Hello! What do McDonald’s ice cream machines and US copyright law have in common? Both are kinda broken…but a tech repair firm, iFixit, wants to amend the two in one fell scoop. Today we're exploring:
A dotcom dinosaur reborn
Yahoo, an early internet trailblazer, yesterday announced its acquisition of venture capital-focused media startup StrictlyVC to bolster its tech news site, TechCrunch. The deal adds to Yahoo's recent shopping spree, following its acquisitions of the social investing platform CommonStock earlier this month, sports betting app Wagr in April, and “unbiased news platform”, TheFactual, last year.
Yahoo was big tech before big tech was the size of countries. In 1994, the company's founders launched "Jerry and David's Guide to the World Wide Web" — the first version of a directory and web portal that, as Yahoo, would go on to offer search, email, shopping, news and more, propelling the company’s valuation to $125bn during the peak of the dotcom bubble.
Of course, Yahoo stumbled soon after, as fierce competition — particularly from Google and nascent social media sites — ate into at its user base. As the wave of “web 2.0” washed over the world, Yahoo was increasingly left behind. In 2013, the company acquired Tumblr for $1.1bn — which didn’t work out — and eventually, Yahoo itself was bought by Verizon for $4.5bn.
Under new management
Since then, Yahoo has changed hands again, and today is owned by private equity giant Apollo after a deal in 2021. Now, the company wants to reinvent itself. Management are looking to get competitive again in the world of search, leveraging the core profitability of its legacy businesses, and the 4 billion (!) visits that Yahoo.com still reportedly receives every month.
Outweighed
Novo Nordisk, the Danish pharma company responsible for Ozempic and Wegovy — two of the buzziest drugs in the weight loss game — has been bulking up, with its market cap. recently crossing the $400 billion threshold, surpassing Denmark’s annual GDP.
With sales up 30%, net profit rising 43%, and supply restrictions still in place for its most popular medication, Novo unsurprisingly raised its outlook for 2023 in its report earlier this month, as demand for the company’s “wonder drugs” continues to rise.
Very good shape
The drug maker’s ascent has been meteoric, especially for a company celebrating its 100th birthday in a few months. The hype around its two flagship treatments — which both trace back to the 2012 development of semaglitude, designed to tackle type 2 diabetes — has catapulted Novo Nordisk to second on the list of Europe’s most valuable public companies, only behind luxury fashion giant LVMH. For another sense of scale, Novo is now worth a similar amount to McDonald's and Netflix combined.
The company's become so large, the government in Denmark — a nation of fewer than 6 million people — is considering publishing separate economic statistics that strip out the “Novo effect”. The pharma giant’s success comes at a good time for Denmark after one of the country’s other iconic brands, Lego, suffered a rare misstep and recorded its largest profit drop for almost 2 decades.
Go deeper: We explored the burgeoning world of weight loss in a deep dive in July.
A little cooler
As summer begins to draw to a close, America’s hot job market is showing signs of cooling, with openings for July dropping to their lowest level in over 2 years according to yesterday’s update from the Labor Department.
There were around 340,000 fewer job openings in comparison to June, as vacancies dipped below 9 million for the first time since March 2021. There’s still plenty of work out there, however: the 8.83 million openings figure from July remains elevated from pre-pandemic levels.
We’re (still) hiring
The narrowing gap between labor supply and demand was enough to see stocks rally, as the S&P 500 enjoyed its best single day performance since May, and undoubtedly put smiles on the faces of a few Fed chiefs. However, the ratio of job openings to unemployed people still sits at ~1.5, still one of the highest readings in the last 20 years.
• The records just keep tumbling for Taylor Swift, as she becomes the first female artist to break the 100 million monthly listener milestone on Spotify.
• While experts estimate that up to 90% of online content could be AI-generated by 2026, the Columbus Dispatch has halted its use, after an illegible article detailing a high school football game went viral.
• Bringing a whole new meaning to the term ‘bargain aisle’, one Las Vegas wedding package, which includes a ceremony, photoshoot, bouquet, and live broadcast, will set you back just $15.
• Looking at on-demand audio streaming data, which weekday strikes a chord with listeners?
• Tall gang: Plotting the height and weight of NBA and WNBA stars.
Off the charts: Which pop superstar has had their HBO show canceled after just 1 season, having received a measly 19% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes? [Answer below].
