After a less than sparkling recovery in Q4 FY14 organic revenue growth to under +3.5% YoY, the Kraft management seems to have thrown in the towel to the current financial masters at Heinz (Berkshire Hathaway and 3G Capital) and agreed to its ‘merger’ offer. While conceding most of the plum jobs in the new combine […]
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The story is an old one. Broadcaster facing erosion of its distribution monopoly buys successful production business to supplement the lack of creative output from its own in-house content origination arm. Whether it was TVS’s purchase of MTM, Thames TV’s acquisition of Reeves or Pearson’s serial offending with Grundy and then All American, the narrative […]
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Yahoo Inc: New management has finally accepted what the markets have been trying to discount for some time; that with Jerry Wang’s legacy investments in Alibaba and Yahoo Japan, Yahoo was beginning to look like an investment trust. New CEO, Marissa Marr’s decision to split off the remaining (15.4%) stake in Alibaba into a new […]
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It’s always entertaining to see good people-management at work. As with a new Government, a new management needs to persuade the stakeholders that their predicament is substantially worse than previous team were letting on, but that with a little pain, the new team and plan (usually with a catchy name) will secure recovery by the […]
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Enterprise Inns (ETI): With a share price at an almost 60% discount to NAV, this may appear to be a compelling asset play, albeit this argument might have also appeared valid when the discount was 30%,40% or 50%. As with banks in 2008, a balance sheet asset is only as good as the credibility it […]
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I can hardly contain myself with excitement. US non-farm payroll data for November is out and the headlines are that the +321k MoM additions (+314k for the more relevant Private sector jobs) “smashes forecasts†(Guardian) and that “The dollar has gone through the roof†(City AM). With another month of unemployment at only 5.8% (try […]
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With fuel costs representing 45-50% of an airline’s operating costs and 35% of its revenues, it would seem self-evident that a significant movement in oil, and therefore fuel prices, would have an equally dramatic effect on margins; in particular when the industry’s margins are often the wrong side of 5%. The oil price however is […]
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When a company such as P&G can sell 10 year debt at little more than a 3% coupon, then we should not be surprised at some of the pricing decisions being taken. With regards its subsidiary Duracell, it has a business in slow structural decline, which provides a drag to its own organic growth figures, […]
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