Consumer Archives - GrowthRater

Category Archives for "Consumer"

Falling used car prices and implications for residual values and margins

After a couple of bumper years, used car prices are now falling, with two further reports out this week suggesting a worsening rate of decline. For manufacturers of new cars & trucks, this presents a challenge to prospective profitability as the residual value assumptions that has been bolstering their financing operational profits may now flip […]

The shape of things to come?

This QuickTake by Bloomberg video drive-thru of Wuhan paints an eeerily post-apocalyptic image that might be straight out of Twelve Monkeys or The Omega Man. My first reaction was to avoid any stock that needs to bring people together (restaurants, cinemas, airlines, event organisers, hotels etc) as the public reaction to this coronavirus is clearly […]

Airlines – back to the old ‘normal’

Manipulating monetary conditions leads to bad investment decisions as we have seen with the airline industry. 18 months ago its principal trade body IATA was waxing lyrical about the industry, as were financial pundits. Unfortunately, they underestimated the impact that low funding costs would also have on margins and profits in a capital intensive industry […]

Do they know something? Informative conformity and stocks

The herding instinct is strong in markets. Solomon Asch would characterise this as ‘informative conformity’ where the participant would disbelieve the evidence of their own eyes and yield to the group think. In Asch’s experiments, the results were remarkable, particularly given the exclusion of outside variables beyond the comparative data (the height of the columns […]

Wazzup – 20th Sept 2017

Slow start to the new fiscal year for FEDEX (fdx) and DIAGEO (dge_l). Fedex Q1 disappoints on cyber-attacks and hurricane headwinds, while Diageo blames a late Chinese New year and US spirits investment for a weak start to its FY18. Management innocent on all counts, of course ;-) Fedex – Q1 FY18: […]

Apple (aapl) – where to now?

It’s difficult to get overly excited with the shares. Having briefly rallied after the better than expected Q3 results, the long awaited new product launches do little to resolve the big question and the shares are back below their relative market level when I closed the GrowthRater long position back on 13 May, for a 29% […]

Wazzup – 27 July 2017 – a results palooza!

A results deluge today as companies report Q2 numbers ahead of the August holidays. Updates from RELX, ITV, DMGT, Sky, A3M, S&P Global, Amazon, Comcast, Nielsen, Solocal, Barrick, Dow Chemical, Fiat Chrysler, Eastman Chemical, BASF, Air Products, Danone and VW, to name a few. RELX – H1 FY17 results. Fortunately, another steady […]

Diageo’s One Billion Dollar gamble

One Billion Dollars!, Yes, that’s right, Diageo has agreed to pay up to one billion dollars ($700m up front with the remaining $300m deferred) for Casamigos, a four year old tequila brand created in 2013 by George Clooney, Rande Gerber (a “nightlife entrepreneur and Mr Cindy Crawford), & Mike Meldman (a property developer). Given that […]

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