It’s become a familiar sight at Starbucks cafes: a counter crowded with mobile orders, frustrated customers waiting for the drinks they ordered and overwhelmed baristas trying to keep up with it all.

Fixing that problem will likely top incoming CEO Brian Niccol’s list of tasks to turn around the struggling coffee giant when he steps into the role on Sept. 9.

Investors and executives alike have pointed to operational issues as one reason the chain’s sales have lagged in recent quarters. Other culprits for its recent same-store sales declines include a weakening consumer, boycotts and the deterioration of the Starbucks brand.

Former CEO Howard Schultz, who lacks a formal role with the company but remains involved, has also pointed the finger at the mobile app. He said it has become “the biggest Achilles heel for Starbucks,” on an episode of the “Acquired” podcast in June.

Mobile orders account for roughly one-third of Starbucks’ total sales, and tend to be more complicated. While add-ons like cold foam or syrups are more profitable for Starbucks, they tend to take up more of baristas’ time, frustrating both them and customers.

“I agree with Howard Schultz,” said Robert Byrne, senior director of consumer research for Technomic, a restaurant market research firm. “This is not in the data — this is in the store. This is where the issue lies.”

In late April, the current CEO, Laxman Narasimhan, said the company was struggling to meet demand in the morning — and scaring away some customers with long wait times.

Schultz said he experienced the problem himself when he visited a Chicago location at 8 a.m.

“Everyone shows up, and all of a sudden we got a mosh pit, and that’s not Starbucks,” Schultz said on the “Acquired” episode.

Making mobile orders more efficient is one of the key ways Niccol can reduce crowding at Starbucks.

When Schultz was building Starbucks to become the coffee behemoth it is today, he positioned it as a “third place” between work and home. Since then, the chain has lost that reputation as more customers lean on the convenience of mobile ordering and prefer not to linger at its cafes.

“Because it’s a beverage, and because I’m frequently consuming it in the car or on the go, it needs to be incredibly convenient,” Byrne said.

But Starbucks also didn’t make significant adjustments to its operations to anticipate that shift in consumer behavior.

In 2017, Schultz stepped down as CEO for the second time, handing the reins to Kevin Johnson. Prior to joining the coffee chain as its chief operating officer, Johnson served as chief executive of Juniper Networks, a tech company. Under his leadership, Starbucks invested in technology and kept growing digital sales, but restaurant operations were already struggling when he left the company.

Schultz stepped back in as interim CEO when Johnson retired in 2022.

“The company did not do a good job of anticipating the technological refinements that needed to be put in place to avoid what was happening. … The stock was at record high, the company was not investing ahead of the curve, not paying attention to the velocity of the mobile app and what it was becoming until it was too late,” Schultz said.

Shareholders have also experienced the frustration with digital orders — and see it as a critical area for Niccol to address.

“The problem you have in New York City, for example, is what is the wait time,” said Nancy Tengler, CEO and chief investment officer of Laffer Tengler Investments, which owns shares of both Starbucks and Chipotle. “And then the mobile orders taking precedence over the in-store orders. [Niccol’s] going to have to flip that somehow to get people to spend more time and more money in stores.”

The mobile-order issues have added pressure on baristas. Burnout, fueled in part by the app, helped inspire some employees to unionize, beginning in 2021.

This November, Starbucks Workers United, which now represents workers at roughly 450 of the chain’s U.S. stores, pressed the company to turn off mobile ordering when it’s running promotions. (Starbucks said at the time that it was already in the process of making the change possible.)

Digital sales aren’t the same albatross for Niccol’s current employer, Chipotle.

In its latest quarter, 35% of the company’s revenue came from online orders. The pandemic fueled a shift to online ordering that has stuck around, as the share of digital orders has jumped from 18% in 2019.

When Niccol joined Chipotle in 2018, most of its restaurants had already installed a second prep line dedicated to digital orders, aiming to avoid bottlenecks as online sales became more important to the business. That same year, it also began adding drive-thru lanes just for online order pickup, which it calls “Chipotlanes.”

In his six and a half years at Chipotle, Niccol and his executives boosted digital sales through different promotions: sports stars’ favorite orders, limited-time deals, a rewards program and the long-awaited launch of quesadillas. In particular, quesadillas became a digital-only option because they would otherwise slow down operations.

Chipotle has also been testing automation to make burrito bowls ordered through its mobile app through a partnership with robotics firm Hyphen.

Starbucks has been taking steps to speed up service and improve baristas’ work experience.

In 2022, under Schultz’s leadership, Starbucks introduced a reinvention plan that included tackling bottlenecks through new equipment and other measures to speed up service.

Narasimhan has largely stuck to that strategy. This February, its mobile app finally started showing customers the progress of their orders, giving them a better idea of when their drinks will be ready. And in late July, Starbucks rolled out its “Siren Craft System” across North America, a series of processes to make drinks faster and baristas’ jobs easier.

But the problem for Starbucks, could require more drastic measures.

For example, the equipment rollout has been slow, with roughly 40% of North American locations expected to install the new machines by the end of fiscal 2026. Speeding up that timeline could cut service times in half — as promised at the investor day in 2022 — and reduce the strain on baristas.

“It’s not an easy lift by any means to do that, like that’s going to take time and training and investment and [capital expenditure],” TD Cowen analyst Andrew Charles said.

“In our view, Brian has tremendous credibility, where if he tells investors, ‘This is the answer to the problem we’re having,’ and can explain why he believes that — he’s going to get a pass,” Charles said.

Shares of former President Donald Trump’s social media company on Monday touched their lowest price since they began public trading on the Nasdaq nearly five months ago after a merger.

Trump Media, the company that owns the Republican presidential nominee’s preferred social messaging platform Truth Social, closed down more than 3.5% to settle at $22.24 a share.

The previous low point for the stock, which trades under the DJT ticker, was in mid-April when the price plummeted to $22.55 following the company’s slingshot rise in its frenzied public trading debut.

The notoriously volatile stock’s downward trajectory over the past month coincided with a swirl of seismic developments for Trump, who is both the majority stakeholder of Trump Media and a main draw for Truth Social users.

The share price surged on July 15, the first trading day after Trump was nearly assassinated at a campaign rally in western Pennsylvania.

Trump was formally nominated at the Republican National Convention two days later, bolstering the momentum he had already built up against President Joe Biden, who at the time was the presumptive Democratic nominee.

But Trump’s growing lead suddenly shrunk when Biden dropped out of the election contest on July 21 and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris as his replacement to lead their party’s ticket.

The historic switch flipped betting markets’ views on who will win in November. Harris is now favored over Trump.

Trump Media has said in regulatory filings that its success is at least partly tied to Trump’s popularity and reputation.

Some Trump supporters seem to treat the company’s stock as a way to support the former president or bet on his chances of winning a second term.

On Aug. 9, Trump Media reported a loss of over $16 million for the fiscal quarter ending June 30, while posting just $837,000 in revenue in the same period.

The company attributed about half of its loss to ongoing legal expenses related to its merger with the special purpose acquisition company Digital World Acquisition Corp., which was delayed for more than two years after it was announced.

Despite its meager revenue, the company currently has a market capitalization of nearly $4.5 billion due to its stock price.

Trump is bound by a licensing agreement that requires him to make “non-political” social media posts on Truth Social first.

But he is free to post political messages on any site without restriction — and he has recently exercised that ability by posting on X and TikTok, two social media giants whose audiences dwarf Truth Social’s.

Trump on Aug. 12 was interviewed by Tesla CEO Elon Musk in a livestream on the social media app X, which Musk owns.

Trump has periodically posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, since the interview.

The Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday said it fined billionaire activist investor Carl Icahn and his company $2 million, settling allegations that he failed to disclose billions of dollars worth of personal margin loans pledged against the value of his Icahn Enterprises stock.

Icahn and the publicly-traded company that bears his name settled those charges without admitting or denying wrongdoing. They agreed to pay $500,000 and $1.5 million in fines, respectively, the SEC said in a press release Monday.

The SEC said that Icahn, who established himself as a ruthless corporate raider before adopting the friendlier mantle of activist investor, pledged anywhere from 51% to 82% of Icahn Enterprises, or IELP, shares outstanding to secure billions worth in margin loans without disclosing that fact to shareholders or federal regulators.

Icahn’s cumulative personal borrowing was as much as $5 billion, according to an SEC consent order.

As the effective controlling shareholder of IEP, Icahn would have been expected to make what are known as Schedule 13D filings, which typically detail what a controlling shareholder expects to do with their influence over a company. They also would have had to include information about any encumbrances, like margin loans, on a stake.

“The federal securities laws imposed independent disclosure obligations on both Icahn and IEP,” Osman Nawaz, a senior SEC official, said. “These disclosures would have revealed that Icahn pledged over half of IEP’s outstanding shares at any given time.”

Icahn’s margin borrowing was highlighted in a May 2023 report issued by short-seller Hindenburg Research, which put pressure on Icahn Enterprises’ stock after alleging that the holding company was, among other things, not estimating the value of its holdings correctly.

Icahn amended, consolidated and disclosed his margin borrowings in July, according to the SEC’s consent order, two months after the Hindenburg report.

“The government investigation that followed has resulted in this settlement which makes no claim IEP or I inflated NAV or engaged in a ‘Ponzi-like’ structure,” Icahn said in a statement to CNBC. “We are glad to put this matter behind us and will continue to focus on operating the business for the benefit of unit holders.”

Hindenburg Research wrote on X on Monday that IEP is “still operating a ponzi-like structure” and reiterated that it remains short the stock.

DETROIT — General Motors is laying off more than 1,000 salaried employees globally in its software and services division following a review to streamline the unit’s operations, CNBC has learned.

The layoffs, including roughly 600 jobs at GM’s tech campus near Detroit, come less than six months after leadership changes overseeing the operations, including former Apple executive Mike Abbott leaving the automaker due to health reasons.

“As we build GM’s future, we must simplify for speed and excellence, make bold choices, and prioritize the investments that will have the greatest impact,” a GM spokesman said in an emailed statement. “As a result, we’re reducing certain teams within the Software and Services organization. We are grateful to those who helped establish a strong foundation that positions GM to lead moving forward.”

GM declined to disclose the entire number of layoffs, but a source familiar with the action confirmed more than 1,000 salaried employees would be laid off, including 600 in Warren, Michigan. Impacted employees were notified Monday morning.

The layoffs represent about 1.3% of the company’s global salaried workforce of 76,000 as of the end of last year. That included about 53,000 U.S. salaried employees.

The cuts come as automakers attempt to reduce costs and, in many instances, employee headcount amid fears of an industry downturn, and as they’re spending billions of dollars on emerging markets such as all-electric vehicles and so-called “software-defined vehicles.”

Software, specifically monetizing it, has been a major focus for automakers, including GM, as it eyes recurring revenue opportunities such as subscriptions to boost profits.

The software and services division covers a wide variety of areas for the automaker, including infotainment, its OnStar brand and emerging areas such as subscriptions and other vehicle features.

The Inflation Reduction Act has sparked a manufacturing boom across the U.S., mobilizing tens of billions of dollars of investment, particularly in rural communities in need of economic development.

The future of those investments could hinge on the outcome of the U.S. presidential election. The prospect of a Republican victory has shaken the confidence of some investors who worry the IRA could be weakened or in a worst-case scenario repealed.

Companies have announced $133 billion of investments in clean energy technology and electric vehicle manufacturing since President Joe Biden signed the IRA into law in August 2022, according to data from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Rhodium Group.

Actual manufacturing investment has totaled $89 billion, an increase of 305% compared to the two years prior to the IRA, according to MIT and Rhodium. Overall, the IRA has leveraged half a trillion dollars of investment across the manufacturing, energy and retail sectors, according to the data.

“It is having a transformative effect within the manufacturing sector,” said Trevor Houser, a partner with the Rhodium Group. “The amount of new manufacturing activity that we’re seeing right now is unprecedented in recent history, and is in large part due to new clean energy manufacturing facilities.”

Some 271 manufacturing projects for clean energy tech and electric vehicles have been announced since the IRA passed, which will create more than 100,000 jobs if they are all completed, according to the advocacy group E2, a partner of the National Resources Defense Council. The investments sparked by the IRA have been a boon for rural communities in particular, Houser said.

“Unlike investment in AI and tech and finance, which is clustered in big cities, clean energy investment really is concentrated in rural communities, and is one of the brightest sources of new investment in those areas,” Houser said.

The IRA has also accelerated the deployment of renewable energy, with $108 billion in invested in utility-scale solar and battery storage projects. Investments in solar and battery storage have surged 56% and 130%, respectively, over the past two years, according to the Rhodium data.

“The more mature technologies, so like wind and solar generation, electric vehicles, those have achieved escape velocity,” Houser said. “They will continue to grow no matter what. It’s a question of speed.”

But the “manufacturing renaissance” is still in its early stages and remains fragile, Houser said. Without the IRA, the resurgence of new factories would not have taken off, said Chris Seiple, vice chairman of Wood Mackenzie’s power and renewables group.

Former President Donald Trump has threatened to dismantle the law as he advocates for more oil, gas and coal production.

“Upon taking office, I will impose an immediate moratorium on all new spending grants and giveaways under the Joe Biden mammoth socialist bills like the so-called Inflation Reduction Act,” Trump told supporters at a May rally in Wisconsin.

“We’re going to terminate his green new scam,” he said. “And we’re going to end this war on American energy — we’re going to drill, baby, drill.”