TheChek News Flow

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Nikkei +0,28% Hang Seng closed CSI Closed Shanghai Closed Shenzen Closed

Eur$ 1.1240 CNH 6,3679 CNY 6,3612 JPY 115 GBP 1,3454 CHF 0,9253 RUB 77,0887 TRY 13,3592 WTI$ 88,45 Gold 1802,40 BTC 38,460 ETH 2,750

S&P -0,25% Nasdaq -0,20% EuroStoxx +1,01% FTSE +0,48% Dax +0,82% SMI +0,23%

Macro :

- The 60/40 Portfolio Has Worst Loss Since March 2020 on Fed Shift

- OPEC+ Expected to Ratify Supply Hike While Struggling to Deliver

Keep an eye on :

- BAS GY : Wintershall Dea Co-Owner Opposes BASF’s ‘Exclusive Focus’ on IPO

- BPOST BB : Bpost Names Former Finance Chief De Romree to Head U.S. Business

- ALCAR FP : Carmat Expects Aeson Artificial Heart Implants to Resume in Oct.

- DAI GY : Mercedes, Geely’s $5 Billion Smart JV Is Said to Seek Funding

- EL FP : EssilorLuxottica to Buy Back as Many as 1.5M Shares

- HEI GY : HeidelbergCement Prelim 4Q Revenue About EU4.7B, Est. EU4.55B

- ELIS FP : Elis Sees FY Ebitda Margin 34.5%, Saw Above 34.5%

- HLAG GY : Hapag-Lloyd Prelim FY Ebitda Above EU10.9B

- IHG LN : InterContinental to Add 50 Hotels to Luxury Portfolio in 2022

- LUNE SS : Lundin Energy 4Q Ebitda Beats Ests; Sverdrup Firmly on Track

- NSKOG NO : Norske Skog to Sell Nature’s Flame Pellets Company for NZD47.8m

- NTS NO : NTS Shareholders Drop Bid for Company After Mowi’s Higher Offer

- PMAG AV : Pierer Mobility Sees 2022 Ebit Margin 8% to 10%

- VAC FP : Pierre & Vacances Extends Exclusivity Agreement With Investors

- RNO FP : French New Car Registrations Fall 18.6% in Jan.: PFA

- RKET GY : Rocket Internet to Buy Back up to 26.6% of Share Capital

- SIGN SW : SIG to Buy Scholle IPN for EU1.05 Billion

- SIGN SW : SIG Combibloc Prelim FY Revenue Meets Estimates

- WAF GY : Siltronic Says GlobalWafers Won’t Complete $5 Billion Takeover

- SW FP : Sodexo Founder, Chairman Emeritus Pierre Bellon Dies

- STLN FP : French New Car Registrations Fall 18.6% in Jan.: PFA

- TEL2B SS : Tele2 4Q Adjusted Ebitda Misses Estimates

- TUI1 GY : TUI, Hansainvest Start Global Hotel Fund With Target of EU500M

- UBI FP : Sony Interactive to Buy Bungie for $3.6 Billion: M&A Snapshot

- UBSG SW : UBS Group 4Q Net Income Beats Estimates

- UBSG SW : UBS Sees Higher Client Activity Levels in 1Q vs 4Q

- VIE FP : Veolia Announces Completion of Sale of New Suez to Consortium

* Barry Callebaut Raised to Add at Baader Helvea

Media company says price paid for viral word game is in low-seven figures

The New York Times NYT 3.38% said it bought Wordle, the word game that has become an online phenomenon.

The media company said it paid a price in the low-seven figures. The game will move from its current website to the New York Times site and apps, but the company declined to say when that would happen.

Wordle went viral this year, with millions of people playing the puzzle daily, according to the New York Times. Only 90 people played it on Nov. 1.

The once-a-day game flooded social-media feeds with green and yellow squares and captured the imaginations of people across generations. It sparked short-lived copycat versions and even prompted the creation of a Twitter bot that spoiled results—which the social-media company ultimately banned.

Josh Wardle, the software engineer who created Wordle, said he made a prototype in 2013 and dusted it off during the Covid-19 pandemic for his partner, who liked word games.

It started to spread last month after Mr. Wardle made it easy to share results on Twitter and Facebook. Jimmy Fallon, the host of “The Tonight Show,” frequently tweeted his results to his 51.4 million followers.

The game has also appeared in a “Saturday Night Live” sketch, and the New Yorker turned it into a cartoon.

Mr. Wardle said in a tweet Monday that the game had become bigger than he imagined and that he would be working with the New York Times to move the game to its site.

“It has been incredible to watch a game bring so much joy to so many, and I feel so grateful for the personal stories some of you have shared with me – from Wordle uniting distant family members, to provoking friendly rivalries, to supporting medical recoveries,” Mr. Wardle said in a statement. “On the flip side, I’d be lying if I said this hasn’t been a little overwhelming. After all, I am just one person, and it is important to me that, as Wordle grows, it continues to provide a great experience to everyone.”

Mr. Wardle didn’t respond to a request for comment.

For now, the New York Times said Wordle would be free to play for new and existing players.

“We don’t have set plans for the game’s future,” said Jordan Cohen, a spokesman for the Times. “At this time, we’re focused on creating added value to our existing audience, while also introducing our existing games to an all new audience that has demonstrated their love for word games.”

No changes will be made to the gameplay, in which players have six guesses to figure out a secret five-letter word.

There is plenty of debate among fans on the best way to play. Mr. Wardle himself has said he doesn’t know the best strategy. “You’re asking the wrong person,” he said earlier this month. “I’m very bad at it.”

The popularity of the game sparked copycats to flood Apple Inc. ’s App store with Wordle look-alikes, forcing Apple to delete them earlier this month. Wordle itself reminded people of games they played years ago, like Mastermind and Jotto, with some Wordle fans inspired to dig through their closets to play them again.

The acquisition of Wordle comes after the Times earlier this month agreed to acquire sports-media company the Athletic for $550 million, as the publisher looks to draw in young readers and expand its subscription offerings.

Games have become a driver of subscription growth for the Times, beyond its core news products.

The Times said it didn’t currently have plans to sell ads in Wordle. Mr. Wardle kept Wordle ad free. And there was no app—users had to return to a website each day to play the game.

The Times charges $5 a month for access to its games, including its flagship crossword puzzle, Spelling Bee, Letter Boxed, Tiles and Vertex. The company said that its games were played more than 500 million times in 2021 and that it reached one million games subscriptions in December.

In the third quarter, the Times’s net profit rose 63% compared with the previous year as it signed up 455,000 new digital subscribers and enjoyed a strong advertising-sales performance.

Activist likely to push for more urgency in shaking up FTSE 100 group’s sprawling international portfolio

A company can be a conglomerate, it turns out, without ever straying from its sector.

Cevian Capital, the activist best known for taking on sprawling diversified businesses, has built a stake in European mobile group Vodafone, and is expected to call for a board overhaul and a serious rethink of its vast portfolio of assets.

Just as with its position in insurer Aviva last year, the issue here seems less conglomeration per se, and more complexity and cost, along with the greatly increased chances that crummy management and chronic underperformance follow suit.

The latter is undoubtedly true at Vodafone. The FTSE 100 group has lagged the European telecoms index be it over two, five or 10 years. The stock has fallen about 20 per cent under current boss Nick Read, who took the top job in 2018. It trades at a valuation discount to the sector.

Cevian has yet to set out its thinking (or indeed say how much it owns in the company). But the implications of what has been reported are that the activist sees few, if any, benefits in the common ownership of international telecoms assets — which, when you think about it, has always been rather the point of Vodafone.

Still, the torching of value in European telecoms markets in recent years has convinced other investors — and lately perhaps even Vodafone’s management — that what you’ve got in a market is more important than how many you’re in. Since investment started in 4G, mobile data usage per consumer has grown 100-fold at enhanced speeds in the European market, while the price per gigabyte has fallen 90 per cent.

It’s hard to eke out growth when customers always get more for less, or attract investment into an industry with that reputation. And Read’s presentation at the interim results last November acknowledged that on two fronts: through a renewed commitment to in-market consolidation in Europe and a willingness to shed businesses that may be better valued elsewhere, as shown when it floated its mast company Vantage Towers in Frankfurt last year.

It’s not clear whether Read’s comments were a coincidence or related to Cevian’s arrival on the scene. Either way, the activist is unlikely to have bought in unless it saw scope to move at speed and inject a greater sense of urgency into the response.

First, if Cevian is asking for changes to Vodafone’s board, then it has a point. The collection of City grandees and serial non-executives with backgrounds in beer, banking, airlines and more is almost bizarrely underpowered in telecoms experience. Former EE chief executive Olaf Swantee joined last year, only to leave six months later for reasons that weren’t entirely clear. A tougher look at the company’s unwieldy portfolio requires a more expert boardroom.

Second, Read will be under pressure to show he can improve performance at Vodafone’s ailing operations, while quickly focusing resources and attention on assets with potential. The boss has been cutting costs. But his standing in the market hasn’t recovered from his pledge that the dividend was safe in 2018, only to cut it months later. A move to increase investment last year, despite Vodafone’s high debt levels, again rattled investors.

Third, and most challenging, will be to act meaningfully on murmurings of consolidation or simplification. Vodafone still has various odds and ends that could leave its portfolio, which is sufficiently complex that it’s easy to forget that European consumer, mobile-only markets (which everyone hates) comprise only about a quarter of its revenues, according to Numis. The rest is converged fixed-mobile markets, business services or emerging markets, largely through Vodacom in Africa.

The trouble is that the group has one obvious star market, Germany. And tackling the rest (such as Spain, Italy and the UK, most obviously) will require testing the unproven appetite of regulators for mobile consolidation deals, which are squarely designed to raise prices and improve returns, or forging partnerships with fibre builders and network owners or in some instances both — all while showing a willingness to get out where those things aren’t possible.

Cevian has a reputation for bedding in and working with management over many years. It will need to.

Snowfalls in the Cyclades have provided a once-in-a-childhood treat for local kids