FT : Bang & Olufsen: cracked record

Bang & Olufsen: cracked record
The Danish group’s chief executive must look harder at his products to get things bangin’ again

Bang and Olufsen’s new chief executive thinks better marketing will turn it round. That is as clear as the sound from one of the Danish group’s luxury stereos. Appointed in October, Kristian Teär unveiled second-quarter sales that were down almost a third. It was the company’s fourth profit warning in a year. Shares opened at levels last seen in the mid-1990s, before bouncing back.

B&O has been here before. Before the financial crisis the company was worth almost $1.5bn, before collapsing to less than $150m. At the start of 2018 it was valued at more than $1bn, compared with just $200m today.

The latest hiccups are unlikely to be the end for B&O. The brand is still powerful and the financial position is better than the share price suggests. Mr Teär, though, must look harder at his products to get things bangin’ again.

B&O considers itself the Ferrari of consumer electronics. That is reflected in its prices. Here, it has got ahead of itself. Its Beovision Harmony television costs almost €20,000. The same LG screen can be bought for a third of that price without the B&O sound system. It's hard to imagine Ferrari selling many cars by slapping badges and body kits on to Alfa Romeos.

Product is ever more important in light of growing competition from the likes of Sonos and Bose. Both have taken market share over the past five years. Sonos of the US doubled to 1 per cent of global sales while Germany’s Bose added almost two percentage points for a total of more than 7 per cent last year, according to Euromonitor. B&O’s market share is tiny. It will get tinier without urgent remedies.

All is not lost. Cash at the end of the second quarter stood at DKr298m ($45m) due to better stock management. By Mr Teär’s bearish predictions, that will halve by year end. If things get worse than expected the balance sheet, with only $10m of debt, can still be brought into play. Bang and Olufsen has a history of bouncing back from the brink. Contrarians should hit the replay button.

FT : Hedge fund bro gonna hedge fund bro

Hedge fund bro gonna hedge fund bro

Posted on Twitter Tuesday -- during FT Alphaville’s Christmas party -- was a video from the back of a New York cab.

Sounds pretty boring, we hear you say. Unless, of course, it’s a seemingly pre-coital Travis Kalanick on a mad one again. (Those truly were the good times, eh?)

Well, not so fast. This time it’s another finance celebrity who’s featuring: Mike Platt, the billionaire founder of hedge fund turned private investment vehicle BlueCrest Capital Management.

Captured after an evening out with his girlfriend, the open-collared trader and Jersey resident describes himself in terms which we’d rather you just saw for yourself:

We’re pretty sure the queasiness Alphaville feels is from the second black velvet at our Christmas party, but after seeing this video, we’re not so sure anymore.

>>> US Gapping down

Gapping down
In reaction to disappointing earnings/guidance:

  • FDX -7.7%

M&A news:

  • FCAU -0.9% (Fiat Chrysler and Peugeot (PEUGF) agree to merge)

Other news:

  • ADRO -14.8% (NVS removes ADU-S100 from its portfolio)
  • FIXX -14% (announces clinical data from Phase 1/2 pheNIX gene therapy trial for PKU)
  • PACB -6.5% (FTC challenges ILMN proposed acquisition of PACB)
  • ANH -6.2% (lowers dividend)
  • CFMS -5.5% (received FDA warning letter that concerns the number of sterilization cycle failures relating to Vaporized Hydrogen Peroxide sterilizers that the Company uses) JNCE -4.7% (enters into $50 mln stock sales agreement)
  • CNST -4.4% (files for ~7.6 mln share common stock shelf offering by selling shareholders )
  • EPZM -3.8% (confirms trading of stock halted; Oncology Drug Advisory Committee to review tazemetostat at 8:00 a.m. ET today for the treatment of patients with metastatic or locally advanced epithelioid sarcoma)
  • GBT -1.4% (entered into $150 mln non-dilutive loan agreement with funds managed by Pharmakon Advisors and manager of the BioPharma Credit funds)
  • QIWI -1.3% (announces resignation of Sergey Solonin as CEO, effective January 15; appoints Boris Kim as next CEO)

Analyst comments:

  • AMC -2.7% (downgraded to Underperform from Neutral at BofA/Merrill)
  • DPZ -1.3% (downgraded to Neutral from Buy at Longbow)
  • HAL -1% (downgraded to Market Perform from Outperform at BMO Capital Markets)

>>> US Gapping down

Gapping down
In reaction to disappointing earnings/guidance:

  • FDX -7.7%

M&A news:

  • FCAU -0.9% (Fiat Chrysler and Peugeot (PEUGF) agree to merge)

Other news:

  • ADRO -14.8% (NVS removes ADU-S100 from its portfolio)
  • FIXX -14% (announces clinical data from Phase 1/2 pheNIX gene therapy trial for PKU)
  • PACB -6.5% (FTC challenges ILMN proposed acquisition of PACB)
  • ANH -6.2% (lowers dividend)
  • CFMS -5.5% (received FDA warning letter that concerns the number of sterilization cycle failures relating to Vaporized Hydrogen Peroxide sterilizers that the Company uses) JNCE -4.7% (enters into $50 mln stock sales agreement)
  • CNST -4.4% (files for ~7.6 mln share common stock shelf offering by selling shareholders )
  • EPZM -3.8% (confirms trading of stock halted; Oncology Drug Advisory Committee to review tazemetostat at 8:00 a.m. ET today for the treatment of patients with metastatic or locally advanced epithelioid sarcoma)
  • GBT -1.4% (entered into $150 mln non-dilutive loan agreement with funds managed by Pharmakon Advisors and manager of the BioPharma Credit funds)
  • QIWI -1.3% (announces resignation of Sergey Solonin as CEO, effective January 15; appoints Boris Kim as next CEO)

Analyst comments:

  • AMC -2.7% (downgraded to Underperform from Neutral at BofA/Merrill)
  • DPZ -1.3% (downgraded to Neutral from Buy at Longbow)
  • HAL -1% (downgraded to Market Perform from Outperform at BMO Capital Markets)

>>> US Gapping up

Gapping up
In reaction to strong earnings/guidance:

  • SCS +6.9%, GIS +2.5%, CTAS +1.1%

M&A news:

  • MCHX +8.7% (acquires Sonar Technologies for $12.5 mln in cash and stock with potential for additional $1.5 mln)

Other news:

  • SLDB +45.4% (provides data update from sgt-001 development program; demonstrated expression of SGT-001 microdystrophin and nNOS function provide evidence that SGT-001 has the potential to provide therapeutic benefit for patients with Duchenne)
  • PCG +13.4% (submits comprehensive, multi-party settlement agreement to CPUC Related to 2017 and 2018 wildfires; settlement agreement prohibits company from seeking $1.625 billion in wildfire-related costs from customers)
  • COLM +4.9% (to join S&P MidCap 400)
  • ZGNX +3.9% (announces The Lancet has published the results of its Phase 3 clinical trial for FINTEPLA)
  • UNIT +3.8% (to join S&P SmallCap 600)
  • NLTX +1.4% (prices public offering of 8,925,000 shares of its common stock at $8.40/share)
  • DVN +1% (announces sale of Barnett Shale for $770 mln; announces new $1 billion share-repurchase program)

Analyst comments:

  • SBRA +6.6% (upgraded to Neutral from Sell at Citigroup)
  • CRMD +4.7% (initiated with a Buy at B. Riley FBR)
  • DDOG +1.8% (initiated with a Buy at Rosenblatt)
  • WMS +1.5% (upgraded to Overweight from Equal Weight at Barclays )
  • CCMP +1.5% (upgraded to Buy from Hold at Loop Capital)
  • DAL +1.5% (upgraded to Buy from Hold at Deutsche Bank)
  • REAL +0.9% (initiated with a Buy at B. Riley FBR)

>>> US Early premarket gappers

Early premarket gappers

  • Gapping up:
    • PCG +15.6%, MCHX +6.1%, COLM +5.4%, SCS +4.8%, ZGNX +3.9%, UNIT +3.8%, DVN +3.4%, CTAS +0.9%
  • Gapping down:
    • FIXX -16.1%, ADRO -14.8%, PACB -7.9%, FDX -7.8%, ANH -6.2%, SLDB -6%, CNST -3.9%, JNCE -3.8%, NLTX -2.7%, CFMS -2.5%, QIWI -1.6%, FCAU -1.2%, JE -0.6%

FT : Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker is fun and fantastic (in parts)

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker is fun and fantastic (in parts)
There’s swashbuckling and explosions, but Adam Driver is the real star of the ninth and final film in the Skywalker saga

The never-ending story has ended. The last word-crawl about galaxies far away has crawled its way across the John-Williams-fanfared cosmos. Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker is a fitting last movie. It’s long; maddening; fun in bits; fantastic in parts; and so desperate to stir itself into legend that we urge it on, like parents screaming at their tots in an egg-and-spoon race.

Oh go on, Rey (Daisy Ridley), be the story’s striding, radiant, marvel-working Amazon. Oh go on, Finn (John Boyega) and whatever-your-name-is (Oscar Isaac), be the two-man Han Solo the writers so want you to be. (But it takes more than two gamely jobbing tyro-swashbucklers, we realise, to be Harrison Ford.) The only actor in the final series who needs no wishing-on has been Adam Driver. He is its true star. As Kylo Ren, the dark prince, he is so sumptuously troubled, so multidimensionally moody, so craggily crypto-Shakespearean that we believe everything — even, in this new, last film, a moral journey so complex and counterintuitive that it out-switchbacks everyone.

The Empire and the resistance are at it again. Giant oyster shells scream across the voids. Explosions bloom like flowers. A whole bunch of British Isles actors (Domhnall Gleeson, Ian McDiarmid’s ghostly-snarling Emperor, Richard E Grant having a final Withnail-ectomy as menacing General Pryde) stride the cockpits of the Dark Side; while wholesome Americans, two more Brits and a gaggle of droids and beasties fight for the Force.

There are fur’s-breadth ’scapes in the imminent deadly breach. “They’ve got Chewie!” yells Finn — so early it’s not a spoiler — when the walking hearthrug is invited to sample enemy hospitality. (A hundred minutes to go: we know he’ll be back.) More dangerously, C-3PO undergoes brain surgery. Will it damage his nuanced babble; his Jeevesian, even Joycean stream of speaking consciousness?

Last episodes of sagas or series are often no-win propositions. They demand too much. They have to be encompassing; we must re-encounter every main theme and character. (“Can’t leave the party without saying goodbye to . . . ”) So don’t expect death, of an actor or character, to inhibit the completism. I hardly dare ask how Carrie Fisher got to the party, speaking, emoting and decreeing. “Rediscovered unseen footage,” says director JJ Abrams. Seriously? Well then, there must be a Force, negating normal mortality to feed and freshen a mega-franchise.

At the same time a last episode must leave us wanting more. And I’m not sure I do. I have been a paid reviewer for this entire, blow-me-down saga since 1977. Entire rooms and wings of my subconscious are tenanted by Leias and Chewies and Yodas. They disturb me in the night; demand breakfast; surprise me by walking past my windows; play the TV too loud. I can’t say I actually “like” the Star Wars magnum opus. (The best films are still the first two: Stars Wars and The Empire Strikes Back.) But none of us will be the same who have experienced it. Like it or not, they’re part of a family, a parallel family, that will be living with us forever.