Hello! Taylor Swift’s 10th studio album Midnights is out today and it’s basically already broken Spotify. We aspire to one day break email inbox providers in the same way. Today we’re exploring:
Empire rebuilding
91-year-old media mogul Rupert Murdoch is eyeing a reunion of his major assets, exploring the remerging of Fox Corp. and News Corp. almost a decade after splitting them up back in 2013.
Thought to be a precursor to a smooth succession, a combination of the two companies would put a number of influential assets under the same corporate umbrella. Through a family trust, Murdoch controls 39% and 42% of the voting stock in News and Fox Corp., respectively, giving him substantial control over the operations of both companies. But after a number of transactions over the last two decades, what's left in the Murdoch empire?
Media mass
Fox Corp. currently houses most of the TV & cable assets that weren’t sold to Disney back in 2019. The Fox Network, combined with cable programming like Fox Business, Sports and News, brought in nearly $14bn in revenue last year.
News Corp., meanwhile, is a broader church. It encompasses digital real estate assets such as the REA Group and Realtor.com, book publishers Harper Collins, and news outlets across the world like the WSJ, Barrons, MarketWatch, The New York Post, The Times and more.
Separated, the two are already mega companies. News Corp.’s market cap is currently just shy of $10bn and Fox Corp.’s is $15.7bn. Together, so the theory goes, they would be a bigger entity with more financial power to take on competitors — an appealing proposition for whichever heir succeeds Murdoch Snr.
Trusst issues
Liz Truss resigned from her post as UK prime minister yesterday after just 45 days in office, making her the shortest-serving PM in British history. It’s official: the lettuce won.
The Truss tenure was marred by major U-turns, botched political plans, and economic missteps which saw the pound sink to a historic low in September, falling close to parity against the US dollar ($1.03).
Unpopularity contest
Taking over from a scandal-hit Boris Johnson, Liz Truss got the keys to Number 10 at an already-tumultuous time with rising inflation, soaring energy bills, and international instability. However, despite starting in marginally better standing with the public, by the 16th of October — after just over 5 weeks at the helm — the PM had a net favorability level of -70%, making her the least popular British leader since polling began.
Former-chancellor Rishi Sunak now looks likely to become the third British prime minister of the year, though some bookies and Tory politicians are backing a surprise Boris Johnson comeback.
McDonald’s are set to start selling Krispy Kreme doughnuts at 9 locations in Kentucky, in a testflight of a partnership between the two chains.
Get that dough
Founded in 1937 in Winston-Salem, NC, Krispy Kreme has a storied history. After originally selling direct to grocery stores, founder Vernon Rudolph soon had customers asking if they could buy fresh doughnuts after smelling them while walking down the street — so he cut a hole in the wall and started selling straight to customers. Rudolph’s efforts eventually turned into the Krispy Kreme Corporation, a company that grew modestly until the 1990s, when they expanded aggressively with franchised locations all across the US — with an IPO following in April 2000.
After going public Krispy Kreme grew quickly, but management were glazing over the details. Franchisees accused them of overloading certain areas, leaving franchisees competing with each other. More seriously, some accused Krispy HQ of "channel stuffing" — claiming that twice the number of doughnuts they actually needed would turn up at their franchise in the final few weeks of a quarter, in order for the company to meet its sales targets. Growth slowed, losses mounted, the CEO blamed low-carb eating and the company teetered on the brink of bankruptcy.
The hub and the spoke
The company was eventually taken private in 2016, and new management are now all-in on a “hub and spoke” model. Stores — or other mini-factories — now act as the “hub”, serving a number of “spokes” like grocery stores, retail locations and now the Golden Arches. The idea is that by having smaller “hubs” near the “spokes” the doughnuts can be super fresh, helping them to charge premium prices. Rudolph would approve, and customers seemingly have too, with sales set to top $1.5bn this year, triple what they sold in 2015.
• A deep dive on the blue tick black market.
• Americans have saved 60 million hours by cutting the commute out of their day as 45% of employees stay in remote or hybrid working arrangements.
• And another! Popular EA game FIFA 23 sees record-breaking 10.3 million players for its launch week.
• The correlation between cigarettes sold and lung cancer rates in the US is tracking in the right direction.
• Ghost town: the rise of vacant office space in San Francisco.
• How you might be paying the same price as your neighbor for even slower internet.
Off the charts: Which tech company were we charting about back in August? (Hint: they just posted another disappointing quarter yesterday).
Answer here.
