LaCroix-maker CEO Goes OFF; Yankees Buy Back YES; Gruesome Jobs Report

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THE HEADLINES

 

LACRY BABY

LaCroix

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There’s a fine line between “the world needs more CEOs like this guy” and clinically batsh*t. Meet Nick Caporella, the CEO of National Beverage, the maker of LaCroix.

The unbalanced chief executive went OFF following his company’s lackluster fiscal Q3 earnings report as previously reported by The Water Coolest. NBD. After the close on Thursday, the seltzer maker reported that its profit fell almost 40%.

And the tribe spoke on Friday. Shares tumbled more than 16%.

But why?

Sure, a drop in profit warrants a price slide, but the worst soft-drink PR faux pas since Kendall Jenner ended racism with a Pepsi is likely behind National Bev’s sharp decline.

Caporella went all R. Kelly in the Gayle King interview in a statement released on Thursday evening. Addressing the revenue and profit drop, and the now debunked (by an “independent” lab) allegations that La Croix was not all natural, Caporella called the results an “injustice.”

He even went so far as to bring the “big guy” into it: “Negligence nor mismanagement nor woeful acts of God were not the reasons.” And then went completely off the deep end: “Managing a brand is not so different from caring for someone who becomes handicapped.”

Why so angry?

La Croix is still reeling from a suit that pegged the preferred drink of hipsters as not-quite “All Natural” as the colorful cans claim. The allegations have been disproved by an unnamed independent lab.

Still, the headlines, including “cockroach insecticide” have had a negative impact on moving units, hence Caporella’s rant.

 

WELCOME BACK, OLD FRIEND

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Amazon, the Yankees, and the Sinclair Broadcast Group walk into a bar …

The Yankees, along with Amazon, Sinclair and others are taking ownership of the YES Network … again. The Bronx Bombers launched the network and owned a majority stake until Fox increased its ownership from 49% to 80% in 2014. This pushed the network’s valuation at the time to $3.9B.

Disney’s sale on Friday shows the value of the network home of Michael Kay has decreased to less than $3.5B in five years time.

So, why the sale then?

Disney was required to sell YES Network, along with twenty-two other regional sports networks, as a part of its acquisition of 21st Century Fox. A big reason for the decline in value is due to more consumers cutting the cord, opting for a ‘choose your own adventure’ OTT package.

A $3.4B price is well below initially reported figures of $5B to $6B.

And as for Jeffry Commerce, this would be his second avenue into streaming major professional sports after Thursday night NFL games should a deal be reached as part of the ownership stake.

 

YOU HAD ONE JOB

There’s no other way to say it, the jobs report was gruesome. Well, kinda. The US government announced that non-farm payrolls increased by a mere 20k in February, compared to an initial estimate of 181k. The news helped the major US indices finish up their worst week since September 2017, all down more than 2%.

There were a lot of factors working against job creators since the start of 2019. Retailers have cut more than 40k jobs. Thanks a lot, Payless, Gap, and the Dollar Tree. Not to mention the month-plus long government shutdown, and a mild winter which has led to less part-time, seasonal hirings.

How bad is it?

Maybe not that bad. The jobs number has a lot of moving parts and is often revised, and Washington is already calling the figures “fluky.”

Case in point: the unemployment rate dropped to 3.8%, 0.1% better than expected. Further, the “real” unemployment rate which considers those working part-time jobs out of necessity dropped to 7.3% from 8.1% in January.

Plus the first two months of the year typically see a lot of retail lay-offs as companies ramp down from holiday hiring sprees.

Bottom line: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯


IN OTHER NEWS

news

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  • China has grounded all domestic flights aboard Boeing 737 Max jets following the crash of a similar model in Ethiopia which killed 157. This follows an eerily similar accident in Indonesia late last year. The plane which accounts for one-third of Boeing’s operating profit could cause major issues going forward for the US jet maker.

 

  • It’s a day of reckoning for Elon Musk. The Tesla CEO must address his moronic Twitter claims after the SEC found his tweet to be a violation of the previous deal that said he would have his Twitter Sitter review all of his tweets. Experts don’t expect the judge presiding over the issue to bar Elon from running Tesla, mostly because it would hurt shareholders immensely, but do expect monetary and oversight penalties. Two Twitter Sitters?!

 

  • Sack lunch num num num num num. The Sackler family, the billionaire clan behind Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin has been tossed from Hilden Capital Management. The hedge fund, whose management has been personally affected by the opioid crisis, told the Sackler’s to take their money and GTFO. No small feat for a hedge fund. The Sackler’s philanthropic relationships with museums and Columbia University among others have come into question as of late.

 

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