John Idol’s Pay Fell to $10.5 Million as Capri Struggled Last Year
But the CEO stands to gain big if the company’s $8.5 billion buyout by Tapestry is allowed to go through.
John Idol, chairman and chief executive officer of Capri Holdings, saw his pay package shrink by 26.5 percent to $10.5 million last year as the company struggled with declining sales and profits.
But Idol, who formed Capri around Michael Kors by adding Versace and Jimmy Choo, stands to do better if the company’s $8.5 billion buyout by Tapestry Inc. successfully overcomes a lawsuit from the Federal Trade Commission, which is challenging the deal on antitrust grounds.
Idol’s salary last fiscal year remained the same at $1.4 million, but his incentive pay fell to $540,000 from $4.3 million the prior year. As is typical for public-company executives, the bulk of Idol’s pay came in the form of stock awards, which were valued at $8.5 million when they were granted.
“Our executive compensation plan design emphasizes pay for performance and is designed to promote responsible pay and governance practices that align with the interests of our shareholders,” Capri said in its proxy statement filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
“Overall, we were disappointed with our fiscal 2024 performance which was below our expectations,” the company said, referring to an 8 percent decline in revenues to $5.2 billion last year and a 49.7 percent drop in adjusted net income, to $413 million.
Usually, executives have to wait for their stock awards to vest before they can get any value from them, but if the deal with Tapestry does go through and Idol is pushed out under the new structure, he’s in line for a $27.5 million payout.
That would include an $11.3 million in cash severance, $540,000 in incentive pay and $15.6 million from the vesting of long-term incentives.
Just how likely a deal is to pass remains an open question — and one that will ultimately be answered by Judge Jennifer Rochon in Manhattan federal court.
For their part, investors are hesitant. Shares of Capri were up 1 percent to $33.62 in midday trading on Friday, well below the purchase price of $57 agreed to by Tapestry, which owns Coach, Kate Spade and Stuart Weitzman.
The FTC has argued that consumers would lose the benefit of head-to-head competition if the companies were combined and formed one larger player in the accessible luxury market.
Regulators have also said: “The proposed acquisition is also part of Tapestry’s pattern and strategy of serial acquisitions….The proposed acquisition builds on a deliberative, decade-long M&A strategy by Tapestry — and is just one in a string of acquisitions for Tapestry to achieve its goal to become the major American fashion conglomerate.”
LVMH’s Bernard Arnault Talks Richemont Stake, Potential SpaceX Collab
The billionaire said he had only a “very minor” stake in Richemont and lauded Johann Rupert, as well as Elon Musk.
The Olympics are about competition, yes, but at their best, they’re also about mutual respect between peoples and countries.
The same just might go for luxury conglomerates.
When Bernard Arnault, whose LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton is premium partner for the Paris Summer Games, sat down with CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin ahead of the Opening Ceremony, he was thinking more about mutual respect.
Asked about an earlier Bloomberg report that Arnault had taken a stake in competitor Compagnie Financière Richemont, the luxury titan acknowledged the investment, but tossed cold water on the idea that it’s a prelude to a mega buyout.
“I know, well the owner, Mr. Johann Rupert of Richemont,” Arnault said. “We have a good relationship and I told him that I will never do anything against him. That’s clear. And if I bought some shares, it’s just my portfolio manager put some shares.
“But it’s a very minor stake and I am very happy,” Arnault said. “He has done something fantastic with Richemont, with Cartier, with Van Cleef, and I think he’s independent. He wants to stay independent. And I agree completely on that.”
Arnault grew his luxury empire by snapping up competitors — and he doesn’t seem to have changed his tack, having bought Tiffany & Co. for nearly $16 billion in 2021. But even for LVMH, with a market capitalization of 331 billion euros, Richemont would be a big buy as it has a market cap of 79 billion Swiss francs, or about 82 billion euros.
For now, it seems the luxury giant status quo reigns, although Arnault is always looking higher.
During the interview, Arnault said he’d be sitting with “my friend” Elon Musk that day at an event with the French President Emmanuel Macron.
“I admire very much what he’s doing because I think he’s a genius,” Arnault said, noting his successes with both Tesla and SpaceX.
Arnault said there had also been some discussions about two of the billionaires’ companies working together.
“Maybe we’ll see a Louis Vuitton rocket, a SpaceX, Louis Vuitton collab,” Arnault said.
“We have to think [about it],” Arnault said, noting the brand could help kit out the inside of a rocket. “He did not say no.”
But if Arnault is looking to launch Louis Vuitton into orbit, he’s less certain about going himself.
“I’m afraid he will ask me to go with him in the rocket,” Arnault confessed.
Asked if he would go, Arnault said with a laugh, “I’m not sure.”
All the Fashion at the 2024 Paris Olympics Opening Ceremony
Dior, Louis Vuitton and a host of emerging Paris-based designers created key looks for performers including Celine Dion, Lady Gaga, Aya Nakamura and more.
PARIS— Paris promised to kick off the 2024 Olympic Games with the greatest show on earth. Mother Nature rained on the French capital’s parade, but Friday’s opening ceremony was still a feast of homegrown fashion.
With LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton on board as a premium partner, its Dior, Louis Vuitton and Berluti brands all played a role in the three-and-a-half hour show that unfurled on the Seine, marking the first time the opening ceremony has not taken place in a stadium.
More unexpectedly, the event also shone a spotlight on a plethora of independent Paris-based designers, with Jeanne Friot, Charles de Vilmorin, Victor Weinsanto, Alphonse Maitrepierre, Kevin Germanier and others featured at different points during the story that unfolded in front of landmarks including the Eiffel Tower and Notre-Dame de Paris Cathedral.
While the pouring rain did not deliver the hoped-for “golden hour” effect, there was plenty to dazzle the more than 300,000 people who gathered on the banks of the river, and the estimated 1.5 billion people who tuned in worldwide.
Lady Gaga performs during the opening ceremony of the 2024 Paris Olympic Games.
Maria Grazia Chiuri, artistic director of womenswear at Dior, dressed performers including Lady Gaga and Celine Dion, marking the latter’s triumphant comeback.
Dion appeared in a grand finale on the first floor of the Eiffel Tower, performing Édith Piaf’s classic “Hymne à l’amour” wearing a fringed white silk georgette gown studded with thousands of silver beads that required more than 1,000 hours of work.
The Canadian superstar was last seen onstage in 2019 before announcing she was suffering from stiff person syndrome, a rare disease that causes muscle spasms.
Shortly after the 7:30 p.m. start time, Gaga kicked things off with a tribute to Zizi Jeanmaire.
The sketches for Lady Gaga’s Dior outfit.
The singer donned a black feather jacket and black satin bustier and panties, topped with a detachable skirt embroidered with pink and black feathers, to perform the French cabaret performer’s best-known song, “Mon truc en plumes,” alongside 10 dancers on the banks of the river. (Dior clarified in a statement that the feathers were collected during the birds’ molt.)
Dior also dressed French-Malian singer Aya Nakamura, whose rumored presence had triggered a heated debate around race and national representation. A Lancôme brand ambassador, she is the most listened-to French artist in the world.
Dressed in a short, asymmetric dress covered in gold-colored feathers that echoed a look from Chiuri’s fall haute couture collection, Nakamura performed her hit song “Djadja” on the Pont des Arts surrounded by the military band of the French Republican Guard. She ended with a salute, in what could be read as a pointed message to her detractors.
Aya Nakamura performs during the opening ceremony of the 2024 Paris Olympic Games.
Another highlight was Axelle Saint-Cirel, a mezzo-soprano from the French Caribbean island of Guadeloupe, singing the French national anthem on the roof of the Grand Palais wearing a draped Dior dress that merged with the French flag she was holding.
She was accompanied by a choir of women on the Pont Alexandre III dressed in updated versions of the peplos, the robe traditionally worn by women in ancient Greece, rendered in red, white and blue.
Some of them held flags revisiting the work “Freedom Woman Now” by African American artist Faith Ringgold, who died in April at the age of 93 before she could see the collaboration come to fruition.
Celine Dion performing on the Eiffel Tower during the opening ceremony of the 2024 Paris Olympic Games.
It was part of a tableau dubbed “Sororité” — the word replacing the traditional “Fraternité” of France’s national motto “‘Liberty, Equality, Fraternity” — that paid tribute to women who have made a major contribution to French history, including Simone Veil, who as health minister promoted the law legalizing abortion in France in 1975.
Chiuri also had a hand in another emotional high point: Juliette Armanet’s rendition of “Imagine,” accompanied by pianist Sofiane Pamart. The French singer wore a waxed canvas top and flared pants embroidered with light-up embroideries, in a collaboration between Dior and Clara Daguin, a designer known for high-tech creations incorporating LEDs and fiber optics.
After her performance, a message on the screen read: “We stand and call for peace.”
Earlier in the day, Pharrell Williams, artistic director of menswear at Vuitton, joined the ranks of Olympic torchbearers in a relay with Laetitia Casta, the French model who served as the template for the bust of Marianne, the symbol of the French Republic, that is displayed in government buildings across France.
Pharrell Williams with the 2024 Paris Olympics torch trunk.
Standing in front of the Basilica of Saint-Denis next to a Vuitton trunk created to house the Olympic torch, the duo symbolized the handover between France and Los Angeles, which is set to host the Summer Games in 2028.
Billed as the biggest TV show ever produced, the opening ceremony involved 18,000 people, from athletes to performers to technicians, according to Thomas Jolly, artistic director of the ceremony.
France’s answer to Lin-Manuel Miranda, he is known for staging marathon Shakespeare productions and recently spearheaded the revival of the 1970s French rock opera “Starmania,” with costumes by Louis Vuitton creative director of womenswear Nicolas Ghesquière.
On Friday night, Vuitton was front and center again in a pre-filmed scene worthy of a blockbuster movie or video game “Assassin’s Creed,” as a masked torchbearer made his way across the rooftop of the French fashion house’s headquarters overlooking the Seine to enter a workshop where craftspeople were making trunks — a bit of poetic license, since the building mainly houses offices and showrooms.
It was the most visible sign of LVMH’s multiple activations around the world’s biggest sporting event.
As part of the scene dubbed “Synchronicity,” several oversize Vuitton trunks were wheeled across the Pont Neuf — where Williams staged his debut show last June — to the Paris Mint, where the Olympic medals designed by LVMH-owned jeweler Chaumet were made.
A torchbearer runs past Pont Neuf during the opening ceremony of the 2024 Paris Olympic Games.
Another prerecorded sequence showed dancers dressed in upcyled clothes sprayed in gold paint, suspended from scaffolding around Notre-Dame, which is due to reopen in December after five years of renovations following a devastating fire.
Shortly afterward, ballet dancer Guillaume Diop performed live on the roof of City Hall dressed in a beige Vuitton vest and ample brown pleated shorts. Diop last year became the first Black dancer to be named an “étoile,” or star dancer, of the Paris Opera Ballet.
Franco-Algerian rapper Rim’K, member of the group 113, performed in a red and black shearling shirt in an oversize version of the brand’s signature Damier checkerboard pattern.
Meanwhile, Shaheem Sanchez, a deaf dancer who pioneered American Sign Language dancing, performed to the song “Supernature” by French disco legend Cerrone dressed in a copper-colored Vuitton suit.
Daphné Bürki, the styling and costumes director of the ceremony who oversaw the creation of 3,000 individual costumes and commented the ceremony live on France 2 television, only mentioned the name of Dior once, although she cited many of the smaller designers that participated in the evening’s 12 artistic tableaux.
De Vilmorin designed the costumes for a sequence dedicated to love that featured a throuple, in a tribute to the French New Wave classic “Jules et Jim.”
Dancers on poles wore rainbow-colored skirts featuring his fantastical designs, in a scene that concluded with the pilots of the Patrouille de France tracing a red heart in the sky above the Pont des Arts.
A rider dressed in a Jeanne Friot outfit delivers the Olympic flag during the opening ceremony of the 2024 Paris Olympic Games.
Friot, whose designs have been worn by the likes of Madonna and Eurovision winners Måneskin, dressed a cowled rider on a gray horse, reminiscent of Joan of Arc, who brought the Olympic flag to its final destination opposite the Eiffel Tower.
Others were featured in a fashion show staged on the Passerelle Debilly, where Kenzo held a runway display last year.
Farida Khelfa, a muse to designers ranging from Azzedine Alaïa to Jean Paul Gaultier, walked in an outfit by Maitrepierre, while Germanier dressed Paralympic fencer Beatrice “Bebe” Vio Grandis. Weinsanto put his muse Ildjima Masrangar in a giant organza coif in a tribute to his native Alsace.
Almost 100 boats carrying the majority of the 10,500 athletes competing in the Games traveled along the Seine from the Austerlitz bridge to the Trocadero — the esplanade across from the Eiffel Tower.
The French boat was the last in. The athletes were dressed in official uniforms by Berluti, though many had slipped on disposable plastic rain ponchos, somewhat diluting the impact of the design. Fortunately, they are due to don the outfits again for the opening ceremony of the Paralympic Games on Aug. 28.
Jolly said he wanted the ceremony to show that France is “very flamboyant, extremely diverse and extremely rich” — a strong political statement at a time when the country’s government is in limbo, following snap elections that resulted in a hung parliament.
“Paris and the Olympic Games in general are all about people coming together,” he said.
The Week’s 10 Biggest Funding Rounds: Space Tech Startup Astranis Tops List
Another big week for startups raising large rounds. All 10 rounds hit $100 million or more, this time with space tech and biotech leading the way. Once again, money was spread around to various sectors — even agtech, which has not seen many megadeals this year.
1. Astranis, $200M, space: Space startup Astranis raised a fresh $200 million round to build out its Omega satellite program. The new round was co-led by Andreessen Horowitz and Bam Elevate. The San Francisco-based startup develops small broadband communications satellites for telecoms, and plans to have more than 100 of its first-generation satellites operating in orbit by 2030. While Astranis did not release a valuation number, the company raised a $200 million round at a $1.6 billion valuation in April 2023, per a Bloomberg report in a deal led by Andreessen Horowitz. Space startups have done well this year as satellite and communication companies continue to attract new investment. So far in 2024, space-related startups have raised more than $3.7 billion, per Crunchbase data. Such startups raised about $5.9 billion through all of last year — putting this year’s venture funding ahead of that pace. Founded in 2015, Astranis has raised more than $750 million, per the company.
2. Third Arc Bio, $165M, biotech: Biotech also saw a huge Series A this week. Boston-based Third Arc Bio closed a $165 million Series A co-led by Cormorant Asset Management, Hillhouse Investment and Vida Ventures. The biotech startup is developing therapeutics for solid tumors and inflammatory and immunology disease. Founded in 2022, this is the company’s first disclosed funding amount, which will be used to advance oncology and autoimmunity programs through clinical studies.
3. (tied) Imperative Care, $150M, medical device: This is an odd one since we don’t really know how much money Imperative Care actually raised. The Campbell, California-based startup, which develops medical devices to care for people affected by stroke and other ischemic diseases, announced the initial close of a Series E led by Ally Bridge Group. However, the company did not announce how much the initial close was worth, but said “there may be additional closings of this Series E financing, raising up to $150 million in total.” So basically, that gets them on the list. The company, founded in 2015, has raised $559 million, per Crunchbase.
3. (tied) Vanta, $150M, cybersecurity: Cyber startups continue to do well. Compliance startup Vanta raised a $150 million round led by Sequoia Capital that valued the company at $2.45 billion. In January, the San Francisco-based startup said it had hit $100 million in annual recurring revenue. Vanta raised a $110 million round led by Craft Ventures in 2022 which valued the company at $1.6 billion. Founded in 2017, the company has raised more than $350 million, per Crunchbase.
5. (tied) Chainguard, $140M, cybersecurity: Yet another big security raise. Kirkland, Washington-based software supply chain security startup Chainguard locked up a $140 million Series C that minted it a unicorn at a $1.12 valuation. The round was led by IVP, Lightspeed Venture Partners and Redpoint. The company is looking to expand its platform — which allows companies to securely build software — to also secure AI workloads. Founded in 2021, Chainguard has raised $256 million, per the company.
5. (tied) IntelePeer, $140M, customer relations: Dania Beach, Florida-based IntelePeer raised a $140 million mixed round of debt and equity. The equity portion was co-led by Savant Growth and VantagePoint Capital Partners. The company offers an AI-powered contact center that automates customer interactions for clients. Founded in 2003, the company has raised $392 million, per Crunchbase.
7. Monarch Tractor, $133M, agtech: Agtech certainly has had its ups and downs, but this week was an up. Monarch Tractor — the creator of a fully electric, driver-optional smart tractor — raised a $133 million Series C co-led by Astanor Ventures and HH-CTBC Partnership. The company also offers the WingspanAI platform, which gives farmers access to on-farm data, vehicle position tracking, crop image collection and more to help close the industry’s profit gap. Founded in 2017, Monarch has raised more than $220 million, per the company.
8. (tied) Autobahn Therapeutics, $100M, biotech: San Diego-based Autobahn Therapeutics, a biotechnology company developing treatments for neuropsychiatric and neuroimmunologic disorders, closed a $100 million Series C led by Newpath Partners. Founded in 2017, the company has raised nearly $209 million, per Crunchbase.
8. (tied) Harvey, $100M, legal: It was a big week for legal tech. San Francisco-based artificial intelligence startup Harvey raised a $100 million Series C led by GV with participation from the likes of OpenAI, Kleiner Perkins and Sequoia Capital at a $1.5B valuation. The round was actually slightly less than the previously reported $600 million at a $2 billion valuation the startup was said to have been looking for, but still big. That same day, Vancouver-based legal tools platform Clio raised a big $900 million Series F at a $3 billion valuation led by New Enterprise Associates. The two rounds alone make up for nearly two-thirds of the $1.6 billion the legal tech industry has raised in venture this year, according to Crunchbase data. Founded in 2022, the company has raised $206 million, per Crunchbase.
8. (tied) Headway, $100M, mental health: Mental healthcare platform Headway closed a $100 million Series D led by Spark Capital. The new funding values the company at $2.3 billion — a 130% increase just from October when it raised a $125 million Series C at a $1 billion valuation. The startup’s platform helps connect patients with therapists who are covered under a user’s insurance. The New York-based startup also announced expansion to Medicare Advantage and Medicaid. Founded in 2018, the company has raised more than $325 million, per Crunchbase.
Europe’s Markets Are Cheap. 4 Stocks to Play.
So much for the far right taking over Europe.
Investors breathed a sigh of relief when Ursula von der Leyen cruised to a second five-year term as European Commission president, winning a first-ballot majority of the European Parliament July 18.
“We would have expected a more complicated election,” says Davide Oneglia, director of European and global macro at TS Lombard. “The center held quite well.”
What comes next looks less inspiring.
Von der Leyen, a 65-year-old former German defense minister, proved an extraordinary crisis manager in her first term. She prodded the 27-member European Union into decisive and effective action, first to cushion the economy during the Covid pandemic, then to support Ukraine and wean the EU off Russian natural gas imports.
Without such fires to fight, and with its two dominant member states in political disarray, the bloc may revert to its glacial status quo. In Germany, Olaf Scholz’s fractious coalition government looks to be limping toward an electoral wipeout next year. In France, President Emmanuel Macron is hamstrung after his snap election yielded a fractured legislature.
The most effective change in the new European Parliament isn’t the rise of the far right, but the decline of the Greens, who slipped from 70 to 53 seats in the 720-member body. That reflects the public’s desire to tap the brakes on Von der Leyen’s Green Deal, a would-be sprint toward carbon neutrality.
“The emphasis is going to shift to how to reduce emissions while maintaining economic growth,” says Eoin Drea, senior researcher at the Wilfried Martens Centre for European Studies.
Hard renewable energy targets are giving way to fuzzier rhetoric about increasing Europe’s competitiveness, somehow. Brussels is again buzzing with talk of a “capital markets union,” harmonizing the crazy quilt of national financial regulations and taxation. Investors are skeptical.
“We have been talking about capital markets union for decades, but haven’t gotten too far,” says Azad Zangana, senior European economist and strategist at Schroders.
Von der Leyen, faithful to her ministerial roots, has also pledged a “true European defense union,” and will likely appoint the bloc’s first defense minister. The collective EU has sent more money to Ukraine than the U.S. has. But a sustained push to NATO’s 2%-of-gross-domestic-product military spending target still looks out of reach for key member states like Germany and Spain.
Donald Trump returning to the White House might change that, Oneglia speculates. “Trump could be the shock that European politicians need to move,” he says.
The shock that may boost Europe more immediately is the precipitous selloff in tech stocks, which is dragging down U.S. and (some) Asian markets. Value-oriented Europe looks safe by comparison. The continent’s Stoxx 600
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index trades at an average price/earnings ratio of 15, compared with 25 for the S&P 500
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.
Europe boasts two of the hottest names in pharmaceuticals these days, notes Andrew Clifton, an equities portfolio specialist at T. Rowe Price: Novo Nordisk, maker of the Ozempic/Wegovy diabetes/weight loss remedies, and AstraZeneca, whose blockbusters include Farxiga for diabetes and lung cancer treatment Tagrisso. He is also impressed by a range of European banks that have “gotten their houses in order,” including Netherlands-based ING and Italy’s Intesa Sanpaolo.
“Could European stocks outperform? Yes, they could,” Schroders’ Zangana concludes. “Markets are cheap and economies are poised for a rebound.”
Just don’t hold your breath on leadership from Brussels.
Crypto Miners Are AI’s New Power Source. The Stakes Are Huge.
The gigawatts controlled by Bitcoin miners could go a long way to quenching the power thirst of artificial-intelligence data centers.
Bitcoin has been unusually boring lately, trading in a relatively narrow range for several months. But the stocks of Bitcoin miners, which own the computers that create new Bitcoins, have been soaring. Those companies have a new side hustle—selling access to electricity to artificial-intelligence companies. Some analysts say they’re tapping into an even bigger gold mine than Bitcoin.
A flurry of deals between Bitcoin miners and AI data-center companies mark an unusual twist in the race to power AI; the electricity needed to power ChatGPT-like apps may come from crypto companies. That possibility has lifted some of the Bitcoin mining stocks by more than 50% this year.
At first blush, it’s a strange pairing. Artificial intelligence is an enormous mainstream technology that’s expected to transform everything from healthcare to media to warfare. Cryptocurrency miners, which own warehouses full of computers, are like trading posts in the Wild West of digital assets. The value of their assets is tied to price fluctuations in opaque markets. Just two years ago, several miners went bankrupt when crypto prices crashed.
But there’s an industrial logic to a Bitcoin-AI partnership. Bitcoin mining companies consume enormous amounts of electricity. They collectively use more power than the entire country of Argentina.
AI data-center owners desperately need power to train and launch their models. A single query to an AI chatbot can use nearly 10 times as much power as a Google search. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission estimated that data centers would need 35 gigawatts of power capacity in 2030, up from 19 gigawatts in 2023. J.P. Morgan Securities analyst Reggie Smith says that the 14 miners he covers manage 5 gigawatts of power capacity today and have another 4.5 gigawatts in the pipeline.
Companies such as Microsoft, Alphabet, Meta Platforms, and Amazon.com are in an arms race to secure that power as quickly as possible as they compete to become dominant players. The approval process to hook into the electricity grid in much of the country takes longer than four years. So, getting access to power more quickly is worth money. The gigawatts controlled by Bitcoin miners could go a long way to quenching the power thirst of the AI giants.
Morgan Stanley analyst Stephen Byrd put a dollar value on the power the crypto companies control, estimating that they could be worth more than double their enterprise values if their AI potential was taken into account. “This value is more significant than appreciated,” he wrote last month.
The concept is no longer theoretical. Core Scientific, an Austin, Texas–based crypto miner with operations around the country, agreed in June to host computers from Nvidia-backed data-center operator CoreWeave. CoreWeave offers cloud-based hosting for AI operators like Microsoft. The deal gives CoreWeave access to 270 megawatts worth of power with an option for 230 megawatts more, and is worth $4.7 billion in cumulative revenue over 12 years, the company said.
It’s a boon for Core Scientific, which just emerged from bankruptcy protection in January. CoreWeave tried to buy Core Scientific for $5.75 per share, or about $1 billion, but the company rejected the offer. Core Scientific stock has doubled since the start of June and now trades around $11, for a market cap of about $2 billion. The Valkyrie Bitcoin Miners exchange-traded fund is up 15% in the past month, and 35% for the year.
The AI opportunity couldn’t come at a better time for the nation’s dozen or so large crypto miners. Lately, miners’ margins have narrowed as the number of Bitcoins created each day was cut in half through a process called the “halvening” that happens about every four years and is designed to cap the total number of Bitcoins created.
Bitcoin mining can still be a lucrative business when prices are high. Miners like Core Scientific can earn gross margins above 40%. But hosting deep-pocketed AI-connected clients is much more valuable. Core Scientific CEO Adam Sullivan said in an interview that the company makes margins closer to 80% in its hosting business. “Profitability is something that you’re always going to be chasing in this industry,” he said. “And you’re going to have to chase that to many different locations over the course of the next few halvenings.”
Other miners have been transitioning, too. Miami-based Hut 8 once made 100% of its revenue from mining but now has transitioned about 40% of its business to these new ventures. The company received $150 million earlier this month from investment firm Coatue Management to build out an AI data-center hosting platform. “Our base revenue from co-location, managed services, and hosting is going to be strong because they’re long term contracts,” said Hut 8 CEO Asher Genoot in an interview.
There are limits to this business model, of course, and skeptics abound. This isn’t the first time companies with volatile pasts have gravitated to a hot new trend.
In addition, it can be dangerous to extrapolate the details of a few deals as if they apply equally to a wide group of stocks. Several major Bitcoin miners, such as Riot Platforms, have shown no signs of transitioning their business models away from cryptocurrencies. Riot didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Some investors have publicly questioned whether mining companies are all equipped to take on AI data-center loads. Bitcoin mining warehouses are much more bare-bones than AI facilities. They use lower-power microchips and need much less extensive cooling systems, for instance. Upgrading the buildings is no small task. A Bitcoin mining site can cost $300,000 per megawatt to build out; an AI data center can cost $8 million per megawatt, according to Genoot.
Activist short seller Culper Research took aim at Bitcoin miner Iris Energy this month, writing in a report that the company’s real estate was ill-equipped to transition to AI hosting, like a “Prius at the Grand Prix.” In an interview, Iris CEO Daniel Roberts said that Iris has been well positioned for data-center hosting since it was founded in 2018, and has all the necessary equipment, such as fiber cables, at its centers. It also gets its power from clean sources, a priority for some tech companies. Smith, the J.P. Morgan analyst, says Iris is the “best positioned” miner to take advantage of the AI opportunity, because it has already bought Nvidia chips and “has a track record of building/delivering (relatively) high quality data centers on time.”
Bitcoin companies have often found it hard to convince investors that they’re mining digital gold. They’re making more headway with their new argument: the real gold is in their wires.
John Malone Has Hit a Rough Patch. How to Play His Liberty Empire Now.
Sirius XM, Charter Communications, and Warner Bros. Discovery have come under pressure. But investors shouldn’t count the media titan out.
Throughout his long career, John Malone has stayed at least one step ahead of the pack. In the 1980s, he was the “cable cowboy,” beating just about everyone in wiring America for cable TV. Then he evolved into a wheeling, dealing media mogul, assembling an array of investments under the banner of Liberty Media. He did so well that his name and Liberty’s were often mentioned alongside those of Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway.
Throughout his long career, John Malone has stayed at least one step ahead of the pack. In the 1980s, he was the “cable cowboy,” beating just about everyone in wiring America for cable TV. Then he evolved into a wheeling, dealing media mogul, assembling an array of investments under the banner of Liberty Media. He did so well that his name and Liberty’s were often mentioned alongside those of Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway.
Now, it seems, the world is catching up with Malone. At 83, he is facing challenges in broad swaths of his empire. Sirius XM Holdings, the satellite radio company, and Charter Communications, the country’s No. 2 cable operator behind Comcast, have been pressured as a result of sea changes in media and cable TV. Other companies associated with Malone, including Warner Bros. Discovery, have taken some real lumps. And Malone’s basic modus operandi, which often relies on debt, has lost its luster as interest rates have risen.
But don’t count Malone out. Just as Buffett, 93, has defied skeptics in his twilight years, Malone could do the same. Some of his holdings, like Formula One racing and the Atlanta Braves, are thriving. And Malone is still making deals. These deals, real and contemplated, provide the key to unlocking the value of his empire—and an opportunity for investors with the patience to navigate his complex web of stocks.
“Malone would rather do things sooner rather than later,” says Pivotal Research Group senior research analyst Jeffrey Wlodarczak, who is bullish on Charter and Sirius XM and views Liberty SiriusXM and Liberty Broadband
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, which holds a 26% stake in Charter, as good plays. “His level of patience is less than it used to be.”
Malone is known for turning Tele-Communications Inc., better known as TCI, into a cable behemoth, before selling to AT&T in 1999. From there, Malone built Liberty Media, where he developed a knack for nurturing media-related companies, seeing around corners, and knowing when to sell, as he did with DirecTV nearly a decade ago.
These days, Malone keeps a relatively low profile—he declined to speak to Barron’s —and lets Liberty Media CEO Greg Maffei do most of the talking. Malone, estimated to be worth $9.2 billion, according to Bloomberg, often spends summers in Maine—he is one of the country’s largest landowners—but “no major decision gets made without John’s approval,” Maffei said at a conference in May.
Malone’s Magic
Unlike Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, Malone doesn’t keep his investments in one entity. There is no single Liberty Media stock, and Malone uses supervoting shares through which he parlays modest economic stakes into outright or effective control. The typical Malone business has three classes of stock: Class A shares with one vote, Class C shares with none—they tend to have a K in their tickers—and thinly traded Class B shares, with 10 votes. Malone controls nearly 50% of the vote at Liberty Media but his economic stake, at under $2 billion, accounts for less than 10% of the financial value of the companies.
Malone also likes to create pure-play investments, even if it means slicing and dicing his empire, and he uses tracking stocks when a direct spinoff of the underlying business isn’t possible for tax and other reasons. Malone has set up trackers for companies controlled by Liberty, notably Liberty Formula One, which holds the auto racing business; Liberty SiriusXM, which owns an 83% interest in Sirius XM, the satellite radio operator; and Liberty Live, which owns a 30% stake in Live Nation Entertainment. Tracking stocks offer investors a play on a company’s financial performance without direct control. They are rare outside Malone’s world, and even he recognizes how unpopular they can be: His goal is to spin off companies as soon as practicable and end their tracking-stock status.
The Malone playbook often involves putting considerable debt on companies to maximize shareholder returns, while favoring stock buybacks over dividends. These strategies work well if asset values rise but backfire if they decline—as has been the case with Charter, which is more leveraged than Comcast. Higher interest rates can also make these strategies less effective.
TV Troubles
Some of the legacy media businesses Malone controls or has stakes in are in a tough spot. Cable providers like Charter have been pressured by slowing broadband subscriber growth and cord-cutting. Even satellite radio operator Sirius XM has felt the pinch. Malone-controlled Liberty Global, meanwhile, has struggled amid competitive conditions in European cable and telecommunications—its shares, at some $19, are down by a third over the past five years.
It has been a similar story for investors in Malone’s Liberty Latin America, which offers cable, broadband, and telecommunication services in Puerto Rico and over 20 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. Its shares, around $10, are off more by than a third during the past five years.
Malone is also a small but influential investor in Warner Bros. Discovery. He is a director of the company and close to CEO David Zaslav. Malone helped create the media company in 2022 when Discovery, in which he held a key stake, merged with AT&T’s WarnerMedia. That deal has been a disaster due to declining cable viewership, advertising softness, and leverage—the company has $40 billion in net debt. The stock is down over 65% since the deal closed, to $8.50 a share.
Another company in Malone’s sphere of influence is Qurate Retail, owner of home-shopping networks HSN and QVC. Qurate, controlled by Maffei, has seen its stock fall 90% in recent years due to erosion in the business and the acquisition of Zulily, an online retail site, that was sold in 2023. The drop also reflects the company’s high leverage and concerns about home shopping amid declining TV viewership. Qurate’s equity market value is just over $300 million, against more than $6 billion in net debt plus preferred stock. There are signs, perhaps, of a turnaround in the business, though the stock, at a recent 72 cents, is a speculative inevstment. “If the recent trends of lower customer attrition and higher gross margins are sustainable, I expect investors will reconsider their view that Qurate’s business is a melting ice cube and instead focus on the company’s significant free cash flow generation and revalue the stock much higher,” says private investor Carney Hawks, a former partner at Brigade Capital Management.
Sirius Issues
Malone’s dealmaking could benefit investors. In December 2023, Liberty reached a deal to merge Liberty SiriusXM and Sirius XM. The merger, set to close this quarter, fulfills a long-sought goal of Malone to simplify the corporate structure and eliminate what had been a 35% discount on the tracking stock to the value of its Sirius stake.
Shares of Sirius, home to Howard Stern, have been pressured after a larger-than-expected drop in its paid satellite radio subscribers in the first quarter. It also has an aging base of auto subscribers, its most important customer base. Buffett, 93, is a big fan of the service and of the Siriusly Sinatra channel. Maffei has acknowledged in-car audio competition, and that the company needs to do a better job of attracting a younger audience. “This was originally built for 40-year old males,” he said, noting they are now 60. “We need to make sure that new 40-year old males are finding our stuff attractive.”
While Maffei said in May that results “will get better as we go through the year,” the stock’s recent rally, likely driven by a short squeeze, has it trading for about nine times projected 2024 earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization, or Ebitda, and 12 times estimated 2024 earnings, with a 2.7% dividend yield.
The best way to play Sirius XM is through Liberty Sirius. The tracking stock trades at a 25% discount to the current value of the transaction, and that gap should narrow by the time the deal closes in early September. Liberty Sirius holders are due to get 0.83 Sirius shares for each of their shares after a 1-to-10 reverse stock split on Sirius XM. That’s now worth over $30, against the current Liberty Sirius price of under $23.
Berkshire Hathaway is the largest holder of Liberty SiriusXM, at more than 30%, or $2.5 billion, having boosted its stake by 50% this year. The investment is rumored to have been initiated by Ted Weschler, one of two Berkshire investment managers (with Todd Combs) who together run about 10% of Berkshire’s $400 billion equity portfolio, and often make investment decisions independent of Buffett.
Endgame for Liberty Broadband
Chris Marangi, a senior portfolio manager at Gamco Investors, and others see investment opportunities in the Malone empire. A similar strategy to Sirius could be applied to Charter and Liberty Broadband, which trades at a 35% discount to the value of its 26% stake in Charter, which was worth about $13 billion as of Thursday. (Liberty Broadband also owns an Alaskan cable-TV business valued at more than $2 billion and holds nearly $4 billion in debt.) The nonvoting shares traded around $55, and Barron’s estimates the asset value at about $90 a share (Charter stock was up 17% after reporting earnings on Friday).
“Everybody knows the endgame is to combine with Charter,” says Marangi. “There is no tax or other barrier to combining the two companies. The question is when.”
The nonvoting shares trade at $43, which values the company at about $2.7 billion, but Marangi values the stock in the mid to high $50s, based on a team valuation of at least $3 billion and the value of the real estate.
The best way to close the gap between where the stock trades and what the team is worth would be to sell the company, which many analysts and investors think Malone is poised to do in the next year. “The Braves are a well-run organization,” Joyce says. “They have one of the highest levels of fan engagement in baseball. It’s free to be acquired by a billionaire who wants a trophy asset.”
Tax expert Robert Willens sees no impediment from a tax standpoint to a sale, and Maffei did nothing to play down the possibility when asked about it in May. “We’re always trying to be good stewards of shareholder value, and we’ll see what gets presented or not,” he said.
Formula One doesn’t need a sale for the investment to pay off, even if a deal is always a possibility. Liberty bought the business in 2016 and has since significantly boosted profitability. Analysts think there is more to come from greater sponsorships and more lucrative TV rights. The sport’s popularity has increased particularly in the U.S., due in part to the Netflix reality show Drive to Survive. A new race in Las Vegas has also generated buzz.
“This is a rare asset, a global sport,” says Pivotal’s Wlodarczak.
While a tracking stock, Formula One doesn’t carry a tracker discount. Its shares have gained 26% this year, and its deal to buy motorcycle racing circuit MotoGP could offer another growth opportunity. The voting A shares, which trade at a discount to the nonvoting stock, fetch around $73, or almost 25 times projected 2025 free cash flow of about $3 a share.
“Free cash flow is just starting to take off,” says Wlodarczak, who says investors can buy and hold Formula One. He thinks it will ultimately be sold and that Liberty could get about $30 billion for the franchise, or more than $100 per share, up nearly 40% from Thursday’s close.