I’m confused as to why they prattle on about inflation at all. Complete joke of a measure. Just allows governments to skullfuck poor people by not adjusting welfare rates ever. House prices up 20% since last year? Nah not inflation losers, go buy some bread and water.
Weird nobody is rushing to CNBC to talk about the 40% drop in lumber prices.
AMC back to 60
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TR is such a garbage company. Look at this collection of candy - it’s a murderers’ row of stuff you didn’t want to get on Halloween.
The CEO, Ellen Gordon is 89 years old and earns roughly $5 million in total compensation per year. Tootsie Roll has a dual class share structure, where Class B shares are entitled to 10 times the votes that a Class A share is entitled to. Gordon owns or controls 83% of those shares (as well as 57% of the regular shares), giving her 80% of the voting rights. Which means that there’s basically no mechanism to replace her or make any changes to the company.
And why might you expect there to be changes? Because it’s a garbage company with garbage products that performs terribly financially. Over the last 5 years, they’ve generated <10% ROE and not grown their revenues at all, despite retaining more than half their earnings:
The same was true in the 5 years before that:
Basically, this company should be trading right around book value (because it earns roughly 8% on its book value, which means investors shouldn’t be willing to pay a premium above that book value). But instead, it’s trading at more than 3 times book and an unfathomable P/E ratio of more than 40.
It is a completely overpriced garbage company and has been for years, and the only reason that price hasn’t been corrected is because of Gordon’s ownership.
Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
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Junior Mints and Andes are basically the only things on that illustration that can be defended.
Imagine having a product line so terrible that fucking DOTS are featured prominently on your annual report.
[Every year in the first class after Halloween, I use Tootsie Roll as the example company and I end up ranting about how terrible their candy is and how terrible their financial performance is, and the students can’t really tell if I’m just being funny or if I’m seriously unhinged, and quite frankly I’m not sure either.]
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All that candy is stuff that I imagine would be popular with, like, a depression era kid who gets one piece of candy each year on Xmas.
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It looks like all the stuff in the massive bag I used to buy at WalMart before Halloween when I was dead broke but wanted to have stuff to hand out.
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Got it
Going all in
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Jr. Mints basically carrying the entire franchise. America’s #1 candy for sneaking into the theaters. Back when we used to go to theaters.
yup.
to the moon!
This is hard to look at, and sums up a lot of our gross culture.
Still would murder a box of Andes rn.
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Bit-O-Honey, Good-n-Plenty have to be in the bottom 5 Halloween candies. Charleston Chew was great.
Dots are awesome. I’ll stand by that.
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Wtf is Cella’s and Nik n Nip?
Those candies suck. Junior Mints and Andes only look good because they’re surrounded by crap. I can think of 25 candies I’d grab first as a kid than any of those.
I’m a good n plenty fan, but I understand I’m on an island on that one. I don’t think any kids like it.
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I’ve always loved Good & Plenty. I think I got a 5 lb bag from my grandma when I was a little kid and she always had them in the house for me.
I used to really like Dots but now I find them too sticky, feel like they’re going to rip my teeth out.
You probably liked mustard as a kid, too.
https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1404839267424038912
Private equity - fuck these guys so hard. Hey let’s take a brand name like Hertz that still has some cache, and absolutely squeeze every last drop of blood out of it by preying on our customers with bogus $400 cleaning fees.
Mustard? Ha! I could only dream of such luxury.
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