is hiring more than 125,000 drivers and warehouse workers and will pay them a starting average wage of more than $18 an hour —and up to $22.50 in some places, the internet retailer announced Tuesday.
The jobs will be both part time and full time, and in all regions of the country—from Arizona and Indiana to New Jersey and Florida.
Workers in certain locations also will get a sign-on bonus of up to $3,000, which shows just how competitive the job market is. Amazon (ticker: AMZN) didn’t specify the locations where either the bonus or the higher wage will be paid.
Amazon now pays one of the highest minimum wages—if not the highest—by a U.S. retailer. In 2018, the tech giant established a minimum wage of $15 an hour, more than double the federal minimum wage of $7.25.
In the past few years, other retailers and consumer-based companies have raised their minimum wages. This year alone,
Walmart
(WMT),
Costco Wholesale
(COST),
Chipotle Mexican Grill
(CMG), and
McDonald’s
(MCD) have increased their starting pay.
Amazon let one of its warehouse workers in Miami speak to the benefits of its higher pay.
“Before Amazon, I was at a car wash making $9 an hour. Then I came to Amazon and I started earning $15 an hour—it was life-changing for me,” said Leonardo, who the company didn’t identify by his last name.
Amazon is on a hiring spree. At the beginning of September, the company announced it will fill 40,000 corporate and technology jobs; since the pandemic began in March 2020, Amazon has hired more than 450,000 people in the U.S.
Tuesday’s announcement ties in with its offer last week to pay 100% of college tuition for more than 750,000 U.S. employees.
Also read: This Robot Trader Just Turned Bullish on Amazon, Facebook and Nvidia. Here’s What It Sold.
Amazon shares closed down 0.21%, to $3,450, on Tuesday. The stock has gained almost 6% so far this year and has risen 9.3% over the past 12 months, lagging the
S&P 500’s
Hyatt Hotels Corp. plans to buy resort company Apple Leisure Group from its private-equity owners for $2.7 billion.
The deal for the company, which is owned by KKR & Co. and travel-and-leisure specialist KSL Capital Partners LLC, was announced Sunday after The Wall Street Journal reported it was imminent.
The transaction is the latest sign of optimism about a return to vacation travel even as the U.S. economy continues to grapple with the coronavirus pandemic. Like many travel-related companies, Apple Leisure’s business got clobbered by virus-related lockdowns and travel bans last year, but it has rebounded as restrictions have loosened.
For Chicago-based Hyatt, one of the world’s biggest hospitality companies, the deal would bolster its already considerable resort-management portfolio and give it one of the biggest U.S. providers of charter flights and vacation packages for travel to Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica and the Caribbean.
It also would accelerate Hyatt’s transformation, long under way, to a more asset-light business model, focusing on generating an ongoing stream of steady and predictable fees.
Some consumers are rethinking their return to dining out, according to executives and industry data, a shift that threatens the U.S. restaurant sector’s rebound.
Restaurants that survived waves of closures last year had headed into the summer with rising optimism as most of the country ended dine-in occupancy restrictions. Bigger delivery and online ordering business boosted sit-down chains in recent months, including Ruth’s Hospitality Group Inc. and Outback Steakhouse owner Bloomin’ Brands Inc.
However, individual operators and recent industry data now point to a more mixed picture, particularly in U.S. markets hit hard by Covid-19 outbreaks and renewed coronavirus-related advisories. Recent consumer surveys show the Delta variant prompted Americans who say they are the most restricted in their activities to start pulling back their activities again late last month.
Chris Downs, a 32-year-old mechanical engineer from St. Louis County, Mo., had returned to dining out at restaurants in May after getting vaccinated, allowing him to celebrate his dad’s birthday and see friends again. Now, with Delta, he’s stopped dining out for fear of getting the virus.
“I am back to mostly cooking all meals at home,” Mr. Downs said.
Doughnuts on a production line inside a Krispy Kreme Doughnuts store in Times Square in Manhattan.
Angus Mordant/Bloomberg
Krispy Kreme
led a group of six companies to the public markets on Thursday.
Besides the doughnut chain,
Acumen Pharmaceuticals,
D-MARKET Electronic Services & Trading,
Evercommerce,
Torrid Holdings,
and the
Glimpse Group
made their stock-market debuts.
So far this week, 17 companies, including those six, have listed their shares. There are no initial public offerings on tap for Friday because of the holiday weekend. On Wednesday, 10 companies went public, with
Didi Global,
the Uber of China, trading flat and closing at $14.14, 14 cents above its offering price.
On Thursday, Acumen Pharmaceuticals (ticker: ABOS) was one of the first to begin trading. The stock opened at $25.07 and closed at $20.10, up nearly 26% from the offering price.
The solid performance came after Acumen increased the size of its deal by nearly 20%. The biotech company, which is developing therapies to treat Alzheimer’s disease, collected about $160 million. It sold roughly 10 million shares at $16, the top of its $14-to-$16 range.
The Glimpse Group (VRAR), which develops and commercializes virtual and augmented reality software products, also opened. Shares kicked off at $11.75 and ended at $17.66, up 152% from its offer price. Glimpse delivered Thursday’s smallest deal. The company collected $12.3 million, after selling 1.75 million shares at $7, the midpoint of its $6-to-$8 price range.
Torrid Holdings (CURV) shares rose 15% from the offer price to close at $24.15. The direct-to-consumer retailer of plus-sized women’s clothes increased the size of its deal twice. It filed to offer 8 million shares at $18 to $21, which it boosted Wednesday to 10 million. It ended up selling 11 million shares at $21, the top of its expected range, raising $231 million. Sycamore Partners, the retail-focused private-equity firm, will own nearly 76% of Torrid after the IPO.
Krispy Kreme (DNUT), the most well-known of Thursday’s group, kicked off at $16.30 and ended at $21, up nearly 24% from the offer price. The doughnut chain increased the size of its deal by 10% but priced it well below its expected range to raise $500 million. Krispy Kreme had planned to offer 26.7 million shares at $21 to $24 each, but ended up selling 29.4 million shares at $17 each. JAB Holding, the European investment firm, will own about 39% of Krispy Kreme after the IPO
D-Market Electronic Services & Trading, or Hepsiburada (HEPS), jumped nearly 12% from its offer price to close at $13.43. Hepsiburada, which means “you can find anything you want here” in Turkish, is a leading e-commerce platform from Istanbul. The company raised $680 million after selling 56,740,000 American depositary shares at $12 each, the midpoint of its $11-to-$13 price range. Each ADS represents one class B ordinary share.
Lastly, EverCommerce (EVCM) stock opened at $20, but slipped back to close nearly 4% above its offer price at $17.60. EverCommerce’s IPO came in at $325 million after the comp[any sold 19.1 million shares at $17, the middle of its $16-to-$18 range. The company provides software for small and midsize service businesses.
Doughnuts on a production line inside a Krispy Kreme Doughnuts store in Times Square in Manhattan.
Angus Mordant/Bloomberg
Krispy Kreme
is leading a group of six companies to the public markets on Thursday.
Besides the doughnut chain,
Acumen Pharmaceuticals,
D-MARKET Electronic Services & Trading,
Evercommerce,
Torrid Holdings,
and the
Glimpse Group
opened for trading.
So far this week, 17 companies, including the current six, have listed their shares. There are no initial public offerings on tap for Friday because of the holiday weekend. On Wednesday, 10 companies went public, with
Didi Global,
the Uber of China, trading flat and closing at $14.14, 14 cents above its offering price.
On Thursday, Acumen Pharmaceuticals (ticker: ABOS) was one of the first to begin trading. The stock opened at $25.07, hit a high of $26.98, and recently changed hands in afternoon trading at $20.98, up 31% from the offering price.
The solid performance came after Acumen increased the size of its deal by nearly 20%. The biotech company, which is developing therapies to treat Alzheimer’s disease, collected about $160 million. It sold roughly 10 million shares at $16, the top of its $14-to-$16 range.
The Glimpse Group (VRAR), which develops and commercializes virtual and augmented reality software products, also opened. Shares kicked off at $11.75, peaked at $16.44, and recently traded at $12.95, up nearly 85%. Glimpse delivered Thursday’s smallest deal. The company collected $12.3 million, after selling 1.75 million shares at $7, the midpoint of its $6-to-$8 price range.
Torrid Holdings (CURV) began trading, with shares rising 15% from its offering price to $24.18 in afternoon trading. The plus-size, direct-to-consumer women’s retailer increased the size of its deal twice. It filed to offer 8 million shares at $18 to $21, which it boosted Wednesday to 10 million. It ended up selling 11 million shares at $21, the top of its expected range, raising $231 million. Sycamore Partners, the retail-focused private-equity firm, will own nearly 76% of Torrid after the IPO.
Krispy Kreme (DNUT), the most well-known of Thursday’s group, kicked off at $16.30, peaked at $20.17 and recently changed hands at $19.57, up 15% from the offer price. The doughnut chain increased the size of its deal by 10% but priced well below its expected range to raise $500 million. Krispy Kreme had planned to offer 26.7 million shares at $21 to $24 each, but ended up selling 29.4 million shares at $17 each. JAB Holding, the European investment firm, will own about 39% of Krispy Kreme after the IPO
D-Market Electronic Services & Trading, or Hepsiburada (HEPS), jumped 8% from its offer price and is trading at $13. Hepsiburada, which means “you can find anything you want here” in Turkish, is a leading e-commerce platform from Istanbul. The company raised $680 million after selling 56,740,000 American depositary shares at $12 each, the midpoint of its $11-to-$13 price range. Each ADS represents one class B ordinary share.
Lastly, Evercommerce (EVCM) also began trading. The stock opened at $20, hit a high of $21 and recently changed hands at $17.46, up nearly 3% from the offer price. Evercommerce’s IPO came in at $325 million after selling 19.1 million shares at $17, the middle of its $16-to-$18 range. The company provides SaaS software for small and midsize service businesses.
Hilton Worldwide Holdings Inc. Chief Executive Chris Nassetta worked from home in Arlington, Va., with his wife, six daughters and two dogs for two weeks before returning to the hotel chain’s nearly empty headquarters for the rest of the past year. Sharmistha Dubey has been leading Match Group Inc. from her dining room table near Dallas. Herman Miller ’s Andi Owen has her dog Finn to keep her company while working from her home office in Grand Rapids, Mich. Moderna Inc. CEO Stéphane Bancel relishes twice-daily 30-minute walks between his home in Boston and the vaccine maker’s Cambridge offices, where he resumed working in August, so he can crystallize his priorities and reflect on the day. The Wall Street Journal photographed them and 11 other business leaders in their pandemic office spaces as they discussed the past year and what’s to come.
More than a year after the coronavirus upended the way we work, the business leaders said they have found that more communication, flexibility and transparency have been crucial in staying connected to their employees.
Heads of companies across sectors including finance, hospitality and technology spoke from their current workspaces about what they’ve learned from the largely remote year, what challenges they faced and what changes they plan to leave in place during the next phase of work.
Brad Karp, chairman of the law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP, predicted his schedule will remain less hectic after the pandemic is over: “Personally, I can’t see myself reflexively flying cross-country for an hour-long presentation or meeting.”
The Utah Jazz have been winning a lot this season, but not as much as their new owner.
Just look back at three days in late January. The Jazz — which Ryan Smith bought for $1.66 billion late last year — beat the Dallas Mavericks for their 10th win in a row on Jan. 27, the same evening that Qualtrics International Inc.
XM,
+2.83%,
the software company Smith co-founded with his father Scott and brother Jared in 2002, set the price for its $1.55 billion IPO. The next day, Qualtrics shares would soar 52% in their trading debut, giving the software company a market valuation of $27.3 billion; a day later, the Jazz would win their 11th straight, putting them solidly at the top of the NBA standings.
So it’s good to be Ryan Smith. At the NBA All-Star break, the Jazz have a league-best record of 27-9. At the same time, Qualtrics is a major mover in a market estimated to be worth $60 billion, and topped Wall Street estimates for earnings and sales in its first quarterly results as a publicly traded company Tuesday.
The combination of a successful basketball team and another large, publicly traded tech company are helping to secure an even loftier goal for Smith: Making the Utah region known for something more than majestic mountains and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
“His goals and objectives have never been anything but over the top,” Todd Pedersen, CEO of Vivint Smart Home Inc.
VVNT,
+0.40%,
told MarketWatch.
Qualtrics got its start in the Smith’s basement, which is near Pedersen’s home. And it’s not just Smith and Pedersen who are neighbors — their companies are right next to one another as well. And they can now watch the NBA team that Smith owns play at an arena that bears the name of Pedersen’s company, as they recently did for a nationally-televised Jazz game against the defending champion Los Angeles Lakers.
The Jazz won.
Handling double duties
Smith sits in a position occupied by few in the history of corporate America: head of a publicly traded company, and owner of an unrelated sports franchise. There is no such owner in the National Football League, Major League Baseball nor the National Hockey League, though Wayne Huizenga once owned franchises in all three while leading Blockbuster Video.
The NBA seems more willing to welcome public-company executives to its ranks, even while denying bids from Oracle Corp.’s
ORCL,
-0.10%
co-founder Larry Ellison. Another recent majority owner is Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.’s
BABA,
-1.34%
co-founder and Executive Vice Chairman Joseph Tsai, who snapped up the Brooklyn Nets for a record $2.35 billion in 2020. The reclusive Robert Pera, CEO of Ubiquiti Inc.
UI,
-0.68%,
is also owner of the Memphis Grizzlies.
Vivek Ranidive was still chief executive of Tibco Software Inc. when he led a group that bought the Sacramento Kings in 2013, and Miami Heat owner Micky Arison led Carnival Cruise Inc. for more than a decade while leading his franchise. In Pera’s first attempt to buy into the NBA, a bid for the Philadelphia 76ers, he was topped by a group that included AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc.
AMC,
+1.92%
CEO Adam Aron, who also served as CEO of the Sixers for the first two years the group owned the team.
Read more: 5 things to know as Qualtrics prepares for its IPO this week
Smith has adroitly navigated the corporate and professional sports worlds by delegating day-to-day operations at each organization.
“As executive chairman, my job during the day is running Qualtrics with [Chief Executive] Zig [Serafin]. My job with the Jazz is at night, and I leave it to the coaches, players, and executives in charge of the team,” Smith told MarketWatch. “The product is proof of their abilities.”
At Qualtrics, CEO Zig Serafin and Smith are self-described “co-builders” of a company that has grown in the four-and-a-half years since Serafin joined as chief operating officer. (Serafin, who was named CEO nine months ago, says he and Smith are “joined at the hip” in their vision.) During that time, Qualtrics has expanded employees (from 1,100 to 3,500), customers (3,000-4,000 to 13,500), and revenue (from less than $200 million annually to $763.5 million last year, the company reported Tuesday).
As the NBA’s newest owner, “One of Ryan’s leadership styles is to delegate. He lets people think big, but by doing so through smart decisions,” Jim Olson, president of the Utah Jazz, told MarketWatch.
To that end, the Jazz use Qualtrics’ data analytics technology to improve team performance on the court and off, down to traveling, sleep, and diet for players and coaching staff.
The rise of Silicon Slopes
Illustrated by Terrence Horan
Such partnerships have fueled not just the success of the Jazz and Qualtrics but the larger Salt Lake City-Provo-Orem area.
“The Jazz and Sundance [Film Festival] are the two most identifiable brands in this state, and Ryan is smartly leveraging the Jazz for global reach,” says Domo Inc.
DOMO,
+1.20%
CEO Josh James, who coined the term “Silicon Slopes” for the region and started the non-profit organization of the same name. “Ryan Smith used to be just another successful tech founder,” he said. “Now he is universally known as Ryan Smith, owner of the Jazz. This is a much larger megaphone and platform for the community.”
For example, the Jazz use Qualtrics software to collect and analyze fan data to improve their experience at home games on everything from concessions and apparel to parking and in-game entertainment. The two organizations have also teamed on 5 For The Fight, a nonprofit that invites everyone to give $5 for the fight against cancer. It is the Jazz’s official jersey patch, a rarity in the corporate-skewed NBA.
The winning ways of Smith and Qualtrics, amid a wave of freshly minted unicorns in the Salt Lake City region, underscores the rise of Silicon Slopes as one of a handful of regions in the U.S. to successfully mold itself after Silicon Valley. From the days of computer-networking pioneer Novell Inc. and word-processing maker WordPerfect Corp. in the 1980s, Utah has stood out as a tech outpost, albeit in the shadow of Silicon Valley and Seattle, but its recent string of triumphs has considerably raised its profile.
Indeed, the Provo-Orem area was deemed the best regional economy in America, according to rankings released in February by the Milken Institute.
Even COVID-19 hasn’t dampened the state’s can-do mindset.
Utah has among the most-open vaccination criteria in the nation. Starting in early March, anyone 50 and over is eligible for a jab—as well as those 16 and older with pre-existing conditions. By emphasizing “speed over perfection,” Nomi Health Inc. CEO Mark Newman says, the state has been able to send kids back to school since September, reduce the unemployment rate of 3% to a pre-pandemic level, and attain a budget surplus.
“The states that figure it out will have a long-tale of success over those states that don’t,” said Newman, whose direct healthcare company is partnering with the state of Utah and Qualtrics in bringing mass testing sites and vaccinations.
“Utah as a state has a get-it-done attitude,” says Newman, who moved to the state in 1993. “That goes back to Utah’s pioneer roots.”
James says Utah’s tech history can be divided into three phases: The first in the late 1980s and early ‘90s led by Novell and WordPerfect; a second in the late 1990s and 2000s, with internet plays Overstock Inc.
OSTK,
-2.18%,
Omniture (acquired by Adobe Systems Inc.
ADBE,
+0.69%
), Altris Corp. (bought by then-Symantec Corp.), Iomega (acquired by then-EMC Corp.), and dozens of companies that were sold for millions each; and the current one of big independent enterprise companies like Qualtrics and Domo, and consumer plays like Vivint.
“A giant crop of companies are coming behind us,” James said, mentioning such unicorns as MX Technologies Inc., Lucid Software Inc. and DivvyPay Inc. “This feels like Silicon Valley in the ‘90s. It’s a really exciting time.”
“Silicon Slopes is doing great, building off the great history of [tech pioneers] Novell and WordPerfect in the state,” Steve Case, the co-founder of AOL who now leads venture-capital firm Revolution, told MarketWatch. The latest iteration, he added, is the byproduct of the region’s focus on enterprise technology and “strong collaboration in building a community.”
Overstock CEO Jonathan Johnson credits Utah’s “rich entrepreneurial spirit” to a “business-friendly environment where constant innovation, great employment opportunities, and real technological advancement are present.”
“Utah is a mixing bowl of cultures,” says Serafin, whose previous stop was 17 years in Redmond, Wash., all of them at Microsoft Corp.
MSFT,
-0.10%.
“Utah is close to the coast, and San Francisco and Los Angeles. It’s not much different than Silicon Valley folks who moved to Nevada.”
An ‘interesting journey’
In a state increasingly bustling with unicorns, none arguably have been hotter than Qualtrics, which went public in late January.
The company’s XM tracker stands for experience management, a software category that Qualtrics coined. Qualtrics, whose software lets businesses gauge how customers use their products so those products can be improved, has about 13,000 customers from about 9,000 two years ago. The company’s sales jumped 30% in the first three quarters of 2020 to $550 million, from $413.4 million a year earlier.
Smith’s “rare and unique ability to spot markets before they exist” gave him an vision of the experience economy that has helped evolve the way enterprises think about culture, brand, products, and people,” says ServiceNow Inc.
NOW,
-1.32%
CEO Bill McDermott, who was previously CEO of SAP
SAP,
-0.10%
when it owned Qualtrics.
Read more: 5 things to know as Qualtrics prepares for its IPO this week
Smith co-founded Qualtrics with his father and brother in 2002. On the cusp of going public in 2018, Qualtrics was acquired by SAP for $8 billion, making it the largest private enterprise-software acquisition in tech history when the deal closed in early 2019.
“It’s been an interesting journey,” Smith says. “For one-and-a-half to two years with SAP, they took our name everywhere while keeping our company independent and keeping the management team together, which is rare. It retained our culture, with an option to IPO.”
“To be in this spot as a public company, so many things had to go right,” Smith said. “It’s freakin’ incredible.”