Guess what Tesco is doing to its avocados
Monopolies are in trouble and M&A is all over the place.
Good Morning,
The eagle-eyed amongst you will have noticed a tasteful banner ad for none other than Q5, the brand-new sponsors of The Business of Stuff! It is super exciting to have them on board. I’ll say this once upfront: if you are facing any organisational challenges in your local football team, FTSE 100 company or anything in between, Q5 are the people to call. I am completely biased as I work for them, but a long list of accolades and happy clients attest to this.
To all the new subscribers, welcome! You’ll soon get a sense of the format, essentially a bit of upfront waffle from me and then some hard-hitting and not-so-hard-hitting stories from the week about the world of business. The general vibe is the free market is a good thing but let’s be honest about all the massive flaws and dodgy stuff that goes on.
For all the long-time subscribers, don’t panic! You are safe and you are loved. The content will remain the same and much like the NHS (hopefully) remain free at the point of use. Thank you so much for your support and all the lovely comments, it means a lot.
Have a cracking week,
Hugo
Chief Stuff Officer
The Business of Stuff
The Stuff
Shares in Abercrombie are surging 👗 - I thought it was all over after the documentary in 2022. Apparently, however, millennials who spent their teenage years suffocating from the smell of Fierce in the darkened depths of their stores after skirting around (or getting a picture with) some chap with no top on are getting right back into it. The retailer is expecting a 10% increase in sales this year, following a 16% increase last year. Their share price is up 470% in the past year.
Oatly shelves its plan for a UK factory 🥛 - it has been a rough year for oat milk. Firstly Big Milk has stopped them from calling it ‘milk’ and secondly (no doubt also the work of Big Milk) the health and environmental benefits have been called into question. It’s not explicitly a result of this but I’ll join the dots anyway, Oatly has withdrawn plans to open a production facility in Peterborough.
Tesco is tattooing its avocados 🥑 - whilst this might sound like giving their pineapples a haircut or piercing their courgettes, etching on labels will save tens of millions of stickers per year. The supermarket sells 70m avos per year and is working with its largest supplier, Westphalia, to implement the change. They also need to figure out a solution to people giving every single one in the shop a quick squeeze before deciding which to buy.
Eurostar is facing several challenges to its monopoly 🚂 - there’s no better feeling than sitting on the Eurostar with a coffee on a Friday morning, the day off work and a long weekend ahead. The only problem is it costs approximately £1m each way, unless you book three years in advance. One would hope that increased competition would result in improved prices but the barriers to entry for a new provider are pretty high.
Czech billionaire to buy the Royal Mail 📮 - I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, British billionaires need to up their game. Foreign investment is all well and good but bloody hell team, why can’t we find someone in the UK to cough up for some of these major assets? International Distribution Services (IDS), the parent company, have agreed to a £3.6bn buyout from EP Group, owned by Daniel Křetínský.
Ticketmaster is having a tough couple of weeks 🎟️ - the Department of Justice decided to sue the company last week to break up what it considers a monopoly of the ticket sales market with its parent Live Nation. To top it all off they’ve just announced they’ve been hit with a cyber attack, affecting the data of half a billion customers. Having that many customers seems like the sort of issue a monopoly might face. The hackers have demanded a $500,000 ransom.
BHP will not buy Anglo-American ⛏️ - it’s been the ‘will they, won’t they’ story of the mining world over the past few weeks, but the deal is not going to go ahead. Anglo American’s CEO now has a job on his hands to reshape the business and create the almost $50bn worth of value that BHP were offering for the business. Currently, this includes selling off DeBeers.
UK Ambassador to Mexico removed from post for pointing a gun at colleague 🔫 - if you did some HR training where there was a question asking whether it is acceptable to point a rifle at your colleague, you’d probably roll your eyes and go ‘urgh bloody health and safety’. Well, it seems there are senior staff members at the Foreign Office for whom the answer is not quite so intuitive. Whilst the FCDO has not commented, Mr Benjamin is reported to no longer be in post.
Mini electric cars will hopefully replace Chelsea tractors in cities 🚗 - in case you hadn’t noticed, cars are getting bigger. This seems to be driven by parents worrying about the safety of little Barnaby and Foccacia, justifying a fuck-off Range Rover to drive the 0.8 miles to their local school in southwest London. Micro and other manufacturers are attempting to buck this trend with 50s-esque bubble cars that are far more practical in cities and better for the environment. I’ll be honest, you’re probably in trouble when the person attempting to reverse their Defender doesn’t spot you.
Salesforce has had a shocker after releasing weaker-than-expected results 📉 - shares fell 20% which some might say is a bit of an overreaction by the market. Yes, the software market is generally pretty rough at the moment, and they’ve got competition from the other million CRM solutions, but they’re very well placed to capitalise on generative AI over the long term. Let’s see what happens!
Quote of the week
You've got to invest in the world, you've got to read, you've got to go to art galleries, you've got to find out the names of plants. You've got to start to love the world and know about the whole genius of the human race. We're amazing people. - Vivienne Westwood