Restaurant chain Hooters of America filed for bankruptcy protection in Texas on Monday, seeking to address its $376 million debt by selling all of its company-owned restaurants to a franchise group backed by the company’s founders.

Hooters, like other casual dining restaurants, has struggled in recent years due to inflation, the high costs of labor and food and declining spending by cash-strapped American consumers. The company currently directly owns and operates 151 locations, with another 154 restaurants operated by franchisees, primarily in the United States.

The privately-owned company, which shares a private equity owner with recently-bankrupt TGI Fridays, intends to sell all corporate-owned locations to a buyer group comprised of two existing Hooters franchisees, who operate 30 high-performing Hooters locations in the U.S., mainly in Florida and Illinois.

Hooters did not disclose the purchase price of the transaction, which must be approved by a U.S. bankruptcy judge before it becomes final.

Founded in 1983, Hooters became famous for its chicken wings and its servers’ uniform of orange shorts and low-cut tank tops.

The buyer group is backed by some of Hooters’ original founders, and it pledged to take Hooters “back to its roots.”

“With over 30 years of hands-on experience across the Hooters ecosystem, we have a profound understanding of our customers and what it takes to not only meet, but consistently exceed their expectations,” said Neil Kiefer, a member of the buyer group and the current CEO of the original Hooters’ location in Clearwater, Florida.

Hooters said it expects to complete the deal and emerge from bankruptcy in three to four months. The company has lined up about $35 million in financing from its existing lender group to complete the bankruptcy transaction.

Casual dining restaurants have been hammered by rising costs in 2024, with well-known chains like TGI Fridays, Red Lobster, Bucca di Beppo, and Rubio’s Coastal Grill all filing for bankruptcy last year.

Restaurant prices have risen about 30% in the last 5 years, outpacing consumer prices overall, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk said Sunday that his involvement in the Trump administration could be hurting the automaker’s stock price.

Speaking at a town hall event in Wisconsin, Musk said his role with the so-called Department of Government Efficiency — which is pushing for widespread government job cuts — is creating backlash against his electric car company and hurting the stock.

“What they’re trying to do is put massive pressure on me, and Tesla I guess, to … stop doing this,” Musk said, according to Bloomberg News. “My Tesla stock and the stock of everyone who holds Tesla has gone, went roughly in half. I mean it’s a big deal.”

Elon Musk at a Cabinet meeting at the White House on March 24.Win McNamee / Getty Images

Shares of Tesla entered Monday already down more than 34% year to date, and the stock has been cut nearly in half from its peak in December. Shares were down an additional 6% in premarket trading Monday.

Tesla’s stock is trading at a little more than half of its highest level from December.

The drop for the stock could be a “buying opportunity” for the long term, said Musk, who was in Wisconsin ahead of a state supreme court election there. Musk has campaigned for the conservative candidate and spent more than $12 million on the race, in addition to giving $1 million each to two voters at Sunday’s rally for signing a petition against “activist judges.”

The slumping stock isn’t the only sign of public anger with Musk for his political work. Protesters demonstrated at Tesla dealerships over the weekend, and there have been reports of vandalism against vehicles and dealers across the country.

Musk’s role in politics is not limited to DOGE. He publicly campaigned with Trump in 2024 and has been a regular presence at the White House since the new administration took over in January. He also regularly comments on many different political topics on X, the social media company he owns.

The CEO’s rising political profile comes amid signs that Tesla’s core business is slowing. The automaker’s vehicle deliveries declined in 2024, and preliminary data has shown that sales are down again early this year, especially in Europe. In a note to clients Sunday, investment firm Stifel trimmed its price target on the stock and lowered its sales projections for Tesla.

Musk’s political dealings may not be the only reason for Tesla’s struggles. Other U.S. auto stocks have also labored in recent weeks, partly because of threats of higher tariffs on imported goods into the U.S. and retaliation from overseas trading partners, adding uncertainty to an industry whose supply chains are tightly woven among the U.S., Canada and Mexico.

Hollywood’s blockbuster slate is heating up, and AMC Entertainment is increasing the number of its premium screens to meet demand.

The world’s largest cinema chain is adding 40 Dolby Cinema theaters to its U.S.-based AMC locations through the end of 2027. It marks a 25% increase in the number of the branded premium screens, bringing the company’s total number to more than 200.

“Premium moviegoing is defining the modern box office,” said Kevin Yeaman, president and CEO of Dolby Laboratories. “In expanding our longstanding partnership with AMC, we look forward to providing even more audiences with access to the most immersive film experiences that you can only get at Dolby Cinema.”

The announcement comes just days after AMC revealed a partnership with CJ 4DPLEX to add 65 Screen X auditoriums and 40 4DX theaters to its theaters around the globe.

Premium large format screens, often referred to as PLFs, are elevated viewing experiences that come with a higher ticket price. The physical screens are often bigger than traditional movie screens or have auditoriums that feature higher-quality sound systems or seating options.

Dolby Cinemas are specially designed auditoriums with plush, reclining seats and a combination of Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos, which deliver crisp visuals and immersive sound. Screen X theaters feature a 270-degree panoramic screen that extends the movie image onto the side walls using multi-projection technology, and 4DX is a premium experience that features gyroscopic seats and practical effects like fog, water and wind that play in time with the movie.

The films that benefit the most from PLF ticket sales have been Hollywood’s biggest blockbusters, as audiences want to see explosive action movies and dazzling spectacles in the most state-of-the-art locations. It’s why films like Universal’s “Oppenheimer,” Disney’s “Avatar: The Way of Water” and Warner Bros.′ “Dune” and “Dune: Part Two” captured a significant portion of the PLF box office during their runs.

The 2025 and 2026 box offices are packed with blockbuster features from major franchises like Avatar, Star Wars, Jurassic Park, the Marvel Cinematic Universe, DC comics and Mission Impossible.

“The expansion of this partnership is a powerful demonstration of AMC’s ongoing commitment to deliver this premium experience — sought out by filmmakers, studio partners, and our guests — to even more of our theaters and AMC moviegoers around the United States,” Adam Aron, AMC’s CEO, said in a statement Monday about the Dolby expansion.

As of 2024, there were more than 950 theaters in North America that had PLF screens, a 33.7% jump from just five years ago, according to data from Comscore. These screens accounted for 9.1% of the domestic box office, around $600 million in 2024.

Premium ticket prices average just under $17 apiece, according to movie data firm EntTelligence, an 8% increase since 2021, when the company first started reporting these figures.

PLF receipts still represent a small portion of the overall box office, with most audiences seeing films on traditional digital screens. However, the PLF box office has grown 33% in just five years.

Disclosure: Comcast is the parent company of NBCUniversal and CNBC.

Amazon on Monday released a new AI model that can take actions in a web browser on a user’s behalf, a move that puts it in more direct competition with OpenAI, Anthropic and other companies that have developed the so-called “agents.”

The new model, called Nova Act, is designed to help developers build agents, or AI software that can complete multi-step tasks for users without supervision. Amazon showed Nova Act searching for “apartments by biking distance to the train station” as one example of a task it can complete.

A growing number of companies are building AI agents as they look beyond text and image generators.

Anthropic, the Amazon-backed AI startup founded by ex-OpenAI research executives, released its Computer Use tool in October. The startup said the tool can interpret what’s on a computer screen, select buttons, enter text, navigate websites and execute tasks through any software and real-time internet browsing.

In January, OpenAI released a similar feature called Operator that will automate tasks such as planning vacations, filling out forms, making restaurant reservations and ordering groceries. The Microsoft-backed startup described Operator as “an agent that can go to the web to perform tasks for you.”

OpenAI followed up that release in February with another tool called Deep Research, which allows an AI agent to compile complex research reports and analyze questions and topics of the user’s choice. 

Google launched a similar tool of the same name last December, which acts as a “research assistant, exploring complex topics and compiling reports on your behalf.”

Nova Act is initially launching in research preview for developers, Amazon said. The company is also launching a website that lets users experiment with its Nova AI models.

The release is part of a broader strategy within Amazon to invest heavily in generative AI software. Amazon has introduced a flurry of AI products, including its own set of Nova models, Trainium chips, shopping and health assistants, as well as a marketplace for third-party models called Bedrock. It’s also overhauling Alexa, the digital assistant it launched more than a decade ago, with AI capabilities.

Earlier this month, Amazon’s cloud unit said it’s forming a group dedicated to developing agentic AI that’s being led by longtime Amazon Web Services executive Swami Sivasubramanian. It’s also created an internal team focused on building artificial general intelligence, or AGI, which broadly refers to AI that is as smart or smarter than humans. The team reports directly to Amazon CEO Andy Jassy.

President Donald Trump commuted the criminal sentence of Ozy Media founder Carlos Watson on Friday, just hours before Watson was due to begin serving a 116-month prison term for a multi-million-dollar scheme that included falsely claiming the start-up had deals with Google and Oprah Winfrey, a senior White House official said.

Watson had expected to surrender Friday afternoon to the Federal Correctional Institution in Lompoc, California, before he received word of Trump granting him executive clemency, according to a source familiar with the situation.

Trump also commuted the sentence of one year of probation imposed on Ozy Media for the defunct news and entertainment company’s conviction in the same case.

Trump’s actions remove the criminal penalty imposed on Watson and Ozy.

Watson, 55, was convicted at trial in Brooklyn federal court last July of conspiracy to commit securities fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, and aggravated identity theft. He was sentenced in December.

In February, a federal judge ordered Watson and Ozy to pay almost $60 million in forfeiture and more than $36 million in restitution.

Watson’s defense attorney, Arthur Aidala, declined to comment Friday when contacted by CNBC.

A spokesman for the Brooklyn U.S. Attorney’s Office, which prosecuted Watson, also declined to comment on the commutation of his sentence.

Glenn Martin, a criminal justice reform advocate, in a tweet on Friday wrote, “We did it,” above a photo of him and Watson.

“President Trump commuted the sentences of Ozy Media and Carlos Watson hours before his surrender,” the tweet said.

″@CarlosWatson is not going to prison today,” Martin wrote.

“First and foremost, thank God for His grace, mercy and the power of redemption. A very special note of appreciation to @AliceMarieFree,” he added, referring to his fellow criminal justice reform advocate Alice Marie Johnson.

“Your advocacy, compassion, and relentless pursuit of fairness have made this moment possible for people like Carlos.”

When Watson was sentenced, then-Brooklyn U.S. Attorney Breon Peace said, “Carlos Watson orchestrated a years-long, audacious scheme to defraud investors and lenders to his company, Ozy Media, out of tens of millions of dollars.”

Prosecutors said that Watson and his co-conspirators between 2018 and 2021 defrauded investors by misrepresenting Ozy’s financial performance, its ongoing business relationships and its acquisition prospects, as well as its contract negotiations.

Ozy abruptly shut down in October 2021, after The New York Times reported that the company’s chief operating officer, Samir Rao, had impersonated a YouTube executive on a conference call with Goldman Sachs.

The investment bank was considering a $40 million investment in Ozy at the time.

The Federal Communications Commission has alerted the Walt Disney Company and its ABC unit that it will begin an investigation into the diversity, equity and inclusion efforts at the media giant.

The FCC, the agency that regulates the media and telecommunications industry, said in a letter dated Friday that it wants to “ensure that Disney and ABC have not been violating FCC equal employment opportunity regulations by promoting invidious forms of DEI discrimination.”

“We are reviewing the Federal Communications Commission’s letter, and we look forward to engaging with the commission to answer its questions,” a Disney spokesperson told CNBC.

FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, who was recently appointed by President Donald Trump, began a similar investigation into Comcast and NBCUniversal in early February.

The inquiry comes after Trump signed an executive order looking to end DEI practices at U.S. corporations in January. The order calls for each federal agency to “identify up to nine potential civil compliance investigations” among publicly traded companies, as well as nonprofits and other institutions.

“For decades, Disney focused on churning out box office and programming successes,” Carr wrote in the letter to CEO Bob Iger. “But then something changed. Disney has now been embroiled in rounds of controversy surrounding its DEI policies.”

An FCC spokesperson didn’t comment beyond the letter.

Disclosure: Comcast is the parent company of NBCUniversal and NBC News.

Lululemon beat Wall Street expectations for fiscal fourth-quarter earnings and revenue, but issued 2025 guidance that disappointed analysts.

On an Thursday earnings call, CEO Calvin McDonald said the athleticwear company conducted a survey earlier this month that found that consumers are spending less due to economic and inflation concerns, resulting in lower U.S. traffic at Lululemon and industry peers. However, he said, shoppers responded well to innovation at the company.

“There continues to be considerable uncertainty driven by macro and geopolitical circumstances. That being said, we remain focused on what we can control,” McDonald said.

Shares of the apparel company plunged 15% on Friday morning.

Lululemon was only the latest retailer to say it expects slower sales for the rest of this year as concerns grow about a weakening economy and President Donald Trump’s tariffs. Even so, the Canada-based company said it expected only a minimal hit to profits from the U.S. trade war with countries including Canada, Mexico and China.

Here’s how the company did compared with what Wall Street was expecting for the quarter ended Feb. 2, based on a survey of analysts by LSEG:

Fourth-quarter revenue rose from $3.21 billion during the same period in 2023. Full-year 2024 revenue came in at $10.59 billion, up from $9.62 billion in 2023.

Lululemon’s fiscal 2024 contained 53 weeks, one week longer than its fiscal 2023. Excluding the 53rd week, fourth-quarter and full-year revenue both rose 8% year over year for 2024.

Lululemon expects first-quarter revenue to total $2.34 billion to $2.36 billion, while Wall Street analysts were expecting $2.39 billion, according to LSEG. The retailer anticipates it will post full-year fiscal 2025 revenue of $11.15 billion to $11.30 billion, compared to the analyst consensus estimate of $11.31 billion.

For the first quarter, the company expects to post earnings per share in the range of $2.53 to $2.58, missing Wall Street’s expectation of $2.72, according to LSEG. Full-year earnings per share guidance came in at $14.95 to $15.15 per share, while analysts anticipated $15.31.

CFO Meghan Frank said on the Thursday earnings call that gross margin for 2025 is expected to fall 0.6 percentage points due to higher fixed costs, foreign exchange rates and U.S. tariffs on China and Mexico.

Lululemon reported a net income for the fourth quarter of $748 million, or $6.14 per share, compared with a net income of $669 million, or $5.29 per share, during the fourth quarter of 2023.

Comparable sales, which Lululemon defines as revenue from e-commerce and stores open at least 12 months, rose 3% year over year for the quarter. The comparison excludes the 53rd week of the 2024 fiscal year. Analysts expected the metric to rise 5.1%.

Comparable sales in the Americas were flat, while they grew 20% internationally. Lululemon has been facing a sales slowdown in the U.S., although McDonald said its U.S. business stabilized in the second half of the year and partially attributed the improvement to new merchandise. He added that Lululemon will expand its stores to Italy, Denmark, Belgium, Turkey and the Czech Republic this year.

President Donald Trump moved Thursday to end collective bargaining with federal labor unions in agencies with national security missions across the federal government, citing authority granted him under a 1978 law.

The order, signed without public fanfare and announced late Thursday, appears to touch most of the federal government. Affected agencies include the Departments of State, Defense, Veterans Affairs, Energy, Health and Human Services, Treasury, Justice and Commerce and the part of Homeland Security responsible for border security.

Police and firefighters will continue to collectively bargain.

Trump said the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 gives him the authority to end collective bargaining with federal unions in these agencies because of their role in safeguarding national security.

The American Federation of Government Employees, which represents 820,000 federal and D.C. government workers, said late Thursday that it is “preparing immediate legal action and will fight relentlessly to protect our rights, our members, and all working Americans from these unprecedented attacks.”

“President Trump’s latest executive order is a disgraceful and retaliatory attack on the rights of hundreds of thousands of patriotic American civil servants — nearly one-third of whom are veterans — simply because they are members of a union that stands up to his harmful policies,” AFGE National President Everett Kelley said.

AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler said in a statement, “It’s clear that this order is punishment for unions who are leading the fight against the administration’s illegal actions in court — and a blatant attempt to silence us.” She also vowed, “We will fight this outrageous attack on our members with every fiber of our collective being.”

The announcement builds on previous moves by the Trump administration to erode collective bargaining rights in the government.

Earlier this month, DHS said it was ending the collective bargaining agreement with the tens of thousands of frontline employees at the Transportation Security Administration. The TSA union called it an “unprovoked attack” and vowed to fight it.

A White House fact sheet on Thursday’s announcement says that “Certain Federal unions have declared war on President Trump’s agenda” and that Trump “refuses to let union obstruction interfere with his efforts to protect Americans and our national interests.”

“President Trump supports constructive partnerships with unions who work with him; he will not tolerate mass obstruction that jeopardizes his ability to manage agencies with vital national security missions,” the White House said.

Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev is betting that by rolling out a large enough portfolio of digital investment products, more consumers will be willing to pay a monthly subscription for its product suite.

Subscribers to Robinhood Gold pay $5 a month or $50 a year for perks like 4% interest on uninvested cash, access to professional research, and no interest on the first $1,000 of margin borrowed.

Now the company is adding wealth management features called Robinhood Strategies, which offers curated access to exchange-traded fund portfolios and mixes of handpicked stocks. The service, available to Gold Subscribers, carries a 0.25% annual management fee, capped at $250.

Robinhood also said this week that with its new Robinhood Banking offering, Gold subscribers will get private banking services with tax advice and estate planning tools, perks like access to private jet travel, five-star hotels and tickets to Coachella, and 4% interest on savings accounts. Customers will also soon be able to get cash delivered to their doorstep, saving them a trip to the ATM, though few details were provided.

Tenev told CNBC in an interview that Robinhood’s subscription service could be similar to what users get from Amazon Prime or Costco membership, where their monthly fee feels justified by the quality and quantity of the perks, which keep them coming back.

“My philosophy behind it is subscriptions are about loyalty,” Tenev said. “So if you’re a subscriber to something, then that service is sort of the first in mind when you think about trying something else from that category.”

Tenev said that in financial services, loyalty is particularly important because it’s “equivalent to wallet share.”

Tenev said the number of subscribers increased from about 1.5 million a year ago to 3.2 million today, adding that it’s a “nine-figure business,” meaning at least $100 million in annual revenue.

Robinhood grew in popularity among younger investors by making it easy to buy and hold fractional shares in companies using a simple mobile app, and then moving into crypto. Tenev said on Thursday that over the longer term, Robinhood wants to be “the place where you can buy, sell, trade, hold any financial asset, conduct any financial transaction.”

Robinhood shares are up 19% this year after almost tripling in 2024, when crypto prices soared.

Oil executives are warning that President Donald Trump’s tariffs and “drill, baby, drill” message have created uncertainty in energy markets that is already affecting investment.

The executives, shielded by anonymity, bluntly criticized Trump in their responses to a survey conducted by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas from March 12 to March 20.

“The administration’s chaos is a disaster for the commodity markets,” one executive said. ”‘Drill, baby, drill’ is nothing short of a myth and populist rallying cry. Tariff policy is impossible for us to predict and doesn’t have a clear goal. We want more stability.”

Several executives said Trump’s steel tariffs are raising their costs, making it difficult to plan for future projects.

“Uncertainty around everything has sharply risen during the past quarter,” another executive said. “Planning for new development is extremely difficult right now due to the uncertainty around steel-based products.”

They also criticized the suggestion by White House advisers such as Peter Navarro that Trump’s “drill, baby, drill” agenda aims to push oil prices down to $50 a barrel to fight inflation.

“The threat of $50 oil prices by the administration has caused our firm to reduce its 2025 and 2026 capital expenditures,” an executive said. ”‘Drill, baby, drill’ does not work with $50 per barrel oil. Rigs will get dropped, employment in the oil industry will decrease, and U.S. oil production will decline as it did during COVID-19.”

CNBC has asked the White House for comment.

The Dallas Fed Energy Survey is conducted every quarter with about 200 firms responding. The survey covers operators in Texas, southern New Mexico and northern Louisiana.

The scathing criticism in the Dallas Fed survey stood in contrast to major oil companies’ public comments at the industry’s big energy conference in Houston earlier this month.

Executives mostly praised Trump’s energy team during the event and welcomed the administration’s focus on increasing leasing and slashing red tape around permitting.