Childers told CNBC in an interview. She said San Francisco was the company’s fastest-growing city, and “we’ve seen amazing members join from start-ups to big tech giants.”

The Covid-19 pandemic boosted business as women flocked to the Chief’s platform, which serves as a support system during times of loneliness. More than 12,000 senior executives have joined more than 8,500 companies, including HBO, American Express, Nike, Google, Goldman Sachs, NASA and Apple.

Annual membership starts at $ 5,800 for women at the vice president level and $ 7,900 for C-suite executives. About 70 percent of members are sponsored by their employers, Childers said. From this year, members can pay an additional fee to receive a pass for full access to the Chief’s Clubhouses, where they can receive clients, reserve meeting rooms and connect with other members.

Childers and co-founder Lindsay Kaplan said Chief was born out of experience, as they both had senior roles in the companies and were struggling to find support. This is one of the main reasons why women do not stay in the technology industry, studies show.

Previously, Childers was a senior video president at Handy and Soap.com, where he worked as a general manager through the acquisition of the company by Amazon. Kaplan was vice president of communications and branding at Casper and did marketing for various startups.

“We managed teams and mentored others, but we no longer had the resources for ourselves,” Childers said. “You can get really lonely at the top, especially when you’re literally the only woman in a room full of men.”

Chief expanded nationally earlier this year. There are about 60,000 women on the waiting list, but Childers and Kaplan say they should be able to start screening candidates faster now that the company has more money to hire and build technology.

Laela Sturdy, a partner at CapitalG, said the company has an “amazing business model”, but has also taken advantage of the time, given the high tensions in the pandemic.

“I started hearing about Chief because I have a lot of friends who are senior women executives and CEOs in my portfolio who joined Chief and I was honestly impressed with the inertia of the brand and the organic love that the key members showed,” Sturdy said. “It’s very rare for members and users to talk about a life-changing platform.”

Childers says the company is already in a position to gain even more momentum in a post-pandemic world as people crave personal events.

“When it’s all digital, the biggest thing is democratized access,” Childers said. “You didn’t have to be in a certain place. For networks and communities, being able to meet in person physically is a huge advantage. “

In April, the platform included member-only chats with Ariel Gross Samuels, global leader of Meta’s environmental, social and corporate governance initiative, and former Netflix CMO Bozoma St. John. Topics range from workplace inclusion to work-life balance.

Childers said it is a particularly diverse community, with 35% of members identifying as BIPOC, or black indigenous and colored people.

The boss raises huge amounts of capital from leading venture capitalists, which means that investors expect the company to scale in a way that can justify a technological assessment. Other supporters include General Catalyst and GGV Capital.

The boss says the big way he plans to grow is to go directly to the companies. For example, he could potentially customize features and programs based on the needs of their executives, whether that means focusing on events or professional growth, Sturdy said.

“We really want to make a deep investment in building relationships with these companies so that sponsorship becomes meaningless for the company you work for,” Childers said. “There are many opportunities to think about where the Chief is, even beyond the United States.”

Sturdy plays a role in the expansion. She has seen 10 of her investments turn into companies worth $ 1 billion or more in the last year and has spent more than a decade at Google in various leadership roles. She said the Chief could serve as a valuable retention tool as companies consider ways to maintain their best results.

“The exciting thing about this extension is the vision of going to Google or Nike and saying, ‘Hey, there are already five, 10, 20 of your top executives who are key members, and here are all the ways we can expand to serve more than your population, “Sturdy said.

I WATCH: The Great Resignation has become global

What do Justin Bieber, Gwyneth Paltrow, Snoop Dogg and Ashton Kutcher have in common? In addition to being celebrities on the A list, they are among more than 60 new investors in the fintech startup MoonPay.

Additional notable investors include Chainsmokers, Drake, Eva Longoria, Jason Derulo, Kate Hudson, Paris Hilton, Matthew McConaughey, Mindy Kaling, Questlav and Sean Mendes, among others. New investors are bringing in a collective $ 87 million for a pre-announced $ 555 million funding round led by Tiger Global and Coatue, valuing MoonPay at $ 3.4 billion.

Founded in 2018, the Miami-based software allows users to buy and sell cryptocurrencies using conventional payment methods such as credit cards, bank transfers or mobile wallets such as Apple Pay and Google Pay.

MoonPay also sells its technology to other businesses, including the crypto website Bitcoin.com and the irreplaceable token (NFT) market OpenSea, a model CEO Ivan Soto-Wright called “crypto-like service.”

NFTs are digital assets that represent real-world objects – such as art, music and real estate – and cannot be replicated. In the last few months alone, major brands in every industry, including Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, Nike, Gucci and the National Football League, have included NFT in their marketing initiatives.

“Many companies can open a very small part of their circles, but we wanted to take significant scrutiny from these people because we want them to be part of that story and shape the product direction,” Soto-Wright told CNBC.

In particular, when it comes to artists, they do not want to travel forever, so they are increasingly diversifying, he said.

“Many of them have venture capital portfolios, many of them have their own independent companies, and we got to them by telling them we can help you understand the possibilities around Web3, crypto and the metaverse,” Soto-Wright said. “We had virtually no rejections. Everyone wanted to be a part of it.”

MoonPay says it has been profitable since launching its platform in 2019. Its service is now used by more than 10 million customers in 160 countries.

However, investors are struggling to see value in digital art and are confused by big sales, such as the Beeple piece, which sold for $ 69 million at Christie’s.

Looking ahead, the company plans to spend the money raised on new products and expansion. He also has ambitions to bring the business to the public.

“We aspire to be a public company in the end,” Soto-Wright told CNBC in November.

However, cryptocurrencies are extremely volatile and this has affected even the most famous players in the space. Bitcoin fell below $ 40,000 earlier this week for the first time since mid-March.

– on CNBC Ryan Brown contributed to this report.

The creator of Fortnite Epic Games has raised $ 2 billion in funding from Sony and the Lego family in a huge deal that highlights the excitement of big business about the so-called metauniverse.

Sony will invest $ 1 billion in the company, Epic announced on Monday, while Kirkbi, the family-owned investment company behind Lego, will invest the same amount. The deal, which is subject to normal closing conditions, will value Epic at $ 31.5 billion.

The news comes hot after a partnership announced by Epic and Lego last week aimed at jointly developing a “family-friendly” meta-universe for children. Lego already has a successful line of video games based on lucrative franchises, including Disney’s Star Wars and Warner Bros. Batman.

“Part of our investment is focused on trends that we believe will affect the future world in which we and our children will live,” Soren Thorup Sorensen, Kirkbi’s chief executive, said in a statement Monday.

“This investment will accelerate our commitment to the world of digital gaming, and we are pleased to be investing in Epic Games to support their continued journey of growth, with a long-term focus on the future metaverse.”

The noise around the metaverse, a proposed network of huge virtual worlds, has taken the corporate world by storm recently. Facebook launched the trend by renaming itself Meta, and several major brands, including JPMorgan, Samsung and Nike, began experimenting with the technology.

However, companies such as Epic and Roblox have long been talking about building a metaverse.

The Epic Battle Royale Fortnite game allows up to 100 players to fight for the last one. But it also branches out into other forms of entertainment, such as hosting music concerts by artists such as Travis Scott and Marshmelo.

Meanwhile, Roblox wants to build a metaverse where millions of people can gather to play games or even work in a virtual economy fueled by Robux, its own in-app currency.

Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney said the fresh funds would help the company “accelerate our work to build the metaverse.”

“As we rethink the future of entertainment and gaming, we need partners who share our vision. “We found this in our partnership with Sony and KIRKBI,” Sweeney said in a statement.

Although best known as the company behind Fortnite, Epic Games is a powerful hub for video games. The company has developed Unreal Engine, one of the largest platforms used to create games, and runs its own online game store, which competes with Microsoft and Valve.

The company is at the center of a heated dispute between app developers and Apple over fees for the latter’s App Store. Last year, a judge ruled that Apple could no longer stop developers from directing consumers away from Apple’s own payment system. The tech giant typically reduces 15% to 30% of all in-app purchases.

Amazon is dealing with a rapidly growing number of returns, which is causing a huge problem for the e-commerce giant and the planet.

A study by the National Retail Federation found that a record $ 761 billion in goods was returned to retailers in 2021. That amount exceeds $ 741 billion spent by the United States on national defense in 2021.

Amazon will not share its total return, but in 2021 the National Retail Federation estimates that 16.6% of all goods sold during the holiday season were returned, up 56% from the previous year. . For online purchases, the average return rate was even higher, at nearly 21%, up from 18% in 2020. With $ 469 billion in net sales last year, Amazon’s return figures are probably staggering.

Returns to the United States generate 16 million metric tons of carbon emissions during their complex return journey and up to 5.8 billion pounds of landfill waste each year, according to return solution provider Optoro.

“We are talking about billions, billions and billions [dollars of] waste that is a by-product of the Vilnius consumerist, ”said Mark Cohen, director of retail research at Columbia Business School and former CEO of Sears Canada.

“Reverse logistics will always be nasty, because in most cases the goods cannot be resold as they were originally,” Cohen said. “The best way is in a garbage can, in a landfill.”

Amazon told CNBC it did not send items to landfills, but relied on “energy recovery” as a last resort.

“Recovering energy means burning something to produce heat to produce energy. And you are rationalizing the disposal of goods as a conversion from one form of matter to another,” Cohen said. “To the extent that they do that, I don’t think they reveal it completely.”

Amazon has said it is “working towards a zero-disposal target”, although it will not set a target date to achieve that target.

“We’re promoting a second life for all the products we get back,” said Cherris Armor, head of Amazon’s North American returns, in an exclusive interview with CNBC.

“And that comes in the form of selling most of the items we get. They are resold as new and used, or returned to the seller or supplier, or we donate them, “said Armor.

Energy recovery, Armor added, is only for “non-recyclable or non-recyclable items” due to legal or hygienic reasons or product damage.

Armor first joined Amazon 12 years ago, starting as a night shift operations manager at the Indianapolis Performance Center. She said the goal of zero product disposal is something Amazon has been talking about for many years.

Researchers have found that consumers love easy returns.

A frequently cited 2018 survey of 1,300 online shoppers found that 96% would return to a retailer if they had a good return experience, and 69% would be deterred from buying if they knew they would have to pay for reverse sending. In 2019, Amazon expanded the free and easy return of millions of items.

“Amazon has really changed the game in the world of reverse logistics because of how easy it is to return them,” said Zach Rodgers, who managed returns for an Amazon subsidiary called Quidsi from 2010 to 2012, before becoming a chain management assistant. supplies at Colorado State University.

“So now you have more traditional retailers like Walmart or Target that have such policies, because that’s really a big part of the way you compete at retail,” he said. “This creates brand loyalty, makes you more likely to register [Amazon’s] Prime, and Prime is really what drives this company’s flywheel. “

Amazon now allows the return of 18,000 seats, including the option to leave items without a box or label at Kohl’s, UPS and some Whole Foods stores. There’s a Try Before You Buy for Prime members program designed to make returning clothes even easier, with return labels already included in the box. At the end of the easy return, Amazon is increasingly allowing customers to keep some “returned” items while recovering them.

“If I tell you to keep the product, instead of counting the cost and carbon impact of returning it, I look better as a company, don’t I?” Said Tony Schiarotta, executive director of the Reverse Logistics Association. “Let’s let people keep it and then it won’t respect us. But now you, as a consumer, what can I do with this thing, right?”

Now Amazon has to solve the problem of what to do with the returns at the back end.

Amazon spent nearly $ 152 billion on logistics in 2021 – almost a third of all net sales. That’s up from $ 119 billion in 2020. A factor of return on these costs, so anything Amazon can do to reduce those costs will help the company’s end result.

“They will do it for their own interests, although they will do it for the sake of saving the planet,” Cohen said. “But at the end of the day, their actions will be based on the economy of what we see.”

To that end, in 2019, Amazon launched a donation program that allows U.S. retailers to automatically donate surplus and returned goods to a network of 100,000 local charities through a partnership with the Good360 nonprofit network. The organization works with about 400 companies, including giants such as Walmart, CVS and Nike, but says Amazon is its largest corporate donor.

Good360 says it coordinates with local charities for direct pickups at more than 230 Amazon facilities, helping Amazon save on transportation costs as gas prices reach record highs. Non-profit organizations pay Good360 a fee to cover transportation costs.

They also agree to certain rules before gaining access to Amazon donations.

“They will not resell these items, put them on online auction sites, take them to local flea markets or anything like that. So protecting the brand integrity of our donors is really essential to what Good360 does, ”said Shari Rudolph, Good360’s Chief Development Officer and CMO.

There are also potential tax write-offs that can come with a donation from a non-profit organization.

“There are some programs that are available,” Rudolph said. “I have no idea what the Amazon team is taking advantage of, if anything else.

There is also a boom in the secondary market that makes it easier to make money from second-hand goods. Against the backdrop of growing pressure from younger shoppers looking for sustainable shopping opportunities and a supply chain lag that causes a shortage of new goods, Colorado Rodgers estimated the size of the secondary market for 2021 at $ 688 billion, compared to $ 649 billion in 2020

As second-hand goods have become a potential source of money, Amazon has launched two new returns recovery programs in 2020. It now gives retailers the ability to liquidate returns by sending them to large third-party liquidators such as Liquidity Services to help them. trade on the secondary market.

Also in 2020, Amazon began offering select resellers the option to evaluate and resell returns. With this option, Amazon evaluates the returned item and evaluates it – as new, very good, good or acceptable – then resells it in special sections on its website. There are offers for second-hand warehouses, Amazon Renewed for refurbished items, Amazon Outlet for overstocks and a site for everyday transactions called Woot! who sells a “bag of nonsense” for $ 10. Amazon even offers customers gift cards to trade in their used Amazon devices, which they can try to upgrade and resell.

“We expect these programs to help give a second life to more than 300 million units a year,” Armor told Amazon.

It’s just a smart business, said Rodgers, a former Quidsi employee.

“Let’s assume that the return is 20%, that’s $ 93.8 billion return. If instead of getting pennies on a dollar from a rescue trader, you could get maybe 30 cents on a dollar from a strategic target location, that brings us up to $ 28 billion, “Rodgers said.

“With $ 28 billion, having a Woot or Amazon Outlet, it makes a lot more sense now because we’re really starting to get a return on our investment,” he said. “Before, when we were on a small scale, it was like ‘This is rubbish, get rid of it.’ Now that we’re getting bigger, they’re growing to the point where monetizing that return would actually be irresponsible not to. “

But reverse logistics experts say the best way to reduce waste and reduce return costs is to first prevent them from occurring and then create a barrier to returning goods.

“The industry as a whole will bow to Amazon for a moment if Amazon starts charging for returns because it will give them air coverage to do the same,” Cohen said.

Shares of Roblox fell more than 26% on Wednesday after reporting gains that did not live up to expectations.

The gaming company reported fourth-quarter revenue of $ 770 million, below the expected $ 772 million, according to Refinitiv’s consensus estimates. Its loss of 25 cents per share was greater than the expected 13 cents and it reported 49.5 million active users per day in the quarter, which is 33% more than the previous period.

Roblox is an open gaming platform that allows players to create their own interactive “worlds”. The first large company working on the metaverse to go public, it sold virtual currency, which was used to buy digital items in its games. He has recently partnered with companies such as Nike and the NFL.

“We have so many opportunities to increase the monetization of our platform,” said Roblox CEO David Bazooka at CNBC’s Squawk on the Street in response to the loss of profits. “We don’t touch the ads, we don’t touch the 3D immersive shopping. We are very gentle about monetizing in terms of quality consumer growth, creating a safe and civic platform and boosting our DAU numbers. So we are focused on consumers and growing engagement. “

Analysts were concerned about delays in reservations and prospects.

“Our key conclusion from the 4th quarter update of Roblox … Reservations for January 22 slowed compared to recent months, increasing by only 2% -3% on an annual basis compared to October, November, December 21 at + 15%, + 23% and + 21%, for example, “analysts at Stifel said in a note on Tuesday night.

“In addition, the company said that reservation computers on an annual basis” need to be improved from May to June, “leaving us to consider what this implies for February-April. Why the expected delay?

Take a look at some of the largest manufacturers in the premarket:

Spirit Airlines (SAVE) – Spirit rose 11.4 percent in the premarket after announcing it would buy rival Frontier Airlines in a $ 6.6 billion share swap deal, including debt. Shares of the parent company of the Frontier Frontier Group (ULCC) fell 2.4%.

Peloton (PTON) – Peloton rose 28.5% higher in pre-market trade after reports that Amazon.com (AMZN) and Nike (NKE) were considering possible offers for the fitness equipment maker. The reports come days after activist investor Blackwells Capital called on Peloton’s board to consider selling the company.

Energizer (ENR) – The company best known for its batteries, jumped 5.7% in pre-market trading after reporting better-than-expected quarterly results. Energizer surpassed estimates by 8 cents a share, earning $ 1.03 per share. Revenues also exceeded Wall Street forecasts. Energizer warned that the current work environment remains “very unstable”.

Zimmer Biomet (ZBH) – The manufacturer of orthopedic and other medical products reported a quarterly earnings of $ 1.95 per share, lacking consensus estimates of 3 cents per share. Revenues do not meet analysts’ forecasts. The company said the ongoing pandemic continued to put pressure on its business during the quarter, and shares fell 5.4% in pre-trade.

Hasbro (HAS) – Hasbro added 2.2% to pre-market trade after the toy maker surpassed its highest quarter-end forecasts for its most recent quarter. Hasbro earned $ 1.21 per share, well over 88 cents per share, the consensus estimate. Revenues in the television, film and entertainment business jumped 61% from a year earlier. Hasbro also increased its quarterly dividend by 3% to 70 cents a share.

Tyson Foods (TSN) – Tyson rose 4.2% in premarkets after its quarterly earnings report. The company surpassed estimates by 97 cents per share, with a quarterly earnings of $ 2.87 per share. Beef and poultry producers ‘revenues also exceeded analysts’ forecasts. Tyson said he is on track to achieve $ 1 billion in productivity savings by the end of fiscal 2024.

Bumble (BMBL) – The dating service operator has announced the acquisition of the European dating company Fruitz for an undisclosed amount, the first deal to acquire Bumble. Fruitz is especially popular with Generation Z consumers.

Ford (F) – Ford fell 1.1% during pre-sale action after announcing it would halt or cut production at eight of its North American plants due to global semiconductor shortages. These changes will take effect throughout this week.

Spotify (SPOT) – Spotify CEO Daniel Eck said he strongly condemned the racist insults used by podcast Joe Rogan, but said removing his podcast from Spotify was not the answer. A number of popular musicians have downloaded their music from Spotify amid controversy over Rogan’s comments on Covid-19. Shares of Spotify fell 2% in the pre-market.

Snowflake (SNOW) – Shares of the cloud data platform provider rose 4.8% in premarkets after Morgan Stanley upgraded them to “overweight” from “equal weight”, saying investors underestimated Snowflake’s endurance potential and quality of growth.