Steamed pork buns
This little piggy goes to market
Good morning, bacon enjoyers. This is your Stock Market Rundown for October 27th, 2023. Thanks for joining me. Let’s bite in:
TODAY’S TOP STORY: PIGGY GOES PUBLIC 🐷
Pork dumplings, Peking pork chops, Char Siu… if there’s one meat the Chinese know and love, it’s pork.
That’s probably why China’s largest meat producer, WH Group, acquired Smithfield in 2013, in an acquisition aimed at locking up pork supplies for export to China.
Smithfield has been a pork phenom in the US for over 80 years. The company slaughters 30 million hogs a year, and sells pork products in your local grocery store under brands like Armour Deli Meat, Curly’s BBQ, and Nathan’s Famous Hot Dogs.
Now, WH Group wants to take Smithfield public again in the US, as a play to unlock value and boost the lagging stock price of the Hong-Kong-listed parent company.
Investors would get exposure to Smithfield’s large network of hog farms, including the world’s largest hog processing plant in Tar Heel, North Carolina. Forty thousand little piggies are slaughtered there every day, to be turned into the ham, bacon, and sausages that Americans crave. (Animal rights activists are literally shaking.)
Problem is, all those hogs don’t always add up to profits. Due to inflation in feedstock prices, the pork industry’s margins are low enough to make you squeal like a stuck pig. Time will tell whether investors will go ham on this pork pure-play.
SO WHAT ELSE IS GOING ON?
If you’ve enjoyed a Powerade lately—whether as workout refreshment or hangover hydration—Coca-Cola thanks you. They reported earnings that beat expectations on volume growth in beverages.
Spider-Man 2 instantly became the fastest-selling PlayStation game in history on release, selling 2.5 million copies within 24 hours. Who knew that many people wanted to fantasize about shooting webs from their wrists after being bitten by a spider that got microwaved?
Verizon’s stock surged on earnings that trounced expectations. Impressive, considering Verizon ranks among the most hated companies in America, and has the customer service reps most likely to make sweet grandmas start cursing like a longshoreman.
High-fives all ‘round at Huawei, where they sold 1.6 million units of their newest phone in the 6 weeks after launch. Chinese government surveillance of your texts is included at no extra charge.
That’s it for today and for the week, my friends; have a delightful weekend, and let’s reconvene Monday morning. Yours in capitalism, The Axe