Companies in the news ... and how they were assessed
Netflix: crowning glory?
When the Netflix royal drama The Crown came out in November, “my husband and I abandoned our usual weekend plans”, said Janice Turner in The Times. Watching endless TV “was once the mark of the saddo”, but since launching its on-demand streaming service, “Netflix has achieved something quite strange: it has made couch potatoes cool”. That much is evident from the $63bn company’s latest quarterly figures, which show that it is close to notching up 100 million members globally, said Jennifer Saba on Reuters Breakingviews. Still, the slowing pace of subscriber growth worries some investors, given the company’s lavish spending on new productions: “Netflix will blow through at least $6bn this year on creating TV series and films.” Meanwhile, the competition from deep-pocketed rivals such as AT&T, Google and Amazon has proliferated “and will only intensify”. Netflix, which was founded in 1997, has “a good head start” and remains the most widely used video service in the US. But even if all goes “perfectly to plan”, the share price, which is reapproaching the $148 all-time high achieved in March, are looking pricey. CEO Reed Hastings hasn’t disappointed up to now, “but he knows all too well how easily the plots of good stories can twist unexpectedly”.
Jaeger: fashion victim
It is not yet two weeks since the British fashion house Jaeger crashed into administration, with the threatened loss of 700 jobs, said Ashley Armstrong in The Daily Telegraph. But the recriminations have already begun. The chain’s former owner, fashion entrepreneur Harold Tillman, “has reignited his bitter row” with the turnaround firm Better Capital, which took over in 2012, accusing it of running the chain into the ground. “They didn’t have anyone with a fashion background running it, they didn’t understand [the] product,” he said. Founded in 1884 as “Dr Jaeger’s Sanitary Woollen System Co Ltd”, Jaeger flourished in the 1960s and 1970s, but “sales have withered as its customer base has grown older”, said The Economist. Age isn’t the only problem, said Kate Burgess in the Financial Times. “Jaeger’s crepe skirts and tweed trews hark back to a time when adults wore plimsolls to play tennis, and only schoolkids wore gym kits.” Today’s grannies, by contrast, “wear trackies and yoga pants, just like their grandkids”. The juxtaposition of Jaeger’s collapse and the 82% rise in pre-tax profits reported by JD Sports “says a lot about what has happened to the high street over recent decades”.
UK wine growers: “Grape Britain”
Britain’s wine revolution continues apace, says Rebecca Smithers in The Guardian. Over the past ten years, the number of acres planted with grapevines in England and Wales has grown by 135%, according to trade body English Wine Producers. A “record” million more vines will be planted this year, “allowing growers to produce two million more bottles”. Among those planting new rootstocks are two big French champagne houses, Taittinger and Vranken-pommery Monopole, which have announced new projects in Kent and Hampshire. Sales of domestically-grown wine have been on an upswing since 2000, but momentum is now being driven internationally. The French have finally admitted “they like our wines”, and New York has decided that “English bubbles are the next big cool wine ‘thing’”, noted expert Oz Clarke. “We are bubbling with confidence.”