Amping up
Tesla gets dethroned
Good morning, speed demons. This is your Stock Market Rundown for January 12th, 2024. Thanks for riding along with me. Let’s get started:
TODAY’S TOP STORY: BATTERY BATTLE
Who’s the king of the electric vehicle market? Nope, not Elon Musk. Does the name Wang Chuanfu ring a bell? Probably not—which is why the motto of his car company is “the biggest car brand you’ve never heard of.”
While Chuanfu is far from a household name in the US, his electric vehicle company, BYD, just unthroned Tesla to become global #1 in EV sales. That’s thanks to three million electric and hybrid cars it sold in China during 2023.
Born to rice-farmer parents, Chuanfu was orphaned as a child, but his genius-level IQ earned him top marks in chemistry. He set out to mass-manufacture lithium-ion batteries, and pretty soon, BYD controlled half the global smartphone-battery market. (Chances are they made the battery in the Motorola Razr you rocked in 12th grade.)
In 2003, Chuanfu made a risky pivot when he acquired a failing state-owned automaker. BYD’s hybrid and fully-electric cars rolled off the assembly lines a few years later. There were skeptics in the early days: in 2011, Tesla CEO Elon Musk scoffed “have you seen their car?” and ripped BYD’s technology as “not very strong.”
Fast-forward to 2023, and Chuanfu’s net worth has hit $15 billion. Manufacturing its own batteries helps BYD keep its prices super-affordable. And of course, its vehicles are eco-friendly, so Chinese drivers can feel good about themselves while sitting in Beijing traffic for hours.
Elon Musk is no longer sipping haterade and now praises BYD’s products. Meanwhile, his own company has had a few struggles in China: Tesla just recalled 1.6 million vehicles there, due to glitches in its Autopilot software. Scary stuff… when Excel crashes, you might lose an hour of work, but bugs in your Tesla’s code could have you careening into a lamppost.
SO WHAT ELSE IS GOING ON?
Did all the wine moms switch to kombucha? Constellation Brands’ earnings missed expectations as consumers slowed purchasing of the company’s premium-priced wine and spirits.
TikTok, Snapchat, Facebook, and other companies have banded together to sue the state of Ohio to block a law requiring children to get parental consent to use social media apps. I guess they think kids have a constitutionally-protected right to watch Logan Paul prank videos.
Novo Nordisk, makers of the famous weight loss drug Ozempic, is working on a new drug to treat obesity by boosting metabolism instead of suppressing appetite. Please, God, let me live long enough to see a drug that lets me eat Dairy Queen Peanut Buster Parfaits every day and not get fat.
Spain’s second-biggest mobile operator suffered a major outage when a hacker named “Snow” hijacked its network, thanks to an employee’s username and password getting compromised. Let me guess, username “admin”, password “123456”?
That’s a wrap for this week, team. Have yourselves a fabulous weekend; already looking forward to circling back with you, bright and early Monday morning. Yours in capitalism, The Axe
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Hit me up at theaxe@stockmarketrundown.co