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NEW YORK — Shares of Bath & Body Works Inc. surged more than 8% Friday, climbing to $19.64 in midday trading as Wall Street showed renewed confidence in the retailer’s efforts to revive its iconic brand through innovation and smarter pricing, even as the company braces for another year of declining sales.

The stock jumped $1.60, or 8.87%, by 11:48 a.m. EDT on the New York Stock Exchange, outpacing broader market moves and drawing attention from investors hunting for value in the struggling specialty retail sector. Volume was active as traders reacted to positive analyst notes highlighting progress on the company’s “Consumer First Formula.”

Bath & Body Works, known for its fragrant body care, home scents and seasonal collections, has faced headwinds from cautious consumer spending, heavy promotions and competition from value retailers. Yet recent moves — including fewer deep discounts, elevated product packaging and international expansion — appear to be sparking optimism.

“We’re expecting to get paid for our innovation,” CEO Daniel Heaf told investors during the company’s March earnings call, signaling a shift away from constant sales toward a more premium positioning without raising everyday prices.

The rally comes weeks after the company reported fourth-quarter results that beat expectations despite a modest sales dip. For the quarter ended Jan. 31, 2026, net sales fell 2% to $2.7 billion, but adjusted earnings per share reached $2.05, topping analyst forecasts of $1.77. Full-year 2025 sales were nearly flat at $7.29 billion.

Investors appeared to look past the softer 2026 outlook. The company guided for full-year sales to decline 4.5% to 2.5% and adjusted EPS of $2.40 to $2.65, citing ongoing macro pressures and tariff impacts. First-quarter sales are expected to drop 6% to 4%, with adjusted EPS between 24 and 30 cents.

Still, analysts are increasingly bullish. Bank of America raised its price target to $30 from $26 while maintaining a Buy rating, citing management’s turnaround actions and a longer-term valuation framework. Wells Fargo kept an Overweight rating with a $29 target, calling the strategy “on track.” Average Wall Street targets hover in the low-to-mid $20s, with some as high as $56.

The stock has traded in a wide range this year, hitting a 52-week low near $14.28 and a high of $34.66. At current levels, the market capitalization stands around $4 billion, with a forward dividend yield above 4%.

Bath & Body Works is pushing its Consumer First Formula, a multi-year plan focused on four pillars: product innovation, brand elevation through storytelling, stronger marketplace performance and operational efficiency. The company aims to deliver $250 million in cost savings over two years, including about $175 million in 2026, to fund targeted investments while protecting margins.

International growth remains a bright spot. The retailer ended fiscal 2025 with 573 locations outside the U.S. and expects mid- to high-single-digit sales growth abroad in 2026 through store expansion and e-commerce. Recent highlights include celebrations of its 20-year Japanese Cherry Blossom franchise and collaborations like a Mother’s Day collection with Vera Bradley featuring Peach Blossom & Nectar.

Domestically, the company is reducing promotion frequency to rebuild brand equity. “We have relied too often in the past on deeper and more frequent discounts,” Heaf said. Executives stressed that baseline prices will stay steady while new, higher-perceived-value items — with upgraded packaging and limited-edition scents — help drive full-price sales.

Gross margin pressure is expected in 2026, with the rate forecast at about 42.4% after a 150-basis-point tariff headwind in the first quarter. Adjusted SG&A is seen at 29.2%. Free cash flow is projected near $600 million, with no share repurchases assumed in guidance.

The stock’s recent volatility reflects broader retail challenges. A class-action lawsuit filed on behalf of investors who bought shares between June 2024 and November 2025 alleges misleading statements around the company’s performance, though the case remains in early stages.

Analysts note that success hinges on execution. Citi recently took a more cautious stance, downgrading to Neutral over concerns about core business weakness and continued sales pressure. Others point to Amazon’s growing role in beauty and home categories as a risk, even as Bath & Body Works expands its own online and third-party marketplace presence.

Retail observers say the company’s focus on “getting paid for innovation” could resonate with consumers seeking affordable luxuries amid economic uncertainty. Limited-edition drops and collaborations have historically driven traffic, as seen with past PEEPS and other seasonal tie-ins.

Chief Financial Officer Eva Boratto emphasized disciplined investment. “2026 will be a year of balancing rigorous cost control with targeted reinvestment to position the business for sustainable long-term growth,” she said.

Bath & Body Works operates more than 1,800 stores in the U.S. and Canada, plus a growing international footprint. The brand built its reputation on signature scents like Japanese Cherry Blossom, now marking two decades as a bestseller.

Investors will watch closely for first-quarter results, expected in late May. Any signs of stabilization in domestic traffic or margin improvement could fuel further gains.

For now, Friday’s surge suggests some on Wall Street are willing to bet that Heaf’s vision — fewer sales, more innovation, stronger storytelling — can help the retailer reclaim its sparkle in a crowded personal care aisle.

A powerful new artificial intelligence model developed by Anthropic has triggered a flurry of crisis meetings among finance ministers, central bankers and senior financiers, who fear the technology could be turned on the global financial system with devastating consequences.

The model, known as Claude Mythos, has been shown to pinpoint vulnerabilities in many of the world’s most widely used operating systems, prompting alarm at the highest levels of government and commerce. While some specialists believe it marks a step-change in AI’s ability to uncover and exploit cyber-security flaws, others have urged caution, arguing that far more independent testing is needed before its true capabilities can be judged.

Canada’s Finance Minister, François-Philippe Champagne, confirmed to media that Mythos had dominated discussions at this week’s International Monetary Fund meetings in Washington DC. “Certainly it is serious enough to warrant the attention of all the finance ministers,” he said. Drawing a comparison with geopolitical risks, he added: “The difference is that the Strait of Hormuz – we know where it is and we know how large it is… the issue that we’re facing with Anthropic is that it’s the unknown, unknown. This is requiring a lot of attention so that we have safeguards, and we have processes in place to make sure that we ensure the resiliency of our financial systems.”

Mythos is among the latest additions to Anthropic’s Claude family of models, which competes directly with OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini. It was unveiled earlier this month by developers responsible for stress-testing so-called “misaligned” AI behaviour, instances in which a model acts against human values or intended goals. Their verdict was that Mythos is “strikingly capable at computer security tasks”.

Citing concerns that the model could surface long-dormant software bugs or identify novel ways to exploit system weaknesses, Anthropic has opted not to release it publicly. Instead, access has been granted to a handful of technology giants, including Amazon Web Services, CrowdStrike, Microsoft and Nvidia, under an initiative dubbed Project Glasswing, which the company describes as an “effort to secure the world’s most critical software”.

On Thursday, Anthropic released an upgraded version of its existing Claude Opus model, saying this would enable Mythos’s cyber capabilities to be evaluated within less powerful systems.

Not everyone in the cyber-security community is convinced the fears are proportionate, particularly given the limited independent testing conducted so far. The UK’s AI Security Institute, which has been given access to a preview version, is the only body to have published an independent assessment. Its researchers concluded that while Mythos Preview could compromise systems with weak defences, it was not dramatically more capable than its predecessor, Opus 4. “Our testing shows that Mythos Preview can exploit systems with weak security posture, and it is likely that more models with these capabilities will be developed,” the report’s authors wrote.

Sceptics have also pointed to precedent: in February 2019, OpenAI similarly delayed the release of GPT-2 on safety grounds, a decision critics at the time dismissed as a marketing device.

Senior bankers are now to be granted early access to Mythos so they can probe their own defences ahead of any wider release. C.S. Venkatakrishnan, chief executive of Barclays, told the BBC: “It’s serious enough that people have to worry. We have to understand it better, and we have to understand the vulnerabilities that are being exposed and fix them quickly.” He added that a far more interconnected financial system had created both fresh opportunities and fresh exposures, cautioning: “This is what the new world is going to be.”

For Britain’s small and medium-sized businesses, which rely on the integrity of banking, payment and cloud infrastructure every day, the implications are considerable. A cyber incident capable of destabilising a major lender or payment processor could ripple rapidly through SME supply chains, hitting cash flow, invoicing and customer confidence within hours.

Anthropic has already flagged that Mythos has uncovered multiple vulnerabilities in core operating systems, financial platforms and web browsers. Governments and banks are being offered advance access to harden their defences before any public launch.

Andrew Bailey, Governor of the Bank of England, has said that the development must be treated with the utmost seriousness. “We are having to look very carefully now what this latest AI development could mean for the risk of cyber crime,” he said. “The consequence could be that there is a development of AI, of modelling, which makes it easier to detect existing vulnerabilities in sort of core IT systems, and then obviously cyber criminals, the bad actors, could seek to exploit them.”

The US Treasury has confirmed that it has raised the matter directly with major American banks, urging them to run internal tests ahead of any public release. Industry sources further suggest that a rival US AI firm could shortly unveil a similarly potent model, but without comparable guardrails.

For the UK technology sector, the controversy may prove an opening as much as a threat. James Wise, a partner at Balderton Capital and chair of the newly established Sovereign AI unit, a £500m government-backed venture capital fund targeting home-grown AI businesses, argued that Mythos is merely “the first of what will be many more powerful models” capable of exposing systemic weaknesses.

Speaking to the BBC’s Today programme, he said his unit was “investing in British AI companies that are tackling that, companies working in AI security and safety”, adding: “We hope the models that expose vulnerabilities are also the models which will fix them.”

For the country’s AI scale-ups and cyber-security start-ups, the message from Threadneedle Street and Washington alike is unmistakable: the defensive side of the AI arms race has just become one of the most commercially significant frontiers in British enterprise.

Paul Jones

Harvard alumni and former New York Times journalist. Editor of Business Matters for over 15 years, the UKs largest business magazine. I am also head of Capital Business Media’s automotive division working for clients such as Red Bull Racing, Honda, Aston Martin and Infiniti.

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Aled Edwards of communications consultancy Freshwater says the £1.3bn Metro can be more than just a transport project but a wider economic driver

After 15 years and more than £1bn of investment, the South Wales Metro is nearing completion. What was once an ambitious vision is now becoming a lived reality across the Cardiff Capital Region.

New trains are in operation and, by the end of 2027, we will see four electric ‘tram-trains’ per hour linking Aberdare, Merthyr and Treherbert directly with Cardiff – cutting journey times and doubling capacity on the ‘Core Valley Lines’.

For commuters, students and other public transport users, these are tangible, practical gains. But as the programme approaches completion, a more searching question comes into focus: how do we fully maximise its impact?

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Backed by the Welsh Government and Cardiff Capital Region, the Metro is already improving reliability, increasing frequency and expanding access to opportunity. Employers can draw from a wider labour pool, college and university courses become more accessible, as workers and students benefit from cheaper, faster and more predictable journeys.

At a time when congestion and environmental pressures are mounting, the shift towards high-quality public transport also supports efforts to reduce car dependency and lower emissions.

However, the success of the Metro should not be measured solely by passenger numbers or reduced traffic on our roads. Its true value lies in whether it can act as a catalyst for wider economic and social change; accelerating much-needed regeneration projects, supporting better housing, attracting investment and connecting people of all ages and backgrounds to opportunity.

Take our town centres, for example. Many high streets have faced years of decline, shaped by changing planning policies, emerging technologies and evolving retail habits, as well as wider economic pressures. The Metro offers a chance to reverse that decline by bringing more people within easy reach of local centres.

Yet improved access alone will not be enough. Without complementary investment in placemaking and business support, the risk is that passengers simply pass through rather than stop and spend.

Housing presents a similar challenge. Enhanced connectivity makes new locations viable for development, potentially easing pressure on high-demand areas. But this must be carefully managed. Building more homes is not, in itself, a solution unless they are the right homes in the right places, supported by appropriate infrastructure and services.

Aligning future transport and planning policy will be critical if the Metro is to facilitate sustainable development, rather than piecemeal expansion.

This is where more innovative approaches, such as transit-oriented evelopment (TOD), deserve greater attention. By concentrating mixed-use development around transport hubs, we can create vibrant, walkable neighbourhoods that maximise the value of public investment.

While widely adopted in places like Denmark and the Netherlands, the approach remains relatively under-utilised in south Wales and, many believe, holds the secret to unlocking the full potential of the Metro network.

The potential also extends beyond bricks and mortar. One of the Metro’s most significant promises is its ability to improve social mobility by linking communities more effectively to centres of employment, education and training. As better connectivity improves access to colleges and training centres, it can attract new employers, help existing businesses tackle persistent skills shortages and allow individuals to upskill and retrain in response to a changing economy.

But realising this potential isn’t going to happen by accident. Policy makers, planners, developers, employers and education providers all need to engage actively in shaping how the system evolves.

There are also important questions about leadership, accountability and investment. Who is responsible for ensuring the benefits of Metro are fully realised? Where should future funding be directed? And how do we ensure that progress is shared across all communities, rather than concentrated in a few locations?

These are precisely the questions that will be explored at Metro & Us, a one-day conference and exhibition taking place at the Depot Cardiff on June 4th.

The brainchild of Professor Mark Barry from Cardiff University and supported by the likes of Arup, Cardiff and Vale College, Cardiff Capital Region, Capital Law, Mott MacDonald, Transport for Wales and Freshwater; the conference features sessions spanning transport, regeneration, housing, education and investment and aims to move the debate forward, from infrastructure delivery to long-term impact.

The South Wales Metro is, by any measure, a major achievement. The challenge now is to ensure that this transformation in transport provision becomes a transformation in prosperity, opportunity and ambition that will benefit individuals, businesses and communities across the entire region.

For further information on Metro & Us click here

• Aled Edwards is director at Freshwater, the Cardiff-headquartered communications consultancy, and event organiser of Metro & Us.

He has received the Freddie Aldous Lifetime Achievement award from the British Vehicle Rental & Leasing Association

Founder of one of the UK’s most successful vehicle leasing businesses Low Cost Vans (LVC Group), Rod Lloyd, has received a lifetime achievement award in recognition of his huge contribution to the sector.

Mr Lloyd, from Neath, has been presented with the Freddie Aldous Lifetime Achievement award from the British Vehicle Rental & Leasing Association (BVRLA).

Mr Lloyd established Swansea-based Low Cost Vans (LCV Group) in 1999 before selling the multi-million-pound turnover venture last year to Global Vehicle Group. He was chair of the BVRLA leasing broker board for two year up until December last year.

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As chair he helped to steer the sector through the regulatory issues raised by the mis-selling of motor finance – which was cited for him receiving the award.

Annually the BVRLA recognises his legacy by celebrating the efforts of colleagues that have shown “selfless and sustained leadership” through the support they have provided to the organisation and its work. The award is in honour of the BVRLA’s honorary life president who passed away in 2017.

Chief executive of the BVRLA, Toby Poston, said: “We recently we saw the sector firmly in the firing line as motor finance came under the regulatory and legal spotlight. That situation rolls on, but Rod Lloyd did more than any other to ensure that broker members had the support and advice they needed to get through some very dark times.

“He committed exceptional time, energy and passion to not only make the case for brokers, but to also field their calls and concerns. He made a deliberate choice to support others in the industry when he could have very easily chosen to focus on his own personal responsibilities.”

Mr Lloyd’s work with regulatory bodies and the HMRC saw leasing brokers – companies that broker funding for business contract hire and personal contract hire agreements on cars and vans – being moved out of scope.

Mr Lloyd said: “It was a scary time, to be honest. Although leasing brokers had followed all the guidance provided by the Financial Conduct Authority, everyone’s business was potentially under threat.

“As chair of the BVRLA leasing broker committee I felt it was incumbent on me to demonstrate to the various bodies that the Court of Appeal ruling on motor finance was being incorrectly applied to leasing brokers, a result eventually upheld by the Supreme Court.”

On his award, he added:“I’m hugely grateful to the BVRLA for becoming a recipient of the Freddie Aldous Award. It’s unexpected, but a real honour which I’m very proud of.”

Mr Lloyd continues to run his property business, Crownhawk Properties, whose assets include the recently refurbished Riverside House in Swansea. Following the sale of the LCV Group he is looking to provide consultancy services to the leasing sector.