TheChek News Flow

Gapping up
In reaction to earnings/guidance:

Other news:

Giulio Borbon is opening a stylish new home in Milan

In another life, Dr Giulio Borbon would have been an architect. Today, the Milan-based aesthetic and regenerative surgeon busies himself fine-tuning faces and bodies in pursuit of “balance”. As he puts it: “Nowadays aesthetic medicine is full of ideas that are pretty wrong and dangerous in my opinion, about being perfect, hyper-photogenic, hyper-real. But it’s not about being beautiful or ugly. It’s to look for an idea of harmony.”

Borbon has won a discerning following for soft-touch procedures that range from IV drips to liposuction at Studio Borbon, the clinic he founded in 2016 in Milan. Nevertheless, he has lived out his architecture fantasies with the opening on 3 March of a second outpost of the clinic in a 1925-era villa in Milan’s CityLife district. Once a summer house for a rich Milanese family, the building has been repurposed for Borbon’s international client base. A specially commissioned François Halard photograph hangs on the wall, while the front of house has been recruited from a five-star hotel; Borbon’s team, which numbers 20, will swell to 25 in the next six months.

Sought after for his Face Harmonisation technique, Borbon is known for his subtle work with filler. He favours Pro-Fill, a patented filler injection that works “on the ratio and balance of the face, without changing the expression or emotional output”. Translation: your capacity to raise an eyebrow won’t be compromised. “We don’t believe in anti-ageing,” he says. “We prefer to think about ageing management.” To that end, Borbon works slowly to achieve a more natural effect over time: someone seeking a face lift, for instance, might need to book in for six sessions over the course of a year. Another common procedure is blepharoplasty, or eyelid surgery, where he is renowned for neat work as well as minimising bruising through tailored post-procedure treatments. 

Borbon is notable in the aesthetic medicine world for another reason: turning people away. “I say no all the time,” he says of clients with unrealistic expectations and demands. “If you benchmark, it’s impossible – I will be frustrated and you won’t be happy.” If there’s elegance in refusal, it’s also in Studio Borbon’s staff scrubs, which are custom-made by Prada. His relationship with the house stretches back 10 years and he is fond of quoting its creative director: “The foundation of everything, as Miuccia Prada says, is cultural honesty.” Part and parcel of that is improving on what nature gave us. “I like when patients want to improve, they want to change stuff, but they basically like themselves.”  

Via Monte Rosa 64, Milan. studioborbon.com

Company's IPO prospectus is expected this week for one of the biggest offerings in recent years

CoreWeave, the Nvidia-backed startup cloud provider that is preparing one of the most anticipated initial public offerings of the year, grew revenue exponentially while pouring cash into capital expenditures last year, two people familiar with the matter said.

The company is expected to publish its IPO prospectus this week and go public this month. CoreWeave generated about $1.9 billion in revenue in 2024, the people said. That is eight times more sales than the previous year, according to the company’s financial records. At the same time, capital expenditures nearly tripled, to more than $8.5 billion, from the previous year.

The multi-billion-dollar IPO, which would be one of the largest by deal size in recent years, will test investors’ conviction about whether the once-obscure crypto miner can become a winner in the artificial intelligence wave.

If CoreWeave’s offering succeeds, more companies benefiting from AI could follow. The company has been discussing a valuation of more than $35 billion, Bloomberg reported.

CoreWeave operates more than two dozen data centers, filled with hundreds of thousands of Nvidia chips that it rents out to tech giants such as Microsoft and Meta that train and run AI models.

The company posted a net loss last year of more than $800 million, the people said. The company was profitable on an operating basis, excluding interest expenses and other accounting-related charges. The company has borrowed heavily to finance its data center expansion. Its cash burn total couldn’t be learned.

The company’s rapid sales growth is largely thanks to Microsoft, which accounts for about 60% of the company’s signed contract revenue, The Information previously reported. CoreWeave benefited from the run on graphics processing units in early 2023, which led large tech companies to ink deals with the startup because it had access to chips and power for data centers.

Investors are debating how long the company’s growth will continue, particularly if customers like Microsoft and Meta move away from using outside cloud providers.

Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s CEO, said on a podcast in December that its contracts with CoreWeave were a “one-time thing” and the company used CoreWeave to get enough data center capacity in a pinch. “We all got caught with the hit called ChatGPT,” he said.

CoreWeave has struck about half a dozen GPU server rental deals with Microsoft. The deals with Microsoft all expire by 2029, meaning CoreWeave will need to find other customers to rent the GPUs to if Microsoft does not renew.

CoreWeave, founded in 2017 as an ethereum mining company, needs to go public in part to offset a growing debt used to finance its data center expansion. The company had more than $6 billion of debt as of last fall, according to investor documents. Much of the debt is backed by multi-year contracts signed by Microsoft.

A CoreWeave spokesperson didn’t return a request for comment.

Forget McDonald’s. This Chinese Fast-Food Chain Is Now the World’s Biggest.

Mixue lures cost-conscious customers with ice cream and drinks under $1 during China’s economic slump

SINGAPORE—It sells ice cream and sugary drinks for under $1. Its mascot looks like the love child of Frosty the Snowman and the Michelin Man. And its stores relentlessly blare a jingle set to the tune of “Oh! Susanna.”

This recipe helped Mixue Ice Cream and Tea become the world’s biggest food-and-beverage chain by number of locations, topping McDonald’s and Starbucks.

Pronounced ME-schway, the Chinese company is found across Asia and Australia. It ended last year with 45,000 stores, according to research firm Technomic, after more than doubling its locations in three years.

The company raised more than $400 million in an initial public offering of its shares in Hong Kong on Monday. The stock closed at 43% above its IPO price, giving Mixue a valuation of more than $10 billion.

It isn’t done expanding. Mixue said in its IPO filing that it planned to keep growing—while acknowledging the risk that its existing stores could be cannibalized by new ones.

Mixue features ice cream and drinks priced at 6 Chinese yuan, about 83 cents. That resonates in China, which is grappling with an economic slump. Spending is down because of a broken housing market and other issues.

“People are chasing more cost-efficient products,” said Ernan Cui, a Beijing-based analyst for research firm Gavekal Dragonomics. She said Mixue is popular in smaller cities, where the company has focused its expansion.

Mixue was founded in 1997 by Zhang Hongchao, who opened a store selling shaved ice in Henan, a Chinese heartland province.

Its blistering expansion can be explained by the simplicity of its bright red stores, often stalls wedged next to phone-repair kiosks or dumpling shops.

The menu is short and very sweet. It includes the signature ice-cream cone, variations on bubble tea and a lemonade that made Mixue China’s biggest purchaser of lemons.

It helps that Mixue charges below-average franchising fees. It generates most of its revenue by selling supplies to franchisees.

Low prices alone don’t explain how Mixue embedded itself in Chinese pop culture. Credit the Snow King—and the jingle.

A roly-poly mascot, Snow King has become a national icon on par with Ronald McDonald and Colonel Sanders. Just as ubiquitous is Mixue’s theme song, which plays in stores. The lyrics to the English version: “I love you. You love me. Mixue Ice Cream and Tea.”

Mixue said in its IPO filing that it intended to become more global, but didn’t mention plans to enter the U.S. Roughly 90% of its stores are in China, with the rest in 10 other Asian countries and Australia.

On a recent afternoon in Singapore, a Mixue store drew in Julian Eymann, an American who visits the country often.

He skipped the rival shop across the street. “This ice cream is better than McDonald’s,” Eymann said. But he had one complaint: “The song’s gotta go. It’s got to torture the employees.”

Kyiv’s European allies sought to project unity at London summit

The UK has distanced itself from a proposal by French President Emmanuel Macron for a limited initial one-month truce between Russia and Ukraine, while Kyiv raised reservations about stopping fighting without security guarantees.

The differences emerged after a showpiece London summit in which Europe’s biggest powers sought to project unity and develop a common plan following a disastrous White House meeting between presidents Donald Trump of the US and Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine.

Macron said after Sunday’s summit that his idea for a limited, one-month ceasefire “in the air, at sea and on energy infrastructure” would have the advantage of verifying Russia’s intentions. The French president has a record of floating policy ideas to push allies towards agreement.

The UK, which hosted the summit, said Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer wanted to move forward with the peace plan “with momentum”. But Starmer’s allies said the one-month truce was not “a UK plan”.

A British official said: “There are various options on the table, subject to further discussions with the US and European partners, but a one-month truce has not been agreed.”

UK armed forces minister Luke Pollard warned on Monday against a pause in the fighting in Ukraine that could enable Russia to regroup.

He told Sky News: “The very real worry that the Ukrainians have is that any short pause in the war simply allows the Russians time to re-arm, regroup and reinvade.”

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni expressed “misgivings” about some of the Franco-British ideas.

“The only thing that we really cannot afford is a peace that does not last,” Meloni told reporters on Sunday. “This is something that Ukraine cannot afford, Europe cannot afford, and the United States cannot afford.”

Zelenskyy has also rejected calls for Ukraine to agree an immediate ceasefire in its war with Russia. As he departed the UK from the summit, he said it would be “failure for everyone” if a cessation of hostilities were not accompanied by detailed security guarantees.

He declined to comment on Macron’s proposal.

The French president told Le Figaro on Sunday that a one-month truce in the air and sea would be easier than overseeing a truce on the ground along the entire front line. “In the event of a ceasefire, it would be very difficult to verify that the front is being respected,” he said.

“We can measure it,” he said. “You have to understand that the front today is equivalent to the Paris-Budapest line. In the event of a ceasefire, it would be very difficult to verify that the front is being respected.”

The French and British leaders are hoping a deal would involve US cover for troops from a European “coalition of the willing” deployed to secure any ceasefire in Ukraine.

Starmer said after the summit that while Europe “must do the heavy lifting”, the “effort must have strong US backing”. The European plan would also see Zelenskyy sign a deal with the US to share some of the profits from exploiting Ukraine’s mineral reserves.

That agreement had been intended to be concluded on Friday, but was left unsigned after Trump ejected Zelenskyy from the White House following their dispute in the Oval Office.

Lord Peter Mandelson, UK ambassador to Washington, urged Zelenskyy to sign the minerals deal and called on Ukraine and European leaders to give “unequivocal backing to the initiative President Trump is taking” to broker a peace.

In comments that Pollard, the UK armed forces minister, said were not “government policy”, Mandelson told ABC: “Ukraine should be first to commit to a ceasefire and defy the Russians to follow.”

Zelenskyy said he saw no need to make amends following the White House confrontation or come up with a plan to salvage his relationship with Trump, although he restated his gratitude to the American people.

“If you don’t have an end to the war and you don’t have security guarantees, no one is able to control a ceasefire,” the Ukrainian president said from London’s Stansted airport as he prepared to fly back to Kyiv.

Guggenheim and Legendary billionaires create $40bn pot to make AI bets

Mark Walter and Thomas Tull want to use artificial intelligence to spur innovation in their finance, sport and media holdings

Mark Walter, the billionaire chief executive of Guggenheim Partners, and Thomas Tull, the former owner of Legendary Entertainment, have formed a $40bn holding company to make large bets on artificial intelligence.

Tull has become chair of TWG Global, which houses Walter’s assets spanning interests in the Los Angeles Dodgers, Chelsea FC and Guggenheim, among others.

Tull will contribute his own investments, which include a sprawling portfolio of venture capital and biotechnology bets and stakes in defence start-ups and media companies. In total, the assets inside TWG will be worth nearly $40bn, according to three people briefed on the matter.

“By joining together to co-lead TWG Global, we can more effectively grow and increase the value of the companies in the portfolio through the implementation of technology and operational enhancements,” said Walter in a statement to the Financial Times.

Tull added: “Our shared history of building businesses that have attempted to transform industries helps us identify opportunities others may not see.”

The partnership brings together two billionaire investors who have revolutionised their respective industries.

As the leader of Guggenheim Investments, Walter spurred the push of powerful Wall Street investment groups into mundane but lucrative insurance assets, now the lifeblood of growth in the $13tn private capital industry.

Under Walter, Guggenheim acquired the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team, in part using capital from insurers the group controlled. He is also a co-owner of Chelsea FC, having acted as an instrumental part of a consortium that bought the football club from Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich for £4.25bn in 2022.

Tull, a serial entrepreneur who grew up poor in New York and made his first windfalls operating launderettes, later earned billions in Hollywood. Beginning in the mid-2000s, his Legendary Entertainment became a sensation, producing a string of box office hits including Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins and The Dark Knight.

Tull sold the group for $3.5bn in 2016 to a Chinese financial conglomerate, but retained a 20 per cent interest.

After a rift with the buyer, Tull left Hollywood the following year and began to invest far away from the film industry. He ploughed his profits from Legendary into lucrative defence start-ups and venture capital bets.

Tull oversees Tulco, a venture capital firm, and United States Innovative Technology, an investment group that has spent billions backing “critical technologies relevant to the national interest”, such as weapons start-up Anduril.

Tull was introduced to Walter in 2019 through their joint personal investment in private equity owned insurance brokerage Acrisure. Afterward, they began discussing how AI would disrupt entire industries and could be used within the companies they controlled to create new profit streams, they said.

In 2022, the two decided that they should put their respective interests under one roof, TWG, and together have begun building broad AI capabilities.

Last year, they hired former JPMorgan executive Drew Cukor to oversee a data and AI division inside the holding company that will drive adoption of the technology across their portfolio companies.

The holding company will also use profits from existing assets to jointly seed new investments spanning sports, venture capital start-ups and media, among others.

Countries want to squeeze more electricity from ageing power plants to help meet global demand, but the strategy has its own challenges