Forever young

Good morning, avid analysts. This is your Stock Market Rundown for March 25th, 2024. Thanks for joining me for another week of financial fun times. Let’s dig in:

TODAY’S TOP STORY: GALDERMA’S CAPITAL INJECTION

Time brings wisdom, but it also brings wrinkles. And there’s no limit to what consumers are willing to spend to soothe the physical ravages of the passing years. In the US alone, anti-aging is a $4.9 billion market. 

A big player is Galderma, a company that just went public on the Swiss stock exchange. The stock was up double digits on its debut, plumping up investors’ portfolios.

The business was originally founded as a joint venture of cosmetics company L’Oreal and Swiss food conglomerate Nestle, to focus on skin care. (You might’ve tried their drugstore staple, Cetaphil cleanser.)

But in recent years Galderma has branched out from creams and soaps. Today, more than half of the company’s revenue comes from “injectable aesthetics”—also known as, stuff rich ladies and TikTok girlies get jabbed into their faces. 

It used to be that the only treatment for the aging face was yanking your sagging jowls back with a facelift. But Galderma’s products let you achieve the same effect—sort of—without having to eat icky hospital food.

You name it, they’ve got it: products to inject in your forehead to smooth wrinkles, under your eyes to fill out hollows, and even in your chin for “temporary augmentation”. If you want to look like Handsome Squidward, Galderma’s got you covered.

Management expects the market for injectables to keep growing at a steady pace over the next few years. And even if a few overly-enthusiastic customers end up looking like a chipmunk in a wind tunnel, it’s not going to make Galderma’s clientele give up on stopping the clock.

Did a friend forward this email to you? Sign up here.

SO WHAT ELSE IS GOING ON?

• Jerry Seinfeld was right: whether it’s breakfast, lunch, or dinner, nothing hits like cereal. General Mills beat estimates thanks to higher prices on products like Honey Nut Cheerios and Cinnamon Toast Crunch.

• Just in time for summer road trips: US new vehicle sales are expected to rise double-digits this month. 

• Industry sources say the average Wall Street bonus for 2023 was an obnoxious $176,500. The staff at Loro Piana can breathe a sigh of relief—their six-hundred-dollar cashmere scarves will be flying off the shelves.

• Did you have money in FTX when it collapsed? Good news, kinda: the bankruptcy settlement for the kaput crypto exchange will give you some of your money back. Hey, things could be worse—Tom Brady lost $30 million to the FTX failure. Is it just me, or do things always seem to deflate when this guy is around?

That’s it for today, my friends; catch you back here at the usual time tomorrow 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.