JetBlue Airways is already the biggest airline in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and it wants to get even bigger.

“Lauderdale has been a star for us,” JetBlue President Marty St. George said this month about Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport.

Capitalizing on growth at the Broward County airport is key for JetBlue as it revamps its network and rolls out more high-end options like a domestic first-class cabin to return to profitability. Its last profitable quarter was two years ago.

JetBlue was looking to expand in Fort Lauderdale even before Spirit Airlines, the South Florida-based discounter that was No. 1 at the airport, collapsed on May 2 under the weight of debt and years of snowballing problems.

JetBlue is now the top carrier with 36% market share by capacity at the airport, according to a Cirium tally of 2026 capacity, up from about 24% a year earlier. From May to June of this year, JetBlue added 5% more capacity, while big competitors pulled back in the Florida offseason, according to Cirium.

The carrier has about 106 flights scheduled a day for this year on average, up from about 68 a day last year, Cirium data shows.

Just hours after Spirit’s collapse, JetBlue and other airlines laid out their own travel plans, adding flights to fill the void at Fort Lauderdale.

JetBlue raised its revenue forecast for the year on June 1, citing strong demand.

“I’m feeling very, very bullish about how customers have responded to JetBlue’s growth,” St. George said.

JetBlue says it’s planning for even more growth as additional gates become available after Spirit’s demise. Some of those gates are still tied up in bankruptcy court.

JetBlue’s plan is to operate about 150 daily flights at Fort Lauderdale in the peak winter months, which include Presidents Day weekend and some school breaks, a schedule that will put it on par with JetBlue’s Boston Logan International Airport hub, its largest after New York.

The plan includes more international destinations leaving from Fort Lauderdale and a focus on premium air travel.

St. George said the carrier has been reviewing sites for a lounge — which would be the third in its network — at Fort Lauderdale to cater to those customers. It already has lounges at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport and in Boston.

“It is unclear right now where we would put a lounge,” he said. “The airport folks, I think, are equally motivated to have a lounge down there. Certainly, given the size of our operation and the number of premium customers going in and out of Fort Lauderdale, I think [it makes] a lot of sense, we just have to find the right location.”

The big competitive threat lies about 26 miles south, at Miami International Airport, an American Airlines hub that dwarfs Fort Lauderdale. Both airports, though Miami is much larger, are major hubs for leisure customers as well as those visiting friends and relatives in Latin America and the Caribbean.

“There’s a good number of customers for [whom] Miami is the right airport, who will never leave Miami, and we’re not planning on converting those customers,” St. George said. “I do think that as we get more service in Fort Lauderdale as a bigger breadth of destinations, that utility of Lauderdale Airport will go up.”

American on Friday said it plans to operate a record 100 destinations to the Caribbean, Mexico and other airports in Latin America from the U.S., with 77 of them leaving from Miami, including a new flight to Maracaibo, Venezuela, from July 14 and to Cap-Haitien, Haiti, starting Nov. 1.

JetBlue, for its part, announced Fort Lauderdale to Caracas service recently, as carriers build up flights. American in January announced it would resume resume service to Venezuela from the United States for the first time since 2019, weeks after the U.S. captured Venezuela’s president.

Restaurant Brands International on Thursday reported quarterly earnings and revenue that topped expectations, fueled by strong international growth.

However, executives said that Burger King’s progress on remodeling U.S. restaurants slowed last year in response to higher costs, and the chain will no longer meet its 2028 deadline to modernize 85% of its domestic locations. The news disappointed investors, and shares of the company fell 6% in afternoon trading.

Here’s what the company reported for the period ended Dec. 31 compared with what Wall Street was expecting, based on a survey of analysts by LSEG:

• Earnings per share: 96 cents adjusted vs. 95 cents expected
• Revenue: $2.47 billion vs. $2.41 billion expected

Restaurant Brands reported fourth-quarter net income attributable to shareholders of $113 million, or 34 cents per share, down from $259 million, or 79 cents per share, a year earlier.

Excluding transaction costs, restructuring expenses and other items, the company reported adjusted earnings of 96 cents per share.

Net sales rose 7.4% to $2.47 billion. Stripping out currency fluctuations and sales from restaurants it plans to refranchise, Restaurant Brands’ organic revenue ticked up 6.5%.

The company’s same-store sales increased 3.1%, fueled by strong international growth.

Outside of the U.S. and Canada, Restaurant Brands’ same-store sales climbed 6.1%. International Burger King restaurants, which represents the bulk of the segment, saw same-store sales growth of 5.8%.

Analysts were projecting international same-store sales growth of just 3.7%, based on StreetAccount estimates.

And Restaurant Brands plans to keep growing its business abroad. In November, the company announced its plan to form a joint venture for Burger King China to accelerate expansion. Under the terms of the deal, which closed in late January, CPE, a Chinese alternative asset manager, owns roughly 83% of Burger King China. Restaurant Brands has retained a minority stake of about 17%, along with a seat on the board of directors.

After spending most of the past decade being trounced by the U.S. stock market, international equities are back and investing experts say the opportunity should last.

A brutal stretch of underperformance that lasted a decade ended in late 2024 and has sustained its momentum at the outset of 2026. After years of global allocations staying low for most U.S.-based investors because of the weak returns, the recent gains amid shifting macro conditions and growing concerns about U.S. market concentration are leading investors to take another look at the lack of international exposure in their portfolios.

It is not merely chasing hot recent performance, according to Tim Seymour, Seymour Asset Management chief investment officer, who is also a portfolio manager on the Amplify CWP International Enhanced Dividend Income ETF (IDVO). “This is not people saying … this is a time to trade global markets,” he said on this week’s CNBC’s “ETF Edge.”

Over the last ten years, global equities outside of the U.S. underperformed domestic markets by a wide margin, with Seymour noting that a major world equities benchmark ETF, the iShares MSCI ACWI ETF (ACWI), underperformed by about 60%. That gap shaped investor behavior and capital flowed into U.S. equities, particularly mega-cap technology stocks. Seymour described it as a generational dynamic among investors in which market capitalization growth in the U.S. “choked off a lot of international investing.”

But he says now the structural underweight that many U.S. investors have to global markets is a tailwind. While international equities represent roughly 30-40% of global market capitalization, Seymour estimates that at the high-end of the range, U.S. investor exposure to overseas markets is 12-15%, and in many cases much lower.

International equities began to outperform the U.S. in November 2024, and since that turn have beaten U.S. equities by roughly 15%, Seymour said. While that does not erase the decade of lagging returns, it marks a meaningful inflection point. “In a 14-month span, you’ve seen international outperform the U.S.” Seymour said. While the ten-year chart versus the U.S. stock market still looks poor, “it really is a story of where global growth has picked back up,” he added.

A popular exchange-traded fund choice among many U.S. investors to gain international exposure is the iShares MSCI Emerging Markets ETF (EEM), which has $26.55 billion in assets and has returned 42% over the past year. The iShares MSCI ACWI ETF is up 20% over the past year, besting the S&P 500’s return by about 5%. Seymour said while the potential returns from emerging markets are higher, investors who are looking to diversify overseas should tilt more heavily to developed market allocations, citing a 70%-30% split as a reasonable example.

Part of the renewed interest in overseas markets is tied to currency. A weakening U.S. dollar has improved returns for dollar-based investors holding foreign assets. Meanwhile, metals have surged as investors look for stores of value, an investing development that Seymour described it as a global trade rather than a U.S. only phenomenon.

“These are all providing tailwinds and a weakening dollar, of course, where this is leading investors to diversify their overall portfolios that had been previously U.S.-centric portfolios,” Jon Maier, J.P Morgan Asset Management chief ETF strategist, said on “ETF Edge.”

Seymour said the most important point for investors to understand when considering the additional of international stocks to a portfolio is that the fundamentals are improving. Earnings growth is appearing in places where stagnation once defined the outlook. Japan is a key example, he said, where years of corporate governance reform and shareholder focus is starting to boost returns.

Europe is also benefitting from lower interest rates, fiscal spending, and regulatory change. Seymour argued that deregulation in Europe may be a more powerful catalyst than similar efforts in the U.S. because it represents a sharper shift from the past. Banking, utilities, and industrials have all seen renewed momentum. He added that in additional to a decade of underperformance making these stocks cheap on a relative basis, many European banking stocks will benefit as much from central bank policy as U.S. banks and are better dividend plays, such as Barclays, Santander and SocGen.

Maier echoed this general view, saying that “developed international markets are certainly areas of interest to our clients.”

International markets also offer exposure to recent winning trades, including precious metals. Latin America has been one of the strongest performing regions this year, driven by gold and copper. Seymour said Chile and Peru are examples of international markets benefitting from rising commodity demand. Meanwhile, Brazil has gained on both commodity strength and shifting political expectations.

“Brazil’s the largest economy in Latin America,” Seymour said. “Some of this are the dynamics around commodities, but some of these are the dynamics around the geopolitics.”

The iShares MSCI Brazil ETF (EWZ), which has $8.91 billion in assets, is up almost 49% over the past year, while the iShares MSCI Peru and Global Exposure ETF (EPU) is up almost 118% during the same time period.

The dollar and metals trades came under pressure on Friday after President Trump announced Kevin Warsh as his pick to succeed Jerome Powell as Fed Chair, with market belief in Warsh as figure who will maintain Fed independence rather than force rates down at the president’s bidding. Gold, silver and platinum all crashed. However, these metals have seen enormous returns over the past year, with gold up over 90%, silver up roughly 200%, and platinum up 120%.

Market strategists say Trump administration global policies will continue to serve as longer-term tailwinds for international-themed trades. “Whether it is India and the EU cutting a trade deal or Canada cutting oil deals with China, the rest of the world is repositioning,” Seymour said.

Technology leadership is another trade where investors are reassessing the balance between U.S. and overseas holdings. Seymour highlighted South Korea as example, noting the country’s market is heavily weighted toward memory chip leaders like Samsung and SK Hynix, which make up around 46% of the South Korean stock market benchmark tracked by the iShares MSCI South Korea ETF (EWY), which is up 125% over the past year. “Memory has been on fire,” he said, making country level ETFs a practical way to gain exposure. Apple said on its earnings call on Thursday it can’t secure enough chips for iPhone demand, another sign supporting the strength of the memory trade.

Seymour noted other companies that are among the biggest chip players in the world, ASML and Taiwan Semi, also reside outside U.S., and there are many data center plays overseas as well.

The renewed interest in international equities reflects broader reallocation after years of neglect. Investors are responding to valuation gaps, earnings growth, and a world where capital and trade are increasingly multi directional. “These are global trades, not just U.S. trades,” Seymour said.

BEIJING — China’s economic slowdown isn’t discouraging U.S. and European brands from revamping their strategies to reach Chinese shoppers.

Instead, the allure of the world’s second-largest consumer market is forcing companies to adapt in the face of growing competition from local brands.

In the case of Kraft Heinz, getting more people in China to buy ketchup this year also meant hiring a local agency to help create catchy campaigns — decorating subway station columns to mimic ketchup bottles and promoting the condiment as a fresh twist on a popular dish: stir-fried eggs and tomatoes.

It’s a hard market to tackle, even for Shanghai-based marketing firm Good Idea Growth Network (GGN). The agency has witnessed at least five different waves of consumer trends in its 14-year history, founder Stephy Liu, said in Mandarin, translated by CNBC. “The gameplay keeps on changing.”

But GGN has succeeded even after rejecting an acquisition offer from British advertising giant WPP, Liu said, noting that about half of her clients are foreign brands.

While Kraft Heinz isn’t done with its China ketchup campaign yet, the company reported second-quarter net sales in emerging markets climbed by 4.2% from a year ago, helping offset declines in North America.

WPP explored a potential acquisition of GGN but did not end up going far in the process, according to a person familiar with the discussions.

Kraft Heinz did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The new store also captures the European brand’s roots in hand-crafted travel trunks — which contrasts with Chinese brands’ inability to offer the same emotional appeal, Joe Ngai, chairman of greater China at McKinsey, pointed out in a LinkedIn post.

“As Chinese customers grow in their confidence and desire for local elements,” he said, “creating more crossovers between West and East is one of the unique opportunities for multinationals in China.”

— CNBC’s Eunice Yoon contributed to this report.

Anthropic is stepping up its global enterprise ambitions.

The $183 billion artificial intelligence startup has grown its business customer base from under 1,000 to more than 300,000 in just two years, as demand for Claude’s models accelerates across industries and regions.

On Friday, the company announced it will triple its international workforce and expand its applied AI team fivefold in 2025, as it scales beyond the U.S. and intensifies competition with OpenAI, Microsoft and Google.

That expansion comes as international demand increasingly drives the company’s momentum.

Claude’s global usage has reached an inflection point: nearly 80% of activity now comes from outside the United States. On a per-person basis, adoption in countries like South Korea, Australia and Singapore has already surpassed that of the U.S.

In an exclusive interview, Chief Commercial Officer Paul Smith told CNBC that Anthropic’s international growth is outpacing even their most ambitious forecasts, with major customers coming online well before boots hit the ground. 

“What is amazing is we haven’t, up until recently, had significant human presence in Europe, in Japan, in our international markets, and yet we already have a very, very significant business over there,” said Smith. 

He pointed to rapid adoption in sectors like life sciences and sovereign wealth management.

At Novo Nordisk, the Danish pharmaceutical giant behind Ozempic, Claude helped compress what’s typically a three-month analysis and reporting phase at the end of a drug development cycle into just a few days.

Smith said Anthropic is now ramping up hiring across its priority global markets.

The company is set to recruit country leads for India, Australia and New Zealand, Korea, and Singapore, with broader expansion underway across the U.K., northern and southern Europe, Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.

As part of its international push, Anthropic is opening its first Asia office in Tokyo and scaling operations across Europe — including more than 100 new roles in Dublin and London and a research-focused hub in Zurich. Additional locations are expected to follow in the coming months.

The global expansion is being spearheaded by Chris Ciauri, who recently joined Anthropic as managing director of international. A longtime enterprise veteran, Ciauri previously served as CEO of Unily and held senior roles at Google Cloud and Salesforce, where he worked alongside Smith and helped grow Europe, the Middle East and Africa revenue from $200 million to more than $3 billion. 

“G20 governments are approaching us about doing really, really interesting things at a citizen enablement level,” he told CNBC, adding that large companies across Europe and Asia are also now engaging Anthropic on industry-specific use cases.