Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
7 Stories We Are Following This Afternoon 5-6-25
Tue, 06 May 2025
In this episode, Scott Becker breaks down key business stories, including continued market declines, Skechers’ $9.4B sale to 3G Capital, challenges facing private equity giants like KKR and Blackstone, and more.
Chapter 1: Why are the markets declining again?
This is Scott Becker with the Becker Private Equity and Business Podcast. These are seven of the stories that we're following this morning. It's May 6th, or I should say this afternoon. First, the markets were down yesterday. They're down again today. Today, they're down more than a half percent. Yesterday, they were down more than a half percent.
Chapter 2: What is the significance of Skechers' sale to 3G Capital?
Looks like it'll be a couple bad days in a row as it unwinds some of the reality we've been seeing. Thus far, the NASDAQ before today is down about 7% year-to-date. The S&P 500 is down about 5.5% year-to-date. Second, Skechers, a great story of a family business going right. They have signed a deal to sell Skechers at a valuation of $9.4 billion. It's going to Brazilian key e-firm 3G.
Chapter 3: What challenges are private equity giants facing?
Just really an amazing story of success by the Skechers family, the Greenbergs family's It's being called the biggest shoe buyout in history. Third, a few of the private equity funds really suffer from the same problem. KKR is down nearly 23% year-to-date. It's like Apollo reported increases in fee earnings, but noted that monetization opportunities are challenging.
Chapter 4: How are smaller private equity funds coping in the current market?
Blackstone also down 20% year-to-date, and Apollo Global Management down 19% year-to-date. Large funds are glugging off fees to sustain themselves during a tough deal environment. Many smaller funds are struggling, and in fact, we're hearing some stories of very small funds laying off most of their teams because they just can't make the fees work for their expense load.
Fourth, Palantir Technologies is now down about 13.5% to 14%. Well, its Q1 sales exceeded its forecast, and its commercial business in the U.S. is hopping and growing. The real story is it saw a decline in international business. It also, even though it beat its estimates, it's showing slower growth than the markets would like. It's down about 14% today. It's still up about 41% year to date.
Fifth, Ford Motor Company was slightly down pre-market. Now it's up a little bit. It expects nearly $1.5 billion hit from tariffs. It had struggled the first quarter before tariffs, so we'll see how this really goes. It's hard to really calibrate what's really due to tariffs and what's due to tough management. Sixth, DoorDash. Starts to tank. DoorDash is down 8% to 9% today.
Its revenues came in lower than expected. Never a good sign for the quarter. It's trying to make it up on acquisitions. It's acquiring seven stores. It's acquiring Deliveroo. That's about $5 billion in deals. Always a concern for us when companies have to make up for organic growth slowing through acquisitions. Ideally, you want a combination of the two.
Seventh in the healthcare sector, Zimmer Biomet dropped nearly 12% yesterday as it reduced earnings guidance for the year. It reported declines in the areas of tech and data, bond cement and surgical product lines, but higher growth in its hips lines. That's a little bit about what's going on in the markets currently. Thank you for listening to the Becker Private Equity and Business Podcast.
We'll be back with you on some short episodes about Palantir, about DoorDash. Tesla also struggling. It's also about Naomi Becker. We'll also have a special episode about revenge and how sweet it is. Thank you for listening to the Becker Private Equity and Business Podcast. Thank you.
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