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Key Facts

The stock of Sweetgreen, whose menu is centered around raw vegetables some are eschewing during the outbreak, has now tanked over 24% in the last month.

Taco Bell pulled some items from locations in select restaurants, the chain told Bloomberg on Tuesday, and stopped serving lettuce at some franchises in Michigan—the state reporting the largest outbreak in the parasite, which can cause explosive diarrhea.

Share prices for Taco Bell’s owner Yum Brands also fell 3.3% on Wednesday, and is down 7.4% over the last five trading sessions.

Chipotle’s stock price fell 4.8% on Wednesday, although shares remain up over the last six trading sessions.

In a statement sent to Forbes, Chipotle chief corporate affairs and food safety officer Laurie Schalow said the company didn’t believe its ingredients were associated with the outbreak, but would be “monitoring the situation closely and evaluating any new information as it becomes available.”

Health officials have not publicly associated any of the restaurants with the ongoing outbreak, though sources told the Washington Post authorities were investigating Taco Bell, and restaurants in Detroit reportedly pulled ingredients like lettuce, guacamole, cilantro and pico de gallo from their menus.

What Is Cyclospora?

Cyclospora is a microscopic parasite that causes cyclosporiasis, an intestinal illness primarily associated with watery diarrhea, fatigue and loss of appetite, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The illness is not usually spread person-to-person, but can spread when people consume food contaminated with the parasite. Authorities are still investigating the outbreak and have not determined the source as of Wednesday. “Early information has shown lettuce as a common product that regularly comes up during the investigation,” Dr. Natasha Bagdasarian, Michigan’s chief medical executive, said in a statement on Monday.

Big Number

3,762. That’s how many cyclosporiasis cases have been reported in Michigan, according to public health authorities in the state. These include 44 cases that have required hospitalization. The CDC has confirmed a total 1,645 cases of cyclosporiasis in the U.S. as of Tuesday, and notes more than 5,100 cases require further investigation to confirm the illness.

Further Reading

ForbesTaco Bell Investigated In Multistate Cyclosporiasis Outbreak, Report SaysBy Mary Whitfill Roeloffs %!s()

Some, including Block, Coinbase, and Standard Chartered, have cited the impact of artificial intelligence as a key reason for the layoffs.

Target, meanwhile, is shifting resources from its supply chain into stores as part of the new CEO's turnaround strategy to improve the shopping experience and return to growth.

More than 100 other companies have filed legally mandated WARN notices about job cuts to come in 2026, according to WARN Tracker. Some of the cuts are part of previously announced reductions.

The moves come as artificial intelligence, public policy, and broader economic conditions are driving sweeping changes in the business landscape.

A World Economic Forum survey last year found that some 41% of companies worldwide expected to reduce their workforces in the next five years because of the rise of artificial intelligence. The survey also found that jobs in big data, fintech, and AI are expected to double by 2030.

Last year, Business Insider tracked layoffs at around 65 major companies, including Amazon, Meta, Paramount, and Starbucks. In 2026, we'll continue to track additional job cuts based on company announcements, WARN notices, and our own reporting.

Here are the companies with job cuts underway in 2026, listed in alphabetical order.

Amazon is laying off thousands of employees

Amazon said in January that it would eliminate around 16,000 corporate roles globally.

Beth Galetti, senior vice president of people experience and technology, described the January move in a company memo as part of broader efforts to cut back on bureaucracy inside the company.

The cuts followed mass layoffs from October 2025, when the tech and retail giant shed 14,000 roles.

In May, Amazon's Selling Partner Services team slashed additional jobs as it continued to reshape its organization.

"Following a recent review, we've made the difficult decision to eliminate a relatively small number of roles in our Selling Partner Services team," a spokesperson told Business Insider.

Angi is cutting 350 jobs

Angi, the popular contractor listing site once known as Angie's List, said in January that it was cutting around 350 jobs "to reduce operating expenses and optimize the organizational structure in support of long-term growth." The company also said it's making the cuts "in light of AI-driven efficiency improvements."

In a January 7 SEC filing, Angi said that the cuts would save between $70 million and $80 million in annual spending. The layoffs will cost the company between $22 million and $30 million, according to the filing.

Atlassian is cutting 1,600 employees

Atlassian, the enterprise software company and maker of Confluence, said on March 11 that it will be cutting about 10% of its workforce as it invests in AI to reshape its organization.

CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes said in a statement that about 1,600 employees will be affected by the cuts.

"We fundamentally believe people and AI create the best outcomes. Our approach is not 'AI replaces people,'" Cannon-Brookes said. "But it would be disingenuous to pretend AI doesn't change the mix of skills we need or the number of roles required in certain areas. It does."

The company expects to incur $225 million and $236 million in restructuring charges, according to an SEC filing.

British American Tobacco cuts 9,000 jobs

British American Tobacco said it will cut 9,000 jobs by the end of the year, about one-fifth of its workforce. The cuts will not impact the US arm of its business.

"We are building a future-ready organisation that is more agile, cost disciplined and technology enabled," CEO Tadeu Marroco said in the statement.

The company, whose cigarette portfolio includes brands like Lucky Strike and Dunhill, has stepped up its push in recent years into smoke-free alternatives, such as nicotine pouches and vapes.

Citi's job cuts continue this year

Citi will cut more jobs this year as part of its plan to reduce its workforce by 10%, or 20,000 employees.

In a statement on January 13, the bank said that it will continue to reduce head count in 2026.

"These changes reflect adjustments we're making to ensure our staffing levels, locations and expertise align with current business needs," a spokesperson for Citi said.

The plan was detailed in the company's January 2024 earnings report and could save the bank as much as $2.5 billion.

Cloudflare lays off 20% of its global workforce

Cybersecurity company Cloudflare on May 7 said it plans to cut roughly 20% of its global workforce, affecting more than 1,100 employees.

In an internal memo, Cloudflare executives said the company's use of AI has climbed more than 600% over the past three months, and that the rapid shift has forced the company to reconsider its structure.

"We want to be clear that this decision is not a reflection of the individual work or talent of those leaving us," Cloudflare executives wrote in the May 7 memo. "Instead, we are reimagining every internal process, team, and role across the company."

The company's shares fell more than 14% in extended trading following the announcement.

Coinbase is cutting 14% of staff

The CEO of Coinbase, Brian Armstrong, said in a letter to staff on May 5 that 14% of its staff would be cut, largely because of AI.

"AI is changing how we work. Over the past year, I've watched engineers use AI to ship in days what used to take a team weeks," wrote. "The pace of what's possible with a small, focused team has changed dramatically, and it's accelerating every day."

Armstrong said this would mean fewer layers and faster decisions in the company. No pure managers, he said — all leaders will now be required to get stuck in and "get their hands dirty."

"AI is bringing a profound shift in how companies operate, and we're reshaping Coinbase to lead in this new era," he added.

Crypto.com laid off 12% of its workforce

Crypto.com CEO Kris Marszalek said in March that the company laid off 12% of its workforce, including "roles that do not adapt in our new world."

"Companies that move immediately and pair the best AI tools with top-performers will achieve a level of scale and precision that was previously impossible," Marszalek wrote in a post on X. "This is where we must go."

Dell cut 10% of its workforce

Dell cut its workforce by 10% for the third year in a row, the company said in its annual filing with the SEC.

As of January 31, 2026, the company had 97,000 employees, down 11,000 from the same time last year. The decline includes both layoffs and attrition, Business Insider reported.

eBay is expected to lay off 6% of its employees

eBay is set to eliminate about 800 jobs globally, making up 6% of its workforce. The company told Business Insider that it's taking steps to better align with its strategic priorities.

"We are grateful for the contributions of the employees impacted and are committed to supporting them with care and respect," a company spokesperson said in a statement.

Epic Games is cutting 20% of its workforce

Epic Games, the company behind Fortnite, said in March that it would lay off more than 1,000 people — about 20% of its workforce — as engagement with the game declined.

CEO Tim Sweeney said in a memo that the layoffs "aren't related to AI."

"To the extent it improves productivity, we want to have as many awesome developers developing great content and tech as we can," Sweeney said.

Estée Lauder is deepening its cuts, now to as many as 10,000 roles

Estée Lauder said in its May earnings report that it will deepen its previously announced cuts, which are now expected to affect up to 10,000 jobs.

More than two-thirds of the reductions are in cashier and demonstration roles at lower-performing retail and department stores.

Expedia laid off some employees

Expedia confirmed to Business Insider that it had laid off some employees on January 26 and had also posted new job openings. It's unclear how many of its workers were affected by the cuts.

"We are eliminating roles as well as opening some new roles as we remain disciplined about assessing the skills we need for the future," an Expedia Group spokesperson said in a statement. "We are also simplifying our structure and reducing organizational layers to move faster and with more accountability. These are not easy decisions, and we are grateful for the contributions of our colleagues who are impacted."

Freshworks is cutting 11% of staff

The San Mateo, California-based software company said in its early May earnings report that it would cut 11% of its staff in the second quarter. The company had about 4,500 employees at the end of 2025.

The cuts aim "to streamline the Company's organizational efforts and product development process" and increase AI across the company, according to the filing.

On an earnings call, CEO Dennis Woodside said about half the company's code comes from AI.

"Like many other software companies, that is definitely changing how we build products, how fast we can build products, and the amount of people that we need to build products," he said.

The company's stock slumped 35% from May 2025 to May 2026.

General Motors is axing 600 salaried employees

General Motors is cutting 600 salaried employees from its global IT division.

A spokesperson said the layoffs would enable it to "better position the company for the future," by ensuring GM has employees with expertise in AI-native development, data engineering, analytics, cloud engineering, prompt engineering, and AI workflows.

GoPro is laying off 145 employees

On April 7, GoPro said it would lay off about 145 employees as it tries to cut operating costs and restructure operations.

The layoffs make up 23% of its global headcount of 631 employees, the camera maker said in a regulatory filing.

The cuts will start in the second quarter of the year and will largely be completed by the end of 2026. The restructuring is expected to result in a charge of $11.5 million to $15 million.

The company cut about 15% of its staff in August 2024 to cut costs.

Groupon is reducing up to 400 positions globally

Groupon said on May 21 that it would cut up to 400 roles globally as part of a restructuring plan, according to a financial filing. It previously said it planned to rebuild as an "AI-native company."

The cuts are expected to happen by the end of the third quarter of 2026. Groupon is looking to generate $10 million to $12 million in gross savings in 2026.

"Up to half of this year's savings will be reinvested into AI infrastructure, talent density, and the tools and teams building the next version of the company," a spokesperson told Business Insider.

Groupon had 1,734 employees worldwide at the end of 2025, according to its annual report.

Heineken has a multi-year plan to reduce its workforce

Heineken is cutting 5,000 to 6,000 roles over the next two years to boost productivity and bring down costs, according to its latest full-year earnings report.

The company told Business Insider that the divisions and regions where the layoffs are due to take place are yet to be confirmed.

Heineken said in its 2025 report that it faced "subdued consumer sentiment" in the Americas, alongside a "challenging year" for brewers in Europe.

Intuit is laying off 17% of its workforce

Financial software company Intuit announced on May 20 that it would be cutting 17% of its full-time workforce.

The company shared a memo from CEO Sasan Goodarzi to employees that listed five reasons for the culling, including reducing management layers, focusing roles on "high impact work," and closing down two of its offices.

"These changes are a necessary evolution to reduce complexity and architect an organization that operates with the velocity required to fuel our growth engines," Goodarzi wrote in the memo, shared in a blog post on Intuit's website.

Laid-off employees in the US would receive 16 weeks of base pay, plus two additional weeks of pay for every year they have worked at Intuit.

The company said in a May 20 earnings report that restructuring costs from the layoffs would be about $300 million to $340 million.

Kenvue cuts 3.5% of workforce

Consumer healthcare brand Kenvue, which produces Tylenol, plans to cut 3.5% of its staff. Kenvue had about 22,000 employees globally, per its latest annual report.

The company wrote in a mid-February SEC filing that its board aimed to reduce complexity and drive operational efficiencies.

The company's layoffs and restructuring efforts are expected to cost $250 million in 2026, per the filing.

LinkedIn is laying off staff and 'scale back' other investments

LinkedIn CEO Daniel Shapero told employees on May 13 that it was laying off employees, and those in affected roles would receive a calendar invite. The jobs included positions in the Microsoft-owned company's Global Business Organization, marketing, engineering, and product teams.

"We need to reinvent how we work, with agile teams focused on our highest priorities, and by shifting investments toward areas such as infrastructure to fulfill our mission and vision over the long term," Shapero said in the memo.

Shapero also said LinkedIn would "scale back" investments in areas like marketing campaigns, customer events, and underutilized office space.

Lululemon laid off 100 part-time employees at its customer service center

The athleisure giant said it laid off 100 part-time employees to "strengthen the business." The affected roles are in the company's North American contact center.

"After careful consideration, we have made the decision to transition our North America GEC to a full-time employee staffing model. As a result, approximately 100 part-time positions in our GEC have been impacted," a Lululemon spokesperson said.

Meta lays off workers at Reality Labs and other divisions

Meta began laying off employees across multiple teams on March 25, including Reality Labs, Facebook, recruiting, sales, and global operations.

The cuts come as the company ramps up spending on AI infrastructure and talent, alongside broader cost-cutting efforts. Meta said the changes are part of ongoing restructuring to better align teams with company goals, while exploring other roles for affected employees where possible.

Meta first began preparing to slash jobs within its Reality Labs division, the unit responsible for Mark Zuckerberg's metaverse ambitions, in January, three people familiar with the matter told Business Insider at the time.

Two employees said that teams working on virtual reality headsets and Horizon Worlds, the company's VR social network, would be disproportionately affected.

Meta has shifted away from virtual reality in recent years in favor of spending hundreds of billions of dollars on beefing up its AI capabilities.

Nike laid off workers in two rounds

Nike is cutting roughly 1,400 jobs, mostly from tech, as part of a broader push to streamline operations and revive growth.

In a memo to staff on April 23 obtained by Business Insider, Chief Operating Officer Venkatesh Alagirisamy said the layoffs are tied to the company's "win now" turnaround plan, which focuses on improving culture, product, marketing, marketplace strategy, and in-person retail. He described the effort as entering its "final stretch."

This is Nike's second layoff in 2026. Nike said on January 26 that it planned to lay off 775 employees across Tennessee and Mississippi, citing efforts to "streamline" its distribution center operations.

"We are sharpening our supply chain footprint, accelerating the use of advanced technology and automation, and investing in the skills our teams need for the future," Nike said in a statement to Business Insider.

Oracle's headcount fell 13% in a year

Oracle's workforce shrank by roughly 21,000 employees, or 13%, over the past year, bringing its headcount to 141,000 as of May 31, according to a 10-K filing released on June 22.

"The adoption and deployment of AI technologies across our operations have resulted, and may continue to result, in reductions to our workforce," Oracle wrote in the filing.

Oracle also disclosed that restructuring costs surged in fiscal 2026. The company spent $1.84 billion on severance and other exit costs, up from $374 million in the prior year.

The reduction in workforce comes as Oracle continues to invest heavily in AI infrastructure.

Papa Johns is restructuring

Papa Johns said it is laying off 7% of its corporate staff amid a broader restructuring.

The pizza chain said it will also close 300 locations in North America through 2027, starting with 200 this year.

"Optimizing our restaurant portfolio and strategically closing underperforming restaurants are among the most impactful actions we can take to improve restaurant profitability and fleet health," Papa Johns CFO Ravi Thanawala said during the company's fourth quarter earnings call on February 26.

Pinterest is expected to lay off 15% of its workforce

Pinterest announced a global restructuring plan that includes layoffs affecting less than 15% of its workforce, according to a January securities filing. The cuts come with reductions in office space.

"We are making organizational changes to further deliver on our AI-forward strategy, which includes hiring AI-proficient talent," a Pinterest spokesperson said.

"As a result, we've made the difficult decision to say goodbye to some of our team members. We are grateful for their service and supporting them with separation packages and benefits," they added.

Saks laid off 16% of its corporate staff, among other job cuts

Saks Global, the beleaguered parent company of Saks Fifth Avenue, Neiman Marcus, and Bergdorf Goodman, conducted several rounds of layoffs as it closed stores and trimmed its corporate staff

In April, the company cut about 16% of its corporate staff, representing less than 4% of its total workforce.

"Following the strategic actions we've taken to secure long-term financial stability, sharpen our focus on luxury and full-price selling, optimize our operational footprint, and exit non-core businesses, we are right-sizing our corporate organization to align with our go-forward strategy," a Saks spokesperson told Business Insider.

The cuts followed Saks's closure of dozens of stores and fulfillment centers in the first quarter, resulting in layoffs.

Saks filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in January.

Standard Chartered plans to eliminate 15% of corporate functions over the next 4 years

Standard Chartered plans to cut 15% of corporate function roles over the next four years, the company said on May 19.

The bank, headquartered in London, credited AI as a driver for the reductions.

"It is not cost-cutting, but it is replacing, in some cases, lower-value human capital with the financial capital and the investment capital that we are putting in," CEO Bill Winters said in a media briefing, Reuters reported.

The company added in a statement: "We are combining the best human talent with AI, investing to support our people into higher-value roles."

T-Mobile cut some jobs

T-Mobile cut some staff in early 2026, though the scope of the layoffs is unclear. Some workers posted on LinkedIn saying they'd been affected by the changes in January.

"As the next step in our evolution, we're making some changes while continuing to hire to ensure we have the right focus, structure, and momentum to keep changing the industry through innovation and our long-standing focus on customers," T-Mobile told Business Insider in a statement.

Tailwind cut 3 of its 4 engineers

Tailwind, a popular web tool, said it cut three of its four engineers in January, citing an AI-driven decline in revenue.

"75% of the people on our engineering team lost their jobs here yesterday because of the brutal impact AI has had on our business," CEO Adam Wathan wrote in a GitHub comment on January 6 that made waves in the tech community.

Target is cutting 500 roles from its distribution and regional offices

Target confirmed to Business Insider in February that it would cut 100 district office roles and 400 supply chain positions. It plans to invest instead in additional labor hours at stores to improve the shopping experience and return to growth.

The store improvement effort is a signature priority of the retailer's new CEO, Michael Fiddelke, who started on February 1.

In November, Fiddelke said the company intends to invest an additional $1 billion in capital expenditures for 2026, an increase of 25% from 2025.

UPS said it will eliminate 30,000 jobs

UPS CEO Brian Dykes told analysts during the company's fourth-quarter earnings call that the company plans to reduce its operational workforce by 30,000 in 2026.

"This will be accomplished through attrition, and we expect to offer a second voluntary separation program for full-time drivers," Dykes said.

He told analysts that the company has identified 24 buildings for closure in the first half of 2026 and will continue to evaluate additional buildings for closure.

Walmart said it would cut or relocate 1,000 corporate jobs

Walmart told employees on May 12 that it would cut or relocate about 1,000 corporate jobs to address redundancies and duplicate roles.

Suresh Kumar, Walmart's chief technology and development officer, and Daniel Danker, executive vice president of AI acceleration, product, and design, announced the changes in a memo.

"We've made changes to simplify how the work is organized, make ownership clearer, and better align roles to the work and skills we need going forward," the memo said.

The move follows Walmart's May 2025 decision to cut 1,500 corporate roles as part of an effort to "remove layers and complexity."

The company employed 2.1 million people as of January.

WiseTech is cutting 30% of its workforce

Logistics software maker Wisetech is cutting 2,000 jobs, or 30% of its staff, citing AI-driven efficiency gains.

In a conference call on February 25, CEO Zubin Appoo embraced AI and said that it means more productivity, in less time, and from fewer employees. The Sydney-based company employed about 7,000 people, according to its annual report released in October.

"I am prepared to say this clearly: the era of manually writing code as the core act of engineering is over," Appoo said. AI is "unlocking levels of efficiency gains across WiseTech that were previously out of reach."

Wix CEO said the company is set to cut 20% of its workforce

Wix, which provides website-building software, is reducing its workforce by 20%, the CEO told employees in a memo published on X on May 28.

The Israel-headquartered company employs about 5,300 workers.

CEO Avishai Abrahami cited the "fast evolution of AI capabilities" as a reason for the cuts and said the company needed to become a "faster, leaner, and flatter organization."

Workday is cutting jobs

Workday is cutting about 400 jobs, and said on February 4 that the move will help the enterprise software company redirect resources toward priority areas.

The layoffs will primarily affect customer-facing roles that are "non-revenue generating," Workday said in a regulatory filing.

The cuts represent roughly 2% of its workforce and are expected to result in about $135 million in charges in the fiscal fourth quarter, which ended in January.

Workday announced a larger round of layoffs about a year ago, citing the need to invest more heavily in strategic areas such as AI. The company reported about 20,600 employees as of late October.

Is your company conducting layoffs? Got a tip?

Forelimbs are critical for survival in marsupials; newborns are typically very small and underdeveloped but rely on strong, fully formed arms to crawl unaided to the teat immediately after birth.

University of Melbourne lead author Dr. Axel Newton from the School of BioSciences said the research, published today in Science Advances, highlights the remarkable biology of marsupials.

"Many of Australia's iconic wildlife are marsupials, including kangaroos, koalas, wombats and the Tasmanian devil, and we need to understand their evolutionary quirks to better protect them," Newton said.

"We found that marsupial forelimbs rapidly develop over a four-day period, going from a flat, featureless bud to fully functional arms with claws, which completely challenges our current understanding of limb development in vertebrates.

"The early forelimbs appear before many major structures are formed, including somites and the neural tube, which are essentially the building blocks of the body."

A developmental sequence rewritten

In partnership with Professor Karen Sears at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), the researchers studied two distantly related marsupials, the fat-tailed dunnart (Sminthopsis crassicaudata) and the gray short-tailed opossum (Monodelphis domestica), to examine the distribution of genes following fertilization.

The research challenges previously held assumptions about the biological process of limb growth. Rather than following a single fixed sequence, key events in embryonic development seen in other species are bypassed or reorganized in marsupials.

"Our previous understanding of how forelimbs grow has largely come from chicken or mouse models, where many tissues grow at the same time. The development of marsupial limbs in isolation from other tissues provides an excellent model to untangle how limbs first form," Newton explained.

"This not only reveals unexpected flexibility in limb development but also paves the way for a better understanding of how congenital human limb defects may arise."

The research was undertaken at the University of Melbourne's Pask Lab in partnership with Colossal Biosciences.

Professor Andrew Pask, head of the Pask Lab, said the research is important in broader conservation efforts.

Biology that informs conservation

"Understanding how evolution has shaped the development of our extraordinary marsupial mammals is fundamental to conserving them," Pask said.

"If we don't understand the biology of how these animals are built, we can't fully understand their vulnerabilities, their resilience or how to intervene when a species is in trouble. This research is a great example of how developmental biology feeds directly into the conservation science we do every day."

Publication details

Axel Newton, Heterochronic limb patterning in marsupials reveals flexibility in the processes underlying lateral plate mesoderm morphogenesis, Science Advances (2026). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aed3192. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aed3192

Who's behind this story?

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Citation: Marsupial newborns get early arms as embryos bypass usual limb-building sequence (2026, July 15) retrieved 16 July 2026 from https://phys.org/news/2026-07-marsupial-newborns-early-arms-embryos.html

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United forecast third-quarter adjusted earnings per share of between $2.50 and $3.50, compared with analysts' estimates for $3.60 a share. It estimated full-year adjusted earnings per share of between $9 and $11, the higher end of the range of the adjusted $7 to $11 a share it forecast in April, when it cut its January forecast after the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran in late February.

According to Argus data published by industry group Airlines for America, jet fuel prices at major U.S. airports are up 34% in July alone through Tuesday amid a roller coaster of escalating and deescalating conflict between the U.S. and Iran. Jet fuel is the largest cost for airlines after labor.

United said the higher fuel prices could add nearly $6 billion to its expenses this year compared with what it expected at the start of 2026, and that its second-quarter fuel costs rose 84% from last year to $2.3 billion. Those estimates were made based on Tuesday's fuel prices. It said it would cover up to as much as 90% of its higher costs this quarter and all of it in the fourth quarter.

Rival Delta Air Lines also said it is passing on more of those higher costs to flyers. The airlines said demand has remained strong despite higher fares.

Here is what United Airlines reported for the quarter that ended June 30 compared with what Wall Street was expecting, based on estimates compiled by LSEG:

• Earnings per share: $1.99 adjusted vs. $1.88 expected
• Revenue: $17.67 billion vs. $17.61 billion expected

United said it is updating its forecast to include the most recent fuel prices because costs have been so volatile. Since the beginning of July, fuel prices have hit adjusted earnings for the third quarter by $1.12 per share, it said.

"We have a strong economy, probably better than people appreciate, because we're a pretty good real-time indicator," CEO Scott Kirby told CNBC's "Squawk Box" on Thursday. He said fares are going up not just because of fuel prices but because other expenses have also gone up, like maintenance, labor and airport fees.

The carrier could further cut its capacity plans because of higher fuel costs this year, it said in a filing.

United expanded flying 3.5% second quarter. Its revenue rose 16% from a year earlier to $17.67 billion, with total unit revenue up 12.1% in the second quarter from last year. That was the highest unit revenue growth since early 2023, according to FactSet.

The airline reported higher revenue for premium, corporate and no-frills basic economy tickets, as well as rising unit revenue for both domestic and international trips.

Net income fell more than 17% to $805 million, or $2.46 a share. Adjusting for one-time items United reported $649 million, or $1.99 a share on an adjusted basis.

United executives will hold an earnings call Thursday at 10:30 a.m. ET.

Read more CNBC airline news

• Delta launches ‘basic business’ fares without lounge access, seat selection
• Record heat, crowds drive offseason boom in international travel
• Delta expects higher airfare to last, bringing 2026 profit goal in reach
• 'Bring 'em on': Delta wants United's crown over the Pacific, too
• Spirit's collapse, high fuel prices test limits of summer vacation spending
• Meet the pilots flying Spirit Airlines' yellow jets to the desert

Key Facts

“The Odyssey,” which opens in theaters this weekend, boasts a near-perfect 98% Rotten Tomatoes score and a “Certified Fresh” status based on the first 162 critics reviews.

The reviews are the best of director Christopher Nolan’s career, even higher than the 93% score for his 2023 Best Picture-winning “Oppenheimer.”

The movie’s one high-profile critic—Musk— repeatedly targeted it and Nolan in posts on his X, calling the director “racist against the Greek people” for casting Nyong’o and Page, and not Greek actors.

Musk also repeatedly amplified misinformation about the movie, boosting posts that claimed Page is playing Achilles (he is not) and making false claims about diversity standards used to qualify for Academy Awards consideration.

What Have Critics Said About Musk’s Anti-Woke Crusade?

Esquire’s review of “The Odyssey,” which praises the movie as “spectacular,” slammed Musk’s anti-”Odyssey” tirade as “contemptible,” saying the only “travesty” about casting Nyong’o as Helen of Troy is the “waste of her talent in such a small role.” In a five-star review, the Arizona Republic called Musk’s comments on Nyong’o “racist and ugly,” criticizing him for using historical accuracy as a justification. “I mean, is the cyclops accurate? Come on,” reviewer Bill Goodykoontz wrote, suggesting “haters should just go see” the movie. Samuel Clench, reviewer for Australia’s news.co.au, condemned Musk for deciding the movie was “an insult to both Greek and broader Western culture” months before release, “having not seen a single minute of the movie.” Clench noted Page does not play Achilles, as Musk had suggested, and praised the actor’s performance. Hollywood Reporter critic David Rooney said he would “refuse to get into the tiresome online controversy about Nolan’s unconventional casting choices,” noting since “nobody here is Greek or Turkish, complaining about one or two actors dismissed as ‘DEI hires’ is absurd.” Rooney’s review named Nyong’o alongside Zendaya and Mia Goth as “vital presences,” despite their roles having “limited scope.”

How Has Nolan Responded To Musk?

In an interview last week, Nolan called the controversy over his casting choices “irrelevant” because nobody participating in the anti-woke backlash had actually seen the movie yet. Nolan said he has often dealt with such backlash throughout his career, including when he directed a trio of “Batman” movies, noting the character is decades old and “a lot of freighted thoughts were out there about what he represents.”

What Else Has Musk Said About “The Odyssey”?

Musk accused Nolan of “desecrating Homer” and said in response to a post criticizing Nyong’o’s casting that Nolan has “lost his integrity.” He also falsely accused Nolan of boosting his film’s diversity to qualify for Oscars consideration. Musk responded, “True,” to a post that falsely claimed films must meet three diversity standards to be eligible for Best Picture at the Academy Awards, including a claim 30% of a film’s cast must be non-white or non-straight people—but these are just some of the multiple criteria films can meet for eligibility.

what to watch for

How much “The Odyssey” will make in its opening weekend and beyond. The movie, produced on a massive $250 million budget, is expected to be a hit, as tickets went on sale months in advance and plenty of screenings are sold out. Variety projected an opening weekend sum of $90 million to $100 million, while Deadline projected an opening between $85 million and $100 million.

further reading

Musk Boosts Misinformation About ‘The Odyssey’ In Days-Long Crusade Against Christopher Nolan Movie (Forbes) %!s()