TheChek News Flow

* Genmab Raised to Buy at NYKREDIT; PT 2,600 kroner

* Grenergy Renovables PT Raised to 60 euros from 50 euros at RBC

* Micron PT Raised to $71.50 from $58.50 at Morgan Stanley

* Rightmove Raised to Buy at Peel Hunt

Asian stocks swung to a loss and US equity futures fell as slowing Chinese industrial profit growth sapped optimism after last week’s equity rally. The yen strengthened against all its Group-of-10 peers. China shares led declines with the Hang Seng China Enterprises Index dropping as much as 1.4%, while benchmarks also fell in Australia and Japan. Rising Treasury yields siphoned some funds away from stocks. Equities trimmed some of last week’s gains amid uncertainty before the next installment of key global economic data this week including euro-zone inflation data, China PMIs and US personal consumption numbers on Thursday, and US, European and Chinese PMIs on Friday. Asian markets had little direction from the US following the holiday shortened post-Thanksgiving session Friday. US stock futures dropped in Asia after the S&P 500 capped a fourth week of gains Friday, when the VIX — Wall Street’s “fear gauge” and a measure of equity volatility — fell to its lowest level since January 2020.  This week, investors will be looking especially closely at Chinese activity data to gauge the health of the world’s second largest economy. Traders will be assessing shadow banking stocks after Chinese authorities said they recently opened criminal investigations into the money management business of Zhongzhi Enterprise Group Co.  Profits at China’s industrial companies climbed at a slower pace in October than the prior month as deflationary pressures persisted, suggesting the economic recovery remains uncertain.  The Hong Kong dollar one-month interbank rate jumped to the highest since 2007 as the supply of cash tightened toward year-end.  Treasury 10-year yields climbed as much as five basis points to 4.51%, the highest in more than a week. The dollar was mixed in Asian trade after Bloomberg’s index of the greenback slipped 0.5% last week. The US currency may “remain heavy” for most of the week as fund managers adjust hedges and cash heads into developing economies, Commonwealth Bank of Australia strategists including Joseph Capurso wrote in a note to clients. “The backdrop of low volatility and expectations for a soft landing in the US economy supports portfolio capital flows into emerging markets,” they said. In earnings due this week, Crowdstrike Holdings Inc. will underscore how businesses are prioritizing cybersecurity after recent high-profile corporate hacks, while Salesforce Inc. and Dell Technologies Inc. are expected to post slower sales growth as overall corporate expenditure tightens. Traders will also be keeping an eye on gold and oil after Israel and Hamas signaled that a temporary cease-fire in Gaza could be extended beyond Monday to allow for the release of more hostages and prisoners. Meantime, OPEC+ looks close to resolving a dispute over output quotas that forced the group to postpone a pivotal meeting at the weekend. Oil steadied after notching a three-day drop.

Nikkei -0.53% Hang Seng -0.30% CSI -0.65% Shanghai -0.24% Shenzen -0.33%

Eur$ 1.0946 CNH 7.1618 CNY 7.1537 JPY 149.06 GBP 1.2606 CHF 0.8821 RUB 89.1241 TRY 28.8960 WTI$ 74.78 -1.02% Gold 2,013 +0.62% BTC 37,370 -0.68% ETH 2,050 -1.13%

S&P -0.28% Nasdaq -0.41% EuroStoxx -0.20% FTSE -0.34% Dax -0.17% SMI -0.02%

Macro :

- Bearish Conviction on Oil Grows as OPEC+ in Dispute Over Cut

- ‘Lighten Up’ on Asia Stocks, Buy US Peers: AllianceBernstein

- SNB Is Evaluating Banks’ Reserve Requirements, Jordan Tells NZZ

- Germany faces threat of creeping deindustrialisation, warns steel boss

- Jordan Explores Alternatives to Israeli Gas Amid Supply Concerns

Keep an eye on :

- AIR FP : Hydrogen-electric aircraft start-up secures UK Infrastructure Bank backing

- ARYN SW : Aryzta Organic Revenue Growth 6.5% in Quarter Ended Oct. 28

- ASRNL NA : ASR Nederland Confirms It Received Non-Binding Offers for Knab

- BAYN GY : Bayer chief blames thin drug pipeline on ‘years of under-investment’

- CCI US : Elliott Renews Push for Change at Big Wireless-Tower Owner -- WSJ

- CO FP : Casino Buys GPA’s 34% Stake in Cnova for €10m, Casino Says Looking at Interest in Sale of Further Stores

- BN FP : EU to sanction Russian involved in Danone/Carlsberg grab

- ELE SM : Brookfield Bids for Stake in Endesa Renewable Assets: Expansion

- ENGI FP : ‘We are experiencing an excess of subsidies’, says president of Engie Brasil

- EURN NA : Seven EU Countries Call for Rethink on Ship Emissions Charge: FT

- FIA1S FH : Finnair Says EU400m Finnish Loan Repaid in Full With Interest

- FNAC FP : Fnac Darty, Currys Services a Win-Win for Margin, Consumers, ESG

- HNSA SS : Hansa Biopharma CFO Donato Spota Leaves Company

- HMB SS : H&M to Pay Suppliers More as Bangladesh Wages Rise

- BAER SW : Julius Baer Confirms CHF606M Exposure to European Conglomerate

- NOVOB DC : Novo Nordisk In Talks For Flexible Wegovy Pricing: FT

- P911 GY : Porsche Macan EU Sales Stop in 2025 Knocks 2% Off Ebitda

- SZA GY : Salzgitter CEO Says Germany at Risk of Deindustrialization Amid Higher Energy Costs

- SAN FP : Sanofi’s Dupixent Shows Strong Efficacy in Second Lung Trial

- SKAB SS : Skanska Builds Highway in Norway for NOK1.3b

- STATT NO : Sparebank 1 Ostfold Akershus Raised to Buy at Pareto Securities

- THG LN : Adore Beauty Rejects Conditional Takeover Bid From THG

- TIM IM : TIM Launches NetCo Unit in View of Fibercop Closing With KKR

- TIT IM : Open Fiber Lenders Pick Adviser Amid €2 Billion Fund Gap (1)

- UBSN SW : SNB Is Evaluating Banks’ Reserve Requirements, Jordan Tells NZZ

Costs for renewables have plummeted and growth is exceeding expectations

There is no shortage of bad green-energy news. Automakers are fretting about electric-vehicle growth, higher interest rates are smashing financial plans, permitting for big projects still takes forever and offshore wind is a mess.

But for every setback, there is a Sun Streams. This cluster of solar farms will cover more than 13 square miles of desert west of Phoenix. By 2025, it will provide enough electricity for roughly 300,000 homes, bringing Arizona’s largest utility closer to its goal of a zero-carbon grid.

The scale of the development, mostly owned by renewables company Longroad Energy, is part of a staggering surge in renewable energy. Driven by falling costs and better technology, growth in renewables has consistently exceeded expectations.

The big annual United Nations climate summit starts later this week in Dubai. What has become clear after years of talking is that few countries or businesses or people are willing to sacrifice much to limit climate change. The explosion of clean energy offers hope for cutting fossil-fuel use.

“We are coming short on many dimensions, and we have an enormous amount of work to do,” said Rich Lesser, global chair of Boston Consulting Group. “But, equally important, our ability to make progress on the technology side has dramatically exceeded our expectations.”

In 2009, the International Energy Agency predicted that solar power would remain too expensive to compete on the grid. It continued to underestimate the growth of renewable energy and EVs. Last year, more than four-fifths of the world’s new power capacity was renewables, according to the International Renewable Energy Agency.

Subsidies drove early growth in wind and solar, then technology refinements and large-scale manufacturing made them cheap. Lithium-ion batteries, which power cars and store electricity on the grid, plunged in price, too. Sun Streams will have enough batteries to power about 40,000 Teslas.

Money is continuing to flow into these projects despite green energy’s headwinds. Longroad, the developer, said on Monday it raised $600 million of debt finance to expand its portfolio in a deal led by Apterra Infrastructure Capital, an affiliate of Apollo Global Management.

Research firm Rystad Energy estimates that we are on course to burn enough oil, gas and coal to heat the planet by between 1.6 degrees and 1.9 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels, depending on how urgently governments act to speed up the transition.

That is rosier than many other forecasts, though it exceeds the international target of 1.5 degrees that is seen as a comparatively safe limit.

Rystad’s bullishness comes from the sun. Chief Executive Jarand Rystad said the spread of solar panels is compensating for lagging sectors such as offshore wind, which has been hobbled by cost overruns and snarled supply chains.

BloombergNEF expects solar panels installed this year to add nearly 400 gigawatts of generating capacity. That is 4.5% of the generating capacity of the world’s power plants in 2022. On the current trajectory, transition bulls argue, it is a matter of when renewables erode fossil-fuel use, not if.

The IEA expects demand for coal, gas and oil to peak this decade. To be sure, many fossil-fuel-producing companies and countries are betting on a long future for their products, and peak-oil talk has been wrong before.

But it is also easy to underestimate the pace of change. Projections by the U.S. Energy Information Administration didn’t foresee how quickly renewable energy and natural gas would erode U.S. coal consumption.

Much depends on China, where the growth of wind and solar coincides with new coal projects. Optimists say coal plants will act as backup in a system increasingly dominated by renewables. China leads the world in long-duration battery projects, according to BloombergNEF.

Jarand Rystad says fossil-fuel power generation in China is close to a peak. “The tipping point is very soon,” he said.

The average cost of solar power fell nearly 90% between 2009 and 2023, with onshore wind declining by two-thirds, according to BloombergNEF. If costs continue to fall as installations increase, “the policy and finance spheres should prepare for a rapid disruptive transition,” wrote academics in the journal Nature Communications last month.

Similar declines are starting to reshape transportation. EV costs are falling, and infrastructure is improving. The total cost of ownership of small and midsize EVs is now cheaper than gasoline-powered vehicles in China and Europe and could hit that point in the U.S. next year, according to the Economics of Energy Innovation and System Transition project led by the University of Exeter.

In this view, renewables, batteries and EVs will become more popular as they get cheaper and better. Emerging green-energy technologies such as hydrogen, which is benefiting from government support and a surge in private investment, could follow the same path.

“We have…underestimated sometimes inflection cost curves, and how quickly adoption happens,” said Kyung-Ah Park, head of ESG investment management and managing director of sustainability at Temasek, the Singapore state investment company with a portfolio valued above $280 billion. “I think you’re going to see more of that,” she added, saying other technologies will benefit from policy tailwinds.

Investors including Temasek put up 1.5 billion euros, or about $1.64 billion, for a low-carbon steel plant in Sweden in September as more money flows into decarbonizing industrial processes. H2 Green Steel will replace coal with hydrogen, produced using renewable electricity. Porsche plans to use H2’s steel in its cars.

Investors are funding startups trying to produce better electrolyzers—machines that use electricity to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. Companies are locking in future supplies of hydrogen. Fertilizer producer OCI Global is securing green hydrogen to make ammonia, oil major TotalEnergies plans to use it in refineries, and shipping giant Maersk is ordering low-emissions methanol fuel, some of which will be made using green hydrogen.

At a recent event in London, Bill Gates said innovation in carbon-intensive industries such as steel and cement has far exceeded his expectations since he launched his Breakthrough Energy initiative to fund climate tech in 2015.

Thorny emissions problems now have competing possible solutions. One Breakthrough-backed startup, Boston Metal, recently raised $262 million to make green steel via a method that uses electricity rather than hydrogen. Two others, Rondo Energy and Antora Energy, are manufacturing thermal batteries that store electricity as heat—a way to power high-temperature processes while using up surplus renewable power.

“The fact that solar and wind costs have come down so dramatically has opened up a whole new set of options,” said Dolf Gielen, an energy economist at the World Bank.

Activist has amassed stake of more than $2 billion in Crown Castle

Elliott Investment Management plans to push for changes at Crown Castle CCI 0.47%increase; green up pointing triangle after the activist failed to gain traction when it first took a stake in the big owner of wireless towers.

Elliott has amassed a stake of more than $2 billion in Crown Castle, which has a market value of nearly $45 billion, and plans to engage with the company about ways to boost its shares, according to people familiar with the matter.

Should Elliott nominate a slate of director candidates ahead of Crown Castle’s annual shareholder meeting in the spring, the window to do so runs from Jan. 18 through Feb. 17, according to proxy materials.

Crown Castle rents out its towers to major wireless carriers including T-Mobile, AT&T and Verizon Wireless under long-term deals. A real-estate investment trust, it is based in Houston and owns thousands of miles of fiber-optic cable used for transporting data and powering its customers’ networks. The fiber network supports so-called small cells that deliver bandwidth much closer to customers than its bigger towers.

Elliott said in July 2020 that it controlled a $1 billion economic interest in Crown Castle as it pressured the company to overhaul its approach to the fiber business, which the hedge fund said at the time was weighing on the company’s market value despite billions in investment in recent years. Elliott called Crown Castle’s fiber spending “undisciplined” and said that it diluted the company’s return on invested capital.

Elliott urged Crown Castle to focus on higher-return opportunities and pushed the company to address its “long-tenured” board.

Crown Castle responded by implementing a mandatory board-retirement policy and refreshing its director slate. It said it planned to stay the course with regard to its business strategy and has since continued to invest heavily in fiber.

Shares of Crown Castle hit a record high of around $209 in January of 2022, but higher interest rates and reduced 5G spending by major carriers have since crimped the company’s performance. Chief Executive Jay Brown said in October that the company expected site-rental revenue to fall next year.

The company has since lost nearly half of its value from the 2022 high, with the stock closing Friday at $103.58. Year-to-date, shares of Crown are down almost 24%.

Shares of competitor tower-owners American Tower and SBA Communications are down about 6% and 16%, respectively this year. The S&P 500 index, meanwhile, has risen by nearly 19%.

Elliott is known for taking on tech companies and others and forcing changes that include sales and executive shake-ups. One of the biggest and busiest activists, it has recently pursued campaigns at companies including Salesforce, NRG Energy and Goodyear Tire & Rubber. The latter two have recently announced plans for new CEOs.

Anti-deforestation law passed in June restricts non-compliant stocks from being sold in the bloc

Hundreds of thousands of tonnes of coffee and cocoa stored in EU warehouses risk being destroyed as an unforeseen consequence of the bloc’s deforestation law, which came into force in June this year.

The law aims to ban products including coffee, cocoa, palm oil and rubber that have been grown in areas of deforestation from being sold within the bloc.

But both Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), one of the main coffee and cocoa futures trading venues, and the International Trade Centre, a joint agency of the UN and World Trade Organization, have warned that coffee and cocoa produced and stored in the EU during a transition period that lasts until December 2024 could be deemed non-compliant and have to be sold outside the bloc or destroyed.

Some 70 per cent of the world’s cocoa comes from Ivory Coast and Ghana, where deforestation and child labour are rife. The world’s top coffee producers are Brazil, Vietnam, Colombia and Indonesia.

“If it lands on the market within the transition period that’s fine. But if it is held and released after the end of the transitional year, it may not be,” said Pamela Coke-Hamilton, executive director of the International Trade Centre. “It could be extremely difficult . . .[the goods] won’t be allowed in because [producers] wouldn’t have . . . done anything that would make it compliant with the new regulations.”

That means that producers would probably send it elsewhere “or dump it”, she said.

ICE warned that confusion over stored goods “will impact the industry’s ability to trade products in a frictionless way, and manage risk responsibly and effectively”.

This could cause disruptions, affecting “the entire supply chain from farmer to consumer”, ICE said, adding that clear guidance from Brussels and national authorities “will be a critical step” to prevent this.

In a paper outlining the issue, ICE said that almost 200,000 metric tons of cocoa and 150,000 metric tons of coffee beans were held in ICE-licensed warehouses in ports across Europe in the summer.

The EU rules are seen as a crucial part of its flagship Green Deal environmental law and aim to prevent the bloc’s consumption from inflicting more damage on countries outside of its borders.

But it has been widely contested by developing nations that argue it is making it expensive and punitive to trade with EU countries.

The regulation requires that importers provide geolocation data for their goods to prove that they have not come from areas affected by deforestation. Goods will be checked according to how at risk of deforestation the country of origin is considered to be.

Coffee and cocoa are particularly impacted because they are not immediately cleared through customs on arrival in the EU and can spend more than 18 months — the length of the transition period set out in the deforestation law — in bonded warehouses.

For the chocolate maker Barry Callebaut “the financial risk would be very significant”, said Nicolas Mounard, the company’s sustainability and farming director. The EU is the largest market for Barry Callebaut, the world’s largest chocolate manufacturer, which processes about 20 per cent of the world’s cocoa crop each year.

“Take 18 months of stock for us and the EU’s weight in our geographical mix and it’s a very, very significant risk,” Mounard said. In the implementation of the rules “that’s the only point that really concerns us at the moment, but it’s a huge one”.

Matthijs de Meer, EU affairs manager at the European Cocoa Association, said that the cocoa industry was reliant on forward-buying: “The chocolate eggs consumed during Easter 2025 are the result of current harvests.”

If the European Commission and member states do not clarify the status of cocoa beans produced during the transition period soon, “there is a huge potential impact for cocoa farmers, EU consumers and the industry”, he added. The value of “significant amounts of cocoa stocks” could be reduced “to almost nothing, creating food waste, and threatening access to the EU market for over 3mn cocoa farmers”.

The commission is in discussion with member states to find a solution for stored crops imported during the transition period. It declined to comment on the negotiations.

Anglo-US venture ZeroAvia raises $116mn from several investors

Aviation start-up ZeroAvia has secured the backing of the UK’s state-owned infrastructure investment bank in its latest fundraising round to help it develop a hydrogen-electric engine for zero-emission flight. 

ZeroAvia said it had raised $116mn from several investors, including $40mn from the UK Infrastructure Bank. The equity investment makes the bank, which was set up two years ago to draw private financing into climate projects, one of ZeroAvia’s top five investors alongside Bill Gates’s energy innovation fund, Breakthrough Energy Ventures. 

Airbus, Barclays Sustainable Impact Capital Capital and Saudi Arabia’s Neom Investment Fund also took part in the latest fundraising. 

The money will help the Anglo-US start-up, which was founded by chief executive Val Miftakhov in 2017, to develop its engines and secure their certification by UK regulators by the end of 2025. Two-thirds of ZeroAvia’s 150 staff are in the UK, although the business is based in California. 

The company initially plans to install its hydrogen-fuel cell engines on existing airframes to simplify getting regulatory approval and reduce the time to market. It hopes to have a nine to 19-seat aircraft capable of flying up to 300 miles ready for commercial flights by 2025, with a 40 to 80-seat aircraft able to fly up to 700 miles entering service by 2027.

The company is expected to announce shortly the names of airlines that have agreed to fly with the engines. It completed a test flight of a propeller plane partially powered by hydrogen fuel cells in January this year.

With the completion of the fundraising, ZeroAvia has now raised more than $250mn in equity investments and grants since it was launched. The company has previously benefited from UK government support through the Aerospace Technology Institute which allocates state funding for innovation in the sector. 

The investment from the UKIB underlines the growing interest among governments in hydrogen as a potential to help aviation reduce its carbon footprint. 

Georgy Egorov, chief financial officer of ZeroAvia, said the support from the UKIB was a “big validation” of its technology, adding that the company was “working full throttle” on its plans.

While differences remain about the speed at which the industry can make hydrogen flight a reality, there is a growing consensus that it will have a role to play in powering short to medium-haul aircraft. Many industry executives in the UK, however, believe more urgency is needed to drive co-ordination across sectors to deliver the necessary infrastructure for a net zero economy.

“Aviation and hydrogen are sectors that need significant private investment to get to net zero,” said Ian Brown, head of banking and investments at the UKIB.

“By providing confidence to investors, our equity has helped to crowd in the private investment needed for the continued development of this cutting-edge technology.”

ZeroAvia is among a number of aviation industry start-ups tapping investors for funding with the promise of zero-emissions flying.

Air taxi start-up Vertical Aerospace has repeated a warning to investors that it needs to raise more money by the end of the third quarter of next year.

The Bristol-based group, founded by entrepreneur Stephen Fitzpatrick and is developing an electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) vehicle, told shareholders in a third-quarter update that it remained “focused on raising new funds in 2023, with our current cash runway taking us towards the end of Q3 2024”.

Vertical said it had cash and cash equivalents totalling £74mn at the end of the quarter. Shares in the company, which listed on the New York Stock Exchange through a special purpose vehicle in December 2021, have fallen more than 97 per cent, valuing it at $167mn. 

Vertical declined to comment.

Thom Browne will unveil a glassware collection Monday made by storied French crystal maker Baccarat.

Just about every evening at 6 p.m., Thom Browne has a glass of Champagne in a crystal Baccarat whiskey glass from his personal collection. Adorned with rare treasures like a John Singer Sargent painting and 18th-century English painted settees, the red brick, Manhattan town home he shares with his life partner, the museum curator Andrew Bolton, sets the perfect Georgian setting for cocktail hour.

Speaking from another aristocratic setting and under the chandelier-studded, vaulted ceilings of Palazzo Serbelloni in Milan, Browne told WWD that his brand and the Lorraine, France-based crystal maker on Monday will unveil a collection that includes coupes, wine glasses, tumblers and a whiskey carafe.

The collection will be launched on Thom Browne’s global e-commerce and digital channels.

The starting point for the collection was a 1925 yacht glass that Baccarat designer Georges Chevalier envisaged for the International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts. Characterized by its sturdy square base, the yacht glass gained popularity for decades to come among various influential figures, notably King Charles III, formerly the Prince of Wales, who chose it to adorn the table of his yacht.

“We didn’t go into it saying we want to get into the crystal business. We want to make a beautiful collection that can live on and is timelessly designed. We want this to live forever and be in our stores forever,” Browne said, pointing to the nautical-spirited lines and Ionic column base of the glass that kept it from tumbling over while at sea.

The collection, he explained, is like a private glimpse into his everyday life, expressing his affection for summers in Newport, R.I., and affinity for storied chapters in American history — from the Gilded to the Golden Age.

The designer, who this year launched a couture collection and also serves as the chairman of the Council of Fashion Designers of America, recently celebrated his brand’s 20th anniversary.

In collaboration with Bolton, curator of the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Browne wrote a coffee-table book to commemorate his brand’s 20th anniversary. The 420-page book titled simply “Thom Browne” features 350 color illustrations and was published in October by Phaidon.

When asked if he’s ready to branch out into other categories, the designer said he’s focused on personalized collections with the best companies.

“It [venturing into something new] really comes down to what I use myself. It’s never forced, when it comes to a new business,” he said, referring to the decision he made to venture into the world of kids’ clothing. “It was very easy because I approached it as the same way I do my adult collections and also because everyone was having kids at the time,” he said, laughing.

The Thom Browne and Baccarat collection will be available exclusively through thombrowne.com and select Thom Browne global retail stores; including 100 Hudson Street in New York, and 3 Albemarle Street in London.

When asked who the testimonial might be? Browne responded with a grin, “Me!”

Is it time to declare the Disney brand dead? Only a couple weeks ago the entertainment giant suffered one of its worst box office showings ever with the failure of The Marvels, a feminist driven girl-boss movie which was widely applauded by social justice advocates but ignored by the vast majority of the public. The film is expected to lose $200 million to $300 million once receipts are totaled and marketing costs are accounted for.

In a bizarre attempt at maximum cope, the media is hailing The Marvels as the largest ever theatrical opening by a black female director. When, in fact, the movie is actually the largest box office bomb made by a black female director.

Now, Disney's animated 'The Wish' is set to top that failure, falling well below box office predictions and bringing in only $32 million over a five day period including the once lucrative Thanksgiving weekend.

Numerous reports suggest that Wish is opening to empty theaters across the country. Media spin doctors have attempted to jump ahead of “get woke, go broke” accusations with articles claiming that the movie is not woke, but more “Libertarian” in its messaging. This is, for the most part, a dishonest deflection. The film's producers openly admitted their woke methodology in a number of interviews including their desire to inject Diversity and Inclusion messaging.

While the woke intent is more obscure than previous films, Wish features yet another precocious ethnic teen female (named Asha) banding together with her diverse cast of friends to fight a revolution against the white male patriarchy. The main villain is, of course, a white guy named “King Magnifico” who rules over the kingdom of Rosas using the magical power to grant wishes. However, the King doesn't grant everyone's wish, only some, and those who don't get their wish granted forget their wishes forever.

Asha believes this is unfair and that all people should have have their wishes returned or fulfilled (perhaps a vague nod to the concept of equity in which every person is taught to expect equality of outcome, not just equality of opportunity). When Asha finds a magical power that threatens the King's monopoly, he loses his mind with envy and goes full-bore dark side to keep control.

While this story arc could be interpreted as a criticism of centralized governance, the greater plot is far more socialist in its agenda. The evil King is overthrown by the power of “collective love”, the Queen sides with the revolutionaries and rules in his place and everyone gets access to equal wish fulfillment. It's a woke carnival side show.

Critics also argue that the film is mostly unoriginal, with an endless list of nostalgia references and character ideas stolen from better movies made decades ago. The most common reaction to Wish from theater goers? It's boring. This has been the M.O. of modern Disney for some time now – They dig up the bones of their previous successes and try to reanimate them instead of making something new and imaginative. This is what happens when a company hires creators based on diversity stats rather than talent.

Massive losses have been plaguing Disney month after month. Lightyear and Strange World featured LGBT messaging for children, which did not go over well with audiences. Indiana Jones: Dial of Destiny was another feminist replacement fantasy that bombed horribly. Almost every major Marvel and Star Wars release in theaters and on Disney+ has hit a brick wall in the past couple years, largely due to woke messaging. It's a failstorm of epic proportions.

The spin machine is working overtime to defend Disney's brand. Woke films like Elemental were flops at American theaters but made more money overseas (the movie still failed to break even once marketing costs and the theater cut is added). Wish will probably be handled the same way – A disaster in the US but a “moneymaker” in South Korea or Brazil. And at this stage in the game this is the best that Disney can hope for: Breaking even.

In the meantime, Disney's name is mud in America and for good reason. Rumors are swirling that the company is seeking to “de-wokify” future content, but it may be too little too late for an organization that only two years ago was so aggressive and prideful in their efforts to indoctrinate American youth.

The designer said the material, made from grape stems, “looks, feels and lasts the same as real leather.”

LONDON — Stella McCartney works regularly with a cornucopia of organic materials, from fungi and banana plants to seaweed and rock samphire. Now, she’s adding grape and cork waste to the list, and transforming those materials into bags, and platform shoes.

McCartney has been working with fellow LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton brand Veuve Clicquot on a partnership that turns manually collected grape stems from the Champagne harvest into luxury accessories.

She sent some of those accessories down the runway — with minimal fanfare — during her spring 2024 show during Paris Fashion Week last month. The open-air runway show, which was set up like a street market, featured a selection of bags, while the full collection is due to land on shop floors in March.

McCartney, who also serves as sustainability adviser to LVMH founder, chairman and chief executive officer Bernard Arnault, worked the grape leather into three Frayme bags and a bottle holder containing Veuve Clicquot Yellow Label.

She has also created two Elyse sandal styles, which also feature a platform wedge made from recycled cork waste collected from the Veuve Clicquot cellars in Reims, France.

According to LVMH, the grape material was created in less than 18 months and helps to reduce two great sources of greenhouse gas emissions: leather and winemaking.

The company added the grape stems have been sourced with full traceability from the environmentally-certified Grand Cru vineyard of Bouzy in Champagne, which Madame Clicquot purchased 200 years ago.

Jean-Marc Gallot, CEO of Veuve Clicquot, said the grape leather was the result of a “strong collective effort and our expertise in regenerative agriculture. It fills me with joy, that beyond crafting one of the best Champagnes, our grapes can now also contribute to drive a brighter future in fashion.”

Asked how the collaboration came about, McCartney said she set a challenge for LVMH.

“I’d been looking at cross-industry collaboration within the group, and one day I said to Mr. Arnault, ‘You know I’m putting bags down my runway made from grape skin waste from the Italian wine industry. Give me one of your brands and let me use that waste,’” McCartney said.

She added her brand and the Champagne house “are very aligned in their values, which was a real selling point for me. Not only was Madame Clicquot a pioneering woman in her field, the house has been prioritizing sustainable and circular methods in their processes for many years now, so it felt like the perfect partnership.”

Asked whether there were any challenges working with the grape material, McCartney argued that it looks, feels and lasts the same as real leather.

“You truly cannot tell the difference. It also has the ability to be available at scale, which is something that excites me because I get to create and design great fashion while at the same time I am pushing boundaries. I get to challenge an industry that is really old fashioned and still works with the same five to 10 materials that it’s worked with for the last hundred years,” she said.

“Cork is very sustainable. It’s one of the greenest alternatives out there and is 100 percent natural, renewable and recyclable. As well as producing oxygen, harvested cork trees absorb 3 to 5 times more CO2 than non-harvested trees. To use the waste from the bottles has been amazing,” she said.

According to McCartney and Gallot, the Veuve grapes are grown using regenerative practices, which helps to restore local biodiversity and soil health and to sequester carbon.

Over the past years, Veuve Clicquot has been exploring next-generation materials, creating packaging made from vegetal waste, and making all its gift boxes from hemp, a soil-regenerative and CO2-fixing plant.

McCartney has also been helping to pioneer regenerative agriculture in fashion, having supported a regenerative cotton project in Turkey, in partnership with LVMH.

Vegan alternatives to leather are thought to generate less than half the carbon footprint of animal leather. The partners said that by creating next-generation, biobased material using waste, they are creating “scalable, sustainable solutions that are kinder to animals, and the environment.”

A rush of deep discounts and the growth of flexible payment options were the drivers behind $9.8 billion in online sales in the U.S. on Black Friday — a record figure for the day. According to Adobe Analytics, sales were up by 7.5% on last year’s numbers (you can see those here).

Sales easily surpassed Thanksgiving figures and growth rate, as well as Adobe’s own predictions for the day. On Thursday U.S. consumers spent, $5.6 billion, up 5.5%; the analysts originally predicted sales of $9.6 billion for Black Friday.

Salesforce, which uses different metrics to Adobe and says that it crunches numbers on transactions for some 1.5 billion consumers, also said that Black Friday online sales exceeded its expectations. They totalled $16.4 billion in the U.S. and $70.9 billion globally, and a record 79% of all shopping traffic — both browsing and buying — was carried out on mobile handsets.

Black Friday is a bellwether shopping day, for years seen as the day that the holiday sales period, the most important for retails, kicks off. These figures will provide some surprise holiday cheer to retailers, which have been seeing, overall, sluggish growth. According to figures from the U.S. Census Bureau, retail sales last quarter grew just 2.3% over the same period a year before. E-commerce, as a younger and smaller proportion of that (around 15% of all sales), typically does grow faster and last quarter also grew around 7%.

“Black Friday online sales performance exceeded any retail executive’s expectations,” said Rob Garf, VP and GM of Retail at Salesforce, in a statement. “Retailers stepped up their discounting game and shoppers, in turn, clicked the buy button.”

Adobe works with hundreds of large and small online retailers and says that it bases its calculations on more than 1 trillion visits to U.S. retail sites, the movement of some 100 million SKUs and 18 product categories.

Inflation of just over 3% is definitely down on last year (when it was over 7%) but economic uncertainty does continue to weigh on consumers, so it’s notable that buy now, pay later options, as a complement to other kinds of credit, continued to grow in popularity. Adobe said that orders using BNPL were up by 72% on last year across the week going into Black Friday, and that BNPL revenue as a result of that is up by $79 million for the period.

The big question will be whether retailers can sustain the growth rate over the next several weeks. The next big barometer-style sales day is Cyber Monday, in two days. We’ll provide more updates when those figures come through.

Some other notable details from yesterday:

— Discounts remain a big driver for sales and are coming in as high as 35% off retail price. The name of the game remains buying presents and home electronics.

— Smartphones accounted for $5.3 billion of sales on the day, up a whopping 10.4% on 2022 and representing 54% of all online sales. Adobe predicts that is going to be the norm for the period: mobile sales will actually overtake desktop this holiday season, it said, with more than 51% of sales.

— Perhaps because people are still concerned about spend, they are opting for cheaper “standard” shipping more often than in previous years. (And frankly why get something faster now if it’s for a present for the end of December?) Adobe said 80.5% of all orders used standard shipping.

— Adobe thinks “Cyber Week” (from Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday) will rack up $37.2 billion in U.S. online sales, nearly 17% of all sales for the holiday period. Salesforce is more bullish: it says it will account for 25% of all holiday purchases this year and will total $53 billion globally.

“Black Friday re-asserted its dominance this season with record spend of $9.8 billion driven by new demand for the major sales’ day,” said Vivek Pandya, lead analyst, Adobe Digital Insights, in a statement. “The decline in online prices over the last year has created a favorable environment for consumers with strong discounts this season that are tempting even the most price conscious consumers.”