November 25, 2022

Today's Topics

Hello! Whilst many of you recover from yesterday’s feast and festivities, spare a thought for the USMNT who skipped Thanksgiving dinner ahead of their clash with England today in Qatar. Today we're exploring:

  • Plowing on. Deere & Co. is going from strength to strength.
  • Glazed over. Manchester United's owners are looking to sell.
  • Strikes. America's railroads could grind to a halt.
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Amidst the economic doom and gloom, Deere & Co. reported a healthy crop of sales and profits this week, forecasting 2023 to be an even better year for America's largest seller of tractors and harvesters.

Nothing runs like a Deere

As the largest farm equipment company in the world, it’s almost guaranteed that something in your Thanksgiving feast yesterday was touched by a John Deere machine on its way from farm to table. With roots back to 1837, when a blacksmith named John Deere developed the first commercially successful self-scouring steel plow, Deere & Co. has grown into an industrial behemoth, selling nearly $50bn worth of equipment in its latest fiscal year, without much fanfare.

The company has moved on a fair bit from the original one-plow product range. These days you can buy a Deere tractor, lawnmower, harvester, tree-cutter, specialist golf-course mower and much, much more. Basically if it needs to be chopped, cut, mowed, sprayed or moved, John Deere has a machine to sell you.

As food prices have risen, demand for agricultural equipment has stayed strong and, with supply chain issues in the rear-view mirror, Deere seems able to pass cost rises onto its customers. This year, Deere shares are +25%, substantially outperforming the wider market.

Glazed over

Manchester United’s owners, the Glazer family, recently announced that they’re "commencing a process to explore strategic alternatives to enhance the club’s growth". Put simply: the American family is looking to sell up, with Forbes valuing the club at $4.6bn.

The Glazers’ tenure has been controversial from the start. Their highly-leveraged 2005 takeover, worth around $1.5bn at the time, saddled the soccer giants with huge debt and suggested to fans that the new owners may be more concerned with capital than the club, an accusation that the family has struggled to shake since.

Soccernomics

Despite supporting one of the most-recognizable franchises on the planet, Manchester United fans have grown used to weaker performances and lower league finishes — and off the pitch things are even shakier.

Matchday takings were obliterated during the pandemic, but revenues have been steady through the years, with the club taking in over $700m in 2022, some way up from the ~$392m they took in ten years ago. However, an ever-growing wage bill, amongst other things, has seen operating costs outgrow revenues, now leading to fairly consistent quarterly losses.

The Glazers’ position has looked precarious for some time, thanks in part to lackluster on-field performances and controversial dividends. Additionally, having star player Cristiano Ronaldo, whose 500m-strong follower base makes him the most-popular Instagrammer in the world, publicly question their credentials before parting ways hasn't helped.

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Not working on the railroad

American heavy industry could be facing a bleak midwinter as a national rail strike looks increasingly likely to bring US freight lines to a grinding halt, just as we head into the busy holiday season.

Negotiations between rail unions and management of major US freight railroads have been ongoing this week after a union representing 28,000 rail workers rejected the latest agreement intended to prevent any action. If a deal is not found, and just one union goes on strike, that action would be honored by all 12 rail unions, and their 115,000 members.

Strikes may have felt closer to home last Thursday if you had been unable to get your caffeine fix, with more than 2,000 Starbucks employees at 112 locations walking out on the company’s coveted Red Cup day. Indeed, the number of strikes has risen this year — bucking a multi-decade trend that has seen organized labor movements slowly disappear.

Even just the threat of strikes appears to be growing, as workers are winning union elections at major organizations such as Starbucks, Amazon, Apple, Chipotle, Trader Joe’s and Google. As more workers start to feel the rising pinch of inflation, wage demands and calls for better working conditions are becoming more common, leading to disputes.

More Data

• Fee for speed: Mercedes is locking faster acceleration behind a $1200-per-year paywall.

54.6 million Americans will travel, or have already travelled, over 50 miles from home as Thanksgiving travel figures nearly return to pre-pandemic levels.

• Hackers are allegedly selling 500 million phone numbers after a huge WhatsApp data leak.

Hi-Viz

• Visualizing the age distributions in this year’s World Cup squads — the US has the second-youngest team at the tournament!

• Charting the danger of rising fuel prices in Europe.

Off the charts: Which tech company, who recently posted their slowest quarterly growth, was at the heart of this pandemic-era mix-up that we charted back in 2020? [Answer below].

Answer here.

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