Walmart is known for its low prices and no frills approach.

So it may come as a surprise that wealthier shoppers are helping to fuel the retailer’s growth.

For more than two years, the discounter has noticed more customers with six-figure incomes shopping on its website and in its stores. Households earning more than $100,000 made up 75% of the company’s market share gains in the fiscal third quarter, Walmart CEO Doug McMillon said on the company’s earnings call in November.

Those newer and more frequent customers have helped support the company’s aspirations to sell more higher-margin items, such as clothing and home goods. They are driving Walmart’s e-commerce sales, which have grown by double digits for 10 consecutive quarters. And they can boost the retailer’s newer revenue streams, such as subscription-based membership program Walmart+ and its advertising business Walmart Connect.

As Walmart reports its latest earnings on Thursday, Wall Street will be watching whether those upper-income customers are sticking around, after market share gains helped the retailer’s shares soar about 83% in the last year. Yet some investors have questioned whether Walmart’s traction with affluent shoppers has staying power, especially if the sticker shock of inflation cools.

In an interview with CNBC, Walmart U.S. CEO John Furner acknowledged that the retailer has gained and then lost upper-income customers before, such as in 2008 and 2009 during the Great Recession. Affluent shoppers stretched their dollars at the big-box retailer, but then ultimately returned to competitors.

This time, Furner said the gains will last because Walmart can save shoppers both time and money with e-commerce options.

“It’s different because we deliver to you at the curb [of the store],” he said in the late January interview. “We deliver to your house. We deliver your refrigerator. That whole Supercenter, which is an amazing retail format, is available in an hour or two for a large part of the country and growing really quickly.

Walmart’s expanding digital services have helped convince higher-income shoppers to give it a shot, said Brad Thomas, a retail analyst and managing director at KeyBanc Capital Markets. Some of those newer or more frequent customers have joined Walmart+, a subscription-based membership program that includes perks like free home deliveries. Walmart+, which launched about five years ago, is Walmart’s answer to Amazon Prime.

Walmart has not disclosed the program’s membership count, but it has reported double-digit membership income growth in each of the past four quarters..

Thomas said e-commerce options wipe out a potential hurdle for affluent shoppers: a potential stigma about shopping at the big-box stores themselves.

“There’s a customer in America that doesn’t think of itself as a Walmart shopper,” he said. “They think of themselves as a Target shopper or a Publix or a Whole Foods shopper and through the app and through the delivery capabilities, they can remain a non-Walmart core shopper, but get all the benefits of getting the branded items at Walmart prices.”

As inflation forced shoppers of all incomes to hunt for deals, some wealthier consumers realized they can get the same national brands like Tide detergent or Bounty paper towels from Walmart cheaper and often faster than at Amazon because of Walmart’s nearby stores, he said.

Walmart’s website and app have increased their selection, too, as the company has bulked up its third-party marketplace. Starting this summer, the company began offering premium beauty brands through its website, including hairdryers from T3 and perfumes from Victoria’s Secret.

Shoppers can now find handbags from Chanel and Louis Vuitton, too. Last month, Walmart announced a deal with resale platform Rebag, which sells the items through Walmart’s marketplace.

Yet as Walmart tries to keep those customers, it wants to encourage them to shop in person, as well. Walmart has stepped up investments in its stores to freshen its look and counter negative perceptions that higher-income shoppers might have.

Walmart has sped up the pace of remodels for its more than 4,600 stores across the U.S., with plans to revamp about 650 locations per year, an acceleration from a prior cadence of 450 to 500 per year, said Hunter Hart, senior vice president of Walmart Realty.

Remodeled stores have brighter lighting, wider aisles and mannequins, said Alvis Washington, Walmart’s vice president of retail brand experience. The stores also feature Walmart’s newer and more fashion-forward brands like Scoop and Free Assembly, and national brands that shoppers would recognize, such as Reebok.

The discounter launched a new grocery brand, BetterGoods, last year with colorful packaging and creative flavors that looks similar to merchandise that shoppers might find at Trader Joe’s or Target.

The Walmart U.S. CEO Furner said some of those changes have drawn upper-income customers to the company’s stores and app.

He said Walmart’s market share gains with affluent shoppers have come from online and in-store shopping, but added curbside pickup orders showed early signs of popularity with those customers. Even before the pandemic, Walmart saw that people who shopped with curbside pickup bought more higher-priced items, such as prime beef and seafood, Furner added.

He said that still rings true: Walmart sees more premium items in the shopping baskets of customers who buy online, get home deliveries or use curbside pickup.

Washington said Walmart treaded carefully with its store redesign, realizing it could risk its reputation for low prices and resonance with core customers, who typically have lower incomes. It promoted newer brands, but mixed in familiar staples, such as folded piles of inexpensive bath towels and denim.

“Having a great, elevated experience and great value aren’t mutually exclusive,” Walmart’s Washington said, recounting the company’s approach. “So when we looked at this, it’s like, how do we do both and make sure we can gain new customers and maintain the customers that we have?

When comparing remodeled stores to the rest of the fleet, Washington said higher comparable store sales reflect that customers like the different look. Walmart declined to provide specific numbers, saying it won’t release sales numbers until it reports fourth-quarter earnings.

Walmart’s customer mix for its U.S. e-commerce business hasn’t changed, even as it attracts higher-income shoppers, according to an analysis by market research firm Euromonitor. About 34% of Walmart’s online customers in the U.S. last year had incomes of $100,000 and above, which is roughly flat compared to two years prior.

Michelle Evans, global lead for retail and digital shopper insights at Euromonitor, said that indicates that Walmart is also gaining market share from lower- and middle-income customers.

Walmart still has a smaller share of higher-income shoppers than some key rivals: 49% and 48% of online U.S. shoppers at Target and Amazon, respectively, have incomes above $100,000.

Amazon remains a formidable competitor, especially when it comes to wealthier shoppers and general merchandise categories, Evans said. But Walmart’s biggest edge is its grocery department.

One of Walmart’s newer, higher-income shoppers is Francesca Frink. The 30-year-old lives in the Chicago suburb of Park Ridge, Ill. with her husband, Sam, 1-year-old son and their English setter. The Frink family’s combined annual household income is over $200,000.

Last fall, Francesca Frink signed up for Walmart+ after her mother-in-law ordered a stroller from Walmart’s website and got it dropped at her door three hours later.

Initially, she said she hesitated to order fresh foods from Walmart. She bought packaged items like pasta and flour. Yet over time, the couple began ordering a larger portion of groceries, dog treats and even clothes for their son from Walmart.

The Frinks have stopped going to their old grocery store, Kroger-owned supermarket Mariano’s. They estimate that their weekly grocery bill is about 20% cheaper.

Previously, the couple said they avoided Walmart because their nearest store is outdated. Yet Sam Frink said the game has changed with curbside pickup and home deliveries.

“You don’t have to go in,” he said. “That’s the biggest thing.”

Francesca Frink said home deliveries from Walmart, included in their Walmart+ membership, save the couple time while they juggle two careers, a toddler and a dog. Plus, she said she found that Walmart had the grocery items she wanted and even those she didn’t expect, including organic blueberries, natural peanut butter and specialty mushroom ravioli.

Still, Francesca Frink said she still faces some apprehension from friends and family about buying groceries from Walmart.

But she said they’ve been surprised when they’ve tried and liked food items from Walmart.

In her day job, Euromonitor’s Evans tracked Walmart’s digital gains with higher-income shoppers. Yet she also saw it firsthand in her household.

Her husband signed the family up for Walmart+. During the holiday season, he told her all of his Christmas purchases would be coming from the discounter.

“He made a comment that all the gifts were coming from Walmart, and obviously that comes with a certain impression,” she said.

So she was surprised when she opened his gift and discovered it was a Michael Kors tote.

In an attempt to court younger audiences, Disney’s ESPN is planning to add some user-generated content to its yet-to-be-named flagship streaming service, which will debut later this year.

While the details are still unclear, ESPN will allow subscribers to post their own content at some point in the application’s evolution, according to people familiar with the matter. The technology likely won’t be available at launch, which the company hopes will occur before the National Football League season begins in September. An ESPN spokesperson declined to comment.

Disney executives have also considered adding user-generated content to Disney+ and discuss YouTube’s influence on streaming on a near daily basis, CNBC reported last year.

Alphabet’s YouTube, which leans heavily on creator-led content, is the most popular streaming service with an 11.1% share of total TV usage in the U.S., according to Nielsen.

ESPN executives are targeting a price of either $25 per month or $30 per month for the ESPN streaming service, which will include all of ESPN’s linear programming plus other digital add-ons, the people said.

The company plans to announce a name for the service, a price and a launch date in the coming months, the people said.

Media and professional sports league executives are focusing on how to capture the attention of younger viewers that are opting to watch YouTube or TikTok over live games. ESPN spends tens of billions of dollars each year on the media rights for live sports.

Airbus could prioritize deliveries to its non-U.S. customers if tariffs disrupt the European plane maker’s imports stateside, CEO Guillaume Faury said Thursday.

“We have a large demand from the rest of the world, so [if] we face very significant difficulties to deliver to the U.S., we can also adapt by bringing forward deliveries to other customers which are very eager to get planes,” Faury told CNBC’s Charlotte Reed, in an interview discussing the company’s full-year results.

“Those tariffs are looming, and we don’t know what they will be, [and], if and when we would have tariffs come in, what they would impact. So we stand ready to adapt accordingly,” Faury said, referring to U.S. President Donald Trump’s wide-ranging tariff threats which have already been ramped up against China.

Faury nevertheless stressed that Airbus had made moves in recent years to not only buy more from the U.S. and sell a significant number of aircraft and helicopters in the U.S., but also to base part of its production locally.

That includes a large output site in Mobile, Alabama, with two final assembly lines for the company’s A220 and A320 family jets, with another U.S. line under construction to build A320 and A321s for the domestic market.

A host of large U.S. carriers are Airbus customers, including American Airlines, Delta, United and JetBlue.

“So we have a lot of potential flexibilities,” Faury said regarding the potential imposition of duties, whose details remain uncertain.

“Bottom lime, we believe in this industry — that is very much a North Atlantic ecosystem with a lot of interdependencies — tariffs would hurt both sides. So I hope, I believe, we will not be significantly impacted by tariffs,” Faury said.

The European plane maker’s target for around 820 aircraft deliveries in 2025 was issued “in spite of those uncertainties, to clarify what we think we can deliver this year absent tariffs,” Faury said.

Airbus, meanwhile, remains stymied by a host of supply chain issues which are limiting its ability to ramp up production and work through its order backlog of more than 8,000 jets, Faury told CNBC.

His comments come after the company earlier on Thursday reported a 6% rise in annual revenue, but an 8% fall in adjusted operating profit to 5.35 billion euros ($5.59 billion) across 2024.

Profit at the company’s defense and space unit swung to a loss of 656 million euros for the full year.

Faury told CNBC that space was the “area where we are suffering,” amid competition from players such as Elon Musk’s SpaceX and past investment in technologies that had proven difficult.

“We underestimated the risk compared to the reality,” Faury said, adding that the company was restructuring the unit and working to solve existing issues.

Despite challenges, Airbus’s annual results served to highlight its strength over its crisis-hit U.S. rival Boeing, which reported an annual loss of $11.83 billion for 2024.

Toy and gaming giant Hasbro took an optimistic tone Thursday on the potential effect of Chinese tariffs on its business, as executives said the company is shifting manufacturing away from China.

Hasbro Chief Financial Officer Gina Goetter said on the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call that the toymaker’s 2025 guidance — which includes adjusted EBITDA of $1.1 billion to $1.15 billion, compared with $1.06 billion in 2024 — reflects the anticipated effect of U.S. tariffs on China, Mexico and Canada. It also reflects “mitigating actions we plan to take, including leveraging the strength of our supply chain and potential pricing,” the company said in a news release.

Rival toymaker Mattel previously said it could increase the prices of toys such as Hot Wheels and Barbie in response to tariffs. President Donald Trump imposed 10% tariffs on China in early February and is set to add 25% tariffs on Mexico and Canada in March after pausing their initial implementation for 30 days.

Hasbro is on track to cut the volume of U.S. toys and games that originate from China from 50% to less than 40% over the next two years, Goetter said. Hasbro does not source from Canada and has “minimal” imports from Mexico, she said.

“Really, it’s a China story for us,” Goetter said.

Hasbro CEO Chris Cocks said on the call that even when accounting for tariffs, the toymaker expects “flattish” performance from the broader industry this year, with trading cards and building blocks leading the way. The company’s licensing business, he added, is one of its biggest margin drivers and will not be affected much by tariffs.

“It’s relatively [unexposed] to some of the tariff drama that’s going on right now,” Cocks said.

Hasbro also on Thursday announced a licensing collaboration with Mattel to create Play-Doh versions of Mattel’s Barbie dolls.

“Play-Doh Barbie allows children to unlock their inner fashion designer, creating Play-Doh fashions with amazing ruffles, bows and realistic fabric textures, all made with every kid’s favorite dough for a never-before-seen creativity experience,” Cocks said.

Shares of Hasbro gained roughly 10% in morning trading Thursday.

Here’s how Hasbro performed in the fourth quarter compared with what Wall Street was expecting, based on a survey of analysts by LSEG:

Earnings per share: 46 cents adjusted vs. 34 cents expected

Revenue: $1.1 billion vs. $1.03 billion expected

Fourth-quarter revenue fell 15% from $1.29 billion during the same quarter in 2023. Full-year 2024 revenue came in at $4.14 billion, down 17% from $5 billion in 2023.

The company partially attributed the numbers to its divestiture from its eOne film and TV business, which it sold to Lionsgate in December 2023. When excluding the divestiture, the company said, full-year revenue declined 7%.

Hasbro’s digital and licensed gaming revenue increased 35% to $132 million in the fourth quarter compared to the same period in 2023. For full-year 2024, Hasbro’s digital and licensed gaming revenue increased 22% to $471.7 million. Mobile game Monopoly Go! contributed $112 million in 2024 revenue.

Hasbro reported a net loss for the fourth quarter of $26.5 million, or a loss of 25 cents per share, compared with a net loss of $1.06 billion, or a loss of $7.64 per share, during the fourth quarter of 2023.

Adjusting for costs associated with restructuring and the eOne divestiture, among other one-time items, Hasbro reported fourth-quarter earnings of 46 cents per share, topping Wall Street expectations.

Cameo wants workers back in the office more often, and it’s paying them each $10,000 to show up.

Starting this week, workers at the celebrity video-greeting app are reporting into the company’s Chicago headquarters Monday through Thursday. In exchange, the roughly two dozen eligible employees can expect a $10,000 annual raise, free lunch, free parking and access to an onsite gym.

″‘Roll out the red carpet’ is our first corporate value, and we really felt like we wanted to make HQ a perk, not a punishment,” Cameo CEO Steven Galanis tells CNBC Make It. “We know we’re asking more out of you to give up the flexibility, and we wanted to compensate you for it.”

Many workers say they’d take a pay cut to be able to keep working from home. Cameo is hoping the inverse will be true.

Galanis and his leadership team landed on a $10,000 annual raise because the sum is “meaningful for everybody,” especially junior employees: “That might be the difference between them being able to get an apartment in the city or having to take the train because they live with their parents in the suburbs.”

Cameo currently has 50 employees, including 26 in Chicago and others around the U.S. and internationally, though most remote workers are concentrated in New York and Los Angeles. The new benefit doesn’t apply to workers outside of Chicago, though “if they wanted to move to Chicagoland, we would give them a [relocation benefit] and they’d be eligible,” Galanis says.

Cameo’s Chicago headquarters opened during the summer of 2024, but leaders never set a schedule of when they expected employees to be in. Without it, workers generally reported to the office two to three times in the middle of the week, Galanis says.

The new four-day policy was announced to staff a month ago. Galanis is reluctant to call it a mandate but says “there wasn’t an ability to opt out.”

“If you live in Chicagoland, you are four days a week in-office — there wasn’t an option on that. And in exchange, we give you a $10,000 raise.”

“If you wanted to move, you could do that” and not be subject to the in-office expectation, Galanis says.

Galanis says none of Cameo’s employees quit the company or moved away from Chicago following the policy announcement. A few outside of Chicago have indicated possibly moving closer to headquarters given the new perks.

Remote workers can also take part in Cameo’s Team Week, launched this summer, where they can be flown to Chicago once a month for a defined week when “everybody’s in,” Galanis says. Since the company covers flights, accommodations and some meals, he says, “if you take advantage of that every month, it’s effectively the same thing as the raise that the Chicagoland folks got.”

Galanis says he’d be in the office five days a week if he could, but recognizes workers have come to appreciate the “flexibility that our employees have earned.”

“We’re hoping Friday can be a flex day,” he says, where workers can take care of doctor’s appointments and other personal needs.

Leaders won’t be tracking attendance. “We’re adults here,” Galanis says, noting that workers who need to step out for personal matters like appointments should just let their manager know ahead of time.

Galanis is hopeful the move will re-energize creativity and speed at the company, and that staff see he’s accessible as a CEO. “Now they see me every day,” he says. “We’re walking around, we’re having lunch together. Some intern can come in and say, ‘Steven, why haven’t we ever done this before?’”

Ultimately, “what we’re really trying to do is maximize the amount of in-person time that our team is getting with each other, and to make sure that we’re able to move at the speed of pop culture,” Galanis says.

KFC is leaving Kentucky.

The fried chicken chain’s U.S. headquarters will move from Louisville, Kentucky, to Plano, Texas, owner Yum Brands said Tuesday.

About 100 KFC U.S. employees will be required to relocate over the next six months.

The relocation is part of Yum’s broader plan to have two corporate headquarters: one in Plano, the other in Irvine, California. KFC and Pizza Hut’s global teams are already based in Plano, while Taco Bell and the Habit Burger & Grill’s teams are located in Irvine.

Additionally, Yum’s U.S. remote workforce, roughly 90 workers, will also be asked to move to the campus where their work is based.

But Yum isn’t entirely abandoning Kentucky. The company and the KFC Foundation plan to maintain corporate offices in Louisville. Plus, KFC still plans to build a new flagship restaurant in its former hometown.

Since the Covid-19 pandemic, many employers have been rethinking the location of their corporate headquarters, often spurred to move because of lower taxes and changes to office space needs due to the hybrid or remote workforce. With its business-friendly policies, Texas has been the most popular relocation choice, according to a 2023 report from CBRE.

In 2020, Yum rival Papa Johns moved its headquarters from Louisville to Atlanta. It later canceled plans to sell its old headquarters, instead opting to hold on to the building for the corporate workers who stayed in Louisville.

Sentiment among the nation’s single-family homebuilders dropped to the lowest level in five months in February, largely due to concern over tariffs, which would raise their costs significantly.

The National Association of Home Builders’ Housing Market Index (HMI) dropped a sharp 5 points from January to a reading of 42. Anything below 50 is considered negative sentiment. Last February, the index stood at 48.

“While builders hold out hope for pro-development policies, particularly for regulatory reform, policy uncertainty and cost factors created a reset for 2025 expectations in the most recent HMI,” said NAHB Chairman Carl Harris, a home builder from Wichita, Kansas.

Of the index’s three components, current sales conditions fell 4 points to 46, buyer traffic fell 3 points to 29 and sales expectations in the next six months plunged 13 points to 46. That last component hit its lowest level since December 2023.

Builders are already facing elevated mortgage rates. The average rate on the 30-year fixed was over 7% for January and February after earlier being in the 6% range. Home prices are also higher than they were a year ago, weakening affordability further.

While President Donald Trump’s tariffs on Canada and Mexico, originally proposed to take effect in early February, were delayed roughly a month, builders are still expecting higher costs.

“With 32% of appliances and 30% of softwood lumber coming from international trade, uncertainty over the scale and scope of tariffs has builders further concerned about costs,” said NAHB chief economist Robert Dietz.

Homebuilder sentiment had been gaining steadily since August on the expectation of lower mortgage rates and, as the builders noted, potential pro-development policies. Single-family housing starts are trending lower than they were a year ago, despite a lean supply of existing homes for sale.

The drop in builder sentiment, coming right before the all-important spring market, signals potentially even less supply in the market. Several homebuilders have noted the pullback in buyer demand in recent earnings reports.

“Despite Federal Reserve actions to lower short-term interest rates, mortgage interest rates remained elevated in the fourth quarter, which impacted buyer demand as homebuyers continue to face affordability challenges,” said Ryan Marshall, CEO of PulteGroup, in its fourth-quarter earnings release.

The share of builders lowering prices dropped to 26% in February, down from 30% in January and the lowest share since May 2024. Other sales incentives also fell.

This may be because incentives are becoming less effective at attracting buyers, since high prices and high rates have reduced the pool of buyers for whom these benefits move the needle, according to the NAHB.

When a buyer is solidly priced out, no incentive helps, and with rates remaining higher, the pool of marginal buyers may be shrinking. Offering incentives to buyers who would buy regardless of price or rates is of diminishing value for builders.