News & Insight • Weekly Newsletters

09 February 2024 | William Buckhurst | Charlie Todd

That Was The Week That Was

MACRO

• A series of Fed speakers touted the strong US economy as a reason not to cut rates straight away
• There were mutterings of Chinese stimulus for the economy which continues to flounder
• The US Commerce Department reported that Mexican imports rose nearly 5% between 2022 and 2023, and Chinese imports declined 20% for the same period. However, Chinese firms were early to respond to Trump introduced tariffs on Chinese goods by moving their assembly production to Mexico to work around these

COMPANY NEWS

• Cardboard manufacturer DS Smith announced they had been approached by their rival Mondi for a merger and Barratt Developments look to be taking over fellow housebuilder Redrow
• Zimmer Biomet forecasts growing devices demand
• Disney saw earnings well ahead of expectation and Bob Iger said he felt the company had passed a turning point and are still firmly on track to reach profitability on streaming
• Equinor trimmed their cash payout guidance sending the shares marginally lower due to weaker gas prices
• The Chinese consumer isn’t spending as much and this was reflected in the numbers by the French cosmetics group L’Oreal and Japanese company Shiseido
• Unilever results showed volumes picking up and were more of a driver than pricing. CEO, Hein Schumacher, insists that the company can do better
• Compass enjoyed good numbers as it produced 12% organic revenue growth and maintained its guidance
• Siemens had good results but saw a slight miss on digital industries revenues and margins
• Novo Nordisk acquired Catalent for $16.5bn in cash to secure more manufacturing capability to meet rapid demand for its diabetes and obesity treatments
• Toyota shares continued to rally as they beat profit expectations and full year guidance was raised by 10%. Virtually all of their outperformance came from their hybrid electric vehicles. They also mentioned further advances in their battery division
• Nintendo results were modestly ahead of expectations
• Two of the three industrial gases companies reported with Air Products citing weakness in Asia and the helium market. Linde was more solid across the board
• BP revealed decent numbers and a share buyback, capex was flat

SWIFT ENTERTAINMENT

According to pymnts.com Taylor Swift accounted for 2% of the music industry’s entire sales – larger than the whole genre of jazz. She also became the first person to win the Album of the Year prize at the Grammy Awards for the fourth time with her “Midnights” compilation

Just past midnight the Super Bowl LVIII half time show will take place and Usher will perform for 15 minutes. Joe Pompliano points out that artists don’t get paid for this but history states that its worth it. Justin Timberlake saw a 534% increase in music sales after Super Bowl LII. Travis Scott’s performance fee went from $500k to $1M after Super Bowl LIII. Jennifer Lopez & Shakira gained 3M followers after Super Bowl LIV

NOT FAKE DEEP FAKES

In a week which saw a Hong Kong firm out of pocket by HK$200mn as scammers used deep fakes to impersonate their UK based CFO, META’s Oversight Board has pushed for a review of the firm’s own rules on manipulated media in order to change its “incoherent” policies on this issue

REWORK

Adam Neumann, the founder of bankrupt property provider WeWork, is looking to buy the company with help from Dan Loeb’s Third Point. It is worth pointing out that he sold it to SoftBank Group Corp head Masayoshi Son for $47bn in one of the greatest feats of salesmanship ever, left, watched it collapse, and will now buy it back for $0

THIS WEEK IN HISTORY

1971: The NASDAQ stock exchange is founded. NASDAQ (National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations) would be the first all-electronic stock market. Today, the NASDAQ is the second largest exchange in the world

2004: Mark Zuckerberg (a 19-year-old sophomore at Harvard at the time) launches his website, Facebook. Initially the website was only available for Harvard students, but would quickly expand to include everyone and boasted 100m users within four years

MARKET DATA

 As at 9^th February 2024. Source: InFront

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