LVMH shares jumped more than 12% on Friday morning, after the world’s largest luxury group posted higher-than-expected sales for 2023 and raised its annual dividend.

The owner of Louis Vuitton, Moët & Chandon and Hennessy, as well as brands including Givenchy, Bulgari and Sephora, on Thursday night reported sales amounting to 86.15 billion euros ($93.34 billion) for 2023, exceeding consensus forecasts and equating to 13% organic growth from the previous year.

Organic revenue was up 10% in the fourth quarter.

The result was boosted in particular by 14% annual growth in the critical fashion and leather goods sector, along with 11% growth in perfumes and cosmetics. Wines and spirits meanwhile posted a 4% decline.

“Our performance in 2023 illustrates the exceptional appeal of our Maisons and their ability to spark desire, despite a year affected by economic and geopolitical challenges,” Bernard Arnault, chairman and CEO of LVMH, said in a statement.

“While remaining vigilant in the current context, we enter 2024 with confidence, backed by our highly desirable brands and our agile teams.”

After a boom during the pandemic, the luxury sector endured a rough end to 2023 as challenging geopolitical and macroeconomic conditions weighed on consumer spending, particularly in the U.S. and China.

LVMH in April 2023 became the first European company to surpass $500 billion in market value, but a share price decline over the last six months allowed it to be eclipsed as Europe’s largest company by Danish pharmaceutical giant Novo Nordisk.

British luxury brand Burberry earlier this month issued a profit warning in response to slowing demand, as the balloon in high-end spending that peaked during the pandemic loses air. At the time, the news sent Burberry shares plunging and dragged down the wider sector.

Yet luxury stocks broadly advanced on Thursday as investors took heart from LVMH’s reassuring results. Burberry’s own shares were up 1.7% Friday morning.

Javier Gonzalez Lastra, portfolio manager of the Tema Luxury ETF, told CNBC on Thursday that investors are trying to gauge where the bottom of the earnings cycle revision is for the luxury sector. He predicted that earnings are “likely to get tougher” through the first half of 2024 because of last year’s unusually high annual comparisons.

Arnault, however, is pinning some hope on LVMH’s partnership with the Paris 2024 Olympics, which he said “provides a new opportunity to reinforce our global leadership position in luxury goods and promote France’s reputation for excellence around the world.

PGA Tour and LIV Golf are working to extend their proposed merger deadline, which was originally set at Dec. 31, Commissioner Jay Monahan told players in a memo on Sunday.

“While we had initially set a deadline of December 31, 2023, to reach an agreement, we are working to extend our negotiations into next year based on the progress we have made to date,” according to the memo obtained by CNBC.

Monahan told players their goal for 2024 is to reach agreements with Strategic Sports Group (SSG), the Public Investment Fund (PIF) and DP World Tour, bringing them on board as minority co-investors in PGA Tour Enterprises.

The PGA Tour recently announced that it was in the final round of negotiations with a coalition of U.S. investors, called Strategic Sports Group. The SSG is led by Fenway Sports Group. Monahan said they have made “meaningful progress” and have provided SSG with the due diligence information they requested.

“These partnerships will allow us to unify, innovate and invest in the game for the benefit of players, fans and sponsors,” he said.

The competing golf leagues are expected to make a formal decision on the combination ahead of the Masters tournament in April, according to The Telegraph, which first reported the extension.

The delay is the latest update in a long and tumultuous saga between the PGA Tour and Saudi Public Investment Fund-backed LIV Golf that has divided players and could dramatically change professional golf if the merger is completed.

The two entities agreed in June to combine commercial operations, shocking the global golf community and raising questions around competition and human rights considerations. Under the structure of the agreement, PGA Tour would hold a permanent controlling interest in the new entity’s board of directors and PIF would be a noncontrolling minority investor.

If the proposed merger is completed, PIF is prepared to invest $1 billion into the new commercial business. The agreement also includes the DP World Tour, also known as the PGA European Tour.

The deal is subject to likely antitrust scrutiny from the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and Justice Department.

Before the agreement, PGA Tour and LIV were locked in heated litigation as LIV Golf lured Tour players away, offering big contracts. LIV Golf most recently signed world No. 3 player Jon Rahm to a contract worth a reported $300 million.

Last month, the Tour told players it would begin offering direct equity ownership in the new company after it reaches a deal with investors.

In late November, PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan told Andrew Ross Sorkin at the DealBook Summit that he was meeting with Yasir Al-Rumayyan, chairman of LIV Golf and PIF governor, to continue discussions.

“When this gets finalized, the PGA Tour is going to be in a position where the athletes are owners in their sport and you’ve got not only the PIF, but you’ve likely got another co-investor with significant experience in business, in sport and [in] brand that’s going to help take the PGA Tour to another level,” Monahan said at the time.

Correction: The story has been updated to accurately reflect the name of Jay Monahan, which was misspelled due to an editing error.

Black Friday e-commerce spending popped 7.5% from a year earlier, reaching a record $9.8 billion in the U.S., according to an Adobe Analytics report, a further indication that price-conscious consumers want to spend on the best deals and are hunting for those deals online.

“We’ve seen a very strategic consumer emerge over the past year where they’re really trying to take advantage of these marquee days, so that they can maximize on discounts,” said Vivek Pandya, a lead analyst at Adobe Digital Insights.

Black Friday’s spending spike reflects a consumer who is more willing to spend than in 2022, when gas and food prices were painfully high.

Pandya noted that impulse purchases may have played a role in the Black Friday growth since $5.3 billion of the online sales came from mobile shopping. He noted that influencers and social media advertising have made it easier for consumers to get comfortable spending on their mobile devices.

Still, shoppers are price-sensitive, managing tighter budgets due to last year’s record inflation and interest rates. According to the Adobe survey, $79 million of the sales came from consumers who opted for the ‘Buy Now, Pay Later’ flexible payment method to stretch their wallets, up 47% from last year.

The best-selling categories of Black Friday, the Adobe report found, were electronics like smartwatches and televisions, along with toys and gaming. Meanwhile, home-repair tools underperformed. Pandya said top sellers directly correlated to whichever products had the best discounts.

Adobe gathers its data by analyzing one trillion visits to U.S. retail websites, 18 product categories and 100 million unique items. It does not track brick-and-mortar retail transactions.

A Mastercard analysis of this year’s Black Friday sales found that in-store sales rose just over 1% versus online sales, which grew by over 8% compared to last year.

“I do think the paradigm has changed around the in-store Black Friday experience, the long lines and things like that,” said Adobe’s Pandya.

Consumers are “more in the driver’s seat” when they are online shopping, he added, because it is easier to make side-by-side price comparisons and secure a better price.

Retailers are aware of the rise of deal-hunting consumers and want to capture as many of them as possible. Companies like Best Buy and Lowe’s have both announced higher discounting levels. Other retailers like Target and Ulta Beauty have rolled out pop-up promotions that offer 24-hour discounts on certain brands and items.

Black Friday kept the momentum going from the day before on Thanksgiving when online sales totaled $5.6 billion, according to a prior Adobe analysis.

Adobe expects the spending strength to hold over the weekend and through Cyber Monday with the biggest bargains still ahead. The report forecasts that online shoppers will spend roughly $10 billion over the course of Saturday and Sunday, and a record $12 billion on Cyber Monday.

But spending will likely begin to taper off deeper into the holiday season, according to Pandya. Cyber Monday, as the last major deal day of the holiday season, could be the final spending spike on non-essential goods for the rest of the year.

“We do expect growth to weaken because those discounts will weaken and they are dictating a lot in terms of buyer behavior this season,” said Pandya.

He noted that there are always gift-givers who procrastinate their holiday shopping so spending could continue to trickle in late into December. But the real growth surges, he said, “end up being in November and Thanksgiving week.”

Amazon on Wednesday offered commitments to the U.K. Competition and Markets Authority after Britain’s competition watchdog raised concerns about the U.S. e-commerce giant’s treatment of third-party sellers.

The CMA said the remedies offered by Amazon, if accepted, would address its competition concerns as part of an investigation that began just over a year ago.

In July 2022, the CMA opened a probe into Amazon alleging it was abusing its strong market position by giving an unfair advantage to its own retail business and sellers that use its services over third-party merchants on its marketplace.

The CMA on Wednesday said Amazon has offered a number of commitments.

One of those commitments proposes to ensure Amazon does not use rival sellers’ marketplace data to gain an unfair advantage over other sellers. The CMA had raised concerns that Amazon’s access to “commercially sensitive data” relating to third-party sellers could give the e-commerce giant an advantage in deciding which products to sell and how to set prices.

Amazon’s commitments also proposed to guarantee all product offers are treated equally when the company decides which ones will be featured in the “Buy Box.” This is an area on Amazon’s product pages that gives customers a one-click option to “Buy Now” or “Add to Basket.”

The CMA is concerned that products sold by third-party sellers were less likely to appear in the “Buy Box” than Amazon’s own products.

Amazon offered to allow third-party sellers to negotiate their own rates directly with providers of Amazon’s Prime delivery service, according to the CMA.

As part of the proposals to the CMA, Amazon will be required to appoint an independent trustee to monitor the company’s compliance with its commitments to the regulator. The CMA will have a “direct say” in this appointment.

“Amazon’s commitments to the CMA will help ensure that third-party sellers on Amazon Marketplace can compete on a level-playing field against Amazon’s own retail business and, ultimately, mean that customers in the UK get a better deal,” Ann Pope, senior director for enforcement at the CMA, said in a press release.

“We are now consulting on these commitments which we believe, at this stage, will address our concerns.”

An Amazon spokesperson said in a statement that while the company disagrees with the CMA’s preliminary concerns, it has “engaged constructively” with the regulator to address the issues it raised.

Amazon’s marketplace practices were also concerning to European Union regulators that were probing similar issues to the U.K. since 2019. In December, Amazon offered similar commitments to the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, to address its concerns.

But scrutiny on Amazon continues to ramp up in the U.S.

On Tuesday, Politico reported that the Federal Trade Commission is finalizing a major antitrust lawsuit against Amazon in various areas of its business.

Eddie Wu will succeed Daniel Zhang as chief executive of Alibaba Group, while Joe Tsai will take Zhang’s place as the group’s chairman, China’s largest e-commerce company announced Tuesday.

Wu is one of Alibaba’s co-founders and currently chairman of Taobao and Tmall Group. Brooklyn Nets owner Tsai is currently Alibaba’s executive vice chairman.

Zhang will continue to lead the Alibaba Cloud Intelligence Group as chairman and chief executive after this change, which the company said will take effect Sept. 10.

This surprise succession announcement comes after Alibaba said in March it will split its company into six business groups. The company explained at that time that this will allow each business group to raise outside funding and go public in the most significant reorganization in the Chinese e-commerce giant’s history.

Wu has held a multitude of roles in his time at the company, including heading technology at Alibaba’s inception, as well as chief technology officer at Alipay and Taobao. He was also director of Alibaba Health Information Technology and founded Vision Plus Capital, a venture capital firm focused on investing in advanced technologies, enterprise services and digital healthcare.

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