VF Corporation, the parent company of the preferred brands of the middle class (The North Face, Vans etc.) has decided to let go of a clothier near and dear to every 90’s kid’s heart: Nautica. The announcement was made as part of VF’s Q4 earnings release, where revenue came in just shy of the target $3.
7B and net income just missed Wall Street’s bet of $1.02 per diluted share.VF Corp. reported a net loss of $90.3M, compared to a net income of $264.3M just a year ago. The culprit? A provision in the new tax code that requires companies to pay a tax for historical offshore earnings that have yet to be converted to USD.
So what does the future hold for Nautica? Only time will tell as a deal has yet to be announced for the back to school shopping mainstay.
Water Cooler Talking Point: “Here’s a list of things you did if you were a kid during the 90’s: play POGS, forget to feed your Tamagotchi … and wear your freshest Nautica shirt for school picture day. If everything old is new and millennials are obsessed with nostalgia then why no love for Nautica? Can’t the powers that be at Buzzfeed put their clout to good use for something other than helping me figure out what member of NSYNC I am?”
“I’m thinking Dorsia.” – every Wall Street CEO after their bonus checks clear.
It’s the most wonderful time of the year on Wall Street: bonus communication season. And it’s better than usual to be a Wall Street CEO. The year of our Lord 2017 was a lucrative one for (already) rich white men in power positions at bulge bracket investment banks. Investment banking, wealth management, and retail banking revenue were up, and so were bonuses for the creme de la creme …
If this were a bonus measuring contest Jamie Dimon would claim the top spot, but what of the lowly shareholders? Moynihan’s Bank of America rebounded vs. 2016, with share prices jumping 33%.
Water Cooler Talking Point: “Remember Occupy Wall Street? I feel for those people every time I hear some news like this. They squatted in a park for like 6 months in absolute squalor … and the very thing (or at least one of the things) they were protesting has gotten worse. A Wall Street CEO making the GDP of a small African nation has got to sting a little bit.”
The much-anticipated Black Panther movie, which apparently is not a dark prequel to Pink Panther, finally hit theatres this holiday weekend and audience turnout did not disappoint. Grossing $201.7M in North America, Black Panther became the highest grossing February debut of all time. No, National Treasure was not the raining champ.
Black Panther’s opening weekend gives it the fifth highest grossing opening weekend of all time and the second highest grossing Marvel release of all time. By the end of 2017, the movie was the ninth most tweeted about film of the year, with nothing but a trailer released.
The movie is also killing it on the record charts, with the soundtrack, featuring the likes of Kendrick Lamar, topping the Billboard 200 by selling 154K equivalent album units, or as we like to call it “the format formerly known as CDs.”
Water Cooler Talking Point: “Comic books have had quite the coming out party these last ten years. Marvel learned what doesn’t work with those first 3 Spider-Man movies and whatever the hell the first Hulk was, and now we have Black Panther. Imagine what’s next!”
We know that Lloyd Blankfein taketh (see: massive bonus) but he also dish-eth. When he isn’t busy being a master of the universe he’s doling out sage advice that you’d expect from a granola crunching REI store manager:
“Chill out.”
But there is more than a worthy nugget in the comically oversimplified career advice: “There’s not a sport — there’s not an activity in life where, if you have a really hard grip, you actually are better.”
