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Nike's supply chain is having some trouble "just doing it" at the moment, sending shares of Nike down more than 5% in pre-market trading.
The sneaker giant's latest quarterly results, which we've visualized above, showed more than $12bn of revenue, and more than $2bn of operating profit (before taxes). Those numbers were actually not too bad, but it was Nike's talk of the future that spooked investors — as is so often the case.
Sneaker supply
Since mid-July the company has been working through factory shutdowns in Vietnam, where the company makes 51% of its footwear and 30% of its apparel, as Covid mitigation policies in the country have completely disrupted manufacturing there.
Those manufacturing woes now seem to be getting worse, with the company anticipating that its entire business will see some kind of short-term inventory shortages over the coming quarters. Even the most well-funded marketing teams (Nike's had $918m to play with last quarter) need a product to sell.
Streaming wars, episode 317
This week's episode of the streaming wars has been an eventful one. CNN announced a streaming service (?), Netflix paid almost $700m to acquire the works of Roald Dahl and Disney announced that its streaming subscriber growth was likely to slowdown this year.
A golden ticket
The most notable of those headlines is almost certainly the £500m ($680m) that Netflix spent to acquire the works of Roald Dahl — the author behind books such as Matilda, Charlie & The Chocolate Factory, Fantastic Mr. Fox and many others.
Spending the best part of $700m for creative control of Dahl's works is a huge bet, even for a streaming giant like Netflix. That number doesn't include any future production costs of actually making the shows, movies or merchandise — confirming that Netflix is looking to ramp its content spending back up, after a lull during the pandemic. In its most recent quarter Netflix spent more than $4bn in cash on content assets, close to its quarterly record from 2019.
Handing over the money is, of course, the easy bit. Getting good value for every dollar spent on content is the hard part — even if you have access to the viewing habit data of more than 200 million subscribers, as Netflix does.
If your family owns the rights to some popular characters or stories, you might want to give Netflix / Disney / Amazon / Apple a call.
Last year the murder rate in the US jumped almost 30%, according to the latest data from the FBI, which was briefly published online earlier this week ahead of a full report coming out next week. That meant a total of 21,500 murders, the steepest single-year rise since records began, and equated to an additional 5,000 lost lives on 2019.
The question we would all like to know is why? Disentangling the many variables at play would probably take a full PhD or two, but even with only anecdotal evidence it feels hard not to blame the pandemic. Millions suddenly unemployed, uncertain about the future and collectively going through one of the hardest years in recent memory is a cocktail for bad social outcomes.
One interesting aspect of this data, as pointed out by The Atlantic, is that overall crime rates actually fell last year. Day time burglaries are presumably a lot harder when everyone is at home and shoplifting impossible if stores are closed.
The data for 2021 is a little less clear, but some estimate the murder rate is still rising, around another 10% so far, based on data from 87 of the biggest US cities.
1) China has announced that all cryptocurrency transactions are now illegal. Bitcoin's value fell more than 5% almost immediately on the news.
2) Very cool visualization of Earth's submarine fiber optic cable network.
3) Rising house prices and stock markets have taken US household net worth to an all-time high of $141 trillion, up almost 20% from a year ago.
4) Comfortable sweatpants that are actually stylish enough to be worn anywhere? Sign us up. Check out Public Rec's All Day Every Day Pant.**
5) European Union lawmakers have announced a proposal that could see the region settle on USB-C as the universal charging port for electronic gadgets like smartphones, tablets, headphones and cameras. Apple is not a fan of the idea.
6) More than 3 million baby loungers are being recalled by company Boppy after the product was linked to the deaths of 8 infants.
**This is a sponsored content.
