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Oct. 23 (UPI) — All-electric vehicle maker Rivian Automotive has announced it is laying off 4.5% of its workforce amid mounting market pressures, the company said Thursday.

In a memo sent to employees, company founder and CEO RJ Scaringe said the cuts involve restructuring of its marketing, vehicle operations, sales and delivery and mobile teams, according to CNBC.

“These were not changes that were made lightly,” Scaringe said in the memo. “With the changing operating backdrop, we had to rethink how we are scaling out go-to-market- functions. The news is challenging to hear, and the hard work and contributions of the team members who are leaving are greatly appreciated.”

Rivian ended 2024 with just under 15,000 employees.

Scarigne’s memo did not say exactly how many employees would be let go, but according to The Wall Street Journal, which first reported the plan, the layoffs would affect more than 600 employees.

Rivian and other elective vehicle makers are facing difficult sales and marketing conditions following the end of a $7,500 dollar tax credit for EV purchases in the new federal budget.

Demand has also been lower than expected for Rivian amid regulatory issues. The automaker also lacks new products until next year and faces a cash shortage. It lost $1.1 billion during the second quarter.

This is the latest in a series of layoffs. Rivian furloughed between 100 and 150 workers in its commercial and manufacturing teams between September 2024 and June.

Rivian is scheduled to release at least 150,000 R2 SUVs in 2026, which will be more widely available to consumers than previous models.

The company also recently started construction on its third manufacturing facility outside of Atlanta, where it plans to build the R2 and other models.

The company has struggled to maintain a sales pace with its current lineup of vehicles. Its sales are projected to drop by 16% in 2025 compared to last year.

Oct. 16 (UPI) — President Donald Trump announced a deal Thursday between his administration and a pharmaceutical company that could reduce the cost of some fertility medications.

Administration officials say the deal between the government and EMD Serono will help millions of U.S. women who have trouble conceiving afford the cost of medications that could help.

“In the Trump administration, we want to make it easier for couples to have babies, raise children and start the families they’ve always dreamed about,” Trump said during his Oval Office announcement.

The president said during the announcement that EMD Serono, the world’s largest fertility drug manufacturer, has agreed to provide discounts for the drugs it sells in the United States, including Gonal-f, which is used to treat infertility by men and women.

A fertility drug cycle typically costs between $5,000 and $6,000, the administration said, and only about 30% of families have access to employer insurance that will cover the treatment. Women trying to conceive can require different amounts of the drug.

Trump said his administration is working with employers to make it easier for them to offer supplemental insurance coverage for fertility treatments.

“As a result of these actions, the per-cycle cost of drugs used in IVF will fall by an estimated 73% for American consumers, and the numbers are going to actually be very substantially higher as time goes by when it really kicks in,” Trump continued during the announcement.

Trump blamed inflated fertility drug prices as a reason for the high cost of IVF treatment, and claimed the cost for the procedure is 700% times more expensive in the United States than in the rest of the world.

Seroni said in its statement that IVF patients will be able to buy Gonal-f at an 84% discount.

XRP (XRP -1.75%) was built as payment scaffolding. Dogecoin (DOGE -1.09%) is the meme coin that keeps surprising people who bet against popular culture. These coins couldn’t be more different.

Both have posted big multiyear gains and made some investors into millionaires, with Dogecoin being the clear five-year standout, up by an absurd 9,780% compared to XRP’s gain of 1,090%. But if your goal is long-term wealth-building from here on out rather than an outrageously risky thrill ride, there’s a clear winner between these two. There are no guarantees in the world of investing or crypto, but let’s investigate which of these coins is more likely to still be a millionaire maker.

Image source: Getty Images.

XRP has decent odds for serious wealth-building

XRP’s core goal is to serve financial institutions and payment businesses across a handful of different functions.

Its chain, the XRPL, originally a platform for doing quick and cheap money transfers, is now a place where users can park value in stablecoins, process payments, access liquidity for settling trades in the traditional or cryptocurrency markets, and generate a yield from real-world assets (RWAs) like U.S. Treasuries.

Ripple, the company that issues XRP, has a go-to-market strategy that’s making the most of that architecture. Ripple recently secured a key license to offer regulated crypto payments in Dubai, a major international financial hub, and it has already onboarded a few clients after getting the approval.

It’s also in the process of getting similar permissions in many other global financial hubs so as to increase the chain’s addressable market. And securing that regulatory clarity to create bank-grade on-ramps to its network is exactly what institutional users require to commit real volumes and workflows.

The coin’s tokenomics and supply also support the long-term thesis for an investment. XRP’s maximum supply is 100 billion, which is gradually being released from escrow at regular intervals. Thus, investors won’t get their value significantly diluted over time.

But could the coin make investors millions?

Its market cap is currently upward of $180.2 billion. For that to dramatically increase, XRP would need to process a large portion of the global money transfer market, as well as onboard billions of capital from the traditional financial sector for management on the XRPL. It’s certainly possible for those things to happen, but only over a protracted period of time, and in the absence of strong competition. That means that you should not bet on it happening.

Dogecoin can still run

Dogecoin’s edge is its mindshare, which is unparalleled among meme coins and certainly one of the largest in the crypto sector in general.

In risk-on markets, it can rally sharply as attention snowballs, sometimes outpacing projects with vastly richer fundamentals, like XRP. While there’s no utility to owning Dogecoin, that hasn’t stopped it from gaining in value over time. In some sense, it’s that very property which keeps investors coming back for more, even though its crashes can be even more frightening than its run-ups are thrilling.

One big fly in the ointment is that its supply issuance schedule is bad for holders over the long term. A fixed 5 billion new DOGE are issued per year, so holders see their value consistently diluted. There is no hard cap on the coin’s total issuance; the value proposition, to the extent that there is one, therefore leans more on the coin’s culture remaining in vogue.

The challenge is thus durably creating and capturing economic value beyond periodic hype. Discussions about adding deeper utility have persisted for years in Dogecoin’s developer community, but most monetization pathways remain tentative compared to chains that already serve institutional workflows. In other words, Dogecoin can absolutely surge when big-picture trends are permissive and attention is high, but sustaining those gains without a hard cap or a cemented set of real-economy uses is harder.

If you’re looking for long-term compounding, predictable issuance without a ceiling is a structural headwind relative to capped-supply assets. That does not preclude strong runs, but it does raise the bar for calling it a millionaire maker from here.

There’s no need to overthink this one

Realistically, neither of these assets is likely to mint new millionaires from small stakes, as both are already quite large and probably can’t grow by the 100x that’d be necessary to really make new investors rich. But if you forced me to choose the more likely millionaire maker from today’s levels, and to say which I think would be the better asset for building wealth, I would pick XRP by a mile for both.

It has a clearer path to sustained, non-speculative demand via payments plumbing, bank-friendly regulatory compliance controls, and growing regulatory footholds, all of which are paired with a defined supply regime that won’t dilute holders’ value.

In contrast, Dogecoin has the bigger five-year highlight reel and can (and probably will) still pop impressively in risk-on periods, but its open-ended supply and still-nascent utility make it less likely to reliably compound in value over time. So consider an investment in XRP — but keep it small as you diversify your portfolio into more traditional investments — and hold off on even thinking about Dogecoin until it can offer some real utility, if it ever does.

Rivian (RIVN -1.10%) is gearing up for its launch of a new electric vehicle model next year, and is coming off a year in which it met gross profit milestones that unlocked additional funding from its partnership with Volkswagen.

That’s the good news.

The bad news is that Rivian narrowed its vehicle delivery guidance for the year, the electric vehicle industry just had its federal tax credits axed, and the company reported a gross loss again in the most recent quarter.

To say Rivian’s challenges are increasing would be an understatement. Here’s why Rivian stock likely won’t make you a millionaire anytime soon.

Image source: Rivian.

Rivian’s slow but steady progress

They say it’s always best to start with the good news, so here’s what Rivian has going for it right now, starting with the company’s upcoming cheaper models. Rivian will begin selling its smaller R2 SUV next year and R3 crossover in 2027. The former will start at just $45,000 while the latter has an estimated price tag of around $40,000.

Those are important price points because they’re below the average price of a new EV, which is currently around $57,000. Potential EV buyers often cite cost as a concern when considering an electric vehicle, and for EVs to gain ground in the market, their prices need to come down. You can’t buy a new Rivian vehicle for less than $71,000 right now, so the upcoming lower-priced models could potentially spark interest among more budget-conscious buyers.

What’s more, Rivian has proved that it can run an efficient EV business after reporting two consecutive quarters of positive gross profit. Management set a goal to achieve that, and it did so, in part, by retooling and reengineering its manufacturing process last year — cutting up to 35% in material costs for some vehicles. Achieving that goal also unlocked $1 billion in additional funding from its partner, Volkswagen, which was another win for Rivian.

Unfortunately, even after notching these wins, Rivian is still in uncharted territory.

The road to success is long, winding, and uncertain

Despite Rivian’s successes and its pipeline of new models, the company is facing an arduous path. First, the federal government ending the EV tax credits is a blow to the industry. Rivian’s vehicles didn’t qualify for the credit because they’re too expensive, but the company was able to take advantage of a leasing loophole that helped lower costs for some customers.

Making matters worse for Rivian is that after two consecutive quarters of positive gross profit, the company slipped back into the red in the second quarter. That may not have been such a big deal if everything else was humming along for the company, but it came just ahead of Rivian’s management narrowing its full-year vehicle guidance.

Rivian now expects deliveries between 41,500 to 43,500 — lower than its previous midpoint guidance by about 500 vehicles. That’s the company’s second revision this year. When Rivian started its production year, it first estimated deliveries of up to 51,000.

What’s especially disappointing is that deliveries for Q3 were actually up by 32% from the year-ago quarter, but the company’s revised full-year delivery guidance was adjusted down, likely due to the federal tax incentives being eliminated and tariff uncertainty. While some of the delivery increases were likely due to customers signing up for leases before the tax credits expired, there’s no getting around the fact that the current 2025 estimates are nearly 18% lower than 2024’s deliveries.

Is Rivian a millionaire maker?

For the reasons listed above, I don’t think Rivian stock is a millionaire maker. I have a small position in Rivian, and I’m willing to wait out this rough patch to see what happens with the company, but expecting Rivian stock to mint millionaires doesn’t look like a good bet.

That doesn’t mean Rivian isn’t a good company or won’t be a good long-term investment, but investors should know that the EV industry is facing significant headwinds and Rivian will likely face more hurdles ahead as it tries to build its EV future.

Published on
20/08/2025 – 13:13 GMT+2

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Shares in Pop Mart soared over 12.5% in daily trading in Hong Kong on Wednesday after the Chinese company released stellar earnings.

The creator of the Labubu doll saw its revenue jump 204% year-on-year in the first half of 2025, coming in at 13.88 billion yuan (€1.66bn). Net profit soared 386% to 4.68bn yuan (€559.39 million), beating forecasts.

Around 40% of sales were made up by purchases outside of mainland China thanks to the international appeal of the firm’s Labubu brand, part of its “The Monsters” range.

“The Monsters” brought in 4.81bn yuan (€574.99mn) in the first half of the year, accounting for 34.7% of total revenue.

The elf-like dolls have become a viral sensation, boosted by the endorsement of celebrities like Dua Lipa, Kim Kardashian and David Beckham.

Part of the attraction is that the toys are sold in blind-box packaging. This means that customers don’t know what they have purchased until they open the product.

Although the firm was created back in 2010, Pop Mart launched its first blind-box series in 2016. The popularity of the range allowed the company to list in Hong Kong in December 2020, achieving a market capitalisation of around €6bn. Since the IPO, shares have risen by over 300%.

Pop Mart opened its first European store in London in January 2022, hoping to expand in overseas markets. Today, the company operates around 2,600 vending machines and almost 600 stores across the globe, meaning Labubu dolls can be bought in more than 30 countries. 

Given the demand for dolls, Pop Mart is now considering expansion in the Middle East, Central Europe, and Central and South America. The firm operates around 40 stores in the US, with 10 more sites expected to open by the end of 2025.

In an earnings call on Wednesday, CEO Wang Ning also said that Pop Mart would this week launch a new, mini version of Labubu that can be attached to phones.

Wang added that his firm was on track to meet its 2025 revenue goal of 20bn yuan (€2.39bn), noting that “30bn this year should also be quite easy”.

Some analysts have nonetheless raised doubts over the sustainability of the company’s rise, driven by social media sites like TikTok.

“The craze for the elf-like Labubu dolls is translating into big profit and cash flow,” said AJ Bell head of financial analysis, Danni Hewson. ““Consumers can be capricious when it comes to this type of fad though and Pop Mart will have to work hard to build on this success if it is to avoid being a one-hit wonder.”

Novo Nordisk’s outgoing CEO, Lars Fruergaard Jorgensen, has warned that layoffs at the Danish pharmaceutical giant could be unavoidable as competition heats up against its blockbuster obesity drug Wegovy amid rising pressure from rival Eli Lilly.

Novo Nordisk – which became Europe’s most valuable company, worth $650bn, last year on booming sales of Wegovy – is facing a pivotal moment as the medicine loses market share and sees sales growth slow, especially in the United States.

It has warned of far slower growth this year, in part due to compounders who have been allowed to make copycat drugs based on the same ingredients as Wegovy due to shortages. Novo Nordisk, which according to its website has 77,000 employees, cut its full-year sales and profit forecasts last week, wiping $95bn off its market value since.

The slide is a vast and abrupt turnaround for the firm that has been one of the world’s hottest investment stories, which led to a rapid expansion of manufacturing and sales capacity. Now the company is eyeing potential cost-cutting measures.

Layoffs loom

“We probably won’t be able to avoid layoffs,” Jorgensen told Danish broadcaster DR. “When you have to adjust a company, there are some areas where you have to have fewer people, some [areas] where you have to be smaller.”

He added, though, that any decision on layoffs would be in the hands of the incoming CEO, company veteran Maziar Mike Doustdar, who takes over on Thursday.

On a media call, Jorgensen said the market for copycat versions of Wegovy’s class of drugs – known as GLP-1 receptor agonists – was of “equal size to our business” and compounded versions of Wegovy were sold at a “much lower price point”.

In May, Novo Nordisk said it expected many of the roughly one million US patients using compounded GLP-1 drugs to switch to branded treatments after a US Food and Drug Administration ban on compounded copies of Wegovy took effect on May 22, and it expected compounding to wind down in the third quarter.

However, finance chief Karsten Munk Knudsen said on Wednesday that more than one million US patients were still using compounded GLP-1s and that the company’s lowered outlook has “not assumed a reduction in compounding” this year.

“The obesity market is volatile,” Knudsen told analysts when asked under what circumstances the company could see negative growth in the last six months of the year. The low end of the firm’s new full-year guidance range would be for “unforeseen events”, such as stronger pricing pressure in the US than forecast, he said.

The lower end of the range would imply sales around 150 billion Danish krone ($23bn) in the second half of 2025, compared with 157 billion krone ($24.5bn) in the same period last year.

Knudsen reiterated that the company was pursuing multiple strategies, including lawsuits against compounding pharmacies, to halt unlawful mass compounding.

Jorgensen said the company was encouraged by the latest US prescription data for Wegovy. While the drug was overtaken earlier this year by rival Eli Lilly’s Zepbound in terms of US prescriptions, that lead has narrowed in the past month.

Second-quarter sales of Wegovy rose by 36 percent in the US and more than quadrupled in markets outside the US compared to a year ago, Novo Nordisk said.

While Wegovy’s US pricing held steady in the quarter, the company expected deeper erosion in the key US market in the second half, due to a greater portion of sales expected from the direct-to-consumer or cash-pay channel, as well as higher rebates and discounts to insurers, Knudsen said.

He said Novo Nordisk was expanding its US direct-to-consumer platform, NovoCare, launched in March, and may need to pursue similar “cash sales” directly to patients, outside of insurance channels, in some markets outside the US.

Cost cuts

Novo Nordisk reiterated its full-year earnings expectations on Wednesday after last week’s profit warning.

Jorgensen said the company was acting to “ensure efficiencies in our cost base” as it announced it would terminate eight research and development projects.

“There seems to be a larger R&D clean-out than usual, but we do not know if this reflects a strategic re-assessment or just a coincidence,” Jefferies analysts said in a note.

Investors have questioned whether the company can stay competitive in the booming weight-loss drug market. Several equity analysts have cut their price targets and recommendations on the stock since last week.

Shares in Novo Nordisk plunged 30 percent last week – their worst weekly performance in over two decades. The stock has continued to tumble since the market opened in New York. As of 12pm local time (16:00 GMT), the pharmaceutical giant was down by more than 3.3 percent.

Deal announced as cereal giant Kellogg struggles as consumer demand slows due to inflation.

The Ferrero Group will acquire United States cereal brand WK Kellogg for roughly $3.1bn as the latter struggles with weakening consumer demand and inflationary pressures.

Kellogg and Ferrero announced the deal on Thursday.

Deal making in the snack industry has picked up pace as food brands battle muted sales in the wake of price hikes owing to higher input costs and a shift in consumer preference for healthier options.

Ferrero has offered WK Kellogg’s shareholders $23 per share, representing a 31 percent premium over the stock’s last close. Shares of the cereal maker were up 30.4 percent at $22.84 in early trading on Thursday.

The deal, which is Ferrero’s biggest acquisition in recent years, will bring legacy brands such as Nutella, Kinder, Tic Tac, Frosted Flakes, Froot Loops and Special K under one roof.

The transaction is expected to close in the second half of 2025.

WK Kellogg was spun off from Kellanova and holds the North American cereal business of Kellogg, the original parent. Cheez-It maker Kellanova is also in the process of being acquired by the candy giant Mars in a nearly $36bn deal.

WK Kellogg and other packaged food companies such as JM Smucker, Kraft Heinz and PepsiCo have flagged subdued demand due to cautious consumer spending in the US after consistent price increases by firms trying to navigate higher input costs.

The Raisin Bran owner said it expects second-quarter net sales to be in the range of $610m to $615m, below analysts’ average estimate of $653.7m, according to data compiled by LSEG. It also projected adjusted core profit of $43m to $48m.

Packaged food makers are also under pressure from US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr’s Make America Healthy Again Commission to eliminate the use of synthetic dyes.

Ferrero, the maker of the Nutella hazelnut spread, has turned into a global group, boosted by an aggressive acquisition campaign launched by Executive Chairman Giovanni Ferrero. In North America, Ferrero has 14,000 employees across 22 plants and 11 offices.

In 2018, Ferrero bought Nestle’s US confectionery business for $2.8bn.

The group reported turnover of 18.4 billion euros ($19.2bn) in the financial year ending on August 31 and said it had increased its investments to boost manufacturing capabilities and expand across categories.

On Wall Street in New York as of 11am (15:00 GMT), Kellogg’s stock was up about 0.2 percent since the market opened. The stock has trended downward over the past month amid its struggles, down about 2.5 percent.

He’s made 1,378 senior appearances, had his debut in 1997 and is the oldest player at the Club World Cup.

Fluminense’s Brazilian goalkeeper Fabio Deivson Lopes Maciel has already had some career – and he’s showing no signs of slowing down.

The 44-year-old starred in Monday’s 2-0 win over Inter Milan to help the Brazilian side into the Club World Cup quarter-final, against either Man City or Al-Hilal.

He produced four saves, including a crucial late block with his legs, as the 2023 Copa Libertadores winners stunned this season’s Champions League runners-up, before celebrating in style.

He even makes 40-year-old teammate Thiago Silva seem young in comparison, although both made a mockery of their years in the 33C heat.

Just four days before, he made history with a record-breaking 507th clean sheet – overtaking former Italy international Gianluigi Buffon. The record is 508 now.

Now, he will have his eyes set on an even more impressive record – the most appearances in world football.

According to the Guinness Book of Records, the former England goalkeeper Peter Shilton is the current record holder with 1,390 appearances. Shilton himself claims he has played 1,387., external

Even then, there are question marks about the actual tally Fabio is chasing.

Shilton is recorded as having played 1,249 games in his club career and a record 125 England appearances, taking him to 1,374 appearances.

So why isn’t Fabio, who has played his entire career in Brazil and has never played for his country despite winning the Under-19 World Cup in 1997, already the record holder?

According to England Football Online,, external Shilton played 13 times for England Under-23s, which would take us to the 1,387 tally Shilton believes he has.

June 3 (UPI) — The maker of Chips Ahoy cookies is suing a discount grocery store chain, claiming it “blatantly” copied its chocolate chip cookie and other snack packaging to “deceive and confuse” customers.

Mondelez, which also makes Oreos and Wheat Thins, filed the federal lawsuit May 27 against German grocer Aldi, seeking monetary damages and a court order to stop Aldi from selling the products. Aldi has more than 2,400 locations in the United States.

The suit claims the supermarket chain, which has its U.S. headquarters in Illinois, also copied the snack company’s packaging for its Teddy Grahams, Belvita biscuits, Nutter Butters and Ritz crackers.

“Defendant is in the business of selling private label cookie and cracker snacks and has a pattern and practice of selling products in packaging that are unacceptable copies of Mondelez’s trade dress,” the lawsuit states.

“Because of this misconduct, Mondelez has a history of enforcing its intellectual property rights against Defendant,” the filing continues. “Indeed, Mondelez has contacted Defendant on numerous occasions objecting to Defendant’s use of confusingly similar packaging and demanding that Defendant cease and desist its unlawful infringement.”

In the lawsuit, Mondelez displays side-by-side photos of Chips Ahoy cookies in blue and red packaging and Aldi’s Chocolate Chip cookies in a similar blue or red. Nutter Butters in their red packaging are shown next to Aldi’s Peanut Butter Creme-filled cookies also in red, and the yellow Wheat Thins box with small square crackers is shown next to Aldi’s Thin Wheat crackers box, also in yellow with a picture of small square crackers.

“Defendant’s actions are likely to deceive and confuse consumers and dilute the distinctive quality of Mondelez’s unique product packaging,” according to the lawsuit, “and if not stopped, threaten to irreparably harm Mondelez and its valuable brands.”