In this episode, Scott Becker highlights 8 business news stories for the day.
Chapter 1: What stories are being followed today?
This is Scott Becker with the Becker private equity and business podcast. This is a special day of recording. We're going to talk to you about eight stories that we're following today, but I get the great pleasure of recording in person at the Becker's healthcare annual meeting. I'm sitting with Jeremy core, the founder and CEO of executive podcast solutions.
Chapter 2: What is the impact of China's export orders?
and Chanel Bunger, the best producer in the business. So for me, it's a special opportunity to visit with our team from Executive Podcast Solutions in person, the best in the business in terms of podcast production, recording, and so forth. So here are the eight stories that we're following today. First, China export orders plunge. China's been hit hard by the tariffs so far.
Chapter 3: Why is Starbucks facing declining sales?
Their economy showed its first big signs of damage from the trade war. The Wall Street Journal reported on that today. Second, Starbucks is down more than 7% today. Lots of investors are sort of betting on the talents of Brian Nicole to move Starbucks in the right direction. In the first quarter, visitors were down. Order size was up. Everything's become so expensive there.
Chapter 4: What happened to Snapchat's stock?
And overall, same-store sales were down, and that's a bad sign. Their comparable same-store sales were down about 2%. As they say, coffee drinkers were going to cheaper alternatives like Dunkin' and McDonald's and others. Third, Snapchat's also way down today. Snapchat, you know, I always worry when people in the household are using Snapchat too much, but in any event, down 13% or so.
Chapter 5: What news is there about hims and hers?
They met their earnings, but they said they couldn't give guidance for the next quarter. And whenever a company says that they're no longer gonna give guidance, that scares people a great deal. Fourth, hims and hers jumped 23% yesterday. They signed a deal for distribution with Novo Nordisk. Novo Nordisk makes Wegovy, which competes with Mongero and Ozempic and these other things.
But the gap that Novo Nordisk has compared to Eli Lilly is getting larger and larger. But hims and hers jumped on the news that they and some others will be distributing Novo Nordisk, you know, weight loss, diabetes, drugs, GLP-1s, and so forth. Fifth, the markets rose yesterday, but they're down significantly today. Some challenging news in the market today.
The economy contracted for the first time in a few years in the first quarter this year. Jobs, new jobs added were very low in this last month. Inflation was lower in April, but still hot for the quarter. So a number of things are driving the markets down today as people have concerns about where things are going.
Sixth, mergers and acquisitions activity, which so many banks, investors, lawyers, consultants, accounts watch closely, was really down in the first quarter. Throughout the rest of the world, it was up. In the US, it was down. People just feeling uncertain, and so being cautious about investing too hard in big deals. Finally, seventh, we've got one more after seven.
Amazon is down nearly 16% year-to-date. It's performing okay compared to some of the other magnificent seven, but still that's down 15% year-to-date. Palantir Technologies remains hot. It's up 53% year-to-date after being relatively flat for a while. It's just been surging. It's up 53% year-to-date. Finally, Hertz. Hurst dropped 13% yesterday, has announced plans to again tap the debt market.
It already has $6 billion in debt. It's going to tap the markets for another 500 million. The company also issued 500 million in high yield slash junk bonds in December. So it's continuing to rely on debt heavily to make its cashflow and operations work and so forth. And it's always scary for companies. We say often debt kills companies, countries, and families. companies, countries, and families.
That's what we say. Thank you for listening to the Becker Private Equity and Business Podcast. And thank you again to Jeremy Corr and Chanel Bunger for being here in person along with Grace Keller and the rest of their team. Thank you very much for joining us.
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