Extreme makeover
Luxury lagging at L'Occitane
Good morning, skincare sophisticates. This is your Stock Market Rundown for April 19th, 2024. Thank you so much for reading. Let’s get into it:
TODAY’S TOP STORY: BUILDING AN ALMOND-OIL EMPIRE
If you’ve wandered through an upscale mall, you’ve probably seen—or smelled—products by L’Occitane. The luxury beauty brand was founded in 1976 by a young Frenchman operating out of an abandoned soap factory in Provence.
Today, the company has over 1,300 lavender-scented shops worldwide, shilling products with mystifying names like Immortelle Divine Cream and Revitalizing Fresh Scalp Tonic. (Great stocking-stuffers for mom.)
The man who transformed L’Occitane into a global powerhouse was Reinhold Geiger, a serial entrepreneur who took over in the 1990s. Geiger became a billionaire, thanks to overpriced hand creams and shower oils.
L’Occitane went public in 2010 on the Hong Kong stock exchange, which was then a trendy listing venue due to the boom in Asian luxury consumption. But disappointment ensued: today, L'Occitane’s valuation lags behind European-listed peers like L’Oreal and Louis Vuitton.
To fix that, Geiger has been working on taking the company private, with help from private equity giant Blackstone. The idea is to delist from the Hong Kong exchange, and relist on a European exchange.
Geiger’s first try at a buyout got shelved in 2023, but now it’s looking like deal o’clock: he’s taking another run at getting 100% control of the business. Maybe this go-round, he can slather some Verbena Perfecting Cream on his own company’s sagging stock price.
SO WHAT ELSE IS GOING ON?
Porsche reported its deliveries last quarter were down 4%, which probably just means a few oligarchs decided to stick to getting around by helicopter.
US regulators are probing Facebook’s privacy practices. Fitting: if there’s anybody who knows about violating our privacy, it’s the government. (Yes, I just filed my taxes.)
The IMF says developed countries need major reforms to boost productivity, unless we want global growth to spend years limping along like a marathon runner with a sprained ankle.
It’s a science project that could alter history: Japan and the US have announced a partnership to work on commercializing nuclear fusion. Unlimited energy at near-zero cost would mean we can pass up the gas pumps—permanently.
That’s it for today and for the week, my friends; have yourselves a fabulous weekend, and I’ll see you bright and early Monday morning. Yours in capitalism, The Axe
Thank you so much for reading. If you enjoyed today’s Stock Market Rundown, the #1 thing you can do to help me out is forward it to a friend.